Chapter 20: Her Gate

The Director crossed the river on a plank.

Two of her men had laid it over the broken span, and she walked it in flat shoes with her hands clasped in front of her, unhurried.

Behind her, on the far ridge, a line of armored trucks had stopped in the road.

They were not Halcyon's.

They carried the general's crest on the doors.

"He came to watch," Rhys said, low. "He wanted to see which of you wins."

"Then let him see," Jessa said.

Joel had already run out the side door and across the gravel for the blue sedan.

He came back carrying the little girl against his chest, with the technician stumbling after him, and shut the gate on them both.

The girl looked at Jessa over Joel's shoulder.

She held her rabbit by one ear, and she did not cry.

Jessa went down off the wall and stood in the open gateway, with Corin on her left and Rhys on her right.

The Director stopped twenty feet away.

She looked at the burning trucks, the broken men on the far bank and the smoke, and she shook her head with real sorrow.

"Such a waste," she said. "Eleven of mine, and for what?"

"For you coming to my house," Jessa said.

"Your house. Yes, we'll get to that."

The Director raised her voice a little, so that it carried up the ridge to the general's column.

"Captain Hartwell. General. Gentlemen. I've come here in good faith to retrieve two people who belong to my institute."

"The first is Miss Jessa Hartwell, a participant in a study she consented to last spring. I have the signed form."

She drew a thin sheet from her jacket and held it up.

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