Birdsong broke into squawking panic. She glanced back: two birds had flown from the sign, their resting place usurped by a raptor. Of the third clockwork songbird there was no trace.

Shale frowned at the metal birds. The raptor preened and puffed the razor feathers of her breast. An organ tritone down the hall signaled preboarding. “Come on,” she said. “We’re late.”

They ran past janitors mopping floors; the dragon eclipsed the sky outside the window. A deep rhythm pulsed through the floor tiles. At first she mistook it for the thrum of ventilation or of escalator machinery, but they’d passed no escalator, and ventilation would be softer.

Heartbeat, she thought.

Passengers waited in long lines by the gantries: beings human and once human in robes and suits. A three-meter-tall statue of silver thorns in the economy line held this week’s Thaumaturgist open with two hands and turned the pages with his third. The fourth fingered his ticket sleeve nervously.

She reached the business-class gantry and fell into line behind a woman with long golden braids and a man wearing a mask of tanned skin. The ticket taker’s smile was riveted in place, literally. The tritone sang again.

“Tara!”

She turned, and saw Abelard sprinting toward them.

The ticket taker extended her hand to the braided woman. Tara waved Shale on. “Get to the cabin. I’ll follow.”

Abelard tripped over the thorn statue’s valise. His robes flared at the hem, and he hopped one-footed three steps until Tara caught him by the wrist.

“I worked all afternoon,” he said, breathless. “When I looked at the clock I realized it was nine, and I’d last seen you in that nightmare.”

“How did you get in here?”

“I kind of shouted my way past the guards. Said I was on a mission from God.”

“I really have to go.” Shale had vanished down the gantry. At the third tritone, economy passengers filed over their bridge. “Shale will get in trouble if I’m not around.”

“When I looked at that clock,” he said, “I realized: she could just leave. Nothing ties her here. She could go to Dresediel Lex and let us deal with this ourselves.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I know,” he said. “You could, but you wouldn’t.” The coach line was almost gone. Tara felt faintly ridiculous, as if underdressed—exposed in the high-ceilinged hall.

“I’ll be gone a couple days,” she said. “Hold the city together while I’m out, okay?”

He hugged her. His arms were tight and narrow, and the body beneath the robes might have been made of thin pipe. His close-cut tonsure prickled against her temple.