Gregor stormed into the rat room and yanked the curtain closed behind him. He sank down on the bed and wept. He knew it wasn't just about Twitchtip, it was about all of the dreadful things that had happened and the ones that awaited him in the coming hours. A hand, Lizzie's he thought, tentatively edged around the curtain. "Leave me alone!" The weeping sent new shock waves of pain through his ribs, but it was a long time before he'd cried himself out. Then he just lay on the bed watching the soft flicker of light from an oil lamp on the wall. It was quiet outside again. Everyone must have gone back to sleep.
Footsteps entered the code room. "Where is Gregor?" asked Howard in an exhausted voice.
"In there," Luxa replied. She had not gone back to bed, then. She was waiting for him. "We had word of Twitchtip's death. They had her imprisoned in a pit until recently. He is greatly upset."
There was a moment of silence while Howard absorbed the news. "So should we all be. Only Gregor's grief should not be mixed with shame, as should ours," said Howard. He had not attempted to save Twitchtip from the whirlpool at first but had taken excellent care of her afterward. "She did us all a great service and what poor treatment we gave her in return."
Howard opened the curtain to the rat room and came in. "I am sorry," he said. Gregor didn't reply. "Come. Sit up. You must have need of this." Howard helped him to a sitting position, administered a dose of painkiller, and gave him the rest of the bottle for later. He painted a new coat of medicine on Gregor's hip and calf stitches, and applied fresh bandages. Finally he examined his back. "Quite a bruise, but the bones are holding in place," he said as he wrapped the ribs again. Then he sat on the bed, elbows on his knees, digging the palms of his hands into his forehead, trying to find the right words. "Gregor, of all those Twitchtip knew in her life, I am sure she would wish you the least amount of grief," said Howard.
"You helped her, too. After the whirlpool. In the maze," said Gregor.
"Because you were right," said Howard. "You were the only one of us who looked past her fur and teeth and claws and saw who she really was. If we are ever to have peace, that will be the first step. The alternative is this." Howard waved a hand vaguely, somehow suggesting their current situation. "Slaughtering one another. Walling ourselves in with our dead. So pointless. All of it." He gingerly touched his eyes, bloodshot and swollen from fatigue. "You must rest your back if it is to heal."
"You need some rest, too, Howard," said Gregor.
"No. If you could see the hospital..." Howard looked down at his hands. They were shaking badly.
"Only I begin to fear I will do more harm than good."
"Just for a few hours. Lie down. I promise I'll wake you," said Gregor.
Howard looked at him as if he couldn't quite process the words. "A few hours?"
"You are going to hurt somebody. Lie down." He stood up and pushed Howard back on the bed.
"Two' hours. No more," said Howard.
In the time it took Gregor to pull the blanket up, Howard was asleep. Gregor came out into the code room. Everyone was up again, back at work. Boots came over and put her arms up. He couldn't lift her, with his back and all, so he sat down and pulled her onto his lap.
"Ow," said Boots. She pressed her hand to her nose. "Ow." This was the sign she had used for Twitchtip, to indicate the rat's hurt nose, when she was still too little to say her name. "She died."
"Yeah," said Gregor, thinking. it had been better before Boots had understood about dying.
"You put her here," Boots said, patting his chest over his heart. Well, not exactly — she got the wrong side. But he knew she meant his heart.
"I'll put her there," Gregor confirmed. He caught Luxa's sad gaze. She had had her own connection with Twitchtip. They had protected each other in the maze for as long as they could.
Gregor set Boots back on her feet and went over to help Luxa with the strips of code. "I truly believed her dead, Gregor," she whispered.
"I know," said Gregor. "I guess I must have, too. But I didn't deal with it. I had, like, this fantasy that she'd escaped. She was safe back in the Dead Land or something."
"She is safe now," Luxa said wanly.
"That's how it works down here," Gregor said. Nothing was really safe until it was dead. He looked at Ripred, thought about the rat's family, and wished he hadn't yelled at him. If anyone knew about being tortured in a pit it was Ripred, who had been left by the Bane to die in the Firelands, his teeth overgrowing until they'd locked in a grotesque fashion. Ripred had treated Twitchtip like he treated almost everybody else. Not great. But Ripred hadn't killed her and if she had lived, Gregor felt sure he would have made good on his promise to let her join his band of rats. Not that it mattered now. A basket of new code rolls came in and Ripred put everybody, even those who had been translating the old stuff, on them. They had been working only a few minutes when Min began to click in distress. "Bad news, here be, bad news!" The cockroach was too agitated to read the message outright, so Luxa hurried to help her. She could translate the chicken scratch into letters and then break the code on sight now.
"When — diggers — reach — arena — launch — attack —" she read.
"What? Where?" asked Ripred, jumping to her side.
Luxa held up the strip of fabric so they could both see it.
"By the river," he read aloud.
"By the river," Luxa repeated. "No one can attack by the river. They would be torn to shreds in the rapids."
"Not anymore. Have you seen it lately? Since the earthquake?" said Gregor.
"No," said Luxa. She had been too ill to notice anything on their flight back from the Firelands.