She pressed redial. But when the answering machine beeped again, she didn’t know what more to say. So she hung up.

For somebody whose entire life had become a litany of apologies, she really sucked at delivering them.

Sliding through the gates of the Cosmodrome with the joker girl, Sezim—and her doll—cradled in his arms, Marcus felt better than he had in a long time. Before him and behind him, the other jokers walked, shuffled, or squirmed. A few were carried in. They moved through a channel of soldiers that protected them from the masses rumbling angrily outside and from the unkind eyes of the various soldiers—UN, Kazakh, and Russian—who weren’t exactly welcoming them in.

Let them stare, Marcus thought. It didn’t matter. The only thing that did was that—with Nurassyl’s help—they’d delivered on their promise to get the villagers inside the Cosmodrome. They were about as safe now as they could be.

The Handsmith strode beside him, holding his wife’s hand. “Thank you,” he said, touching Marcus on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

Marcus shook his head. “Not me. Nurassyl. He did it.” He wished he could explain it all to him. He’d make sure that Olena did. Saying he’d go and get the boy, he handed Sezim to Aliya and started toward the Committee’s warehouse. He didn’t get more than a few yards before a swarm of wasps shot out of the warehouse, curved in the air, and swept toward him. Bugsy formed in front of him, looking quite a bit more substantial than he had when Marcus had left him with Nurassyl. He was naked again, but this time not even modest enough to blur his genitalia.

“Something’s up with your girl,” he said. “She was talking to this guy for a while, and then they started arguing. Next thing you know a bunch of Russians grabbed her and dragged her away. She went screaming bloody murder, man.”

“You let them take her?” Marcus asked.

He swiped his limp hair from his face. “Let them? What could I do? Have you not noticed that Russians run this place?”

“Where’d they go?”

“Come on. I got a hornet following them.”

Bugsy swarmed, and Marcus squirmed after him. Vasel, he swore, if you hurt her I’ll kill you. If you take her away … He couldn’t finish that thought. If Vasel vanished with her what chance did Marcus have of ever seeing her again? The gangster seemed capable of anything, and he had all of the vastness of Russia at his disposal.