Two guards, dressed in riot gear—helmets with black opaque visors and carrying batons and pistols in their belts—stand at the entrance and oversee the passage of a long line of people into the building’s dim interior. I can see scanning metal detectors just inside the huge doors. No getting in that way with a sword. Horse-drawn carriages and then metal detectors. Carts and flying ships. Venetia is an unholy mix of old and new. A reminder, I suppose, of the way Shinigami has cross-contaminated worlds with tech from other realms.

I see a huddle of Hari Krishna types walking through the crowd. They wear loose-fitting robes, beaded necklaces and their heads are shaved. One of them swings a heavy incense ball, sending up puffs of blue smoke. I can’t catch everything they’re shouting in their language—a version of French—but it’s along the lines of:

“Repent! For it is by the hand of Shinigami we ascend to the seventh.”

I watch them snake towards me and I think about legging it, but I don’t.

“Will you give yourself to the living god, sister?” the one with the incense ball says to me, in thick French, full of zeal, swinging the chain as he speaks.

“Don’t come any closer,” I warn him, in English. Duval said the city is full of migrants, so I figure I won’t be the only one who doesn’t speak the lingo.

“A foreigner,” he says. He’s reed-thin, wet-through and weasel-faced. I say nothing. He watches me and says, “Will you give yourself to the living—”

“No,” I say, cutting him off.

He pauses. Eyes me up and down. “You come for le spectacle, n’est-ce pas?”

“Maybe.”

“You are in luck. It is a good day. They have captured a new Pathfinder. He fights soon, in there.” My heart jumps. A new Pathfinder. Malik?

“Cherchez-vous des billets?” he asks. “Tickets? They are twenty francs.”

“Twenty? I only have ten.” He narrows his eyes and says: “Pathfinders are not cheap.”

“I need another way,” I say, lowering my voice, pointing at the guards and the metal detectors. “Is there a way past the guards?”

“Sans billets?” he says, raising his. “Without tickets?”

“That’s right.”

“C’est pas possible. There is no other way.”

I see a few members of the crowd turn to me and one of the guards looks up and I’m wracking my brain, trying to figure a plan, when I remember.

I almost start laughing.

“Never mind,” I tell Weasel-face, and I move off.

“Wait!” he says, and makes to grab my arm, but I ghost away.