It was a strange meeting. Twenty-six people, crammed into a small cave, surrounded by even more people. So much humanity that we collectively warmed the cave like a radiator. It was humid, and stank, but at least I was somewhat warm for the first time in days.

  I wouldn't have trusted any of them to recycle my trash. Now I had to trust everyone with my life, and more.

  "Kaladin," the Knife said, pointing to a skinny man with dark hair and darker eyes. He carried a steel spear that looked crudely home-made and lethally solid at once. "Fastest tunnel rat on Remba. Also something of a medic."

  The spearman nodded, half-hostile, half-hoping. That was the attitude of most of the Knife's recruits. Friends. Comrades. Competitors. Something. They knew each other, or had heard of each other.

  I couldn't get my head around the system of feudal anarchy that seemed to reign in the badlands of Remba. The Knife had the respect of people in the Gash. So had a few more of his recruits. I could understand that. Some of them had survived on Remba longer than the Knife had.

  They didn't command, though. Things they wanted simply happened to get done. No one touched the Knife's rope, because the Knife didn't want that. Someone watered the Knife's bed of sour-roots when he wasn't there, because the Knife would have wanted that.

  Someone pushed someone else off a cliff, and the Knife turned up, smacked a few heads, maybe slit some throats, and everything went back to normal. The same with all of his fighters, except in other parts of the Gash, or other hiddens beyond it. They walked freely through each other's territories, except when they didn't, and then people got hurt.

  "Whom do you trust the most?" I said to the Knife.

  He gave me a skeptic look.

  "Trust?" he said. "Haven't you learned anything about Remba?"

  It took all of my self-control not to sigh, or stomp my foot and throw a hissy fit. If I ever got off this crudmucking world, I'd toss the Knife and Riina into a room and see what happened. Sell the vid rights to the combat networks.

  Or maybe they'd get along great, exchanging sarcasms.

  "Who would you leave in charge of these people?" I said. "And don't say yourself, because I need you as a guide."

  "Take Velor," said the Knife. "She's the best tracker."

  A few heads nodded. The woman in question raised her hand and see-sawed it.

  "I don't trust Velor," I said. "I trust you. No offense." I nodded at the woman.

  "None taken," Velor said. Her voice was as dry as her flaking skin.

  "Well, I don't trust-" the Knife began, but I turned away from him, stomping up to Widen as she pushed through the crowd around us.

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  "Congratulations," I said, before she, or Ade, could say anything. "You're the chief of police. Anyone you don't like, you have the Knife's goons dispose of."

  "What?" she said, her powerful voice carrying clearly over the talk in the cave.

  "The Knife's in charge of the strike force," I said. "You're in charge of everyone else. Your job is to keep the people moving, and weed out any bad bloods. Any of them get on board the hauler, and we're all bound for the void."

  I didn't think Ade could be more obsessed, but at my words, her eyes doubled their size and she stretched, rising as if she was going to soar away on faith alone. True believer. Soon, she'd be proclaiming me a void wyrm in disguise, come to turn us all into magic pixies.

  Widen deflated.

  "We're going to get killed," she said. "A sloth would spot a mass this large. Better to stay in the Gash. Up in the plains, the Syndicates will shoot us all."

  "They won't," I said, but she was already slumping, curling in on herself, the people around her mimicking her. I wondered if I'd made a mistake, asking for her.

  But no, Widen was a born leader. The people surrounding her hung on her words, imitated her actions, posture, state of mind. She would get them to move. And she was paranoid enough to find all the bloods. I just needed to get her on my side.

  I spoke for an hour, talking about the way to City, the hauler sitting at dock. At one point, the Knife stood by my side, echoing my words, more of his not-quite-friends appearing, men and women with knives, spears, clubs, swords. I divided them into teams, letting some come with us, leaving others to support Widen.

  Mostly, I spoke.

  Little by little, Widen's disbelief melted away. Ade did her part, knowing her mother's weaknesses, adding a word or a sentence at the right times. She convinced Darrow when he showed up. She got Hao to laugh.

  Even I laughed. I was beginning to believe my own words. A dangerous proposition. You are always the one best suited to fool yourself.

  "So what do you think?" I said to my command crew, twelve people all so different that I couldn't have imagined them in the same room if someone had shown me a picture. The only thing they had in common was their gauntness, and the look of cold competence.

  And their hate of Syndics and Remba.

  "Maybe," Widen said.

  "Maybe," echoed Darrow.

  "Best chance I'll ever have," said Corwin, one of the Knife's partners from down the Gash. "I'm in."

  "We're all in," I said. "Whether we want it or not. Widen is right, the Syndicates will come. They're likely negotiating passage rights right now. The Void Orb's greed is what keeps us alive for now. Only way we live longer, is by going to them first."

  A simple plan. Move at dusk, a small force, going fast to City. Once there, I'd attack the Syndicate bunker complexes. I'd seen how they walked around, always alert, always ready to fight off a provocation.

  I'd give them a provocation. I'd provoke them into an all-out war between clans. Fire into the bunkers, make it look like sniper strikes, bombs, orbital bombardment. Anything to get them to fight. Even this gathering of refugees would help us. If the Syndics knew about the mass of people gathering, they would be planning how to take advantage of it themselves, block the other clans. Wars happened at flashpoints. We'd give them the biggest flashpoint of their lives.

  I didn't expect huzzahs. A few nods at best. To my surprise, I got cautious optimism.

  "Doable," said Corwin.

  "Could be," the Knife said. "Could be. Depends on the specific plan."

  "We won't know that, until we see the lay of the land. Scout around for a night. The hauler is the prime target, and the com center. That's what controls their missiles."

  "That's a mighty thin plan," Corwin said.

  "If you've got a better one, I'm listening," I said, readying for another fight.

  "Nah," he said. "This is as good a plan as any we've had. Better even."

  "It'd better be," said Widen. "We'll have a wave of sneaks coming up behind you."

  "Not only sneaks," said Darrow. "Diggers, too, and bloods."

  "We'll fly off Remba," Ade crowed.

  "We'll do that," I said, swept along by the energy I'd ignited.

  "Good," said Widen. "Now git, and kill us some Syndicates, and I'll kill us some bloods."

  It was easy to forget how bloodthirsty these people were.