“Oh, crap,” he murmured under his breath. Nothing I can do.

Even as he observed the scene through a myriad of emotional outpourings, everything changed. A mind rose into the gaiafield close to Mareble and her fool of a husband, a mind of incredible strength, its presence flaring bright and loud. Cheriton’s filter routines were just enough to shield him from its astonishing magnitude. Yenrol and the others screamed with one voice, their cry of anguish deafening in the confined office.

Mareble wanted nothing else but to be off this dreadful world. She and Danal had come here with such soaring spirits, believing they would be close to the Second Dreamer. But instead, their lives had degenerated with increasing speed, culminating in Danal’s arrest by Living Dream. Those who had taken him away were not a part of the movement as she understood it. The Welcome Team moved with Cleric Phelim’s authority, but they certainly lacked any of the gentle humility of the devout. Men of violence and hauteur. What they’d done to poor Danal was an atrocity. Not that they cared.

Her husband had been released into her arms, a frightened trembling wreck, unrecognizable as the kindhearted man she’d married. They couldn’t even return to the pleasant apartment that they’d bought and that was the reason Danal had been arrested in the first place. It was ridiculous, but the Ellezelin forces suspected them of colluding with the Second Dreamer herself. And Araminta being the Second Dreamer was the one thing Mareble could never quite bring herself to understand. Araminta, that pretty young woman, slightly nervous and on edge, eager to sell the apartment she’d been laboring to renovate. Somehow, that just didn’t connect. Mareble was expecting something quite different, but there had been no hint, no inkling when they’d talked and haggled over the price. She’d shared a cup of tea with the Second Dreamer and never known. Such a thing was simply wrong.

Danal didn’t care about any of that when she tried to explain. When they were free of the Welcome Team, he sank into a bitter depression, jumping at shadows and shouting at her. The things he shouted, she tried to ignore. It wasn’t Danal saying such hurtful things; it was the confusion and hurt left behind by his interrogators.

They spent days in a hotel together, living off room service, with her offering what comfort she could. Cheriton had recommended some drugs that ought to help, which she’d tried to get Danal to take. Sometimes he did, but more often he’d fling the infuser away. So she waited patiently for her husband to recover while the insanity of the invasion raged on the streets outside. That was when the unreal news broke that the Second Dreamer was Araminta and, worse, that she’d escaped to some planet Mareble had never heard of on the other side of the Commonwealth. Bizarrely, the knowledge seemed to ease Danal’s state of mind; at least he started taking the antipsychosis drugs.

The calming effect was slow but constant; she began to see signs of the man she’d lost reemerging. That was when they realized they had to get away. It was a decision that seemed to be shared by most of the Living Dream supporters on Viotia. The hostility and violence directed at them from the rest of the population was never going to abate.

They decided to wait until midmorning before leaving the hotel. That way they figured there would be more people about, more Living Dream followers doing the same thing, more paramilitaries patrolling. It would be safest.

The hotel was only a couple of miles from Colwyn City’s docks, where the wormhole opened to the safety of Ellezelin. When they made their way cautiously down to the lobby, it was deserted. Mareble had tried to order some modern clothes from a local cyber-store and have them delivered by bot, but they’d never arrived. The store’s management system insisted they’d been dispatched. She wanted to use the clothes in an attempt to blend in with everyone else on the street. Instead, they made do with what they had. Danal wasn’t too bad; his sweater was a neutral gray, and he wore it above brown denim trousers. From a distance it would escape attention. Except for his shoes, which were lace-ups. Nobody else in the Commonwealth used lace-ups anymore. Mareble was more worried by her own green and white dress; a dress was less suspicious, but the style was recognizable as belonging to Makkathran. In fact, it was a copy of a dress Kanseen had worn one night in Olovan’s Eagle.

Standing in front of the door, she called a cab. There was a metro rail running along the street right outside the hotel. Her u-shadow reported that the cab companies weren’t responding to requests; their amalgamated management cores apologized and said that normal service would resume as soon as possible.

“It’s not far,” she said, more for her own benefit than his. “Come on, we can get there. We’ll be back on Ellezelin in an hour.”

Danal nodded, his lips drawn together in a thin bloodless line. “Okay.”

The hotel entrance was on Porral Street, which was almost deserted when they walked out into the warm midmorning sunlight. They could hear distant airborne sirens as well as a suppressed buzzing like some angry insect, which Mareble just knew was a crowd on the hunt. Porral Street opened out onto Daryad Avenue, which was the main thoroughfare in this part of town, sweeping down the hill to the river Cairns. And just off to one side at the end of that slope were the docks. Simply looking down the broad avenue with its tall buildings and silent traffic solidos changing color and shape for nonexistent ground vehicles produced a surge of hope. Along its whole length she could see barely a hundred people in total.

An equally optimistic Danal linked his arm through hers, and they set off at a fast pace. A lot of the stores on either side had suffered damage. Windows were broken and covered with big sheets of black carbon. Most of the adverts were cold and dark. Three smashed cab pods blocked the metro rails running down the middle of the road. The people they passed never met their gaze. Nobody was sharing anything in the gaiafield. Nobody wanted to be noticed. Mareble was acutely aware of other people heading down the slope-couples, groups-all of them moving with that same urgent intent as her own gait yet trying to appear casual.

They were halfway down toward the smooth fast-flowing water of the river and starting to relax, when they crossed a side road. The shouts of the mob reached them at the same time. Mareble saw a man running frantically toward them, chased by about fifty people.

“Run!” he screamed as he charged past. His black felt hat tumbled off as he turned down the slope. The mob was thundering up fast behind him, faces contorted with bloodlust and hatred. Mareble and Danal took off after him; it was pure instinct.

“Help,” Mareble yelled. Her u-shadow was sending an alert to the Ellezelin forces that wasn’t even being acknowledged. She cried into the gaiafield, only to receive the slightest ripple of sympathies from Living Dream followers. “Somebody help!”

Danal was holding her hand, tugging her along. The dress was hindering her legs. Her ankle boots weren’t designed to run in. It was at least a mile and a half to the docks. Fear began to burn along her nerves as the adrenaline kicked in. She thought of the Waterwalker on the mountain after Salrana’s betrayal, with Arminel and his thugs closing in on the pavilion. Even then he had maintained his dignity. I must be like him.

Her foot hit something, and she went flying, landing painfully on the stone block pavement, grazing her knees, tearing the skin on her wrists. The jolt thumped along her arms, and she wailed in dread, knowing it was all over. “Lady, please,” she whimpered as Danal hauled her to her feet.

The mob came up around them incredibly fast, surrounding them with a fence of savagely hostile faces. They carried lengths of wood and metal bars; a couple gripped small laser welders.