“You have permission to leave?” he called out.
The conductor motioned to the first flute, who was driving the lead caravan—keep moving—and went to speak with the boy. “Good evening,” she said. Kirsten stopped walking and lingered a few feet away, listening.
“What’s your name?” he asked, suspicious.
“People call me the conductor.”
“And that’s your name?”
“It’s the only name I use. Is that dinner?”
“Did you get permission to leave?”
“The last time we were here,” she said, “no permission was required.”
“It’s different now.” The boy’s voice hadn’t broken yet. He sounded very young.
“What if we didn’t have permission?”
“Well,” the boy said, “when people leave without permission, we have funerals for them.”
“What happens when they come back?”
“If we’ve already had a funeral …,” the boy said, but seemed unable to finish the sentence.
“This place,” the fourth guitar muttered. “This goddamned hellhole.” He touched Kirsten’s arm as he passed. “Better keep moving, Kiki.”
“So you wouldn’t advise coming back here,” the conductor said. The last caravan was passing. Sayid, bringing up the rear, seized Kirsten’s shoulder and propelled her along the road.
“How much danger do you want to put yourself in?” he hissed. “Keep walking.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Then don’t be an idiot.”
“Will you take me with you?” Kirsten heard the boy ask. The conductor said something she couldn’t hear, and when she looked back the boy was staring after the departing Symphony, his squirrel forgotten at the end of the stick.
The night cooled as they left St. Deborah by the Water. The only sounds were the clopping of horseshoes on cracked pavement, the creaking of the caravans, the footsteps of the Symphony as they walked, small rustlings from the night forest. A fragrance of pine and wildflowers and grass in the air, the stars so bright that the caravans cast lurching shadows on the road. They’d left so quickly that they were all still in their costumes, Kirsten holding up her Titania dress so as not to trip over it and Sayid a strange vision in his Oberon tuxedo, the white of his shirt flashing when he turned to look back. Kirsten passed him to speak with the conductor, who walked as always by the first caravan.
“What did you tell the boy by the road?”
“That we couldn’t risk the perception of kidnapping,” the conductor said.
“What did the prophet say to you after the concert?”
The conductor glanced over her shoulder. “You’ll keep this to yourself?”
“I’ll probably tell August.”
“Of course you will. But no one else?”
“Okay,” Kirsten said, “no one else.”
“He suggested that we consider leaving Alexandra, as a guarantee of future good relations between the Symphony and the town.”
“Leaving her? Why would we …?”
“He said he’s looking for another bride.”
Kirsten dropped back to tell August, who swore softly and shook his head. Alexandra was walking by the third caravan, oblivious, looking up at the stars.
Sometime after midnight the Symphony stopped to rest. Kirsten threw the Titania gown into the back of a caravan and changed into the dress she always wore in hot weather, soft cotton with patches here and there. The reassuring weight of knives on her belt. Jackson and the second oboe took two of the horses and rode back along the road for a mile, returned to report that no one seemed to be following.
The conductor was studying a map with a few of the older Symphony members in the moonlight. Their flight had taken them in an awkward direction, south down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. The only reasonably direct routes to their usual territory took them either back through St. Deborah by the Water, or close by a town that had been known to shoot outsiders on sight, or inland, through a wilderness that in the pre-collapse era had been designated a national forest.
“What do we know about this particular national forest?” The conductor was frowning at the map.
“I vote against it,” the tuba said. “I know a trader who went through there. Said it was a burnt-out area, no towns, violent ferals in the woods.”
“Charming. And the south, along the lakeshore?”
“Nothing,” Dieter said. “I talked to someone who’d been down there, but this was maybe ten years ago. Said it was sparsely populated, but I don’t remember the details.”