“Wait! Wait!” he screamed.

The executioner raised his ax.

“I think it was meant to happen,” René said, “but I also say that if we had chosen differently, it never would have. Tell me I am wrong.”

She smiled. She couldn’t.

Sophia climbed out of the water-lift shaft, shaking her arms, wondering why they had to live on the twelfth floor. She’d been up the water-lift shaft three times since the Hasards got the flat back. She pulled off her black cap and jacket, but not before she had retrieved a cloth bag from her vest and set it aside on the table. The rope in the water lift was jiggling, and by the time she had washed the grime from her hands and was back in her embroidered yellow skirts, René was swinging his legs through the opening.

“Hello,” she said.

His boots hit the floor and he grinned. “Have you looked yet?”

She shook her head, the brown curls grown longer but no less wild. “I waited for you. No, let me. You’re still dirty.” She pulled a little hinged box from the cloth bag and opened it.

“Ah,” said René. “It is in excellent condition.”

They stared at a small plastic man, his colors of red and blue still unnaturally bright, strange, plastic clothes tight to show a body oddly bulged and top-heavy with muscles. Was this the way Ancient men had wanted to look, she wondered? Because surely they hadn’t. But that wasn’t even the part that amazed her. The man sat in a vehicle, something like a landover, only longer, elaborate, no horse attached, and with no visible way to hitch one.

René ran a finger along a yellow wheel. “Sanchia told me tonight that she thinks this little man should be destroyed because he is an Ancient idol. Do you think he is a god?”

“Sanchia thinks that she is a god,” said Sophia, closing the box.

“Sanchia is half-afraid you are,” René teased. “Are you aware that the Red Rook actually flew to the top of the scaffold, my love?”

“That’s a new one. Where did you hear that?”

“From Sanchia. She was showing me her new tattoo.”

“Was she?” Those who had fought against the revolution and in support of the Red Rook had taken to tattooing a red and black feather on their forearms. And so had some who had not fought. Like Sanchia, Sophia suspected.

René sighed. “Ah, well. She has opened the chapels and the Lower City, so we will extend her some forgiveness, even if her council is corrupt.” His smile became devilish. “I wonder how soon she will miss her artifact.”

“What did she think of your suggestion for a representative parliament?”

“She seems to prefer five council members to five hundred. I would have talked with her more had you not slapped me so soon.” René tugged off his black trousers to show blue satin breeches underneath. “Is it necessary? To hit so hard?”

“You shouldn’t have flirted so hard with Commandant Napoléon’s wife. And you know those breeches are vile?”

“Of course I know my breeches are vile. And if I had not flirted so hard, you would have had no reason to hit me. It is only your enthusiasm I question.”

She smiled sweetly. “But your maman recommends it.” She waited a beat, and then they both laughed.

“Maman needs to come back to the city,” René said. “Tom manages the glass factory too well and it makes her testy. She has no one to fight with.”

And when Madame returned to the flat, Sophia thought, that would be just about the right time to take René back to Bellamy House. It was practically a village now, like it had been when she was a girl, only with both Parisian and Commonwealth to be heard on the lane. No ports in sight. And she would be arranging Tom and Jennifer’s Banns in the autumn. The glass factory was doing well enough to pay the marriage fee, which the Bonnards would immediately give back so Tom could prove for his inheritance. The thought made her smile as she tucked the flowers into her hair. She was thinking of taking René to Finland after that, where he could be himself for a while.

“Did you hear what Napoléon was saying to me?” René was saying, buttoning his jacket. “That the premier plans to build a lattice tower, all of metal, right in the center of the Lower City? It will be taller than the cliffs.”

She looked over her shoulder. “Whatever for?”

“I do not know. But Sanchia should watch Napoléon closely, I think …”

Sophia frowned as she finished arranging her hair. It was from Napoléon’s residence that they had stolen the last three tubes of Bellamy fire, part of what Cartier had put in place for panicking the mob and never lit, there being quite enough panic as it was. The tubes had been left behind in the melee, and Sophia had often wondered how they had fallen into the commandant’s hands. Mr. Halflife was no longer a member of Parliament, but she’d not forgotten his talk of war. The barrels in the sanctuary had been rolled into the sea, Tom’s recipes and her father’s research locked in the secret compartment of her desk in Bellamy House. But it would not be long, Sophia thought, before he, or Sanchia, or someone, discovered what her father had. The tubes they had stolen from Napoléon’s safe had been opened, their contents examined.

There was a light knock and Benoit stuck his head in the door. “Is your lovers’ tiff over? Because the singers are almost done.” He checked the small clock strapped to his wrist. Everyone in the city was allowed to have clocks now, but the sight never failed to give Sophia a start. And they still worked terribly.

René said, “Tell Émile we have it, and that he can leave tonight for Canterbury.”

“Very good.” But instead of going, Benoit came inside, took out a handkerchief, and wiped a smudge of dirt from Sophia’s cheek. “You might have taken care of that,” he chided René, winking once before he left.

René turned to her. “Do you need taking care of, my love?”

Sophia looked up in alarm. “Oh, no,” she said. “The singers are nearly done …” But he already had his arms around her, and she was already done protesting.

“Let’s go back to the party,” René whispered into her neck, “and behave so badly that everyone will go home early.”

“René,” she said. He pulled back just far enough to see her, but she didn’t speak right away. He was beautiful, even in the gaudy jacket, which also brought out the fire of his eyes. Nothing was certain, she knew that, and the world ever circled. But she couldn’t help but wonder what she would risk to keep her future exactly the same as her present.

She tilted up her chin, and knew the answer even before he kissed her. It was everything.

Polar shift really is an interesting way to end the world. The idea of what could happen if the magnetic poles of the earth reversed, as they have at least twice in geological history, is a chilling thought. Not only because of the wholesale death that would follow, but because it’s a completely natural process. Humans can do nothing to cause it, nothing to stop it. But since writing about uninhabited wastelands is not particularly appealing, I decided to play with the idea of wandering magnetic poles, a slight shift rather than a complete reversal. Instead of destroying our magnetosphere, this would turn it into something like Swiss cheese, exposing large swaths of humanity to deadly solar radiation while sparing others, and at the same time wiping clean the digital and electronic world on which we have become so dependent. Could a shift of the poles really happen? Maybe. Or at least, no one yet has proven that it can’t.