“You mean this morning? Yes, as much as possible, as long as I can,” said the Angel. “Hindered by the fact that I can’t teach mathematics—I couldn’t begin to teach you reading and writing—I don’t want to teach history—but I do want to keep you louts out of trouble. So I thought I’d come and teach you that … how to stay out of trouble.”
The Angel took a big roll of wax paper out of her satchel. She sat them all down at a table, even Kevin, who had to sit on top of the table, and spread it out in front of them. Camilla did not amble over, which surprised Nona. She was sitting with her hands clasped together, staring at the Angel as hard as possible. Nona looked at the roll of wax paper instead and didn’t quite understand what she was seeing until the Angel said kindly: “So this is a top-down diagram of the city. See, here’s the civic centre, where some of you have recently been…” Here she looked at Nona and Hot Sauce particularly, and Nona coloured. “And here’s us.”
She ran her finger down a few streets, made a few zigzags, and tapped another piece of the drawing. Nona still couldn’t see how such a tiny move could represent her and Hot Sauce’s expedition, nor could she parse the shapes, the heights of things. The map was too flat—everything was a minute collection of squares and lines and squiggles; but Beautiful Ruby seemed to get it. He pointed at a bit of the paper. “That’s not there anymore.”
“The water plant. No,” said the Angel. “They blew that up early in a bid to smoke the Cohort—that’s the Nine Houses’ army—out of the barracks. Really stupid stuff. And this isn’t here, the big terraced graveyard. I mean, it’s still there … shelled to hell and back. Which wasn’t as stupid … although there’s been so many sand burials outside the walls it was all optimism in the end. Ruby—colour that in red.”
Beautiful Ruby took the red, chisel-ended marker pen—not like a wax crayon or a fat ballpoint, a grownup thing they all looked at admiringly—and neatly coloured that part in. The Angel said, “Anywhere we colour red, that’s somewhere you don’t go unless the only other option is being swallowed up in a sinkhole. Got it?”
Honesty said, “I’ve been to that graveyard. It’s all tents and concrete.”
“Yes, but it’s the first place people will assume necromancers will go, and people like to shoot first and ask questions later,” said the Angel, “or worst case, maybe a necromancer will be there. I know we think they’d have the blue madness, but what we know is that we don’t know anything, okay? I want you lot to make that your motto. What we know is that we don’t know anything.”
Nona quite liked this motto. It was an accurate summary of her entire life. The Angel gave another pen to Honesty and said, “Can you find Southgate? Colour it in.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Honesty, “for you,” as though he might not have done it otherwise. When he found Southgate he blocked it in. This pen was coloured blue. The Angel said, “Southgate is a good place to go in an emergency. Why do you think that is?”
Nona said mechanically, “Because it’s got access to the road out of town and there’s a water pump and the ground is stable and it’s not a priority target for any kind of orbital strike or bombardment.”
Everyone looked at her. Then they looked at Camilla, sitting in the back. Camilla didn’t move. She had found some bit of paper and was writing on it furiously, so Nona didn’t even get a “Well done, Nona,” which she deserved because Cam had taught her all that.
“What’s bombardment?” asked Beautiful Ruby suspiciously.
“No idea,” said Nona proudly.
“An interesting group, your family,” said the Angel slowly, with an eye on Camilla. “I mean, you’re totally right—if you have to run away, run there and keep close to the road. You’re all city kids, I don’t think any of you can survive in the open desert … still lots of buildings out there, customs buildings, sturdy shells to hole up in from the elements. Go there, go together, but don’t wait for one another. It’s good to move in numbers, but don’t stay anywhere dangerous to find the others. Don’t worry about weapons or even food. Water bottles are your priority. Anything that happens will happen in the short-term. Okay?”
Nona looked at Hot Sauce as the rest of them chorused a slightly reluctant Okay, and noticed that there was no surprise in her face, no sense she was taking in new information, just the normal Hot Sauce dark-eyed intensity. She thought: The Angel has already told her all this, and had her suspicion confirmed when the Angel said— “Hot Sauce, tell them which building you picked out.”