“She’d go with us?” Harman said stupidly. “On the eiffelbahn? Back to Ardis?”

“Almost certainly,” said Prospero.

Harman gripped the railing so tightly that his knuckles turned first bright red, then white. Finally he released the iron and turned to the waiting magus. “All right. But you wait here. Or better yet, go back to the car. Out of sight. I’ll do this thing, but I have to be alone.”

Prospero simply winked out of existence. Harman stood on the high railing for a minute, breathing in the musty leather smell of ancient books, and then he hurried down the nearest flight of steps.

It was a ragtag, motley group of forty-five freezing men and women that made the seven-mile walk from Starved Rock to the fax pavilion.

Daeman led the way, carrying the pack with its glowing, occasionally squirming white Setebos Egg, and Ada walked by his side despite her concussion and cracked ribs. The first few miles through the forest were the worst—the terrain was rough and rocky, the visibility was poor, it had started snowing again, and everyone was braced for the attack of unseen voynix. When thirty minutes passed, then forty-five minutes, and then an hour with no attack—no sign of the voynix at all—everyone began to relax a little.

A hundred feet above them, Greogi, Tom, and the eight seriously injured survivors of Ardis filled the sonie. Greogi would flit ahead, circle high over the forest, and then come back, swooping low just long enough to shout information.

“Voynix ahead about half a mile, but they’re retreating—staying away from you and the egg.”

Through the pounding headache and the duller ache from her wrist and broken ribs—every breath pained her—Ada found little comfort that the voynix were only a half mile away. She’d seen them run at full speed, watched them leap into and out of trees. The creatures could be on them in a minute. The group had about twenty-five flechette rifles or pistols with them, but not many extra magazines of ammunition. Because of her broken right wrist and taped-up ribs, Ada didn’t carry a weapon, which made her feel all the more exposed as she walked up front with Daeman, Edide, Boman, and a few of the others. The drifts were a foot or more deep here in the woods and Ada barely had the energy to kick her way through the clinging wet snow.

Even after they got out of the rockiest, thickest part of the forest, still heading southeast to intercept the road between Ardis and the fax pavilion, the group traveled with excruciating slowness because of those who were ambulatory but more seriously injured or sick, including some who’d been victims of hypothermia the last two nights. Siris, their other medic, was walking with them and she shuttled back and forth constantly, making sure that the ill and injured were getting help and reminding the leaders to slow their pace.

“I don’t understand,” said Ada as they came out into a wide meadow that she remembered from a hundred summer hikes.

“What’s that?” asked Daeman. He carried the rucksack with the glowing egg in it ahead of him at arm’s length, as if it smelled bad. In truth, as Ada had noticed, it did smell bad—a mixture of rotten fish and something sewerish. But it was still glowing and it vibrated from time to time, so presumably the little Setebos inside was still alive.

“Why do the voynix stay away while we have this thing?” said Ada.

“They must be afraid of it,” said Daeman. He slipped the rucksack from his right hand to his left. He was carrying a crossbow in his free hand.

“Yes, of course,” said Ada, speaking more sharply than she’d meant to. The throbbing in her head, ribs, and arms was making her short-tempered. “I mean, what is the connection between that… thing… in Paris Crater and the voynix?”

“I don’t know,” said Daeman.

“The voynix have been around… forever,” said Ada. “This Setebos monster just arrived a week ago.”

“I know,” said Daeman. “But I feel that somehow they’re connected. Maybe they always have been.”

Ada nodded, winced from the pain of nodding, and trod on. There was very little talking in the rough ranks of the forty-five men and women as they trudged through another patch of thick woods, crossed a familiar stream that was now mostly frozen over, and headed down a steep hill of frozen high grass and weeds.

The sonie swooped low. “Another quarter mile to the road,” Greogi called down. “The voynix have moved farther south. Two miles at least.”

When they reached the road there was a stir among the survivors, urgent whispers, people clapping one another on the back. Ada looked west toward Ardis Hall. The covered bridge was in sight just before the turn in the road that ran up to the manor house, but there was no sight of the great hall, of course, not even a plume of black smoke. For a minute she thought she was going to be sick to her stomach. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. She paused, put her hands on her knees, and lowered her head.

“Are you all right, Ada?” It was Laman speaking. The bearded man wore only rags, including one wrapped around his right hand where he had lost four fingers during the battle with the voynix at Ardis.

“Yes,” said Ada. She rose, smiled at Laman, and hurried to keep up with the small group at the front of the shuffling pack.

It was less than a mile to the fax pavilion now and all looked familiar, except for the unusual snow. There was not the slightest sign of voynix. The sonie circled above, disappeared in wider circles, and then swept back, Greogi giving them a thumbs-up as he dipped the machine low and then flew on ahead.

“Where are we going to fax, Daeman?” asked Ada. She heard the flatness and lack of affect in her own voice but was too tired and hurting to put any energy in her tone.

“I don’t know,” said the lean, muscled man who had once been the pudgy aesthete who’d tried to seduce her. “At least I don’t know where to go for the long run. Chom, Ulanbat, Paris Crater, Bellinbad, and the rest of the more populated nodes have probably been covered with blue ice by Setebos. But I do know an unpopulated node I stop by from time to time—it’s in the tropics. Warm. Nothing but an abandoned little town, but it’s on the ocean—some ocean, somewhere—and has a lagoon. I haven’t seen many animals there other than lizards and a few wild pigs, but they don’t seem to be afraid of people. We could fish, hunt, make more weapons, take care of our injured… lay low until we come up with a plan.”

“How will Harman, Hannah, and Odysseus-Noman find us?” asked Ada.

Daeman was silent for a minute and Ada could almost hear him thinking—We don’t even know if Harman is alive. Petyr said that he disappeared with Ariel. But what he finally said was, “No problem there. Some of us will fax back here regularly. And we can leave some sort of permanent note at Ardis Hall with the faxnode code for our tropical hideout. Harman can read. I don’t think the voynix can.”

Ada smiled wanly. “The voynix can do a lot of things none of us ever imagined they were capable of.”

“Yeah,” said Daeman. And then they were silent until they reached the fax pavilion.

The fax pavilion looked pretty much as Daeman had seen it forty-eight hours earlier. The stockade had been breached. There was dried human blood everywhere, but the voynix or wild animals had carried off the bodies of those Ardisites who’d fought to the death trying to defend the pavilion. But the pavilion structure itself was still intact, the faxnode column still rising in the center of the open, circular structure.

The band of humans stood awkwardly at the edge of the pavilion floor, looking over their shoulders at the dark forest. The sonie landed and the injured were helped out or carried.