Waiting for him. Possibly even waiting for-

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’ll only speak once, and you best answer true. Do they know about that thing? Do those three boys know about the Rainbow?”

Her eyes shifted away from his. It was answer enough in one way, but not in another. She had had things her way all too long up there on her hill; she had to know who was boss down here. He leaned over again and grabbed her shoulder. It was horrible-like grabbing a bare bone that somehow still lived-but he made himself hold on all the same. And squeeze. She moaned and wriggled, but he held on.

“Tell me, you old bitch! Run your fucking gob!”

“They might know of it,” she whined. “The girl might’ve seen something the night she came to be-am-, let go, ye’re killing me!”

“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.” He took another longing glance at the ball, then sat up straight in the saddle, cupped his hands around his mouth, and called: “Clay! Hold up!” As Reynolds and Renfrew reined back, Jonas raised a hand to halt the vaqs behind him.

The wind whispered through the grass, bending it, rippling it, whipping up eddies of sweet smell. Jonas stared ahead into the dark, even though he knew it was fruitless to look for them. They could be anywhere, and Jonas didn’t like the odds in an ambush. Not one bit.

He rode to where Clay and Renfrew were waiting. Renfrew looked impatient. “What’s the problem? Dawn’ll be breaking soon. We ought to get a move-on.”

“Do you know the huts in the Bad Grass?”

“Aye, most. Why-”

“Do you know one with a red door?”

Renfrew nodded and pointed northish. “Old Soony’s place. He had some sort of religious conversion-a dream or a vision or something. That’s when he painted the door of his hut red. He’s gone to the Manni-folk these last five years.” He no longer asked why, at least; he had seen something on Jonas’s face that had shut up his questions.

Jonas raised his hand, looked at the blue coffin tattooed there for a second, then turned and called for Quint. “You’re in charge,” Jonas told him.

Quint’s shaggy eyebrows shot up. “Me?”

“Yar. But you’re not going on-there’s been a change of plan.”

“What-”

“Listen and don’t open your mouth again unless there’s something you don’t understand. Get that damned black cart turned around. Put your men around it and hie on back the way we came. Join up with Lengyll and his men. Tell them Jonas says wait where you find em until he and Reynolds and Renfrew come. Clear?”

Quint nodded. He looked bewildered but said nothing.

“Good. Get about it. And tell the witch to put her toy back in its bag.” Jonas passed a hand over his brow. Fingers which had rarely shaken before had now picked up a minute tremble. “It’s distracting.”

Quint started away, then looked back when Jonas called his name.

“I think those In-World boys are out here, Quint. Probably ahead of where we are now, but if they’re back the way you’re going, they’ll probably set on you.”

Quint looked nervously around at the grass, which rose higher than his head. Then his lips tightened and he returned his attention to Jonas.

“If they attack, they’ll try to take the ball,” Jonas continued. “And sai, mark me well: any man who doesn’t die protecting it will wish he had.” He lifted his chin at the vaqs, who sat astride their horses in a line behind the black cart. “Tell them that.”

“Aye, boss,” Quint said.

“When you reach Lengyll’s party, you’ll be safe.”

“How long should we wait for yer if ye don’t come?”

“Til hell freezes over. Now go.” As Quint left, Jonas turned to Reynolds and Renfrew. “We’re going to make a little side-trip, boys,” he said.

10

“Roland.” Alain’s voice was low and urgent. “They’ve turned around.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. There’s another group coming along behind them. A much larger one. That’s where they’re headed.”

“Safety in numbers, that’s all,” Cuthbert said.

“Do they have the ball?” Roland asked. “Can you touch it yet?”

“Yes, they have it. It makes them easy to touch even though they’re going the other way now. Once you find it, it glows like a lamp in a mineshaft.”

“Does Rhea still have the keeping of it?”

“I think so. It’s awful to touch her.”

“Jonas is afraid of us,” Roland said. “He wants more men around him when he comes. That’s what it is, what it must be.” Unaware that he was both right and badly out in his reckoning. Unaware that for one of the few times since they had left Gilead, he had lapsed into a teenager’s disastrous certainty.

“What do we do?” Alain asked.

“Sit here. Listen. Wait. They’ll bring the ball this way again if they’re going to Hanging Rock. They’ll have to.”

“Susan?” Cuthbert asked. “Susan and Sheemie? What about them? How do we know they’re all right?”

“I suppose that we don’t.” Roland sat down, cross-legged, with Pusher’s trailing reins in his lap. “But Jonas and his men will be back soon enough. And when they come, we’ll do what we must.”

11

Susan hadn’t wanted to sleep inside-the hut felt wrong to her without Roland. She had left Sheemie huddled under the old hides in the comer and taken her own blankets outside. She sat in the hut’s doorway for a little while, looking up at the stars and praying for Roland in her own fashion. When she began to feel a little better, she lay down on one blanket and pulled the other over her. It seemed an eternity since Maria had shaken her out of her heavy sleep, and the open-mouthed, glottal snores drifting out of the hut didn’t bother her much. She slept with her head pillowed on one arm, and didn’t wake when, twenty minutes later, Sheemie came to the doorway, blinked at her sleepily, and then walked off into the grass to urinate. The only one to notice him was Caprichoso, who stuck out his long muzzle and took a nip at Sheemie’s butt as the boy passed him. Sheemie, still mostly asleep, reached back and pushed the muzzle away. He knew Capi’s tricks well enough, so he did.

Susan dreamed of the willow grove-bird and bear and hare and fish-and what woke her wasn’t Sheemie’s return from his necessary but a cold circle of steel pressing into her neck. There was a loud click that she recognized at once from the Sheriff’s office: a pistol being cocked. The willow grove faded from the eye of her mind.

“Shine, little sunbeam,” said a voice. For a moment her bewildered, half-waking mind tried to believe it was yesterday, and Maria wanted her to get up and out of Seafront before whoever had killed Mayor Thorin and Chancellor Rimer could come back and kill her, as well.

No good. It wasn’t the strong light of midmorning that her eyes opened upon, but the ash-pallid glow of five o'clock. Not a woman’s voice but a man’s. And not a hand shaking her shoulder but the barrel of a gun against her neck.

She looked up and saw a lined, narrow face framed by white hair. Lips no more than a scar. Eyes the same faded blue as Roland’s. Eldred Jonas. The man standing behind him had bought her own da drinks once upon a happier time: Hash Renfrew. A third man, one of Jonas’s ka-tet, ducked into the hut. Freezing terror filled her midsection-some for her, some for Sheemie. She wasn’t sure the boy would even understand what was happening to them. These are two of the three men who tried to kill him, she thought. He’ll understand that much.

“Here you are, Sunbeam, here you come,” Jonas said companionably, watching her blink away the sleepfog. “Good! You shouldn’t be napping all the way out here on your own, not a pretty sai such as yourself. But don’t worry, I’ll see you get back to where you belong.”

His eyes flicked up as the redhead with the cloak stepped out of the hut. Alone. “What’s she got in there. Clay? Anything?”