“Just not interested in dying.” Duval tips his chin. “Cremations,” he says. “Look.”

I see a horse-drawn cart turn into what looks like a burial ground with long lime-covered pits. We watch a team of workmen in long black coats undertake the grim task of unloading dead bodies wrapped in white cloth from the cart. They heave the corpses, one after the other, into the pits. Then I see them pass a lit torch through their hands and they set the bodies ablaze.

WHUMPH!

Up in flames they go. Columns of dark smoke rise.

“The fighters that lose,” Claude says. “Burn together.”

The bodies are engulfed by smoke and fire.

The highwayman watches me. “I have done what you wanted. I have led you here. We had an accord. The pistol, s’il vous plaît.”

“Not yet.”

“What more do you want? Merde!”

“For one thing, your veste.”

“My jacket?”

I use the sword tip to lift his lapel, revealing his grimed skin and the taut tendons of his neck. “Your jacket,” I repeat.

He grumbles and shrugs it off and throws it down on the ground. I flick off the poncho, lift the jacket with the sword and, watching him, swing my arms into it. It smells of mould and smoke and it’s heavy.

“How do I look?”

“Like you are wearing my jacket.”

I smile.

“My pistol,” he says.

“Where do they take them?” I ask. “The Pathfinders?”

The highwayman curses and mumbles something under his breath. “Mostly to the main Arena,” he says. “Notre-Dame.”

“The cathedral is a fight pit?”

“The biggest.”

I look out over the sprawling city of Paris Nouveau and I know two things with absolute certainty. Malik is here and he’s alive. I feel it in my bones. An invisible thread connecting us, pulling taut. I’m tempted to send my thoughts out to him, to tell him I’m here, but I get the feeling it’ll bring unwanted attention.

And there’s something else I know.

She’s here too, in that pyramid in the sky.

Bea.

“How do I get in?”

“To the fights? You pay.”

“How much?”

“Ten francs.”

“How much do you have on you right now?”

“Me?” He gives me a nonplussed look.

“C’mon. We both know you’ve filched from everyone who’s crossed your path.” I step up to him and dig the sword’s tip into his thigh.

“D’accord,” he says. “Calmez-vous.” He rummages through his pockets and produces a handful of gold coins. Counts them out. Twenty-four francs.

I take just the ten I need and flick him up my poncho. “Fair trade,” I tell him. “Your life and a poncho, for a coat and a horse-ride.”

Duval spits.

I point up at the pyramid in the sky. “And how do I get inside that thing?”

“Bad idea,” he says, shaking his head.

“How?” I repeat.