The herald continued, “Yet the Builder and his true servants may be merciful. Let the heretic witch Solo Aria present herself, the traitor Jean-Claude, and the relic they have stolen to the most excellent justice and mercy of le Comte de Travers, eighteenth of that name, pure of blood and the true heir of the Risen Saints. Do this by nightfall, and your crimes may be forgiven.”

Aria started to sing in a low, soft voice, and what felt like a mountain of air built around her. Jean-Claude imagined her flinging one of her air bursts down there and blowing the herald to bits. He tapped her on the shoulder and shook his head vigorously.

“No,” he signed, sliding back from the ridgeline to converse without risk of being seen. “You can’t take the whole camp.”

“Can’t I? We sees how they deal with a hurricane.”

“How long can you keep that up, and what will you do once you’ve exhausted yourself?” Jean-Claude asked. “We still don’t know where Hasdrubal is. They know you’re here. They know I’m here. They’ll have prepared for both of us. We have to present them with something they aren’t prepared for.”

“Unless you has someone else down your trousers, you and me is all we has.”

Jean-Claude found himself grinning as he sometimes did when he felt a really bad idea coming on.

“That’s not quite true,” he signed. “We have them.” He gestured toward the encampment. “It’s time I went and had words with them.”

“Far be it from me to point out you can’t talk.”

“One problem at a time,” he signed.

It was barely an hour later when Jean-Claude marched out of the wilderness carrying a long pole with his white shirt tied to it like a flag. His pace was steady, but his heart worked double time. Travers’s sentries could see him from the palisade by now, and no doubt word of his approach had raced up the chain of command. There was a small chance Travers would simply have him shot and thereby cut his opposition in half. Yet any sensible person would realize Solo Aria was far more dangerous, and they would want to drain him of information about her plans, or so he prayed.

“Halt!” shouted a soldier from the rampart, and several more came out to deprive him of weapons that he’d already discarded, bind his hands, and march him through camp. Hundreds of flat-eyed aeronauts went about routine tasks, showing no interest in the procession.