“I’ve changed,” she said, “a cocoon, a chrysalis choosing new challenges and a choir of churlish characters over catatonia and cognitive calamity, and you…” The alliteration game was one they had always played.

“A clockwork cyclops, crashed on a craton covered in cockroaches.”

Isabelle opened her arm and they embraced, a crushing hug such that she had to take care not to crack his ribs. He was here. He was real.

“I was so worried,” Isabelle said.

“So was I,” he said, and they let each other drift to arms’ length.

“I got your hat,” she said. “And your message.”

“Sedgwick proved true, then. I saw Marie facing off against Czensos just before my eye blacked out.”

“Sedgwick told me about your eye. You mean it stopped working?”

“It might as well be a metal marble,” he said.

The air stirred and Rebecca flew up and said breathlessly. “You moved fast, Capitaine. Bonjour, Jean-Claude.”

“Who?” Jean-Claude asked, and then, “Rebecca?”

“Bet you didn’t know I’m a Seelenjäger.”

“It was not included on your list of qualifications,” he said.

Isabelle said, “We’ve all got stories to tell, but this is not the place for them. Rebecca, go tell Similce to get ready to march.”

Isabelle walked with Jean-Claude down the switchback trail, talking about all that had transpired since their parting. Isabelle was dismayed to hear about Dok and Aria.

“I got tricked,” Jean-Claude said. “Sometimes you lose.” But she could tell it bothered him more than he was willing to say.

They had just reached the last switchback when the world stuttered.

Between one eyeblink and the next, Isabelle found herself in a thunderstorm. Rain sheeted down, soaking her to the skin before she could even think to deploy her cappotto. The trees on the slopes bent in the wind.

Then just as quickly, all was as it had been, save for the water dripping from her crest feathers. Isabelle looked to Jean-Claude, also dripping wet, who returned her gaze as bewildered as she felt. On the staging ground, her aeronauts broke into excited chatter and drew weapons to aim … where?

It was as if reality was a candle that flickered, and might be snuffed out.

“Hasdrubal,” Isabelle realized. “He’s made it to the Vault.” That lunatic had grabbed hold of the levers of the world and started jerking them around. How long would it be before he broke the ineffable machine?

Fear kicked Isabelle’s heart, for all the good it did. “How far ahead of us are they?”

“Hasdrubal took the reliquary two days ago, and he can fly,” Jean-Claude said. “What’s left of Travers’s party, including most of his Sanguinaire relations, landed here yesterday and set off through the woods.”

“So we’re going to have to get through Travers to get to Hasdrubal,” Isabelle said. “How convenient for us. Do you have any idea how far away the Vault is?”