Sauce leaned forward; she put a hand on Syr Vizirt’s shoulder, and he smiled at her through his own tears, and then he spoke in a low voice, and the irk answered, and the messenger translated, because the words were in a language none of the rest of them spoke.

“Nine hundred years,” she said to the emperor. “As best she remembers.”

“Was she born here?” Gabriel asked gently, and the chain of translation passed his words along.

“Her parents were brought here.” The messenger frowned. “Are they from . . . home?”

Morgon looked at Gabriel and then at his wife, and shrugged.

“We don’t know,” he said for all of them.

“We don’t know anything,” Gabriel said. “March on.”

“Makes me feel like I should cut a Christmas tree,” Tippit said.

“You ha’e wood between yer ears,” muttered Smoke.

“Nah,” No Head said. They had a small fire; they had volunteered to watch the next gate while the army got a hot meal and marched in the snow. “Nah. We’ve looked at they crawlies, and we fought the salamanders. And this is just bleedin’ snow.”

“So far, it’s all a lot like fewkin’ hell,” muttered Half Arse.

“Don’ you worry, mate,” Smoke said. “It’ll get worse before it gets better.”

“Mark my words,” they all said in unison.

Sauce took direct command of the green banda, allowing Long Paw to get some sleep. She waited, her warhorse blowing steam like smoke from its great slit nostrils.

Gabriel was looking at the gold plate on the pedestal. It wasn’t actually gold; it was golden stone, or glass—very hard, and very beautiful in the purity of its form.

“It has five settings,” Gabriel said in a low voice. “But Al Rashidi said four.”

Sauce shuddered.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about the plaque was that it had been defaced. There was a flaw, like a hammer stroke, across the face of it, and one of the stations, sometimes, but not always, marked by a cabuchoned jewel, was black, the stone ripped away.

Gabriel turned and looked back down the cave; another vast cave quickly filling with battle-ready troops. The company was already drawn up across the gate. But the gate was dark, and the light coming from it was barely perceptible.

“Bring me the translation team, and a representative of the Quazitsh,” Gabriel said. He was tired; the weight of fatigue was there, behind his eyes and in his hips and shoulders. And he was entering the very stuff of his nightmares—that Al Rashidi’s map of the gates was inaccurate.

The messenger, whom Blanche had coaxed into revealing her name was Maria, appeared, leading Brown and Lucca and three salamanders as tall as Brown.

The messenger took a knee. Gabriel drew his sword. “Stay kneeling,” he said. Before she could resist, he had knighted her; Sauce provided a pair of spurs.

“The duty of a messenger is to speak accurately and be selfless,” she said, her head high. “I was taught to strive that no one would even remember I was there.”