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The run-gun trucks tear through the open bays and crouch in the middle of the garage, idling. There are two vehicles, five men between them. Devlar hides are strung across the grilles and the beasts' wings hang like prizes from the antennas. Caked mud eats into the rust and paint, but Trin can see Gerrick's mark well enough. Aissa's right, he's finally here.

When the men file out of the trucks, Trin sees him immediately. There's more grey in the blond hair and deeper lines around the grey-green eyes, but it's him, it's Gerrick, Trin would know him anywhere.

Once, years ago, Blain took Trin out to Konstas with him to trade for parts and on the run home, their engine died. Sort of ironic, Trin thought at the time, lying on the hood of Blain's old jalopy and staring up into the nuclear sky while his brother swore at the truck. A bed full of burned out motors and none of them worked. If it weren't for the heat baking his skin and the dust clogging his nose, he might have even laughed.

In the drowsy sun, Trin didn't hear the devlars until they were swarming over the back of the truck. "Trin!" Blain cried. His brother gave him a shove that sent him sliding off the hood and into the dust, and before he could stand Blain grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him to his feet.

Dark shadows flittered over the ground from preybirds circling above, sensing a kill. Trin got one good look at the devlars--claws and teeth and hateful eyes like drops of black blood--and then his brother foisted him into the cab of the truck, slammed the door shut behind him. Inside the heat was stifling and Trin could hear the insidious sound of dry wings rubbing together, teeth squealing offmetal, his brother's gun firing laborious rounds into the horde.

What about when the pillshot ran out? What about when they overtook Blain and Trin was trapped inside?

He tried to peer through the windows but they were thick with dust. His heart hammered in his chest--three seconds ago, he was almost asleep. He couldn't seem to comprehend that this wasn't part of a sun-induced dream.

The ground rumbled like thunder and Trin wiped at the windshield, desperate to see. From out of the swirling sand rode two large run-gun trucks, one gunner on each roof, another leaning out the passenger side windows, flames licking from their guns. The driver of the closest truck held it on the run with one hand and aimed into the devlars with the gun in his other. Trin saw the driver's hand steady on the steering wheel, felt the pellets from his gun strike the truck, each shot carefully aimed.

Later, after the devlars were dead and the men gone as quickly as they had appeared, he asked Blain who they were. "Gunners," his brother replied. The look he gave Trin suggested that he thought the sun had melted part of his brother's brain.

"I know that," Trin said. He remembered the driver's smoky eyes, the blond mustache above lips pulled back in a grimace, each shot fired true. Not one astray, not one. "But who are they?" he persisted. "Did you know them when you gunned?"

At Blain's nod, Trin wanted to know, "The tall one, the driver? Who's he?"

Blain laughed. "How do you know he's tall? He stayed in the cab."

It was no matter to Trin, tall or not. He had to know. Those hands, those eyes. "Who is he?"

"Gerrick," Blain told him.

Gerrick.