Frying fritata cakes layered the air with pungent promise. Walls wandered, crudely shaped and misaligned. Though freshmade, he saw them as tired. There was none of the precision Killeen automatically expected of mech constructions. To him buildings were mechmade, of precisely laid-out sheetmetal and ceramic. The only counterexample in his experience was the Citadel where he grew up, which was a majestic conglomerated accumulation of centuries.

Citadel Bishop had had interlaced warrens of rock and mechmetal, shaped and counterpoised to accommodate stories and stories piled upon broad arches. By daylight, this new Citadel King was an insult to the memory.

Still, he reminded himself, this was at least a beginning. He had no place criticizing.

He knew he should be encouraged by the fervent activity and solid walls. But he could think only of Toby.

The boy could speak weakly now. He responded to Killeen’s easy massaging everywhere but in the legs, which were immobile. More than the physical pain, which was tapering away, Toby felt the apprehension that came with any disabling injury in the Family.

He had to be convinced—not by Killeen’s words, but by the solidity of the hut walls—that he was in a home, a fixed place. That the Family Bishop would not need to march away. That he would not be abandoned.

Killeen had spoken to him. Slowly the points had come through. These realized, Toby’s face had collapsed into a smooth calm. He had plunged into sleep.

Killeen’s fears were not so easily quieted. He made his way back to where he had heard Hatchet was negotiating with Ledroff and Fornax. He let himself through the crude fence surrounding Cap’n Hatchet’s own large lean-to hut. The fencing strip was plain unfaceted mechmetal but the pickets were fashioned crudely of wood and had to be humanmade.

He fidgeted with the latch on the gate and only then missed the use of his left arm. He had been able to swing it while walking, a wooden weight that at least did not get in his way. Until now he had been able to regard his injury as a mere sickness. As he walked to the lean-to he realized that he would not be able to run or carry or fight as he had before. Which meant that he was married to this Metropolis in a way he had never thought.

Hatchet was ushering Fornax out as Killeen arrived. There had been a full day of back-and-forth negotiation, Killeen knew. Skills to trade. Aspect and Face chips with rare knowledge. Already the bargaining instincts emerged. He had heard the occasional shouting a full three huts away.

There was an ordained manner for the Families to interact, a liturgical line. The Bishops and Rooks would be guests in this rude Citadel. Offering of food and rest-place had its ornate protocols. These took time, but more essential matters like survival and defense consumed far more. Once protocol was done, the three Cap’ns had at one another with sharp tongues. Both Fornax and Ledroff could only gape at what the Kings had accomplished. Every standing stick or clay wall was a reproach to the other Families. The dignity of the Bishops and Rooks demanded that they not show a bare hint of envy, though, so there had to be some blustering and even outright arguing. Killeen was glad to have missed all that.

He asked admittance of the young woman guard outside. To his surprise, he was let in immediately.

Hatchet sat him down, gave him a cup of dark, heady, minted tea. Killeen downed it automatically, asked for more. Hatchet nodded with satisfaction, took the brewing pot, and poured into a larger cup from the shelf behind him.

“You’ve got my habits,” Hatchet said with gusto. “Like everything strong and in plenty. Right?”

“Um.”

“Thought more ’bout that Mantis?”

“Some.”

“Why you figure there were brains in that navvy?”

Killeen slurped tea and squinted. “Mantis must’ve done it.”

“How you figure?”

“We killed all the midminds it had in its main body, back when it killed so many. We didn’t guess it was using navvys with midminds, too.”

Hatchet’s eyes widened with surprise. “It does?”

“Sure. That navvy we rousted and got burned by—that was no accident.”

Hatchet did not respond to this. Instead—and unlike either Fornax or Ledroff—he simply sat and thought for a while, feeling no need to keep their conversation going or pretend to have understood everything. Killeen liked that. Hatchet was large and sat in a brown cloth deck chair of distended and misshapen form which seemed to have molded itself to him. He rocked forward, putting his big wide hands on his knees, and said finally, thoughtfully, “It’s changing itself. Adaptin’.”

Killeen nodded. “Looks like.”

“Not like the other Marauders.”

“Double naysay that.”

It was a relief to be able to blurt it out this way, his stored-up and undefined misgivings. Ever since Fanny had suredied Killeen had felt a gathering vague unease about the Mantis and what it meant. The thing was no legend now, but a very real, if unseen, force.

Hatchet slapped his hands together, the hard clay walls reflecting the sharp clap and concentrating it. Killeen had been so long in the open the sound came as a surprise, intense and startling.

“Just like that, eh? It changes its pattern. When you and Family Rook met, it surekilled plenty you.”

Killeen frowned. “Yeasay?”

“But now three Families meet and it does nothing.”

So Hatchet had seen it. “That navvy means it’s nearby.”

Hatchet nodded. “It knows of Metropolis. If not before, it does now.”

Killeen did not like this line of thought, but since he had been over it before he could scarcely refuse to follow the idea to its conclusion. “So why didn’t it attack right away?”

Hatched mused, his big lower lip thrust out in a pensive unconcern for appearances. “It may not have known we were here. Wants to look us over a li’l first. Or maybe it’s afraid of coming up against a defended position. We got plenty mech traps ’round here.”

“Didn’t seem scared last time,” Killeen said dryly.

Hatchet’s eyes narrowed. “You tryin’ say something?”

“Naysay. Just that I can’t fashion it hanging back.”

“Other Marauders don’t want come this way, why should it? We’re smack in the middle of the Splash. Wetlands. Why, over south there’s even marsh. Marauder treads’d sink up over the rims there.”

“Could be.”

“Why else’d they stay away?”

Hatchet was getting irritated now. Killeen tried to figure why. He knew something of clay and mud from watching his uncles make spot repairs at Citadel Bishop. This new Citadel was no more than a couple of years old, judging from the age of the plastering on the better walls. He guessed Hatchet was trying to make out to Ledroff and Fornax that he was the natural leader of all the reassembled Families, since after all Hatchet had made a working Citadel. And kept the Marauders at bay. Somehow Hatchet had equated in his own mind the solidity of these clay walls, and of his own tenuous metal and wood fence, with keeping Marauders out.

Killeen had a sharp reply to Hatchet’s question ready on his tongue. But then he saw which way the talk would go and saw too that he could make a choice. He could push Hatchet further and then end up stomping out, or he could take a fresh angle.

He made a few remarks about how impressed he was with Metropolis and how everybody looked well fed. Then he said casually, to draw Hatchet out, “What you figure all this points at?”

Hatchet rubbed his long, pointed nose. “What you mean?”

“Been what—six years?—since the mechs hit all our Citadels.”

“Seems like.”

“Yeasay, seems like forever. All the time since, we been on the run. Couldn’t stop more’n five, six days. No thinkin’ time.”

Hatchet shrugged. “So?”

“Ever figure that might be the idea?”

“Huh?”

“Could be they don’t want us thinking. Learning from. our Aspects. Why’d they destroy the Citadels, anyway? Just because we poached on their factories?”