Chapter 18
Gavi walked down a farmland road with Ivy beside him, thinking again about the faces of the rangers. They had been shocked, but there was a feeling beyond shock in their faces, and he couldn’t place it. He tried to be focused on what he was doing, but their faces came back to him, and he looked for the word. He didn’t understand it. They had been shocked. But what else?
He and Abbas had traveled closer to the city, looking for rangers to warn about the identity of the approaching force. When they found a pair of rangers, two men who had been rangers for decades already, people Gavi knew by name, the men were watching the force move nearer and nearer to the city. They seemed stupefied, almost as if they were still deciding what to do.
“Peace behind you and before you,” Gavi sa
