We arrive at a four-way crossing and Malik holds up his hand for us to wait as he scans the length of a deserted road, pistol drawn.

I feel the Firewater going to work now, spreading heat to my extremities.

“Where’s everyone gone?” I ask Malik when we move off again.

“Hiding,” he says. “They’re at war. Pathfinders with Pathfinders. Normals with Normals. Normals with Pathfinders. All kinds of scavengers and war parties and bandits around Londra. People turn dangerous when they get desperate.”

“Londra?”

“That’s what London’s called here in Ares.”

I say nothing. Beyond him, I see Akuji watching us from across the road.

“So…the Reapers,” I say. “You never told me they could shapeshift.”

Malik shrugs. “Does it make a difference?”

I shake my head and look up and down the empty road. Vidhan and Akuji, on the far side, pick through the rubble. I think about how they moved before, during the battle. Vidhan, so fast he was a blur. Akuji, like a warrior trained to do only one thing: fight. And then I remember the way I fought. It was instinct—in me.

The sword, Ra, pulls at my belt and chafes my hip bone. I realise that my hand hasn’t left the hilt since we came out of the alleys and moved out onto bigger streets. I lift my hand self-consciously and feel Malik’s eyes on me.

“This sword,” I say to him. “It really belonged to Mother and Thoth?”

“Yup.”

“Then what am I doing with it, Malik? I’m nobody. It should be with someone like you, or Akuji. It belongs to a warrior. Not me.”

Malik just nods. “What did you think of her?” he says.

“Mother?”

“She can be tetchy, right? But she sees things in us. Where others see nothing.” When I don’t respond, he adds: “What did she tell you about Bea?”

“She said Shinigami took her to Venetia, to the Seventh Gate. And then…something strange. She told me Bea’s in Kronos. But that doesn’t make any sense.”

Malik stops in his tracks. He looks at me and his brow furrows. “She really said that? Kronos?”

“Yeah. And then she said something like ‘some have made it there but none have returned.’ What do you think it means?”

Malik rolls his shoulders and frowns.

“Vidhan told me about the prophecy,” I continue. “He said the Order’s supposed to have found the Seventh Gate and been looking for the key that’ll open it. But that the key’s not a thing, it’s a person. A Pathfinder. You think Bea’s somehow mixed up in all this? That she’s the key?”

Malik doesn’t answer my question, because just then Vidhan crosses the road and asks Malik for his Firewater canteen.

“Hell’s teeth,” Vidhan says, wheezing and coughing after taking a slug. “That’ll put hair on your chest every day of the week.”