Free Exit Kingdom by Alden Bell

Maybe we’ll both find out what’s what.
    So he leaves her there, clad in her white robes, her red hair spilling lurid on her shoulders, her eyes like false gemstones – and, too, like a fluid and perversetreachery, her curving
lips.
    *
    Though the sun is not yet risen before the commotion begins.
    There is a man’s voice, loud – spitting and thick, as though the tongue were too big for the mouth.
    We’ll burn it! the voice calls. We’ll burn the whole goddamn place to the ground!
    Moses rises, kicks his brother awake and moves to the stable door to look out. There’s nothingto see except the parishioners gathering in fearful huddles around the courtyard. The voice,
he realizes when he hears it again, is coming from outside the perimeter wall – at the front gate.
    Open the goddamn doors! If she’s in there, we’re takin her. If she ain’t, we got no truck with you all. It can go quiet, or it can go rough. Your choice.
    Then Ignatius is there, dashing around thecorner of the building with the Vestal Amata in tow. The expression on the woman’s face is equal parts fear and anger.
    I ain’t goin back with them, she says under her breath. Ignatius doesn’t seem to hear her, and the words are directed to no one in particular. It is a personal vow to herself and
nothing more.
    It’s the man Fletcher, Ignatius says to Moses. He’s back. The whole carnivalof them. You have to go now. Leave by the back.
    Abe, let’s go, Moses says, gathering his satchel and weapons. Show us where to go, he says to Ignatius.
    The monk gestures for them to follow and leads them around the chapel itself to a place where barrels are stacked against the back wall and can be climbed upon. Moses goes up first until he can
see over the top of the wall. It’s clear.

    Don’t worry about us, Ignatius says to reassure them. They won’t bother us if she’s not here.
    It did not occur to him, until the monk Ignatius uttered this last, that he should be concerned about defending the residents of the mission. He did not think of it at all.
    And so it is that he is no hero by nature. And for what cause, then, is he a warrior?
    Hand her up, Moses says to hisbrother. His brother lifts the Vestal Amata into his arms, and Moses hoists her to the top of the wall. Then he tosses his satchel over the back and turns to leap
down himself. But before he goes, he looks back over the mission. On the opposite side there’s a glow against the sky, the front of the structure illuminated by the headlights of
Fletcher’s convoy. It is eerie, the blaze and fracasat the intersection of people’s lives.
    He turns and looks down on Ignatius.
    I’ll protect her, he says to the monk. But I ain’t a good man. You understand that?
    It doesn’t matter, the monk replies. Partly strong, partly broken. It’s the same with everything. Just go.
    And they do.
    *
    Moses drops down on the other side of the wall then helps the Vestal Amata to theground. Abraham comes last, leaping down with a yee-ha like a cowboy and tumbling in the weeds.
He wears a mad smile on his face, as though there is no difference in his economy between fear and frolic. He stands and dusts off his hands.
    The Moses realizes something.
    The car, he says.
    What about it? Abraham asks.
    It’s around front with them.
    So what? We’ll find us anotherone.
    It’s got our things in it.
    Nothin we can’t replace.
    Moses thinks about the weapon in the trunk, the bladed mace made for him by the tinkerer Albert Wilson Jacks. Abraham is right – most things in the world are replaceable, but that is not
one of them. And this is a time of cherishing unique things.
    We ain’t leaving without our things, Moses says.
    Abraham looks off intothe distance, as though he would rush headlong into it were he unleashed to do so.
    All right, he says. So what’s your suggestion?
    Then, suddenly, there’s another voice behind them, a man. He has crept around the corner of the wall while they were talking, and