Two hours earlier, the two boys had followed the peaceman into a small, dark room.
"We've only got to question one of you," the man said, sounding bored.
Zacharias smiled innocently. "Okay, I'll do it."
Joseph leaned against the wall, watching as the blond was hooked up to the machine, and for the first time beginning to feel nervous. They hadn't killed anyone, certainly, but they were still wanted...
"What's your name?" the peaceman asked.
Zacharias stared straight ahead. "George Johnson."
Joseph blinked, and took a step forward. That was a lie, but apparently the machine hadn't registered anything, because the peaceman went on, "What's your friend's name?"
"Eric Kennison."
"What's your occupation?"
"I'm an actor. And before you ask - he's a chef. We're both in training."
"Where are you from?"
"Maine. We're visiting my relatives. Do you know them?"
"Can't say that I do." The peaceman peered at the readouts. "Did you kill the woman we found?"
"No."
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
"No."
"What about Mr. Kennison?"
"He hasn't, either."
"Why did you have a gun?"
"It's a prop from a play I'm in - I was just getting used to carrying it around. You'll find that there are no bullets in it."
The peaceman shrugged. "Well, that's that. I'll give your gun back and let you go. In the future, try not to run away from crime scenes - it looks very suspicious."
Zacharias smiled. "Very sorry about that."
* * *
As they walked away from the Justice Guildhall, Zacharias bent down and removed several bullets from the side of his shoe. "It's not smart to be caught with a loaded weapon," he said cheerfully.
"You lied to it," Joseph said.
"It's all a matter of not panicking."
"So anyone could lie to it?"
"Anyone with the proper training, yes."
This flaw in the justice system shocked Joseph into temporary speechlessness. He followed Zacharias down the street as the blond calmly slotted the bullets back into his gun.
"It's getting dark."
"I know. We'd better get back to the hotel, otherwise we're likely to be shot at again."
Joseph had entirely forgotten about the attempt on their lives; he glanced nervously up at the rooftops, but saw nothing.
He continued to see nothing, even when another arrow flashed past his ear and stuck in a crack in the wall beyond.
Zacharias dragged the priest into an alley, out of range of their attackers. "Okay, I can't do this with you tagging along. Run that way, and just - keep running, all right? Until you get back to the hotel. I'll join you guys later."
Joseph shook his head. "What if they catch you?"
"They won't. Go!"
"But if they do - "
"Now!"
To his eternal shame, Joseph turned and fled.
Almost as soon as he'd turned the corner, he crashed into someone and barely kept on his feet. "Sorry," he cried, and tried to duck around the figure.
"Wait," said a voice, and it was a lilting, heavily accented voice that ensnared him more easily than a weighted net would have. He paused, and turned his head to look.
The figure was not particularly tall, but nevertheless gave off an impression of height. It was shrouded in an anachronistic black cloak. What caught Joseph's eyes, however, was the longbow clenched in one pale hand.
This, then, was the mysterious Jen.
"You're one of them." It wasn't a question; it didn't need to be. "Where is he?"
Without realizing he did it, Joseph raised his hand and pointed into the alley he'd just left.
"You will be rewarded," she said, and leaned her longbow against the wall while she fumbled in a pocket, eventually drawing something out. She handed it to him, patted him on the head, snatched up her longbow, and ran on silent feet into the alley.
Joseph gaped after her for a minute, then looked down.
She had given him a cookie.
Moments later, he heard the scream.
* * *
"I don't even like raisins," Joseph whimpered.
"Maybe she didn't catch him," Erion suggested.
The priest shook his head. "I heard him scream. She killed him, he's dead, it's my fault..."
Lasa reached up and gently pressed a finger to his lips to make him shut up. "That isn't true. It's not your fault."
"I told her where to find him!"
"Then we'll avenge him," Ysranna snapped. "What did she look like?"
"I don't know! I just remember the cloak and the bow!"
Lasa closed her eyes. Her head ached, and she could barely feel the heat of the fire on her back through the chill that had taken hold of her. She hadn't even known him for a year, but somehow Zacharias had become important, and now...he was gone. Just like that.
Well, she wasn't going to stand for it.
"We have to get out of the city," she told the others. "Once they're done with him, they'll come after us. We'll leave a message with the clerk for my brothers to meet us in...Minnesota sound good?"
Roger nodded slowly. "Yes. They'll never expect us to stay so close. They know we're not that stupid."
"But we are," Ysranna said. "We're staying close, ergo, we're stupid. QED. Thus it is proved."
"You haven't proved anything."
"I've proved we're all morons."
"We," Erion said, his voice harsh with emotion, "are doomed."
* * *
In the weeks that followed, Ysranna, who had known Zacharias the least and was thus not much affected, noticed a distinct change in her companions.
Her brother kept twisting on his horse to talk to someone who wasn't there, and then turning to the front again, disappointment in his eyes. Erion sniffled a lot, and tended to give comforting pats at strange moments. Lasa cried at night; Ysranna was almost positive that the younger girl didn't know the priestess could hear her, but it didn't matter.
And Joseph...
Roger informed her that Erion had told him that Joseph cried at night, too, and had nightmares about it. He often woke screaming that it was all his fault, then refused to talk about it.
Ysranna wondered how Erion could hear the screaming over his own, because Joseph told her that his roommate had been waking in horror every night since Pacific City, and most of the time panicked because he'd got entangled in the blankets and thought someone was trying to kill him.
Zacharias, she finally concluded, was just that sort of person. He got into your life and while he was there you hated him, but when he was gone it broke your heart.
She wondered at this, because her heart was certainly whole, and then found herself wondering why, when Shem and the others finally arrived in Milwaukee, she flung herself into his arms sobbing that Zacharias had died.
Ysranna lay awake that night, staring at the ceiling, listening to Lasa's nearly-silent crying and pondering this strange new development. It didn't take long for her to decide that she did, in fact, like Shem, though she was almost positive she would break up with him if he really did become a cheesemaker.
Then, of course, her thoughts turned to Zacharias.
As if the whole save-the-country thing wasn't enough, we've lost the one person who could have won it for us. We are so very doomed.
The others went out shopping the next day, though she, Joseph, and Shem stayed behind. Joseph, she knew, didn't want to do anything, because according to him, being responsible for someone's death meant he didn't have a right to live. Shem was obviously just there because she was.
They sat around in the lobby, playing cards for an hour. After awhile, the doctor got bored and wandered off. Almost immediately, Joseph dropped his cards, burst into tears, and scrambled over the table to hug her.
"It's all my fault!" he wailed. "All - my - fault! And she gave me a cookie because I betrayed him! I'm a traitor! Just hang me, hang me now, it's no more than I deserve..."
"Hang you?" Ysranna asked, awkwardly patting him on the back. Where had he learned about that? You didn't learn that unless you took Advanced History of the Church, and she knew he wasn't in that. In fact, she knew he didn't know anyone who was, except for her. She was certain she hadn't mentioned it...
"Yes, hang me, burn my town to the ground, kill my family, I don't care! I'm a traitor!"
Ysranna noticed that the other people in the lobby were watching with interest, and flipped up her middle finger, glaring suspiciously. "Joseph, maybe we should go somewhere else for the guilt trip."
"I don't even like raisins!"
It was not very difficult to lead him upstairs. He managed to get his room key out of his pocket, but seemed incapable of opening the door. "Cotton ball," he whimpered, and while this didn't make any sense to Ysranna, she didn't much care.
Later, of course, she would wish she had.
She attempted to get away, but Joseph seemed to need something to cling to, and had obviously chosen her. Thus she was forced to make hot chocolate while encumbered by her best friend.
"Okay, if this is going to continue, we're going to set down some ground rules," she told him.
"Only one rule. Death's a certainty. He said that, ages ago - remember? Oh, no, you weren't there. It was while we were going to get Erion, that's when he said it."
"I was there." She remembered that, quite well. They'd nearly got caught stealing from a bakery, and the boys had begun a debate about law, morality, and ultimately, death.
"But it's wrong."
A bitter laugh. "Wrong? Says who? Anna-Maria Eskine, who dictates your entire life through that Codex of hers? The President? Who? There are no rules, and laws are just a set of rules with the added twist of Right and Wrong."
"Yes, exactly. And stealing is wrong."
"Not always."
"There are laws. Gravity, and - um - that other science stuff."
"No, ultimately, anything can change. There's only one rule. Everyone dies. I'm going to die, you're going to die, Ysranna is going to die. Everyone does. Death is the only certainty."
She finally managed to detach Joseph, and handed him the hot chocolate. For the five years she'd known him, she'd discovered that hot chocolate healed all ills, up to and including near-death by decapitation.
"You know what the worst part of it is?" he said sadly, staring down into the cup. "We were finally becoming friends. Sort of. He hadn't said anything mean to me for at least an hour." He collapsed on the bed, and Ysranna noticed idly that he had copied that move - the graceful collapse, as if everyone who was anyone never just sat down these days - from Zacharias.
Since the hysterics seemed to have died down, Ysranna deemed it safe to sit down on the bed beside Joseph without fear of him latching onto her again. "Let's talk about something else."
"Okay. You are madly in love with Shem."
"I am not!"
"You are, you practically told him so yesterday! It was hilarious! You were drooling!"
"I did not! You are so dead!"
"Only if you hang me." He sank almost instantly back into depression, and Ysranna yelled at herself inside her head for being so tactless.
He wouldn't actually try to kill himself, would he? Not over Zacharias.
And where had he heard about hanging traitors?
She prayed silently, desperately. Please, please don't let him know the whole story. And whatever happens, don't let him find out the truth.
The truth would kill him.
Maybe even literally.
* * *
It was nearly a week before Quinn raised the subject of moving on.
"We can't stay here forever, it's boring!"
"What are you talking about?" Alex asked, not noticing Monica ruefully shaking her head in his general direction. "There's the zoo."
"Don't treat her like a child," Monica sang out quietly.
"I've been three times. It's boring. I want to go to Canada."
This comment brought silence; then one of the apprentices said, "If people are out to kill us, maybe they won't be able to in Canada. They have cars there."
"Ooh! And phones!" a girl squealed. "I've heard those are amazing!"
Thus it was that the decision was made to cross the border into Canada. This inexplicably drove Joseph even deeper into depression.
They left near the end of June, and Lasa, after a bout of tears based on the fact that they no longer needed Zacharias' little mare, began to scrutinize her companions.
Erion was letting his hair grow long, much to the amusement of Roger, who was riding next to him and occasionally commenting: "So, when are you putting on the high heels? Those were his favorite suggestion, you know." "I think a nice dark purple would go well with your eyes." "Whatever you do, don't wear a mini-skirt."
Joseph had fallen back, and kept his head down. Occasionally, Ysranna would go to join him, and make him laugh, but he always retreated to his silent depression.
Alex and Monica traded off letting Quinn ride with them, and they were constantly talking about the technology that they could expect to find in Canada.
Lasa was so busy attempting to remember the apprentices' names that she didn't notice when Rebekah rode up next to her until the woman spoke.
"You all really loved him, didn't you?"
Lasa yelped and turned to face her former teacher. "What? Love? Who? Mrr?"
"That blond Codebreaker. What was his name?"
"Zacharias. And no - we hated him."
Rebekah glanced back at the gloomy teenagers. "Somehow, that's not the reading I'm getting."
"You're not a psychology student," Lasa said defensively. "We hated him. He was cruel, and manipulative, and he acted like - like he was going to live forever."
* * *
"I'm a Codebreaker, not a forensic pathologist!"
Jen's father stared at the trays lining the table. "Why would you ever need ninety peanut butter cookies?"
"They are killing devices," she said defensively. "I mean, for people who are allergic to peanuts, they are highly dangerous."
Agent Matthews stole a cookie and bit into it thoughtfully. "Genevieve, that is nearly the same excuse you used to make me buy you stiletto-heeled shoes."
"It really is possible to kill someone with those!"
"And this from a Codebreaker. Look, we're never going to catch up with those heroes unless we take care of the Pacific City killer."
"Why are you still calling him that? He only killed five people there. Why not the Pacifica killer? He got seven there. Or, better yet, the Denver killer? Eleven."
"I do not care what you say, you will conduct a crime scene investigation at the next one. You notice things."
"I notice things...I don't notice things!" She thought about that. "Okay, so I do. Fine, I will do it, but I'll hate every minute of it." She laughed bitterly. "If you hadn't so effectively got rid of Zacharias, perhaps he could have helped. He probably knew exactly who it was, the little - "
"Genevieve."
" - dork." She grinned her charming little grin and turned off the oven. "What did you think I was going to say?"
"That isn't the point. You can't talk about Mr. Mathari."
"Why not?"
"Because he no longer exists."
"You burned the files, then?"
"Naturally."
Jen sighed. "Let me guess. If I get the murderer, you're going to make me find their folders. I'm not in the Justice Guild, I'm not a detective, I don't do criminology, I'm a killer. I'm an assassin, Father."
"Yes, one who uses cookies and shoes."
"It's important to improvise," Jen said haughtily. "If you'll excuse me, Father, I've got people to interrogate..."
* * *
"You know he wants to kill himself?"
Ysranna nodded automatically before turning to stare at her brother. "Ah, you've heard about that?"
"Yep." Roger had his whip wrapped loosely around his arm for no real reason. He sat down beside his sister on the bench and stared out into the park. It was a cloudy day, the trees casting dim shadows on the ground. "Do you think he'll actually do it?"
"Never."
"Lasa and Erion think he will."
Ysranna rolled her eyes. "And how well do they know him? Yes, I know they had twelve years with him, but I had four with him all to myself - the four when he changed the most. I know him as he is now. Maybe then he would've done it."
"Come on, Izzy, you know how he's been - "
"I heard his speech!" She whirled to glare at her brother, red hair whipping around in the cruel wind. "Freedom of religion! He doesn't believe in belief! To kill himself because he believes it's his fault wouldn't be right! He won't even let himself understand that he does believe it!"
"I heard the speech," Roger said quietly. "Some acolytes were giving it on a street corner when I came here."
All thoughts of Joseph and Zacharias vanished immediately. "What? Those idiots! They'll be arrested for sure! We have to stop them!"
Roger led his sister a few blocks until they reached the edge of the crowd. Ten or so acolytes and, surprisingly, one old priest stood there, shouting at the top of their lungs.
"We haven't been free since the War ended! Only, the War didn't end! It's still out there and it's going to get us because we're not in control of our destiny! We have to fight back! We have to get our freedom back!"
"They changed it," Ysranna moaned. "They're coming close to declaring war on the world. This isn't good."
They were unable to push through the crowds, though luckily, none of the peacemen could get in, either. There were several in the audience who had taken up the chant of "The Frog! The Frog!"
"Don't do anything stupid," Roger said, but his sister, a grim look on her face, had already reached into a pocket and pulled out God.
"This is God!" she cried, in the voice that all Senior Journeymen in the temple learn - the voice that carries in a huge room with bad acoustics, perfect for delivering sermons. "This is the Frog you all cheer for! And I'm Ysranna Moran, and I started this rebellion, and you'd better let me get through!"
Roger made a desperate grab for her, but she slipped past him and into the path the crowd made for her. "Izzy!" he yelled, trying to follow, but the audience had moved back and wouldn't let him past.
Ysranna made her way to the front and hopped onto one of the boxes the acolytes were using. "This isn't about the War! It was never meant to be about the War! It's about us! It's about America, and what we're doing wrong, and how things should be!"
The peacemen, having given up on keeping the peace, were loading their crossbows. Roger gazed at the cruel weapons in horror, and quickly unwrapped his whip from his arm.
"Don't you shoot at my sister!" he yelled.
He'd practiced long hours with the whip, and thus the move he tried actually worked - he lashed out, caught hold of the crossbow held by the nearest peaceman, and yanked it out of the man's hands.
Roger hadn't learned anything in the Aqueous Guild about mob psychology.
* * *
The others heard the news much later - two people dead, several injured, and nearly fifty arrested in one of the most terrible street fights in one hundred years. Up until then, they hadn't noticed that Roger and Ysranna were missing.
Alex and Monica hurried to the Justice Guildhall to attempt a rescue, and returned an hour later.
"They weren't there. Even if they had been, they won't take bail," Monica reported.
"We can't stay here," Alex said desperately. "Eventually they'll find out who Ysranna and Roger are, and then they'll come looking for us. We're still wanted."
"O Canada?" Quinn suggested.
"We can't abandon them!" Joseph yelled, fire snapping in his dark eyes. "They could be hurt! Did you check the hospital?"
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"I would have, but no one asked me to go," Shem said sulkily.
"I don't see why you aren't more upset! You love her!"
"Of course he's upset," Monica said calmly. "Grow up, Joseph. Maybe you grieve by going on an extended guilt trip, but some people - "
"I'm not on a bloody guilt trip! Damn, I'm talking like a Londoner! I hate Zacharias!"
"Is that all you ever think about? Once again, grow up! All of you!" Upon seeing the shocked looks that the others gave her, Monica shrugged. "Someone had to say it."
After a brief silence, Joseph said in a small voice, "Am I wigging out?"
"Yes, most definitely."
"Am I going crazy?"
"Probably."
"Am I an atheist?"
"Not at all."
Joseph nodded as if someone had told him what the meaning of life was. Without another word, he stalked out of the hotel.