“I said, shut the fuck up.” The older courier glared at the kid with all the world-weary cynicism of his twenty-six years. Spots, tufts of straggly beard hair—Sky Father, why do I get to nurse the babies? “Listen, nothing is going to go wrong.”

He nudged the briefcase at his feet. Inside its very expensive aluminium shell was a layer of plastic foam. Inside the plastic foam nestled a bizarrely insectile-looking H&K submachine gun. The kid didn’t need to know that, though. “When the boss man gets here, we do a straight delivery run then lock down the house. You stay with the boss and do what he says. I get the fun job of telling the postmen to drop everything and yelling at the holiday heads to execute their cover plans. Then we arrest anyone who tries to drop by. Get it? The whole thing will be over in forty-eight hours, it’s just a routine security lockdown.”

“Yes, Martijn.” The kid shook his head, puzzled. “But there hasn’t been an extraordinary meeting in my lifetime! And this is an emergency lockdown, isn’t it? Shutting down everything, telling all our people on the other side to go hide, that sucks. What’s going on?”

The courier looked away. Hurry up and get the nonsense out of your system, he thought. “What do you think they’re doing?” he asked.

“It’s obvious: They envy us, don’t they? The old dudes. Staying over, fitting in. You know I’m going back to college in a couple of weeks, did I tell you about the shit my uncle Stani’s been handing out about that? I’ve got a girlfriend and a Miata and a place of my own and he’s giving me shit because he never had that stuff. What do you need to learn reading for if you’ve got scribes? he told me. And you know what? Some of them, if they could stop us going back—”

The door opened, stemming his tirade in full flood. The older courier straightened up; the young one just flushed, his mouth running down in a frightened stammer. “Uh, yessir, uh, going back, uh—”

“Shut up,” Matthias said coldly.

One more squeak and the kid fell silent. Matthias nodded at Martijn, the older one. “You ready?” he asked.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Very well.” Matthias didn’t smile, but some of the tension went out of his shoulders. He wore a leather flying jacket and jeans, with gloves on his hands and a day pack slung over one arm. “Kid. You are going to carry me across. Ready?”

“Uh.” Gulp. “Yessir. Yes. Sir.”

“Hah.” Matthias glanced at the older one. “Go on, then.” He advanced on the youth. “I’m heavier than any load you’re used to. You will need to have your key ready in one hand. When you are ready, speak, and I’ll climb on your back. Try not to break.”

“Yessir!”