Adrienne rode sidesaddle on a muddy road, surrounded by brambled fields that rolled gently to the horizon. The air was perfumed with the acrid scent of gunpowder and horse dung. Behind her she heard the creak of wagons, the chattering of the sutlers and the whores, drums beating.

Nicolas d'Artagnan rode beside her, his rangy body swaying comfortably in rhythm with his horse, colichemarde slapping gently in time against his leg.

“How is it with you, beloved?” he asked.

She didn't know the answer. She couldn't remember. She closed her eyes and saw only colored clouds, shifting and breaking.

“Where are we, Nicolas?” she asked.

“Where are we?” He repeated her statement, frowning a little. “We are together, I think.”

“I l—” Her tongue clove thickly to her lips for a moment. “I love you,” she managed to finish.

“I know.”

“I have a son.”

“I know that, too. You named him for me. But he isn't mine.”

“I wanted to give you sons. If children could be born of hearts instead of bodies, he would be yours. I have never loved anyone as I loved you.”

He smiled gently, as if to himself. “One of the great benefits of dying in the first days of love, I think.”

“Please don't say that.”

“I always spoke what I felt with you, when I had the courage. Now courage and cowardice are equally absurd.” His saddle squeaked as he shifted to face her. “You are thinking of killing him, this child of our hearts.”

“No.”

“Yes. As you killed me.”

“Nicolas, no.”

“As you killed Hercule.”

“No,” she whispered, collecting herself. She looked at Nicolas again. He was a boy, a child. What did he know? “You killed yourself,” she accused. “You could have lived.”

“We could have gone away together, you and I,” Nicolas said. “I planned it. I offered it to you.”

Adrienne shook her head. “But I had to— You're trying to confuse me. Are you one of my enemies?”

“You're starting to remember.”

“Yes. Are you Nicolas? Or are you the one who came be fore? Lilith? Sophia?”

Nicolas smiled, that infrequent, cryptic, annoying smile of his. “Maybe I'm your son. Maybe I'm Hercule. Who else shall we add?”

“What do you want? Have you just come to torment me? To remind me that everyone I love dies? My skin is thickened to that.”

“Thick enough to kill your own son?”

“I do not know him. He does not know me except to hate me. How is he my son?”

Nicolas just chuckled at that.

“What do you want of me?” she demanded again.

“‘And God so loved the world …’ ” Nicolas began. He turned his byzantine eyes fully on her then. “God does love the world, Adrienne.”

“Last time we spoke, you said you were not sure God existed.”

He frowned almost imperceptibly. “Perhaps that was another, or perhaps my faith has returned. Or perhaps I love the world, and that is enough.”

“Real or not, God does not love me.”

“Maybe not, not as you mean. When you loved Nicolas, did you love each atom that composed him? Did you mourn each breath that was in him when he exhaled, cherish the new air as it entered his lungs? Did you weep when he lost a fingernail, grieve when his hair was cut? God's is a different sort of love, Adrienne. A more profound sort. It is a terrible sort of love, the love of the world. It is a love that requires, at times, bitter things.”

“What sort of bitter things?”

“You,” he whispered. “You.”

Her hand glowed, and she held it up in front of her.

“I have no power left,” she said. “My djinni have all died or deserted me.”

And Nicolas began to laugh. Not his usual chopping, reserved, good-natured chuckling, but a full roar from the belly. She could only watch him in astonishment.

“My predicament amuses you?”

“You would use a sword to trim fingernails. You would use a cannon to snuff a candle.”

“What do you mean?”

Instead of answering her, he leaned suddenly and kissed her. It was as if some potent distillation had been poured between her lips, a tonic of every sort of love. He tasted like Nicolas, Hercule, Crecy, her son.

And he was gone.

“Uriel?” she asked the gray sky. “God?”

But no answer came.

She awoke in a cathedral, the largest she had ever seen, whose columns supported a roof so vast she had difficulty making it out. She heard priests chanting the Te Deum, smelled the incense.

Another dream?

But no —the columns were the boles of pine trees so enormous in girth that four men could not link hands around them. The Te Deum was in a language she did not recognize, and the incense was tobacco and the scent of popping, hissing pine resin in the fire nearby.

The chant broke off. “She wakes,” someone said in French.

Her eyes, stung to tears by the smoke, cleared again, and she saw an Indian sitting near her. He was handsome, in an alien sort of way.

“Adrienne?” That French was better.

“Veronique?”

“It is me. How do you feel?”

“How long have I slept?”

“You have been in and out of a fever for almost two weeks. You nearly died. I nearly lost you.”

She wanted to ask where she was, but she feared another conversation like she'd had with “Nicolas.” Instead, she touched her throat. “I'm thirsty.”

“I'll get water.”

A second later, lukewarm water splashed in her mouth. It tasted good. Crecy touched her forehead.

“Your fever seems to be gone at last,” she said cautiously.

Adrienne surveyed her body. Her left leg was in splints, and her ribs ached as she drew breath. She wondered how she had been traveling. “What of the others?” she asked.

“Hercule is dead.”

“I remember.” Words clotted on her tongue for a moment, then she went on. “The others?”

“More than half the crew, actually. Your students all survived—Elizavet included—and Father Castillion. Some of your guard was killed, fighting these Indians.”

“They are our enemies, then?” She glanced up at the Indian.

“They fired on my people,” the Indian said. “My people killed them. If their guns had stayed silent, they would still be alive.”

“Who are you?”

“I hesitate to give a name to someone as powerful as you. Suffice to say I am a sorcerer, something like you. We fought the Sun Boy together, though I was confused about the matter at the time. He survived, by the way. His army follows us, by perhaps two days, perhaps three. I am still too weak to tell.”

“Follows us to where?”

“To your kinfolk. To New Paris.”

She fumbled in her memory for such a place, came up with nothing.

He saw her confusion. “It was once named Mobile,” he offered. “The chief city of Louisiana.”

“Ah. Why do we go there?”

“Because we have matters to attend there, you and I,” he answered, and with that he stood and strode away.

“They have treated us well, but we are captives,” Crecy explained. “What he says about the soldiers might be true. It might have been a misunderstanding.”

“Most of my guard gone, no djinni left to serve me. It's as it was in the beginning, Crecy.”

“No. You have me. You have Linné and Breteuil and Lomonosov. They want to see you, but I have kept them away.”

“But I have no way to protect them. The Queen of Angels is dead.”

“Good. Then perhaps Adrienne can live again,” Crecy said.

“I'm not sure I—” But Crecy wouldn't want to hear that. “How badly am I hurt?”

“A broken leg, cracked ribs. You lost a lot of blood, and then the fever set in. It seems now that the fever is gone—you will be well soon.”

“Well? What does that matter? Unless you defeated Oliv—” She broke off. The Indian was back.

He rubbed his chin. “The Sun Boy defeated both of us, and his army is a few days behind our heels. But I think there is still a way to win. Here.” And he pointed at her hand.

“Not anymore,” she said. But she remembered the creature in her dream and what it had said.

“I think you are mistaken,” Red Shoes said.

“You are the one mistaken, if you think you can talk to her like that,” Crecy snapped.

A faint frown creased his brow, and he looked away, almost as if he hadn't heard her. Then he sighed. “My apologies. You have just awakened. We do not have much time, but it can wait until we reach New Paris. If we reach New Paris.”

“I thought we were ahead of the army. What would prevent us?”

“We are ahead of part of the army. Several airships flew over and let troops off between us and our destination.

“Must we go around them?” Crecy asked.

The Indian smiled disconcertingly. “I thought we would go through,” he said.