As though reading his thoughts, Winnie burst out, “This won’t happen to New York City. We won’t let it!”

“Brave words,” an unfamiliar voice rasped from nearby. The words pelted against their ears like tossed pebbles, and they all lurched to attention.

“Who was that?” Ahmad gasped.

Vijay Bhai rested a hand at his side, as though he expected to find a sword or dagger hanging there. “Yes, who was that? Answer now.”

“It’s been a while, balloon man,” the voice said.

A shadow unfolded from next to one of the collapsed tents.

It took Ahmad a moment to realize it wasn’t a billowing fold of cloth, but a man: a small sad shade of a man, thin from his head to his shins. His face was drawn and pale, and his lips looked a bit too red, as if the wind had been smacking them like an open palm.

He looked like he had one foot in the grave. Or like he’d perhaps recently crawled out of it.

“Well, well, well,” Vijay Bhai muttered, lowering his arms. “Mr. Titus Salt. What are you doing out here?”

“Titus Salt?” Winnie asked cautiously. “The guy you were looking for before?”

“He was the mind behind Paheli,” Vijay Bhai said, not taking his eyes away from the approaching man. “Every gear went through his hands before it became part of the city.”

“Still do, whether that upstart girl likes it or not,” Titus Salt said. He spat over his shoulder toward a sand dune. Winnie winced.

“By that upstart, you mean . . . ,” Ahmad started.

Titus waved a hand. “I have no time for whatever title she dreamed up for herself. She and the spoiled little master—sorry, our Architect, as if he ever knew what it meant to see this city built from the foundation up and know where everything was twisted and corked and set—may think they own this city, but I still am closest to its heart.”

Ahmad realized the man was holding something. It was a small, golden gear. As he watched, Titus absently scratched its grooves, the way an old lady would groom her cat’s ears. The gear actually seemed to shift in his grasp, like it was enjoying it.

It was creepy.

“The city doesn’t seem to run on your gears anymore,” Vijay Bhai said. “So why are you still lingering here?”

“She tried once to get me out of the code,” Titus said, walking heavily toward an overturned barrel and sitting down on it. “She failed. As much as that boy can be a milksop, he knows what I mean in this city. My name, like that woman Nasirah’s, is an important part of the game. It’ll turn up at some point, and because of that, I’ve stayed rooted in here.”

He looked around himself with disgust.