Koda sees the flinch in Kirsten’s shoulders, remembering the death-pit in Craig, the ruins of the clinic in Salt Lake. Morgan, though, seems disinclined to answer questions. Up ahead, the path fans out into an open space where white smoke rises up into the moonlight above the embers of a fire. Cabins line the perimeter, small oblong log structures with coarse screening in the windows. Here and there he yellow glow of a kerosene lantern silhouettes women’s shapes as they move about in their lodgings; one, as they pass, seems to be tucking a child into bed. Looking up at the sound of the horses’ hooves, the women wave as they pass, calling greetings to Morgan. One, leaving her cabin with a guitar slung over her shoulder, pauses to stare at Kirsten and Koda; Morgan answers her unspoken question with a wave of her hand and a brief “Later.” To Koda she says, “I’ll show you where the stables are, then where you can bunk. Come join us around the fire after you get settled; there ought to be some stew or something left in the pot.”

The stables, obviously designed to accommodate only a handful of horses for the amusement of riders on family outings, now house mostly hay, grain and tack. The horses themselves are tethered along a picket line behind the building. Koda counts thirty-two as she and Kirsten lead their mounts to one end to remove their saddle cloths and rub them down. Add to that the ones left behind in the hills across the dry lake and those likely to be on patrol in other directions, and you get forty riders, a formidable warband when the population of the continent has been reduced by 99 percent or so. Most are mustangs, but one or two show signs of more aristocratic breeding: a chestnut walking horse with white socks and blaze, a couple Appaloosas. Almost all are mares, two of them beginning to swell with foal; a few are geldings. They whicker softly as Koda passes, one nuzzling at her back pocket where she has stashed a trail bar. Kirsten, following her gaze, says, “I guess the ‘no man’ thing extends to the critters, too. Maybe we should worry about Asi.”

“Maybe Asi should worry about Asi,” she replies, smiling and ruffling his ears where he walks beside her. “They’ve got a stallion or two somewhere; they just wouldn’t stake them out on the line with the rest.”

At the end of the picket, Kirsten and Koda slip the skins off the horses’ backs and loop their reins around the rope that runs between a pair of tall pines. Tossing an armful of hay down in front of them, Koda hands Kirsten one of the two curry brushes she has brought from the tack room. “Know how to use one of these?”

Kirsten, her eyes wide in the low light, looks at Koda as if she has sprouted horns, or a second head. “You’re kidding, right? I’ve ridden before, but some stable guy has always taken care of the technical stuff, like getting the saddle on and off.” Gingerly she stares down at the arcane instrument and shrugs. “How hard can it be, though? I mean, it’s basically a hairbrush, isn’t it?”

“Basically,” Koda says with a smile. “Just watch and do what I do.”

Ten minutes later, both horses stand munching contentedly at the hay, their coats smooth and free of dust and the small accretions of the trail. Kirsten has done yeoman work, following Koda move for move, watched by Asi where he has settled in among the tree roots, his gaze sardonic. He follows them to the cabin Morgan has shown them, which contains little but four bare cots and a galvanized pipe across one end for a closet. “Looks like we’ve got our penthouse to ourselves,” Kirsten remarks. “We could shove a couple of these beds together.”

“Mmm,” says Koda. “We could. Just for warmth, of course.”

“Of course.” Kirsten grins back at her as she shed her pack. Asi hops up onto the bed in the far back corner and stretches out, making himself instantly to home. “Guess you’re not gonna come check out the place, huh, boy?”

For answer, Asi lays his chin on his paws and closes his eyes. “Guess not,” Koda answers for him. “Want to go get something to eat?”

The path to the center of the camp leads them past other cabins like theirs, a slightly larger main office building with actual windows, a communal shower and latrine. “Wonder of that still works?” Koda murmurs. “The one good thing about the Elk Mountain Incident was that hot bath.”

“Wonder how that came out? My money’s on Tanya and Elaine.”

“If not, we could always introduce Ari to Morgan and her tribe.” Koda flashes a grin. And I know where my money’d be on that one.”

“Nasty.”

“But amusing.” She pauses, sniffing. Her stomach turns over in a barrel roll of sheer joy. “Gods. They’ve found some onions somewhere. And chicken. Come on.”

The fragrance comes from a circle of stones some twelve feet across. A fire pit in the center sends clouds of smoke billowing upward, and nestled in the embers is a Dutch oven of a size that would serve the entire Rivers family, with seconds all around and thirds for Manny and Phoenix. Around it, their faces flushed with the red glow, a company of perhaps a dozen women sits on rocks or skins or the bare grass. Some still hold their bowls in their laps, while a couple lean back on their elbows, gazing up at the sky, and the woman with the guitar strums softly, her voice weaving wordlessly in and out amidst the melody. Yet another pair sit with their arms around each other’s waists, a small dark woman leaning her head against her taller partner’s shoulder. Introductions go round the circle. Inga fia d’Bridget. Frances fia d’Alice. Magdalena, daughter of Rosario. Sarai fia d’Yasmin. They bear their own names and their monthers’, no acknowledgement of paternity or patriarchy. And every face that Koda can see bears, too, the marks of dead enemies. Three, five, not a few with seven to equal their leader’s. Morgan herself sits on a flat granite boulder at the northern quarter of the circle, her bowl still between her hands, a far-off look in her eyes. She takes note of Kirsten and Koda, though, rising to invite them to stand beside her while she makes the introductions. With Salt Lake behind them, their story is now that they are headed for Los Angeles to find “Annie’s” parents. At that, the faces around the circle grow grave, and Morgan says, “Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard?” Kirsten frowns. “It’s been a bit busy between St. Louis and here. We haven’t had any contact with anyone at all in California.” And again, “Heard what?”

Morgan lays a gentle hand on Kirsten’s arm, and draws her down to sit on the boulder. “LA’s gone. Nuked.”

CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

KIRSTEN’S PARENTS WERE nowhere near Los Angeles when the uprising began, have not lived in southern California for two decades. Yet even in the dim light, Koda can see the blood drain from her face as her mouth repeats the word without sound. Dakota’s own mouth goes dry, imagining the radiation cloud spreading inland on the winds off the Pacific, sweeping across the orange groves and to lay radioactive ash on the already burning sands of the desert. “Bombed?” she says, inaudible even to herself. Then, more loudly, “Bombed? Who?”

Morgan’s eyes between them, softening suddenly. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t think. Of course you might well know someone there.” Laying a hand on Kirsten’s arm, she draws her down to sit beside her on the boulder.

“It’s okay. It’s just—sudden. I grew up a bit further south, San Diego .”

Very deliberately, Koda lifts the lid of the Dutch oven with the poker left by the side of the firepit and ladles two bowls full of the stew. She replaces the lid and brings one bowl and a spoon to set beside Kirsten, settling cross legged on the ground beside her with her own meal. She says, “Who did it? How?”

“We’re not real sure. We heard about it from a couple refugees headed back east to try to find their people. Seems a couple ships up from the Naval base at San Diego sailed into the port there and blew up.”

“Warheads aboard?”

“Maybe. According to what we heard, it was a pair of aircraft carriers. The Reagan and the Kerry .”

Stirring her stew aimlessly, Kirsten says, “All the new aircraft carriers have nuclear power plants, some of the older ones, too. Even if it was just the reactors, it would be bad. Real bad.”

“Supposedly there was more than one mushroom cloud. Supposedly the fireball incinerated everything from Long Beach to Ventura and out to Pasadena . It’s all fourth- and fifth-hand, of course. Hearsay. What we do know from what we’ve heard since is that Los Angeles just isn’t there anymore.”

“There were so many droids in LA to begin with, we heard they took it in half a day.” The small, dark woman straightens and leans forward, toward the fire. Her face carries no expression. “Lots of tech-droids, maid-droids, lots of military models at Oxnard . My brother worked for Paramount . He said they’d taken over just about everything except the acting.”

Almost imperceptibly, Kirsten’s eyes widen at the mention of Oxnard . Then the shock is gone, and she lowers her gaze and begins to eat silently. No one else seems to have noticed, their attention still on the Amazai whose brother must have been blown to subatomic particles in the blast. Not for the first time, it comes to Koda that Kirsten’s government position has made her more poker player than politician or diplomat. No glad handing, no smooth equivocation, just the calculation of a very junior predator in a pack of hyenas all older and more experienced by decades.

“So,” comes the inevitable question from across the circle, “what’s it like where you’ve been?” The speaker is an older woman, her red hair graying at her temples, introduced earlier as Fiona fia d’Linda.

The circle seems to draw closer together as Koda gives a carefully edited account of their wanderings. She makes no mention of Ellsworth or the two battles fought there, nor of Kirsten’s journey from Washington . She begins with Wyoming, gets a round of laughing applause and “Right on, sisters!” when she recounts the Elk Mountain Incident in all its dubious glory, plays up the encounter with the wolverine without making clear exactly where it occured. Then she says, watching their faces in the flickering shadows, “When Annie went into town to look for some antibiotics, she came across a wrecked women’s clinic. And back by the incinerator she found a pile of dead kids—babies, toddlers. There was a spray-painted sign on the building that said, ‘Children Murdered Here.’ And then we found something similar in Salt Lake . Like it was organized.”