Witnesses along Neckerdam’s eastern shore and Pataqqsit’s western saw the slate-gray airship sail ­majestically over the river. The golden glow brightened in the ship’s bow, then swept toward the stern, making an oblong sun of the ship, eating through its rubberized cloth skin, twisting its metal skeleton with unimaginable heat.

Two men made it out of the liftship, descending by cable from the gondola; one towed the other away from the descending wreckage. When the gondola was a dozen yards from the water’s surface, a third man, his back afire, leaped out through the forward windows.

The ship was completely consumed with fire as it touched down on the water. It rested there a long ­moment, burning, dying, then began its final descent to the bottom of the river.

Tugboats and Novimagos Guard rescue craft ­approached as close as they dared and picked up the survivors.

Gaby opened her eyes.

The room was dark, but not so dark that she couldn’t recognize Harris’ face above her own. Recognize the feel of him as he crushed her to him. She held on to him with fierce strength.

She was in her own room in the Monarch Building, more tired than she thought it was possible to feel, but not too tired to remember. “Doc?”

“He’s a little burned, a little stiff. He’ll be okay.”

“The others?”

“Everybody’s banged up some. Except Joseph. Joseph . . . didn’t make it.”

“Dammit.” She was silent a long moment. “What about Duncan? And the Changeling?”

“Dead. Really, truly, dental-records-prove-it dead. They scraped Darig off a rooftop the day it happened, fished what’s left of Duncan out of the river yesterday.”

“Yesterday—”

“You’ve been asleep for a couple of days, baby. You wiped yourself out.”

“Did Doc . . . ” She forced herself to ask the question. “Did Doc have to kill him?”

“No. If anybody did . . . I did. And you did, with that marvelous stunt with the exploding talk-boxes. You blew out talk-boxes in the liftship, in the Monarch Building, and all over this part of Neckerdam.” He smiled. “It sort of makes sense. Gaby Donohue, Programming Director. You beat him with TV.”

The stoneware urn held a shovelful of clay. That was all of Joseph anyone had been able to recover.

As the priestess spoke about death and rebirth, summer and spring, crops and trees, Gaby placed a loaf of bread in the urn. Doc, leaning on the cane he’d be ­using for a few weeks, added a leather pouch of salt.

Alastair contemplated a glass flask of fine uisge ­before placing it down in the clay. Noriko followed suit with a cup and a plate of fine copper, a fork and a knife of silver. Ixyail added the pouch packed with clothes and coin.

Last in the ceremony, Harris placed the tiny jeweled axe, symbol of warriors and warrior-kings, into the urn. He stepped away and linked arms with Gaby.

The six of them drew away from the graveside. Workers of the cemetery capped the urn, then carefully lifted it and lowered it into the grave.

Harris looked out over the people attending the graveside ceremony. Associates of the Sidhe Foundation. Sturdy construction workers, Joseph’s fellow workers, uncom­fortable in dress clothes. A detachment of Novi­magos Guard in full uniform, ready to fire the ­salute for a man who had briefly been, by association with Doc, a guardsman. An interesting gathering.

“Harris,” Gaby said.

He smiled at her. She was resplendent in a shimmering gown of red. He admired the funerary garb of the fair world. He felt foolish in his matching dress suit, but she’d said he was gorgeous and he didn’t mind her lie. “What?”

“This is an interment, not a stakeout.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“So stop giving everybody the eye.”

The priestess carefully poured a handful of grain into the grave. She withdrew. The guardsmen fired their volley. The men and women in attendance rose, freed from the obligation of ritual, and began talking to one another. Workmen shoveled dirt into the grave.

Harris drank in the details. Ladislas and Welthy, too hurt to attend, even after being tended by Alastair, would want to know everything. And Fergus, who was not so badly hurt but who felt unwanted around the associates—and, for the most part, was correct. “Doc.”

“Yes?”

“What are you going to do about Fergus?”

“Just what I promised him. He did very well during Duncan’s assault . . . but I cannot forget that he betrayed us.”

“Oh, well.” He didn’t press Doc. The man had buried his son earlier today. He looked so glum, so inconsolable, it seemed unlikely that a smile would ever cross his face again.

Ixyail asked what Harris never would have dared to. “Doc, how did it happen?” Her voice was soft, full of sympathy; even her Castilian accent was fainter than usual.

Doc didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I’m not sure. I’ve never been sure. It might have been inheritance. I was pureblood, and pureblood Daoine Sidhe and their children are often tainted with madness. One of the prices we pay for being long-lived.” He shook his head, a sorrowful gesture. “Dierdriu wasn’t touched, just melancholy, a sadness I always thought I could end. But when Duncan began to make his name, she killed herself from grief. From shame.

“Duncan always said it was my fault he became what he was. Restrictions he abhorred. Rules he could not abide. His hatred of guidance became hatred of any restric­tion, any limit. Understanding his mother’s sadness taught him to manipulate others through their weaknesses.”

Ish asked, “Are you ever going to try again?”

He didn’t answer.

Gaby said, “You didn’t kill him, you know.”

He managed a bare smile. “You went to some considerable effort to make sure of that. I appreciate your ­intent. Have you two thought about my offer?”

“To stay on as associates?” Harris looked speculatively at Gaby. She smiled back. “We want to,” he said. “But we don’t know if we’ll have time. There are a lot of things we want to do.”

“Study my Gift,” Gaby said.

“Invent martial arts movies for the fair world.”

“Learn to fly.”

“Teach tae kwon do.”

“Get married.”

“Have kids, God help us.”

“Go back to the grim world every so often.”

“Think we can do all that and still be Foundation asso­ciates?” Harris asked.

Doc blinked owlishly at them. “Please try. And if you succeed—” he turned his gaze on Ish “—tell me how you do it. I might need to know.”

Both women turned their smiles on him. “It’s a deal,” they said.