Chin up, jaw straight. She waits.

He smiles, lets his hand drop. Her mask hasn't moved. "Just in case of miracles," he says, as if that means anything. "You should go."

She doesn't look back, doesn't say anything else. Pauses, briefly, before the Virgin and asks for mercy for him, because he's going to die a hero, even if it doesn't work.

When the church blows, it looks like the clouds are on fire.

Bouchard's surviving men run away from the flying adobe and closer to the garrison. Her people are waiting on the banquette and pick the remaining 100 off like it's thinning carrots—-not easy, but thorough and methodical. She closes in from behind, surprising almost ten men before they can properly aim at her. The dust helps; a blind sword is more destructive than a blind pistol.

The dust also means that when they die, they choke on air while bleeding out from the gut. She still has Grisham's kerchief over her nose and mouth; more than once, she thinks she's vomited into it. More than once, it catches the spray of blood from her victim. She prays for a bullet to the brain, at least twice.

It's over in an hour. Over. Bouchard and Corney flee with the explosion and a handful of soldiers; she toys with the idea of going after them, but there are cannon to deal with and it's too risky. Lima is the only one who comes to her and comments on the explosion. "Bigger than I thought."

"Sky high," she replies, looking at the flames.

Clean up is rough.

The garrison plaza is covered in bodies; almost 150 of Bouchard's mercenaries, about 35 of her people. There is a rosary beside the well and it's finding that, the smooth wooden beads covered in bloody dust, that does it. She slumps down and cries, silently, between the bodies of Morena Bilbao and Adolfo Murrieta. They were going to be married in the winter. Adolfo was going to Mexico City, to study law.

She's not sure how long she's kneeling there before Marta comes and holds her, hugs her, wipes away her tears. She cries harder for a few minutes, imagines a pike like the one Padre Hidalgo's head is on, can't get enough air. Marta just holds her, doesn't say anything, and air comes back after a little while.

When she looks up, she seems Lima directing people away from her, towards the church, telling them to start searching. He looks back at her, nods quickly, and keeps shouting.

Montoya is dead. His body was face down in the dirt when she came in; the bullet entered at the back of his neck. There's no way to tell where the bullet came from and she doesn't see a need to ask. No one's crying, but they've taken his body inside, to be embalmed and buried with respect. Her people are even preparing to bury Bouchard's men properly. Gaspar is deciding which section of land would be the best graveyard.

Her legs give out again, and this time it's Vera who comes to her, with strips of salt pork and water, a moist towel to clean herself off. It's Vera who wipes the grit off her face—careful around the mask—while she eats and drinks, who says nothing but squeezes her hand before going to the next fighter wandering in.

It's Vera who stays calm and focused when the shouts go up outside the walls for a doctor, when, twenty minutes later, four soldiers stagger in with a stretcher bearing Grisham's heavily battered but heavily breathing body. She, on the other hand, can't begin to breathe.

Belen comes to her just as two men carry Pira's body inside the barracks; she winds her little arms around her neck and sobs. It almost knocks her over, she's so tired, but she holds on, strokes the little girl's hair, whispers yet another prayer. As if God would listen to her now.

Lima comes and tells her, sits next to her against the wall while the uninjured bring in the dead. "He's a bastard, for sure, but he's a bastard we know. You know how things get backed up and screwed up in Monterey; we don't want an outsider—"

She stops him, holds up a hand and breathes deeply. Belen is asleep in her lap, sobbed into exhaustion. "He helped you load the church, didn't he?"

Lima folds his lips, shrugs one shoulder. "He didn't stop us."

She feels bile at her throat and salt at her eyes. "Christ, Lima, he's not for you, he's against Montoya—"

"Montoya is dead." Lima's voice is hard, his baby face sharp. "Grisham had a piece of wood—looks like a barrel stave—in his side," and he draws his hand horizontally from his navel, "como asi. Juarez got it out, stitched him up."

She wonders if he stood next to the barrels and dropped the match, or fled and threw it behind him, tried to escape. Knowing Marcus, he tried to outrun it. "Why are you telling me this? We did what we had to do, we lived through doing it—"

"He's asking to see Tessa." Funny how it doesn't even feel different, how out of all the explosions in the past two days, this one is almost meaningless. Lima's eyes are bird-bright, almost hopeful.

She feels Belen's weight shifting, looks up to see Marta lifting the little girl away. She's about to protest, but Marta gets it, all of it, shakes her head with a small lift to the corners of her mouth, like she's proud.

So she smiles, and lifts the mask.

END