Page 17 of Us in Ruins

Margot took another steadying breath, bracing for the moment when security spotted her. She’d lead them on a goose chase, buying Van enough time to get ahead, and then she’d lose them in the fifth region, hopping the fence just like she had when she got here. It was just like Isla and Reed escaping the Durham Crew under gunfire on Crete in chapter eighteen of Relics of the Heart. Divide and conquer. Easy.

“Looking for someone?” Margot hollered.

A lone beam rounded the corner at the far end of the alley. Margot held her ground. She had to wait until the exact right moment, giving Van as much time as possible to make it past the ruins’ edge.

“Signorina, fermati adesso!” one of the guards replied. Not that Margot was in a position to dissect the sociopolitical hierarchy of the night-duty guards, but if she had to guess, he was the head honcho. He had a head full of dark hair and a face as wrinkled as a T-shirt you forgot in the dryer.

Except that Margot couldn’t fermati adesso, whatever that meant.

“Sorry,” she responded. “I haven’t reached that Duolingo level yet!”

Three more flashlight beams appeared. Then, three more. No, five more. Margot quailed, pacing backward with her hands held palms-out next to her face. The guards spoke, overlapping each other with shouted demands Margot couldn’t comprehend.

Around the next corner, another line of security guards materialized, fencing her in. Margot froze, staked to the ground with a spike of terror.

Okay. Maybe Van was right. This was a bad idea. Terrible.

The guards waded closer. She’d stalled between the buildings, closed in a dead end. What had Van said? There’s always another way.

Scanning the ancient street, Margot searched for new escape routes. There had to be something, but the structures leaned into each other, one stone wall flush against the next. A window had been carved into the stone facade, and the tiled roof had been remarkably preserved, the clay faded into pale red.

Well, when one door closes, a window opens.

Margot bolted toward the window and hoisted herself through feetfirst. She landed in a lousy excuse for a somersault, tumbling over herself in a tangle of limbs. Recovering, she sprinted through the house, zipping around walls plastered with ruddy-faced cherubs who looked absolutely nothing like the guardians they’d left in the temple below.

At the back of the house, she launched herself over a half-decayed wall. Or, at least, tried to. With gravel biting into the soft of her palms, her hold slipped, sneakers skidding, and the skin of her knees scraped against the stone.

Okay, ow. That couldn’t slow her down. She hooked a leg around the top of the wall, vaulting herself over, and scrambled down the backside.

The alleys were so narrow. If she stayed, the guards would corner her in three seconds flat. Using a window as a foothold, Margot stretched, grappling at the clay roofline. She heaved herself up with a groan.

From the rooftop, Margot spotted Van. He’d passed the graveyard and turned toward the city’s yellow glow, a moth to a flame. Margot raced along the roofs, balancing with her arms out, ancient roof tiles tinkling to the ground as she cried out a belated “Sorry!” Beneath her, the guards and their flashlights followed her every step. Whatever they hollered was lost on her, but she imagined it sounded a lot like, That’s very much not allowed and Get off the roof.

Fortunately for the guards but unfortunately for Margot, there wasn’t much roof left. The shingles evaporated, chipping off at the edge of a courtyard. Throwing her arms out for balance, she walked the thin ledge of the retaining wall like a gymnast’s beam as the guards barreled into the building below.

At the far side of the courtyard, Margot climbed down and made a fast break for the outskirts of the city, leaving the ruins strewn behind her. The fifth region’s wide-open fields swayed in the lilting wind. She hopped the fence with so little grace, she was glad no one had been around to see it.

Wait... no one was around.

Ahead, silhouetted in the moonlight, Van hiked over the hillsides. What part of wait for me hadn’t been clear?

Even running as fast as she could, Van felt impossibly far. “Slow down,” Margot called.

Van didn’t look over his shoulder. Margot had the lung capacity of a Choir Girl #7, not an Elphaba or an Eliza Schuyler, and her body screamed for air when she finally caught up with him. With her hands on her knees, her chest heaved, heart slowing back to a normal operating tempo.

“It’s this way.” She steered him toward the rut in the grass near the cul-de-sac with the flickering streetlight. Shaking the residual adrenaline out from her arms, Margot said, “That was incredible. I felt like a real Indiana Jones.”

Van’s forehead wrinkled. “Who?”

“He was... a little after your time.” With her hands in her pockets, Margot ran her thumb over the shard’s smooth side like a worry stone. “So, where to next?”

“I told you, no partners. I don’t need someone to worry about saving.”

“What are you talking about? You saved me, and then I saved you. We’re even.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Van’s pace didn’t slow. “I’m not associating with some troublemaking girl with a brain full of bad ideas.”

“I told you. You need me,” Margot said. And this time, she knew she had the upper hand. “You don’t know anything about the twenty-first century. We have wireless internet and cat cafés and Uber Eats. What are you going to do without a credit card or an ID or an international data plan? You don’t even have a car.”

---