“So we’re just getting the last ripples of aftereffect. Whatever’s going to happen, hashappened—here. Except for the warehouse—and us.”

“Because of the stones, or Bidewell’s weird library?”

They both stared at the fragmented city, beyond shock, even beyond wonder, and then stared at each other, expressing their only remaining surprise: that they were still alive, still thinking, still speaking.

“Maybe both,” Jack said. “We’re saved—for the moment. But that moment is going to be awfully short. And then we’re going to have to do something.”

“What?” Daniel asked.

Jack shook his head.

The cityscape around the warehouse had congealed into a bleakness of broken buildings, sluggish flows of muddy water, torn, ragged clouds barely obscuring the battered sky. The last limb of the hideous arc of fire dropped below the horizon and the clouds glowed blood-red, then dimmed to somber brown, their undersides fitfully illuminated by curling wisps of orange and green.

“The whole city is a grab bag of past and present,” Daniel said. “If you’re right, it could mean this Chalk Princess is still out there—waiting for things to settle before she comes and gets us. Glaucous has a weird confidence.”

“He’s protecting you,” Jack said.

“Is he? How strange. I don’t need protecting.” He poked and rubbed one temple with a thumb. “I don’t see any sign of the women who left. Your friends.”

Glaucous made sure Daniel and Jack were out of the way, then approached Ginny’s cubicle. With batlike acuity, he could hear her moving about from across the warehouse. Ginny blinked and looked confused as he drew back the flimsy curtain. “I don’t want you near me,” she warned, her tongue thickened by the long, hard sleep. “I’ll call for help.”

“Abject apologies for my crude appearance and manners,” Glaucous said. He glanced up. “The young men are on the roof, satisfying curiosity. They seem to be learning to trust each other.”

“Jack knows better,” Ginny said, still blinking—whether from nerves or irritation, she couldn’t tell. Everything felt gritty. Everything seemed to be running down—even her brain.

“Perhaps. At any rate, I am no threat,” Glaucous said softly. “In fact, I eliminated the ones who came here to hunt you. The man with his coin, the woman with her flames and smoke. A dreadful pair. I have my allegiances, of course—and they may not match yours. But with no leadership, I am no more a threat than one of these warehouse cats. You are not mymouse. Whom would I deliver you to? And why?”

“Please go away,” Ginny said.

“Not before I salve my conscience. You have misplaced your trust, and now I fear the worst. Bidewell has hidden himself for many decades, but we—my kind, hunters all—knew him long before that. He was legendary among us.”

“He’s been kind to me.”

“We do have that ability, to be charming when we wish, despite all other appearances. Can you feel that between us, even now?” He looked down, raised his hand to his forehead as if ashamed. “Pardon. It’s an instinct, misplaced no doubt. I will withdraw it immediately.” He shut down the treacle ambience. Ginny stepped back, even more confused.

“I will come no closer, and I will leave soon. But I must tell you…in the spirit of an honorable hunt, which must soon resume. Bidewell brought you all here for the same reason I attached myself to the one who calls himself Daniel—a strange fellow, don’t you feel it? Not what he seems. Very ancient. We call his like bad shepherds—but no matter. Whoever possesses a stone exudes an atmosphere of protection, and provides others a pass to the next level of this astonishing endgame. As do you, young Virginia. Here’s the pattern, the picture of our next few blinks of time. I will complete my part in the game, and Bidewell will complete his. He will deliver you to his mistress, and I will deliver Daniel and Jack to mine.”

“I don’t believe anything you say,” Ginny murmured, but her eyes indicated otherwise. She had never been good at trust.

“Pardon me for speaking truth,” Glaucous said. “But even among my kind, there are rules.”

Glaucous backed out and let the curtain fall, then returned to the storage room, his face stony and gray.

CHAPTER 78

The Chaos

Under the Witness’s eternal gaze, the Silent Ones had almost skimmed down upon the breeds when the entire land seemed to erupt with geysers and fountains of sooty darkness. The huge, flattened faces with their darting, ever-searching eyes—reminiscent of Tall Ones, breeds, and other varieties unknown to the marchers—had suddenly pulled away, leaving Tiadba and her companions spilled on the black ground, waiting for doom…doom delayed.

Tiadba withdrew her arm from her faceplate and saw that Khren and Shewel were already up on their knees. Herza and Frinna had risen as well. Still vibrating with shock, Tiadba managed to push into a crouch, and listened to the shrieks and wails shooting skyward from all around. The compressed ruins of a dead city had either risen around the Witness or been pushed into place like a pile broomed up for burning.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Has the Chaos shrunk?”

Khren and Macht crawled beside her. Nico had found another wall with better footholds.

“There has been movement,” the armor’s voice announced to all. “Distances have been reduced.”

By now the marchers had found vantages to all sides, less interested in the city than in what had happened to the Silent Ones and where the Witness was now situated, almost on top of them. Tiadba studied the Witness with a frown. The huge, distorted head—as tall as three or four blocs stacked on top of each other—had been erected on a massive scaffold of old buildings. Its expression seemed frozen in weary despair. Perhaps that half-melted visage revealed its emotions over times longer than the life of a breed. With everything shifting and changing, perhaps the Chaos would accelerate and she could actually seethe agony come and go across those ruptured brows, accentuating the rotation of that huge, protruding eye, dull green glimmers winking within its dark pit of a pupil. The sweep of the beam had been interrupted, but now the glimmers were focusing, re-forming…and the beam lanced out again over the Chaos, returning to its slow, inevitable rotation. Khren and Shewel pulled Tiadba to her feet. None of them had been hurt—yet. They were left untouched in the very shadow of the Witness, wrapped around by labyrinths of broken walls and toppled structures—spirals, towers, ornamental facades.

The walls had grown up in no time, while the sky had turned a sickly metallic gray and something like wind had rushed over the Chaos, carrying fanned-out clots of black dust. And now the fountains, shooting into the sky, suddenly joined into spinning funnels, then curved over and swooped toward the distorted horizon.

“Here!” Herza and Frinna called.

Tiadba pushed Khren back and climbed the opposite angled wall to see. They all watched as the Silent Ones maneuvered on their tracks, hunkering, collapsing their stilts to avoid the funnels, now like thick fingers, with the marchers in the middle of a giant palm. A kind of living smoke shot through with gray and silver rose all around, and the Chaos erupted once more—this time bolts of red light rose up and spread against the wrinkled sky.

“More intrusions,” the armor explained.

“I seethat,” Tiadba said, and then reached to make sure she still carried the bag in her pouch, with her books. Theirbooks.

How could Jebrassy ever find them, ever make his way through this?

“Where’s the beacon?” Nico asked. “I don’t hear anything.” If they lost the beacon, then it did not matter whether they were alive or dead.

“It’s stopping,” Khren called.