Killeen shook his head, not in rejection but to sense the vacancies in himself. He lifted his left arm a fraction with great effort. “That’s… all,” he said through lips that felt fat, swollen.

“This your son?”

When Killeen nodded Hatchet bent over and examined Toby’s eyes, which still moved restlessly under the filmy lids. “Ummm. Might get some this back. Legs, is it?”

“Dunno for sure. He breathes fine. ”

Hatchet’s hands moved expertly over Toby, pinching and tugging. “Moved his arms?”

“Some. Said he couldn’t feel his legs. Then fell asleep.”

Hatchet waved a hand without even looking up and the line resumed its march. “Could come back. I seen cases like this. Just luck the Marauder only got partway through his sensorium. Hadn’t finished its work.”

Hatchet’s face scrutinized Killeen and something in the gaze blew away the last of the clammy fog that encased him. The stark world came rushing back and with it a surge of fury and despair, familiar because they had been there all the time, behind the mist. “It was a navvy!” Killeen blurted.

Hatchet frowned. “Navvys can’t fight.”

“A Mantis navvy.”

Hatchet frowned. “Mantis? What’s that?”

When Killeen described it haltingly, with thick lips, Hatchet said, “No Mantis ’round here I know of.”

“Is now.”

Around them had gathered oddments of the Families Rook and Bishop and King. Flanking guards covered the hills. The hundreds remained spread out, watching all approaches as they made their way steadily down the long grade to the plain.

Killeen’s words had made the King party rustle with dispute and incredulity. He heard their objections through a thin, distorting haze.

Shibo came forward and added, “Navvy had mid-mind.”

Hatchet turned to her. “A navvy with a big-size mind? You sure?”

Shibo never answered such questions. She simply stared directly at Hatchet and let her silence give assent.

More murmuring from the Kings. When they paused Killeen said, “The Mantis navvys put the Mantis back together again, I figure. Twice now it’s done that.”

Hatchet blinked and his air of authority lessened a fraction. “The Mantis mind’s dispersed?”

Killeen was glad Hatchet had seen the answer right away. Ledroff still didn’t believe it. A Cap’n who was smarter than the rest of the Family would be a relief. “First time we brought down the Mantis it had a main-mind. Second time it surekilled plenty Rooks and Bishops. Then it had midminds.”

Hatchet scowled. “Stowed in different parts?”

“Yeasay,” Shibo said.

“What’dyoudo?”

“We blew all them.”

“That shoulda killed it,” Hatchet said.

“Didn’t.”

Killeen said, “This navvy’s a new kind. Suckered us in.”

Hatchet and the other Kings glanced at one another, liking none of this. “Mantis followed you?”

“S’pose so.” Killeen noticed he was rocking slightly from sudden giddy fatigue.

Ledroff said something Killeen couldn’t follow and Hatchet brushed the remark aside. “We’re founding a new Citadel here and I don’t want attract Marauders. Certainly not this Mantis thing.”

Killeen blinked. Shibo asked, “Citadel?”

Hatchet’s voice swelled. “Citadel King. We call it Metropolis.”

And there it was. Killeen had been concentrating on walking and watching to see that Toby was all right. It had taken all his effort to talk. Now he looked outward and saw rising from the plain before them a cluster of brown mud huts of one and two stories. Tall doorways. Open oblong windows without glass.

“See the crops?” Hatchet and the Kings smiled with the pride befitting the Family which had first restored a Citadel. “We plant in patches. That way the mechs can’t pick up a pattern from their flyers.”

Killeen nodded. The huts seemed fused in place beneath the twilight stillness, like earth that had itself climbed upward and made a blunt gesture at the emerging stars. A distant warbling sound seemed to skate on the air. Killeen recognized birdcalls, dozens of cheerful songs floating out from the lush trees and high bushes. “The Splash. This the center?”

“Yeasay,” Hatchet said. “We build on top the ice-moistness, our true and rich and holy Snowglade. Bring back those times.”

A far cry, Killeen thought, from the battlements and bulwarks of Citadel Bishop. In those days humanity had expressed its assurance in eternal stone. Now they used mud that promised to dissolve if a hard rain lashed at it.

Arthur piped up:

Yet this is a more beguilingly human environment.

“Primitive,” Killeen muttered so only Arthur could hear.

Note the umbrella-shaped trees. The little lawns before each rude hut. See there—a pond. Sizable, too. I’d wager that inside we will find carpets, which are essentially lawn analogs. Humans evolved in a mosaic environment where there were trees to scamper up for protection, open water, and broad grassland for foraging. This new Citadel King unconsciously resembles the ancient savanna. Hatchet has made a new kind of Citadel, deeply reflecting the way we evolved.

Killeen nodded, wondering how the Kings had managed all this. Hatchet spoke on, welcoming the Bishops and Rooks with simple, direct courtesy. There would be a full ceremony later, he assured them, as befitted such a portentous event.

Ledroff asked for the privilege of dakhala. This required a Family to give shelter to any of humanity which fled for their lives. Never had it applied to whole Families in flight, but Hatchet nodded warmly and formally agreed. This shoring up of human tradition was greeted with applause. Hatchet presented them with bowls of scented water.

Killeen felt the weight of Hatchet’s words, the blunt, inexorable force of the man. Hatchet, builder of the new Citadel.

In Killeen’s mind blossomed a hope that this man knew something he did not, had firm basis for the incredible hope here expressed in rude mud. After all, a Citadel meant there would be no question of abandoning Toby.

As they marched into the shouted greetings and fervent cries of their reception, Killeen banished all doubt and let himself be drawn into the wondrous quality of it. He could scarcely walk from the heavy seeping tiredness but he shrugged it aside, wanting above all else to believe.

A day later he did not. Clarity had returned as Killeen lay sunstruck through the inert morning and afternoon.

The throbbing ache in his left side eased. He still could not lift the arm more than a few fingers’ width.

Hatchet and some of the other Kings said the navvy must have depleted whole sections of his and Toby’s sensoria. Interrupted, the probing mechmind had departed, taking Killeen’s left arm control centers and all Toby’s leg command and nerve integrations.

Other things were gone, too. Rummaging through the perpetual tiny voices in the back of his mind, Killeen found missing a Face, Rachel, and an Aspect, Txach. He had never used them much but still the vacancy left a quiet, hollow void.

It was twilight again when Killeen went out to walk the random streets of Metropolis. Pathways deliberately swerved and veered among the vegetation to avoid mech analysis from the air. Huts were dispersed, to present no easy target. The Family King wore headrags and paid less attention to their hairshaping. They all seemed invested with purpose, busily cultivating and crafting. There were hundreds visible in the windy streets.

Like the Bishops and Rooks, they wore shirts and leggings of scavenged tightweave. Theirs were far more ornately marked, mutely advertising the leisure they had to stitch elaborate King emblems, loops, and wide swirls. Each Family member had a different design. Some proudly wore patches signifying their familial tasks.

Killeen had hoped the walk would renew his belief in Hatchet’s dream. As he shuffled down dusty lanes he did feel a kindling of mute wonder at a Family which had escaped the worst depredations of the Marauders and could even thrust up crude, thick-walled structures.