"The Britannia opens in less than six hours," Margo said pointedly when she insisted on joining them.

"Yes, it does. And I am as ready as I will ever be. I may not know how to shoot a gun yet, but I am certain you can remedy that for me once we reach London, Miss Smith."

The look Margo shot the breathtakingly beautiful older woman wavered somewhere between pleased surprise and wary assessment. Skeeter wondered why, but he didn't have the time to pursue it. Then he spotted Bergitta, a young down-timer who'd fallen through an unstable gate from medieval Sweden. She'd been crying, to judge from her reddened, swollen eyes. She'd hooked up with young Hashim ibn Fahd, a down-time teenager who'd fallen through the Arabian Nights gate, and with Kynan Rhys Gower, whose face was a lethal mask of fury.

Bergitta gave a glad cry when she spotted him. "Oh, Skeeter! We have looked and looked..."

Kit was already speaking rapidly in Welsh with the bowman, who had sworn an oath of fealty to Kit down that unstable gate into sixteenth-century Portuguese southern Africa. Skeeter gave Bergitta's hands a swift and reassuring squeeze. "The search teams are organized and out?"

"Yes, Skeeter, and I am told to say to you, please search the escape routes from Little Agora to Frontier Town. You will need a team..."

"They're with me," Skeeter said roughly, nodding at the others. "Not my choice, but they're good."

It was a monumental understatement, one of his all-time best, in fact.

Bergitta, who knew their reputations perfectly well, for all that she'd been on station only three months, widened pretty blue eyes; then nodded. "Kynan and Hashim and I go to search also, then." She hugged him, very briefly, but it didn't take more than a fleeting contact to feel the tremors shaking through her.

"We'll find them, Bergitta." Skeeter forced the conviction in his voice. We have to find them. Dear God, please let us find them soon... and safe.

She nodded and tried to smile, then departed with Kynan Rhys Gower and Hashim, whose glance looked ready to kill anyone who hurt Ianira, despite his youth. Skeeter found Margo's speculative gaze on Bergitta as she moved away into the crowd. What he read in her eyes defied translation for several moments. At first, he thought it was simply distaste for sharing company with a girl who'd been forced by circumstances to sell the only commodity she possessed to make a living on the station: herself. Then he looked again, struck forcibly by the memories lurking in Margo's shadowed green eyes, which had filled with pain, shame, remorse. But for what? He knew how other kids Margo's age had been forced to make a living in New York. He rather doubted Margo had been there long enough to get into serious trouble, given her determination to get onto TT-86 and begin her career as a trainee time scout. But with the kind of pain and the depth of shame he could see in Margo's eyes, Skeeter found himself wondering how she'd raised the money for a ticket through Shangri-La Station's expensive Primary gate.

If Kit's granddaughter had resorted to... that... Skeeter wasn't sure how Grandpa would take the news. Or—Christ, talk about complications—Malcolm, who planned to marry her. Noneya, Skeeter told himself severely. Whatever the reason for that look in Margo's eyes, it was very much none of Skeeter's business.

"We'll start in Little Agora," he said gruffly. "It's closer. Let's go, I've waited too long as it is."

Wordlessly, his little search party followed.

Jenna Nicole Caddrick didn't take Ianira to the hotel room she'd reserved nearly a year previously in Carl's married sister's name. She hadn't dared try to check into the luxury hotel, not with Ianira Cassondra draped, unconscious, across her back and shoulders in a fireman's carry where Noah Armstrong had put her. "Get her to the hotel!" the detective had ordered. "Take the stairways to the basement—I've got to find her husband and kids!"

So, staggering with every step, because Jenna was not that much larger than Ianira, herself, she carried the sacred prophetess through the station's Commons during security's riot-control blackout, bumping into people and stumbling into walls until she finally found a staircase, its emergency "Exit" sign glowing in the stygian darkness. The lights down here, at least, hadn't been shut off. Shangri-La Station's basement was a twisting montage of pipes and conduits and crowded storage rooms where, with any luck—and the Lady alone knew they deserved a little of that—the Ansar Majlis wouldn't think to look. Or anyone else, for that matter, not right away, at least. Jenna, legs and arms trembling with the effort, joints all but cracking, finally spotted a thick pile of hotel towels, in a big packing crate that someone had pried open to remove part of its contents. Moving gingerly, she lowered Ianira onto the piled towels. The prophetess was still as death, with a nasty bruise along her brow where Noah had slammed her to the floor, saving her life.

Jenna didn't know much about medicine or first aid, but she knew how to test a pulse, anyway, and remembered that a shock victim had to be kept warm. So she covered Ianira with a whole pile of the crated towels and tested her pulse and wondered if slow and regular might be good or bad news. She bit one lip, then wondered how to let Noah Armstrong know where to find them. We'll meet at the Neo Edo, kid, that's where you've got reservations and they'll expect you to show up.

Yeah, she thought glumly. But not with an unconscious prophetess across her shoulder. Showing up with Ianira, Cassondra of Ephesus, in a state of coma was a great way to get the attention of all the wrong people, fast. When Jenna heard the footfalls and the distant murmur of voices, she spun on her heel, gripping Carl's reproduction pistol in both hands, terrifying herself with that blurred, instinctive reaction. I don't want to get used to people trying to kill me... or having to kill them. The thundering shock of shooting down a living human being up on Commons would have left Jenna on hands and knees, vomiting, if Ianira Cassondra's life hadn't been in mortal jeopardy with every passing second. She wanted to go into shock now, needed to be sick, was shaking violently with the need, but there was someone coming and she couldn't let them kill Ianira.

The voices drew closer, voices she didn't recognize. Jenna scowled, fist tight on the reproduction antique weapon in her hand, trying to make sense of what they were saying. She realized abruptly that the words weren't going to fall into any recognizable patterns because they weren't in English. Whatever it was, it sounded like... Classical Latin, maybe? Would the Ansar Majlis speak Latin? She couldn't imagine it, not a pack of medieval terrorists imported from the war-wracked Middle East for the express purpose of destroying the Temple which formed the bedrock of Jenna's faith.

Then the speakers rounded an abrupt corner and Jenna gasped, giddy with relief. "Noah!"

Armstrong swung around sharply, recognized her, relaxed a death grip on the trigger. "Kid," Noah muttered, "you are gonna get yourself shot one of these days, doing that. Where is she?"

Jenna pointed, eyeing the people who accompanied Noah. The ashen-faced young man in jeans and an ordinary short-sleeved work shirt, she recognized as the Cassondra's husband—the Roman slave—and the two little girls with him looked so much like their mother it closed Jenna's throat. Another young man with them was a kid, really, younger than Jenna. A lot younger. At the moment, Jenna Nicole Caddrick felt about a thousand years old and aging rapidly.

"Ianira!" Marcus cried, running toward his wife.

"She's unconscious," Jenna said, voice low and unsteady. "She hit her head on the floor..."