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“Oh,” Stephen said. “That's different, I suppose. I suppose I could do that. But …”

“But what?”

“You aren't going to die, too, are you?”

“It happens, sometimes, as you know by now. But—I will try not to.”

“I'm not ever going to die,” the boy said, determined.

Tears turned Adrienne's eyes to prisms, and in the refracted light, she saw again the hurricane of fire, the white-hot eye of the keres.

“Could you find Auntie Crecy, Stephen? I doubt she has gone far.”

“Yes. If you will swear to watch my sister. She is younger than me.”

“I will watch her. Come here, Ivana.”

Ivana came over as the boy left. She looked at the bed very matter-of-factly. “May I come up there?”

“Yes, dear, but be careful. Aunt Adrienne has a broken leg.”

The girl climbed up and lay looking at the ceiling. She was careful not to touch Adrienne. “My leg is broken, too, see?” She flexed the tiny limb. “Right there.” She pointed at her knee.

“So it is,” Adrienne replied. “I wonder why they made such a big fuss about mine?”

“Because you're a grown-up, that's why,” Ivana said. “Do you know any stories?”

“I—I used to.”

“Tell me one.”

By the time Crecy returned, Adrienne had given up trying to remember her way through “Sleeping Beauty”—Ivana had herself fallen asleep.

“How cozy,” Crecy said.

“I despise you, Veronique. I expect perfidy from you, but this—”

“Shh. You'll wake the child, and you know how I hate them awake.”

“Yes, of course you do. Who wouldn't? Where is the boy?”

“I left him with a certain Monsieur Voltaire, a very interesting man I last remember being a guest in the Bastille.”

“He is safe with him?”

“Boys are safe with Monsieur Voltaire, I think, and girls below the age of fourteen or so. They were playing at dueling. You wanted something?”

“Yes. Find me Benjamin Franklin. Tell him I need to speak to him—without Vasilisa, without Red Shoes. I do not want them to know we have met.”

“Achillette is done sulking in her tent?” Crecy asked.

“That's enough from you,” Adrienne said.

But when Crecy was gone, despite her desperate wish not to, she looked at Ivana's sleeping face and smiled. A promise was a promise, and she had promised Hercule to look after his children. She couldn't very well do that if the world ended, could she?

Unoka bounced down from his horse like a king's acrobat and all but dashed into the command tent.

“Gib me some o’ t'at rum,” he said.

“Ah!” Oglethorpe replied. “And I thought you just eager to report.”

“General, you not in a hurry t'hear t'is.”

“That bad, eh?”

“Could be five t'ousands o’ t'em.”

“That's all?”

“Ain't t'at plenty?”

“That's only four to one their way. At Belgrade the Turk outnumbered us two to one, but at the end they lost thirty thousand and we only five thousand. I think we can make a good fight of this.” He paused as Unoka gulped down his rum and rolled his eyes at Oglethorpe's optimism. “How long before they arrive?”

“Two day, I t'ink,” the African replied.

“Well, we shall make it a hard two days for them, shan't we? The pine forests were made for ambuscade.”

“Yes. I take my Maroons out into ‘em.”

“That's not necessary, Mr. Unoka. You've already worked them to death as scouts. Let's give ‘em a bit of a rest.”

Unoka looked levelly at him. “General, it come down to a fight in t'e ranks, my men, t'ey no good. Pickin’ ‘em off, killin’ t'ey horses—‘ambuscade,’ you call it—t'ats what we good at.”

Oglethorpe surveyed the man, noticed for the first time the blood leaking through a rag on his arm.

“You're a good man, Mr. Unoka. I've never known better, and I'm proud to serve with you. If it pleases you to do this, I won't stop you.”

“’Tis always good, when serve wit’ a madman, be a little mad you’ self,” the Maroon observed.

“Take what you need from the armory,” Oglethorpe said. “No sense in rationing now.”

“Wit'pleasure, General. An’ anot'er cup o’ rum—”

“Take the cask. For your men.”

For the next several hours, Oglethorpe bent over the maps, trying to imagine where the