Rudi winked at a naked toddler with a huge mop of frizzy hair; she ducked behind her mother, herself a girl of no more than sixteen years who cradled a baby on her hip. ?Let these studs have room!? Jake called.?They saves our asses, truth! An? lay on eats! We got Murdy to bury, an? our new friends to show our right n? good ways!?

When the mob surged back towards the camp Jake went on quietly: ?And when we?ve had the eats, you can tell me more of that story of yours. We don?t like the Iowa motherfuckers or their bossman at all . Shoved our pamaws back into this shit with their pitchforks. Keep us here still.?

Rudi nodded gravely; Edain thawed a little, since he too had little use for Iowa?s ruler and liked the whole place less than the older Mackenzie. The Iowa folk had closed the Mississippi bridges in the chaotic months after the Change and patrolled the western shore. .. or they?d have been buried beneath the tidal wave of refugees heading west from Chicago and the other lakeside cities, and north from Saint Louis.

Though now they?ve more land than they can till, he thought, remembering pasture where fields had once been, and at that more grass than the cattle could eat down. They could change their policy, if they would, and both would benefit by it.

There was a hungry smile in Jake?s words:?Anyone?s got a hate against that Bossman bastard, he?s got a word to say here.? ?Sure, and I?d not weep if he were to be done an injury,? Rudi said.?He?s not the worst ruler I?ve ever met, but he?s far from the best-and not the smartest, either, that he is not.?

The smartest of rulers? A toss-up between my mother and Matti?s, that would be; the one wise and good, the other wise and wicked.

He realized with a start that he missed Mathilda?s mother; missed her counsel, and her peculiar way of looking at the world. They?d always gotten on well enough, even when he?d been her husband?s captive during the War of the Eye, but then again you never really knew where you stood with the Spider of the Silver Tower. He did know she loved Mathilda…