"Was there?"

"Not a soul. Just night animals having a drink."

"Must have been boring."

"We talked."

"About anything in particular?"

"Different things."

"Different things are good. I like different things."

Shrike took her coat from the ground and, after testing with her hand to see if the ashes were cool, scooped the charred remains of the fire into the lining. She then tied the whole thing in a bundle.

"What are you doing?" asked Spyder.

"I don't want to leave a big arrow pointing to where we've been or where we're headed. We brought some reeds from the river and can drag those over the sand to dampen out footprints. The wind will do the rest."

"Any ETA on that city?"

"A day or two, depending on our pace," said Primo. He was already smoothing the sand on the far side of the fire with another bundle of reeds.

"I don't suppose we have any food?"

"No, but we have a fresh water source and that's more important," said Shrike.

"And lord knows we've got weapons," Lulu said, using the bottom of her Hello Kitty shirt to polish the blade of a long, thin knife with a yellowed bone grip.

"When do we move out?"

"Right now," Shrike said. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"If the wind will not serve, take to the oars," said Count Non, hoisting his saddlebags onto his shoulders.

"What?"

"From the Romans. Not as poetic as Marcus Aurelius, but not bad. In this case, it means that we should start walking." He tossed Spyder the weapon he'd been playing with the night before. "Here. Work with that some more. You really weren't doing too badly. And it can't hurt to have as many competent fighters as possible on this journey."

"Thanks," Spyder said, not sure if he'd just been insulted or not.

The river was a few yards beyond the nearby dune wall. The water looked clean and clear. Animal tracks by small stands of reeds and algae-covered rocks lined the banks. Spyder leaned down painfully and scooped some of the water onto his face. It was icy, runoff from the mountains in the distance, he figured. They headed inland, straight toward the unknown city. The Count and Lulu were talking up front, with Primo trailing behind. Shrike dumped the remnants of their campfire in the water and used her cane to navigate the sand and rocks. Spyder walked with her. He had his leather jacket tied around his waist, holding Apollyon's knife in place.

"So, straight up, how do we stand right now?" he asked.

"We were blown out of the air. We're moving too slowly. And we're too many people."

"Why do I think that last one includes me?"

"I didn't say that, but I still don't want to see you get hurt."

"I appreciate that and double-down on that particular wish. But we're alive and moving. Besides, we've got the Count with us now. The way I see it, Lulu and I are the only dead weight."

"I don't believe in dead weight when it comes to people. People are too complicated. Too capable of surprises."

"For an ex-princess stuck in the desert with a bunch of semi-cripples, you're awfully Up with People."

"I like the heat. It reminds me of home."

"What's your reading on the Count? Sounds like you spent a nice day and night getting to know each other."

"That's an odd way to put it."

"He's sure your type. Tall, armed to the eyeballs, a hunk of burnin' love. He even has better saddlebags than me. I don't have any illusions about you and me, you know."

"Now who's jealous?"

"This isn't jealousy. This is the voice of pure reason. I just know that slumming for a few nights with a drunk ink monkey doesn't mean anything. Hell, he's even royalty. You can compare scepters."

"I'm not picking out bridesmaids dresses yet."

"Red is in this year. It goes with everything."

"I asked you silly questions when you brought Lulu, remember? We're still working on this trust thing."

"That remains the sad truth."

"Tell me a story," said Shrike.

"What kind of story?"

"Something about your life before. Something illuminating and revealing. Not tattooing or sexual conquests. An adventure."

"You don't think sex is an adventure? Tough room," Spyder said.

He played idly with the Hornet. The weapon had a long cylindrical grip wrapped in a light, tough leather. At the top hung several whip-like strands of a stiff, saw-tooth metal. From the weight and feel of the weapon, the metal strands seemed to slide around the edge of the cylindrical grip on some kind of internal runner. With a little practice, Spyder discovered that he could spin the metal strands until they hummed like a swarm of locusts. When he had the rhythm right, the whirling strands formed a kind of shield that pulverized anything they made contact with. It was like holding off an enemy with a wood chipper. Spyder remembered Lulu and Primo taking turns chucking rocks and burning wood from the fire at him. The only times anyone hit him was when he lost the rhythm that kept the strands moving at top speed. He wondered what those saw-tooth blades would do to flesh.

"Okay, I have a story," Spyder said. "This was on, probably, my second trip to Paris. You been to Paris?"

"I passed through."

"I went there with this girl, Trina, one Christmas. She came from money and knew a lot more about the high end of the world than me. I was used to staying in squats and youth hostels. When I was with her, we stayed in an actual French hotel. The Hotel Esmeralda, across from Notre Dame. It was cold and wet that time of year. We were under-dressed and freezing, but we did all the usual tourist stuff. The Louvre. The Eiffel Tower. Cafe Deux Maggots.

"There was this older Spanish guy, worked the front desk at night. Really nice. Later, he told us he was Peruvian. We asked him what bar we should go to and he offered to drive us around, give us an insider's tour of the city.

"It's a little after midnight when the guy, Pablo, gets off. He pulls around the front of the hotel in the smallest car I've ever seen. This car'd give a fetus claustrophobia. I'm polite, so I squeeze into the back. Pablo and Trina are up front.

"He starts driving and we don't know where the hell he's taking us. I'm suspicious, because that's my nature. But Pablo is cool. He takes us by some old buildings where Jean-Paul Marat and other French Revolution psychos used to live. He takes us into a dark, wet park where it's just starting to snow. This is the park where the best hookers hang out. Sure enough, there's a woman in a fur coat standing at an intersection, looking like she's waiting to cross. As we pull near her, she opens the fur coat. She's naked underneath, a Victoria's Secret wet dream. Pablo asks if we've ever seen Versailles. We hadn't, so he drives us out."

Spyder spun the Hornet's metal strands, and thumbed a stud on the grip. Spring-loaded spikes popped from both ends of the weapon. The Count had explained that when a fighter destroyed an enemy's sword, the spikes could be driven into the opponent's midsection as a finishing blow.

"Now, this is after midnight on Christmas Eve. In Paris. Everything is closed. Does this stop Pablo? Hell, no. He drives us all the way around Versailles until, in the back, we spot a guard gate that's open. This is too good to pass up. We sneak inside.

"There's a guard house maybe ten feet away, and we can hear the guards inside getting juiced on Christmas cheer. They don't care that three idiots are sneaking into a national monument. Did I mention that we'd been drinking?"

"I took that for granted."

"By now, the snow's stopped and there's mist everywhere. We're not drunk enough to try and bust into the palace itself, but there's acres of gardens out back. We wander back there for an hour, whispering, hoping not to set off any alarms. At times, the fog is so thick, we can't see anything, even standing next to each other. Leafless trees appear out of nowhere and then vanish again into the gloom. We sit on benches and smoke and try to peek inside the palace to see the Hall of Mirrors or where the Sun King might have shagged a mistress in secret.