Beckman’s wire arm lengthened, unspooling with a shivering sound as he and the lumbering robot disappeared off into darkness beyond the moonlight, leaving Alex leaning on his makeshift support. He glanced down and saw that he was standing on something. It took a moment to recognize the discarded old painting covered in footprints. A woman holding out a plate, forever offering a waffle nobody wanted.

Zia placed her plant pot down and started fussing with two large black pebbles that lay near the center of the space, some distance apart. Smooth and shiny, they seemed out of place amid the dirty old rubble, as if they were recent additions.

She produced a compass and measuring tape. Studying the needle, she shifted the stones, making tiny, just-so adjustments. Finally, she took a small rock from her pocket and firmly tapped each stone three times before nodding and stepping back, dusting her hands. She turned to Alex, closed her eyes, then raised a finger, pointing to the sky behind her.

“Here it comes.”

Alex looked up, mystified. Then he saw it. Two fliers were approaching, carrying the empty old picture frame between them. As the little machines landed, the life-sizer and Beckman reappeared, dragging a massive form shrouded in tarpaulin. Zia stepped forward and pulled the covering away, then helped maneuver the object into position between the two stone markers.

It was a strange assemblage, but Alex knew instantly what he was looking at: all of the stolen frames, broken into pieces and joined together to form one huge structure.

The frame that had held the enormous painting stolen from the museum in Munich—The Great Last Judgment—was intact, surrounding the rest. Within it, the other pieces had been lashed together in a rough, crisscross arrangement. At the bottom left corner, Alex saw the space for the last frame, which the fliers had just dropped by Zia’s boots.

“The Shadow Gate of Boll,” she said, kneeling to begin knocking the final frame apart. “You honestly don’t know how lucky you are to see this, rabbit. It’s been over five hundred years since it stood intact.”

With a weary blink, she sent the two fliers up and off, vanishing toward the trees. She finished tying the wooden strands into place and stood. “Look, see how happy it is?” As she spoke, she took the rock from her pocket and gently touched it to the structure. For a second, the entire gate pulsed with glimmering, white-blue light.

“Now, now, not yet,” Zia said soothingly, removing the rock. The light died. She squinted up at the moon over the tower, wielding her thumb like an artist gauging a measurement. “Soon, though. Hans, toss me the astrolabe.”