Dominic’s blows grew fierce and faster, the rounded guard of Sniper’s sword ringing like a bell in a child’s abusing hand. Rage is an asset in the kind of rough, animal combat Saladin and I perfected, but fencing is an art, and Dominic’s rage contaminated his stance as roughness muddies paint. Sniper lunged, a deep strike which skewered Dominic’s wrist. The rapier fell from fingers no longer properly connected to the muscles which give grip its strength, but that would not stop Dominic. He hurled the weapon as it fell, and, as Sniper blocked the throw, Dominic flailed with his remaining hand and seized the blade of his opponent’s sword. Sniper gave the hilt a twist, but pain could not dislodge the zealot. Sensing bloody fists dangerously close, Sniper released its sword and leapt off the rooftop onto nothing. The crowd screamed, then screamed more as the expected plummet turned instead to flight. Sniper ran across the empty air, as if that eternal inner flame which fires each new generation’s athletes to break record after record had at last defeated gravity. Watch the footage in slow motion if you can, see how, like a dolphin chasing currents invisible within the sea, the practiced symmetry of Sniper’s footfalls chased the wind. That wind turned out, in fact, to be a plank covered in Griffincloth, laid invisibly between the rooftops to enable Sniper’s swift escape. I must point out, reader, the inhuman confidence it takes to sprint unflinching at Olympic speed along a walkway less than a meter wide and completely invisible, with only precipice below. I could not do it, nor could Dominic, who groped after his prey, marking the invisible path with his own blood as he lumbered forward over the heads of the crowd and stunned police. Even without cars, the cops had come, and they had almost finished surrounding the law courts, prepared to storm the roof. Now they could only watch their quarry soar over their heads to safety like some destructive angel, which does Providence’s dirty work, then retreats to heaven beyond the reach of Earthly law.

Papadelias cursed fiercely, brightly, rich colloquial Greek burbling from him as this crisis-of-a-century fired his old bones with a vigor almost as fresh as youth. “Third squad stay on the ground,” he ordered, “follow Sniper close as you can on foot. Ripper, Stark, and Bolenge, take Tully Mardi into custody. Everyone else, get the VIPs into the Censor’s office, then lock it down. The Senate’s already sealed.”

Kosala seized Jehovah’s limp arms and mine. “We can’t move them without stretchers!”

Papa nodded to his men to drag her off by force. “Mycroft, can you hear me?”

I had heard all, and seen, but only now grew strong enough to speak. “Bridger.”

I did not summon him. Rather, I named him when I saw him before me, the hood of the invisibility cloak falling back from eyes too tear-red any longer to look blue. He was above us, wracked with sobs, Hermes’s winged sandals fluttering in protest as he made them descend toward the blood-smeared stone. “It’s my fault!”