It was the twelfth of June, a week after Amy had gone, when Dr. Mordecai declared Sally well enough to leave the ward. "Be glad that Boxer was a terrible shot," he told her as he cleaned the wound, "three inches to the left, and you would be paralyzed from the waist down."

Sally winced at the touch of alcohol on her raw flesh. "Do I still have to wear the sling?" she asked.

"No. Just keep the wound clean, and you should be fully recovered in a week or two. Keeping your arm immobile for much longer will cause other issues. There." He stood up as Sally pulled her roughspun robe over her body. "Come back in a week: I'll have to remove the stitches."

Sally let out a quiet sigh of relief. In her father's day, such a wound would have meant a bullet permanently stuck in the bone of her shoulder blade at best, and a slow, horrific death by gangrene at worst. "Thank you, doctor. I will." Per his instructions a few days before, she got up to take her daily walk. Before she could do so, she saw Cixin at the other end of the ward, his head still wrapped in bandages. "May I talk to that boy over there? He was with my mission," she asked.

Dr. Mordecai glanced at Cixin before answering. "Keep it short; that one has a long recovery ahead of him."

Cixin was awake when Sally approached. "Hey Sal," he said weakly, "You look pretty today."

Sally's long auburn hair was clean but unkempt, and dark circles gave her eyes a sunken aspect. Pretty, am I? Seeing him like this, she couldn't help feeling that her own injuries warranted less attention than a paper cut. She smiled wanly. "Thanks. How are you feeling?"

The boy took in a breath before answering. "Sal, I feel like shit. They said they were going to fix my eye, but I can't tell if they did."

Sally seated herself on the edge of the bed beside him. "Did Amy remove all of the glass?"

"Most of it. The nurses keep finding bits in my arms. When can I get out of bed like you can?"

Sally gently took his hand and gave it a little squeeze. "It may be a while."

"How long is a 'while'?"

Sally considered. "Maybe a few weeks," she half-hoped, half-lied, "Dr. Mordecai fixed me quickly enough."

Cixin brightened. "Will I see out of it again?"

No, Sally thought. Medicine was Amy's wheelhouse, but Sally knew enough about battle injuries to know that you couldn't recover a punctured eye. I can't tell him that. Not right now. "I don't know," she said.

Despite her ambivalent words, Cixin heard the "No" they concealed, and the hurt showed on his face. "Can you heal it?" he said hopefully, "Can you put some mud on my eye, like Shangdí did for that blind man by the pool? I wouldn't need all this stuff on my head, would I?"

Sally felt her throat tighten. Like Vanilla, she did believe that healing miracles were possible outside of the events that the Bible described- even in this world of machines and scientific wonders- but that belief tasted bitter to the practical, businesswoman side of her mind. It was true enough for herself. Can I raise my father from the grave? Amy's mother? My mother? Vanilla? She would have to tread carefully. "'Xin," she said, "do you know why He healed the blind man?"

Cixin shook his head. "Did Vanilla tell you?"

"In a way." Sally paused to gather her thoughts. "Do you remember how a month ago, she talked about why He brought Lazarus back from the dead?"

Cixin thought. "A little."

"What do you remember?"

"It was something about showing His power, wasn't it?"

Sally nodded. "Very good. He wanted to show His power over life and death, that He truly is a divine man."

"So He wanted to show His power over blindness?"

"Over all sickness," Sally gently corrected, "and if you remember, even Vanilla said that He didn't heal every sick man who crossed His path."

"Oh." Cixin deflated, and his eye fell to his lap. "Yeah."

I can't end it like that, she thought. She put her other hand on his, and tried for a message that would neither tie Cixin nor herself in knots. "Thankfully, that's not the whole story."

Cixin looked up at her, expectant.

"When He brings us the new heaven and new earth, He will restore our bodies," she said carefully. "We will be good as new."

"New, like a baby?" Cixin started to frown in thought, but winced at the pain it caused to his injured eye. "Is that what Vanilla meant? We'll all be born again, like babies?"

A little smile touched Sally's lips. "Better than that."

"How?"

"We'll be like Amy. We will be young, and fit, and whole, forever." She squeezed his hands in hers. "Even if you lost both of your eyes, your legs, and your arms, you'll have them back." She watched her smile creep its way onto his lips.

Sally was about to explain the meaning of the phrase "born again", when Dr. Mordecai tapped her on the shoulder. "Miss Acorn, you appear to have a visitor."

She turned and saw the blue hedgehog standing in by the ward entrance. He dressed in khaki instead of grey, and he seemed much more tense than when she'd last seen him. "Captain?" Her stomach clenched on itself: she'd heard nothing of the baby nor Amy since Knuckles told her where she'd gone.

"Miss Acorn," he said, "Colonel Prauer requests your presence."

She kissed Cixin on each cheek, then on the nose. "I'll be back soon," she promised, "just do as Dr. Mordecai says, okay?" Maybe now, I'll finally get some answers.

Sonic was brusque when she'd asked after Amy: "Your friend is safe, as is the baby."

"Knuckles?" She hadn't seen Knuckles in three days.

"He's at The Fu up the street, recruiting labor from the refugees."

"For what?"

"Barricades. We're going to wall up the Quarter."

The ache in Sally's shoulder deepened. "Are we getting reinforcements to man them?"

Sonic looked surprised at her asking. "Yes," he said.

"How many?"

"I don't know. Sir Claude MacDonald and Colonel Squiers have taken charge of the Quarter's defenses, so you could ask one of them."

Sally knew the names of those gentlemen: they were respectively the British and American ministers to China. She and Vanilla had written them occasionally, asking for charitable donations; but neither man seemed inclined to subsidize a Quaker mission, for neither of them had ever written back. She shook her head. "Is your colonel advising them?" Sonic looked curiously at her. "What is it?" she asked.

He relaxed a little, his lips quirked in a half-smile. "I didn't think a Quaker would be so interested in military dispositions."

Sally let out a small, rueful chuckle. When her father was grooming her to take over Acorn Armaments, he liked to frame what he taught her within a militaristic mindset. "As the Army fights with cannons and cold steel," he liked to say, "we fight with telegrams and cold cash." For her, it was an easy mindset to slip into, like putting on an old pair of shoes.

"I just want to know if we're safe here," she said.

For a long time, Sonic did not answer her. The tension in his face and body returned. "Once the barricades are up," he said finally, "We'll be safe enough."

When the gates to the British Legation opened for them, Sally was surprised to see five horses waiting outside, with four of them mounted. All of them had their pistols drawn. She gave Sonic a questioning look. "Just a precaution," Sonic replied, "It's a short ride." Ice dripped into her stomach as Sonic helped her into the saddle, and dripped faster as he mounted up behind her.

However uneasy Sally felt, Sonic was doubly so. Last night, the head of the Japanese Legation -a thin, soft-spoken tanuki named Sugiyama Akira- had gone alone to the Qing's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and never come back. Early this morning, while on he was leading a patrol around the Quarter's perimeter, Sonic had found poor Sugiyama's body in an alleyway behind the now-deserted Italian Legation.

Sonic suppressed a shudder as he kicked his horse into a brisk trot, which encouraged the ragged columns of wagons and refugees flooding into the Quarter, to part for him and his men. He could tolerate the sight of blood and gore in battle, but that grisly discovery horribly itched his mind. He could still see how the tanuki's head had been twisted to a strange angle, how his business suit was shredded, and how, from head to heel, his fur had been matted with dark, coagulated blood. Sonic had seen no sign of the diplomat's horse, nor any sign of the two guards Sugiyama had brought with him. All of these circumstances gave him the unnerving feeling of being hunted. He hated it.

As the six riders approached the canal bridge, the ragged crowds began to rapidly flow toward the horsemen, opposite the direction they had been going. "Hauptmann!" called Koschorreck, "Boxers, at our door!"

Sonic looked ahead: half a mile distant, he saw flashes of red robes through the browns and greys of the refugees. Then, above the growing grumble and din of the crowds, he heard gunfire.

"I have something for you," Tails said as he opened the wardrobe opposite his bunk. Not wishing to invite Ketteler's further displeasure, he had Amy wait outside his quarters with the door closed.

Amy listened through the crack in the door. In the week since she'd given him her harmonica, she'd heard snatches of its music coming from the Tartar Wall above. Four days ago, in the black of morning, she'd awakened to the sound of Sahne fretting again. As she held the child and tried to rock her back to sleep, Amy had heard the harmonica buzzing softly, soulfully across the hallway. To her surprise, the melody was one Vanilla liked to play on her bamboo flute. Tails's rendition of the tune had a narcotic effect on his little sister, and Amy as well.

She hadn't had the opportunity to thank him until the next evening, when Amadeus invited her to dinner in the officer's mess. Tails had casually told her "Roi de Prusse," in response to her thanks. Amy had turned beet red then, thinking he had said something...rather different. Amadeus had been too busy with his daughter to notice, but Tails had definitely noticed. He'd asked about her strange reaction after dinner, and had turned about as red as she had when she answered.

"Proosuh, Wrah deh Proosuh," he'd enunciated, trying and failing to smother a laugh behind his hand, "P-R-U-S-S-E, not-" He couldn't hold it anymore, and neither could she. They'd laughed for nearly an hour.

The recent memory put a smile on Amy's face. Most of the soldiers here didn't smile much, preferring expressions of blank, stoic discipline, or cool suspicion whenever she tried to ask them a question. This strange kitsune who shared their uniform-who'd braved fire and streets crawling with angry Boxers to save Sally-was quiet, but the warmth in that laugh had been enough to make Amy drop her guard. She decided that she liked him.

Tails drew aside his uniform shirts to reveal three pegs on the back wall of the wardrobe, from which hung three belts by their buckles. He took down the center belt, went over to the door to his quarters, opened it, and held it out to her buckle-first, his other hand supporting the actual belt. Amy was reminded of a picture she'd seen of Robert E. Lee surrending his sword to Ulysses S. Grant.

Curiously, she took the belt and weighed it in her hands. The buckle seemed pretty heavy for brass. She turned it in the sunlight from the window. The medallion fixed to the belt buckle was about an inch and a half in diameter, embellished with a crown design in the center and the words "Gott Mit Uns" arching above the crown. Below the crown was a laurel design that reminded her of an eagle's outstretched wings, and the buckle itself was so well-polished that she could clearly see her face in it. "Gott Mit Uns?"

Tails nodded, glad that her pronunciation was getting better. "Oh, it's the motto of House Hohenzollern, the Kaiser's family: it means 'God With Us.'"

"''God With Us.'" She liked that. "Is this real silver?" she asked.

"The medallion is. The buckle itself is gold."

Her eyes widened. "Gold? You mean...gold? Real gold?"

"Yes. It's yours, if you want it."

"That's..." She shook her head, smiling. Gold. She'd seen gold before, in rings and necklaces, but never had the opportunity to touch it before. "That's very generous of you. Thank you."

Tails gave her a sly look. "Eh, Roi de Prusse."

She punched him on the arm, trying not giggle. "Jerk. How do I wear this?"

"Cinch it at your navel." He unbuckled his own belt to show her how the mechanism worked, then quickly refastened it. "The extra length should be hidden on the inside loop."

Amy mirrored him. "Are all of your belts like this?"

Tails should have expected the question, but he didn't. A blush crept up his face. "N-no," he admitted, "The other ones are brass and aluminium."

Amy looked up from the buckle, her emerald eyes meeting his. She smiled knowingly, but said nothing.

"Do you have any shoes to match the belt?" he ventured, trying to break the silence.

"Oh sure, I have a pair under my..." She stopped, recalling the one good pair of "church clothes" Sally had bought her last year. "Bed," she finished, her voice barely above a whisper. Amy had usually worn the same roughspun tunics and robes that the Chinese peasants wore, but she'd kept a simple Western-style red dress and those shoes in a trunk under her bed. She'd worn that outfit three times, each at a Mass; once at Easter, once at All Saint's Day, and once on Christmas Eve. Vanilla had donned her own simple Western clothing on these days as well, as she escorted Amy to and from the great Nantang Cathedral downtown. Vanilla was gone now, along with Amy's dress and shoes. She was suddenly aware that she was crying, and that khaki cloth and brass buttons were pressed against her face.

Tails was astonished; in Germany, girls usually laughed at his twin tails and walked the other way, or otherwise gave him subtle touches that he didn't pick up on until it was too late. This situation was entirely foreign to him. He also hadn't expected such a wiry girl to be so strong: his forearms were free, but her hug had pinned his upper arms so tightly that it made his shoulders hunch. He could faintly smell the hard white soap she'd used to clean herself this morning, alongside the natural scent of her scalp. Slowly, Tails returned the embrace. When she did not pull away, he rested his chin atop her head.

A large, scab-brown brick came through the window behind Tails, loudly taking a huge chunk from the window and clunking across the the floor. In one move, Tails shoved Amy out of the room, drew his broomhandle, and spun to face the sound, just as a rock flew in behind the brick. Several more heavy objects thunked dully against the wall outside as he dodged another rock, picked it up, and it hurled back through the broken window. A pained shout told him that he'd scored a direct hit. A gunshot, and the rest of the glass shattered. "Get to the mess and stay there," he ordered to Amy, before he dashed out of the room and down the hall to the stairs. "We're under attack."