She pulled her knees tighter to her chest and flicked another card down onto the slate roof tiles. “He’ll be back.”
Higgins grunted. “You must have a touch of the Sight, lady.”
She frowned. “What?”
“You’re right. He’s back.” He was standing and facing down into the streets. His face was tight and disbelieving.
Allie struggled to her feet. “Who?”
“Him.”
She stood up, gripping him by the sleeve. Though she was a head shorter, she tore him down to her height through sheer vehemence. “Who, damn you?”
Higgins’s face bore the toothy smile of a child waking on Christmas morning. “Him. He’s back.”
“Norman?” Allie breathed. Her heart skipped a beat.
Higgins shook his head. “Mr Cain. Alexander Cain has returned to us!”
She blinked and nodded. A flood of relief, tainted slightly by disappointment, suddenly swept the cobwebs from the day. “You’re sure?”
“See for yourself, lady.” He gestured to the cobbled streets below, where she could now see a lone, robed figure striding from the abandoned outer edges of the city.
He had grey-blond thatched hair, tall and wiry, with a ruddy, wise face akin to the Greeks of old. Even from this distance, there was no mistaking the Messiah of the South. Allie let loose an enormous sigh, deflating like a knackered old balloon, and watched him stride toward the city. As though sensing his arrival, people who had been locked up for days in their own homes thrust out their heads through boarded windows and barred doorways, squealing with wordless delight. The droves who had clamped themselves to Agatha and her sermons in the cathedral came running, most of them far too old for more than a careful shuffle, but hurrying still.
He was swamped in moments. The crowds of New Canterbury were upon him before he could reach the building where Allie still stood. Higgins and the kid had scampered away to join the crowd, but she couldn’t move. A wave of exhaustion that she had been denying until now crashed over her.
People were jabbering. Many were crying. Some just screamed, down on their knees.
How does one man do that? How can people believe that much in flesh and blood?
But it was a pointless question, because she knew she believed just as much as they did.
Alexander Cain had been unheedful and selfish. He had given his and all of their futures to his mission. She knew he must have played a least some part in the debacle they now faced. And in that way, he would never stop.
But he was here. He had played his hand when nobody else had in a game nobody understood, just as she had been doing up here with Higgins and the kid. In the end he had lost big, but there he was, standing down there in the street.
He had come back to them.
Allie was about to head for the window and climb down when she saw the crowd fragment and face down the street. The crying and wailing was stemmed. And amongst them, Allie saw that Alexander looked shocked.
She turned to follow their gaze, and there at the end of the street was the militia. Regimented in strict rows, rifles and pistols at the ready, two hundred of the people of New Canterbury stood puff-chested and erect upon the cobbles. Among them were Heather and the wife of Ray Hubble, and countless others whom Allie would never have believed would take a stand.
But here they were, a formidable line amidst the ruin and chaos.
At their head, Sarah Strong stood front and centre, her red hair and angular face aglow with dogged temerity.
I wouldn’t have it any other way, Allie thought. By the time she reached the streets, Alexander and the crowd had joined the militia, and the two groups became one. Heather and Agatha were amongst those armed, a doctor and a senile old lady, standing arm in arm with the young and brave.
Allie took a pistol for herself.
The two crowds of militia and civilians chattered and mingled for a long time, nuzzling like a separated bitch and her pups. Coldness had grown between those prepared to fight and those who would never be ready, but those divisions now dissolved, spurred by a strength that even Alexander would never have been capable of on his own.
Alexander appeared before Allie and Sarah and the others. He stared right down at them as though seeing them for the first time. He wasn’t smiling, nor was he serene like she had expected. He had found a humbleness somewhere out there in the wastes.