“But I’ve seen it more often,” said Loaf, “and I’ve never seen any of my friends who was happy to do it. Or any of my enemies, for that matter—they seemed to be quite reluctant to begin, and it took a good deal of exertion to get them to change their minds.”

“We won’t die,” said Param.

“Everyone dies,” said Loaf. “But it’s also true that there’s no escort we could give you that would improve your chances. What we will do is station Umbo in a location that you know about, but they do not—right, Umbo? You’ll go there in the past and then jump forward?”

“Will I be able to see what happens?” asked Umbo.

“If you’re close enough to see,” said Loaf, “I imagine you’ll be close enough to be seen. What matters is that they’ll know where you are. So if things go badly wrong, but one of them survives, they can go to where you are and put a message into your hands, warning you to warn them about the danger. Then either they don’t go after all, or they go in prepared.”

“Good plan,” said Umbo. “But I also want to be able to see.”

“We’ll look for a hiding place that can do that,” said Rigg. “Once we have some idea of where it will be.”

It turned out to be a place that was far from any of Hadda­mander’s army camps, far from any major cities. As they approached along a road in deep woods, Rigg looked at the ­tangle of paths up ahead. “I think they’ve prepared this place especially for us, to block our escape.”

Param was not surprised. “How can they block an escape into the past?” she asked.

“They dug a deep, wide pit,” said Rigg. “I can see the paths of the men who dug it out. If I jump us back into the past, it’ll either be underground, killing us instantly, or it’ll be in the midst of the men digging—who were warned, I’m sure, to watch for us to appear suddenly among them.”

“Interesting,” said Param. “And we can be sure they’ll have barriers made of stone or metal to keep me contained.”

“They promised,” said Olivenko, “to have no one carrying any kind of metal or stone larger than a single coin within a walk from the place.”

“It’ll be interesting to see what they’ve devised,” said Param. “They made their plans based on what they knew of our abilities. But those have changed. Noxon and I worked on my slicing. I can go backward, for one thing. And I can slice forward at such a pace that they could pass iron bars through me for hours without my heating up more than a degree or two.”