"You've been here three days," Spahl pointed out. The seal-like mutant shrugged sadly. "That's three days longer than any non-mutant's ever spent in this city, Kesley. We can't keep you here much longer."
"Why do you want to stay here?" asked Foursmith, an angular, knobby-looking mutant with a row of inch-long red nubbins protruding through the flesh of his back. "You've got to get going, you know. Daveen's not here."
"I don't know where Daveen is!" Kesley said. "Can't you let me catch my breath?"
"You'll have to leave tomorrow," Spahl said. "We'll give you a horse."
"Thanks."
This was the third day since Spahl had rescued him in the forest and brought him to Mutie City; they had fed him and rested him, but now they insisted that he leave.
He couldn't blame them; the city was a refuge for harried mutants, not a harbor for escaped turncoats. They ran the risk of incurring Winslow's displeasure by giving him sanctuary. Yet, he thought, as long as they'd admitted him they might as well have let him stay long enough to get his bearings, to have some of the furor over him die down.
Well, at least they'd taken him in. A small blessing, but a real one.
"I'm sorry," he said humbly, walking to the window of the room they had given him. He looked out over the variegated city below—strange and motley compared with the neat regularity of all Empire-built cities.
"I'm imposing myself, and I'm acting like a fool." He wet his lips. "I'll go whenever you want me to."