“Mycroft, I don’t…”

“Caesar’s sworn an oath to protect the three billion Masons who are living now, not in the future, now. If I hadn’t killed you, Caesar would have had to do it. Wouldn’t that be worse? Being the one that killed you hurts more than just losing you, a thousand times more. It’s better for the world that I’m the one who has to live with that, not Cornel MASON.”

“Killed me?”

“You would have died anyway.” Tears trickled far enough to touch my lips. “You knew that. You would have been a front line soldier. The odds of you living even through the first few weeks of the war were next to zero. At least this way we had our battle, you and Seine against the two of us, no innocents, no civilians, the best kind of battle, both sides knowing exactly what we were fighting for. The only battle of your war. You lost.”

The stranger reached through the bars and lifted aside the edge of the coat to bare my eyes. “Mycroft, I’m not Apollo Mojave. It’s me.” He let the cloak of invisibility around him fall back, just enough to show his blue striped child’s wrap, and Excalibur’s plastic scabbard hanging at his side. “The Major said you wouldn’t really be locked in a cage.”

“Bridger.” New tears followed the old tracks down my cheeks. “I asked to be locked in here.”

“Why?”

I scanned the room for spies, shadows within the shimmer of dim gold where hounds might lurk. “Is the Major with you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “The Major’s watching, but I came alone. I’m here to rescue you. Will you come with me?”

I shuddered as I answered. “Do you need me?”

His smile shed more warmth than fire could. “I always need you, Mycroft.”

“But do you need me right now? Are you hurt? Is there trouble? Something urgent?”

“No.” His frown, though sweet, felt like a criticism. “The only problem is that you’re gone. Come home.”

The child’s smile went from warm to wriggling as the winged sandals tickled his ankles, flapping at each other in their boredom. I gulped a fast sigh. I really had believed it was Apollo, that he had come in Hermes’s place to offer me death’s rest. No other has the right to absolve me of my labors, yet he never would, not he who wept with rage whenever illness threatened to steal an hour from him, and preached that one should never snuff a candle which can still burn. Even after the battle, given the choice between cyanide’s painless end and one last hour facing the tortures Saladin and I had prepared, he chose life. Sane men may call him a fool, but in that hour we three—Apollo dying, I expecting soon to follow, and Saladin long dead—explored realms of philosophy which, if they were not virgin, at least no traveler had ever yet returned to share their riches with the living. Apollo will leave me here to eke out every last second this living carcass can endure, just as he did himself.