Oresias held up his arms and she wrapped the belt around his waist. “How would you make it work?”

Rhita thought for a moment, then touched the control box with her hand. The device did not communicate with her mind; apparently it was less sophisticated than the clavicle. What would Grandmother do? she asked herself.

She’d talk to it.

“Please turn on,” she said in Hellenic. “Please protect this man.” Nothing happened. She thought about that for a while, and then decided to use her grandmother’s English, a difficult language she was not at all fluent in. “Please turn on,” she said. “Protect this man.”

Again, no response.

Rhita felt a flush of anger at her own ignorance. Why didn’t Grandmother teach me how to use all the Objects? Perhaps, toward the end of her life, Patrikia’s brilliance had faded. “I can’t think of anything else to try…” she said. “Unless…it might work if I’m wearing it.”

Oresias shook his head firmly. “If her Imperial Hypsēlotēs still sits on her throne, she’d have my head if I put you in any danger. We’ll try the animal first.” He ordered that a cony be brought forward.

“I’ll go,” Lugotorix told Rhita in confidence, speaking softly in her ear. She shook her head; everything was confused. They were amateurs; none of the others—probably not even her—had any idea of how momentous this occasion was, how dangerous and not just for them.

The cony arrived, a small bundle of fur in a wicker cage, twitching a pink nose, its cage suspended by a metal hook on a long wooden pole. The water had not risen appreciably, so he took the far end of the pole and stepped into the stream, walking awkwardly with the cage dangling before him. “Where should I put it?” he asked.

Despite herself, Rhita grinned. “In the center.”

Lugotorix seemed to find this amusing, too; the Kelt seldom found anything worth smiling about.

Oresias lifted the long pole and maneuvered the cage up to the center of the glimmering lens. “Like this?” he asked. The cage and cony disappeared, as if by some magician’s sleight of hand.

“Yes,” Rhita said softly, awed. She tried to visualize Patrikia falling through such a lens, landing in an irrigation channel…

“I’ll leave it there for a few seconds,” Oresias said, the pole trembling in his grip.

Rhita heard a deep pounding sound to the north. Jamal Atta looked up from the swale and flinched. “Tatars—Kirghiz!” he shouted. “Hundreds of them!”

Oresias’s face blanched, but he continued to hold the pole in position. “Where?”

Lugotorix leaped to the rim of the swale. Rhita was torn between staying near the gate and Oresias and following the Kelt to find out what was happening. Soldiers shouted around the beecraft. The pounding grew louder.