Lost Ones

CHAPTER 14

E ven gods needed to rest.

Kitsune walked along the bank of the Atlantic River in the dark, the moonlight glittering on the rushing water, and felt the tug of its flow. She wanted to hurry on to their destination the way the river did. A knot of anxiety had wound into her gut, and it tightened with every moment they spent camped on the eastern bank.

Bellona had insisted they make camp. The war goddess did not seem to imply that they were tired, so much as that a pause in their march to battle was the natural way of things. They stopped to rest because armies were expected to do such things. It maddened Kitsune, especially since she herself trembled with exhaustion, and yet her mind would not let her rest.

Guilt burned like poison in her blood, and emotions warred within her. She felt shamed by her jealousy and by her behavior with Oliver, even as she hated him for the way he had looked at her and touched her hand, his gentleness and the lust she had seen in his eyes. But had she really given him any choice? Kitsune had played the temptress, had nurtured his lust quite purposefully, even as she pretended innocence. She had hungered for him and so tried to lure him into betraying Julianna.

Kitsune had fallen in love with him.

Yet, though tempted, Oliver had never succumbed. He had wanted her-there could be no doubt about that. But he did not love her, and never could. His heart belonged to Julianna. Confronted with that truth, Kitsune had turned bitter, and her trickster nature had emerged. Had she stayed and fought Ty’Lis with them, she would only have been captured herself. But that would have been better than striking Julianna and fleeing for her life. Better than seeing the pain in Oliver’s eyes.

Now she would reclaim her own self, her pride and passion. War raged, and she had called the gods themselves out from the heart of Euphrasia to aid King Hunyadi. Oliver might be in a dungeon in Palenque, but if she helped to turn the tide of the war, one day soon he would be free. He and Julianna.

They could find happiness.

It tasted sour in Kitsune’s mouth, but she knew their happiness would be the only way she could forget the way she had betrayed them. The war must be fought, the Atlanteans crushed for their deceit and their slaughter of the Borderkind, and Kitsune would do whatever she could to see it happen. She fought for her kin. But if she died, it would be as much for Oliver as it would be for herself.

She’d had enough of hibernating, and enough of guilt.

“Damn you all,” she whispered through sharp teeth, turning to look back at the camp the gods had made. “Let’s just get on with it.”

But they would not. The gods moved in their own time. Perhaps it would have been better had she and Coyote not attempted to recruit them.

A chill went through her, a hint of a long winter to come, though still distant. Kitsune raised her copper-red hood and pulled the cloak of her fur close around her. Immediately, she felt better. More herself. More clever. The fox had none of the heartache of the woman in her; at least, that was what she told herself. But even so, she could not separate the two.

A rumble came from the camp. She glanced over to see dark silhouettes by the fire. Fully a dozen of the old gods of Rome and Greece had joined her, and they were formidable. But they were still shadows of themselves. Once, these few would have turned the tide of the war simply by arriving upon the battlefield. Now they looked to combat as resurrection, a way to make themselves feel young and powerful again.

Notus, the south wind, drifted lazily around the camp. Mercury had gone ahead to scout, unable to stand still. If Kitsune had his speed, she would not be able to control herself-she would have left them all behind long ago and raced to join King Hunyadi on the field of battle. Salacia, Hesperos, and Bellona clung together, like lovers, and she suspected that might be the case. Ares, the Greek god of war, clearly lusted after Bellona despite the nearly incestuous nature of such a coupling. Dark and brooding, old and grim, Ares never spoke except of killing. Kitsune worried that he might not care very much about who or what he was killing, as long as he could make war and spill blood.

Coyote kept mostly apart from the old gods, save for Cronus. The Titan had risen from beneath ruins in the Latin Quarter, destroying what remained of those buildings. Though a lumbering, mad giant, Cronus nevertheless was excellent company. He spoke in a low murmur, gazing into nothingness, rattling off stories about the days before days and the glory of the creation of Olympus. From time to time he spoke to gods and Titans who were not present, as though reliving scenes from his ancient life. He had come along because Ares had summoned him, as though he was some kind of attack dog, and Kitsune wondered what would become of Cronus when they joined the war.

A smile touched Kitsune’s lips-rare, these days. The gods had descended from Titans and they from beings born out of chaos. Perhaps by bringing these faded things to war, chaos would be the result. What a gift to Hunyadi that would be.

Then again, what were she and Coyote but tricksters? It might be that chaos was all that they could ever give to anyone.

Kitsune turned her back on the camp and continued along the river, breathing in the cool night and letting the sound of the Atlantic carry her where her legs, at the moment, could not. It brought her a little peace, and she could ask for nothing else-deserved nothing else.

“Evening, cousin.”

She paused and glanced around to find Coyote behind her. Kitsune could not be surprised that he had caught up to her so quickly, and without her hearing a step. It was their nature.

“Lost in your head again, I see,” he said.

Kitsune nodded. “I cannot seem to escape the predators in there. They wait for me every time I close my eyes.”

Coyote sighed and shook his head. His eyes were mischievous as always, but strangely gentle. “It isn’t healthy for our kind to think so deeply. Caprice is our great fault and our great salvation.”

“Trickster-philosopher, that’s a new one.”

“One of us has to practice a bit of awareness. Usually, I’d rely on you. But you’re not yourself.”

Kitsune couldn’t argue with that.

“How strange to have come to this moment,” she said. “Once, I despised you as the most devious, most cowardly, and least honorable of our kin.”

Coyote executed a courtly bow, half mockery and half sincerity. “And in those times, I worked hard to earn your scorn. But you and Blue Jay put aside caprice and whimsy to focus on the threat to all of us, and though it frightened me, I could no longer deny the truth.”

“Which is?”

“If I let the world die around me, I would be alone.”

A silence fell between them, full of understanding and sudden longing. Coyote wore his lopsided grin, but for once she did not think it foolish.

Then his eyes widened. His nostrils flared and he snarled, gaze locked on something just beyond Kitsune. Coyote bared fangs, ears pricking up, transforming even as he leaped past her.

Kitsune spun.

The Sandman stood on the riverbank, an arm’s length away. Terrible lemon eyes glowed sickly in the dark and the moonlight. His gray-black cloak seemed to swallow the night. The sound of shifting sand filled the air and she saw the way the grit of his substance undulated beneath his cloak. And then he flowed toward her, long, dreadful fingers reaching for her, jaws opening, tongue rasping across his teeth.

Coyote flew toward him, meaning to drive him away.

A hand darted up. The Sandman gripped his throat and Coyote lashed out with his paws, clawing the monster, digging furrows in him.

The Sandman pulled Coyote to him, long, rough tongue poking out, and sucked one of Coyote’s eyes into his mouth.

Coyote’s tortured scream echoed along the riverbank. The monster tossed him away like garbage and turned on Kitsune. His soft, insinuating laughter crept under the fox-woman’s skin, and she felt despair take hold of her heart.

“You turned my brother against me,” the Sandman whispered. “You and Bascombe. I have hunted you, trickster-bitch. Now you die. You, and then Bascombe. And I’ll bring him your eyes so that he knows that you are gone, and that you died screaming.”

Kitsune shook her head, terror shuddering through her. “I saw you die.”

“Destroyed. Not dead,” he rasped. “I cannot die. Not as long as children fight when sleep comes to take them.”

He extended a single, knife-thin finger. “Come. Your eyes are the loveliest green. I hunger for them.”

Coyote struggled to rise, laid back his head, and howled to the moon and to the gods. Kitsune heard shouts from the camp and the ground shook as Cronus began to move. But they would be too late. If she pulled her fur around her and became a fox, the Sandman would catch her easily. As a woman, she could fight for a few moments. They would be all that remained of her life.

I’m sorry, she thought, but couldn’t have said who the apology was meant for. Sand skittered toward her along the ground and then began to rise in a dancing breeze around her, scouring the exposed skin of her hands, face, and throat. She could feel it in the fur of her cloak. And she understood. He would strip the flesh from her bones.

First, though, the eyes.

Kitsune showed her tiny pointed teeth in a snarl. She hooked her fingers into claws.

“Take them,” she dared him.

The Sandman came toward her. She tried to fight him, tore at his body and his cloak, dragged fingers through his sand-flesh, reached for his eyes, but he batted her arms away. His knife-fingers tore her hood back and twisted in her long curtain of hair, and Kitsune screamed.

She hated herself for it, but she screamed.

Halliwell hid deep inside the Sandman. He had a tactile awareness of a body he no longer possessed. Still the sand seemed to flow over and around him. Nearby he could sense the presence of the Dustman, cold and angry and grim. When he had first learned he had become trapped behind the Veil-that he would never see his Sara again-he had felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. But this was far, far worse. This was a churning, rasping Hell.

His hands were stained with blood. Perhaps the Sandman’s murders had not been committed with Halliwell’s own hands, but the difference mattered little to him. He was a part of this barbaric, murderous thing. There in the maelstrom at the center of the Sandman, he was sure that he had felt their souls crying out as they died, felt their spirits brush against his own. As vicious and brutal as their murders had been, some part of him had been envious. They were free, while he was trapped with those eternal monsters.

The Sandman’s hands. The Dustman’s hands. Ted Halliwell’s hands.

He hated himself, now. Show a little backbone, Detective, he thought. There was a cruel bit of humor in there somewhere, but he hadn’t the heart to find it. Hadn’t the heart. There you go again. He hadn’t a heart or a backbone now, of course. But these were spiritual as well as physical things. Heart. Backbone. Courage.

There was a major disconnect in his brain. Courage wasn’t the absence of fear, he reminded himself. It was action in spite of fear.

Ted Halliwell visualized himself standing on the riverbank. He saw through the Sandman’s eyes, watched the water stream by, watched as they slipped toward the woman in the fox-fur cloak-Kitsune-and the man with whom she spoke.

He knew what would come next.

The Sandman had been looking forward to this moment ever since the three of them all rose together in this single form-sand and dust and bone, three beings in one. Kitsune had to die. Then the Sandman would travel to the dungeon where Oliver Bascombe was imprisoned, and in that darkened cell, they would murder the helpless man.

Halliwell stretched out his fingers. The ground felt solid beneath his feet. But there was what he saw through the Sandman’s eyes and what he saw in his mind. The sand still shifted around him as though he had been buried alive. He felt its weight and warmth and texture on skin he no longer had.

In his mind’s eye, he turned. In the sandstorm that enveloped him, he sensed the shape of the other-the Dustman, with his greatcoat and bowler hat.

“What are you doing, Detective?”

Halliwell sneered at him. “You know exactly what I’m doing.”

“I’m not sure it’s possible,” the Dustman said.

Halliwell imagined himself breathing evenly. He imagined his flesh rippling with a constant shift of sand. He stared out through the Sandman’s eyes and felt with the Sandman’s hands as the monster shook Kitsune like a rag doll. She clawed at him and down there inside the Sandman, Halliwell cried out in pain, feeling the ragged furrows she dragged in his/their sand-flesh.

His fingers twined in her hair and he yanked her head back.

The Sandman’s fingers twined in her hair and he yanked her head back.

“It has to be possible,” Halliwell snarled to the Dustman. “We’re all in here. You said so yourself. That means we have a choice. I can’t bear any more blood on my hands.”

The Dustman hesitated. Halliwell could feel it. Perhaps he didn’t believe they could do it or perhaps he was only afraid of his brother. The Sandman’s ferocity gave him the strength to subjugate them-or it had, so far.

Halliwell saw the terror in Kitsune’s jade eyes. He watched the way her beautiful, elegant face became ugly and twisted with fear, and she opened her mouth and screamed. Her anguish tore at him.

The Sandman thrust out his tongue and licked Kitsune’s eyes. Her cry became one of pain as the rough sand obscured her vision. The monster dangled her at arm’s length and reached out with one prying, knifelike finger to dig her eyes from their sockets.

“I wish we had more time together,” the Sandman said.

At first, Halliwell didn’t understand these words. Then noises flooded into the maelstrom and he heard shouts and felt something shaking the riverbank beneath his feet. A low growl came from nearby. The one-eyed coyote rose on his haunches, issuing a menacing snarl. Wind whipped around them suddenly, tearing at the Sandman’s cloak. Something loomed against the night sky-a giant, lumbering toward them.

“Alas,” the Sandman said.

His talon cut the skin beside Kitsune’s left eye.

Halliwell remembered the first time he saw one of the Sandman’s young victims, a girl named Alice St. John. He allowed himself to recall, now, the screams and blood and ravaged faces of the victims the monster had taken since their substance was joined.

He could feel the riverbank underfoot, shaking with the giant’s approach.

Truly feel it.

Sorrow and fury swept Halliwell forward. He felt as though he were surfacing from a sea of sand. New screams came from inside his mind, but now they belonged to the Sandman himself. Halliwell tossed Kitsune away. She hit the ground and rolled halfway into the river, then shot up to a crouch, staring at him.

I did it, you bastard, Halliwell thought.

The Sandman howled. He could feel the monster inside him, and the Dustman as well. The Dustman remained still, though he had begun to churn and flow, and somehow Halliwell knew the Dustman had begun to move closer to the Sandman, down there in the maelstrom.

For a moment, Halliwell was in total control. He could feel the grains of his substance, the swirl of sand, the wind whipping his cloak. Then pain raced up the back of his neck and a terrible weight crushed down upon his soul, trying to force him into the maelstrom again.

Kitsune stared at him.

“Run,” Halliwell told her. “He’s going to-”

The coyote hit him from the side, driving him down to the dirt and glaring down at him from its one, remaining eye, gore still dripping from the crater of the other. The impact jarred Halliwell, and when he tried to move, he could no longer feel the Sandman’s body-only his own bones, scoured by the maelstrom. He could see and now he could hear.

You wait and see, a voice in the maelstrom said, the Sandman talking directly to him, and perhaps to the Dustman, too. Your presumption will cost you dearly. Whatever spark of you remains, it will be extinguished.

Halliwell expected the Dustman to be troubled by this. Instead, he felt a grim satisfaction coming from him. “If he could have done so, he would have done it already.”

“All of a sudden you sound pretty sure of yourself.”

“Your spark survives. Your spirit’s continued existence is proof enough.”

So the Dustman had used him to see if the Sandman could be thwarted without repercussion.

“You’re an asshole,” Halliwell said.

The Dustman did not reply.

Halliwell concentrated on seeing out of the monster’s yellow eyes.

A being hung in the air, the center of a blossom of starlight that illuminated the entire riverbank. Halliwell saw the others, now, warriors with hammers and swords and axes, all racing toward him. Kitsune had stepped out of the water, copper fur glittering with droplets, and the coyote trotted to her side to face the Sandman.

Too many, the Sandman’s voice echoed into the maelstrom. I will take her another night.

They burst into a drifting, eddying mass of sand and floated off across the river, with the shouts of Kitsune’s comrades-Borderkind or legend or whatever they were-chasing them into the dark.

You dislike being a killer, tasting the blood that stains the sand of my fingers. There is a village nearby with many young children. Perhaps we should pay a visit to each and every one. I can almost feel the pop of their small eyes between my teeth now. Can you feel it, Detective?

“I’ll stop you,” Halliwell replied.

No. I felt it just before you stepped into me. Now I know what it feels like, and I will be on guard. You are a little puppet, mimicking my every move.

Ice gripped Halliwell’s heart. Courage seemed far away, now. Where was the Dustman? If he could combat the Sandman, why had he withdrawn so deeply into the maelstrom that Halliwell could no longer even sense his presence?

No. Not the village. A far more satisfying punishment occurs to me, the Sandman thought, resonating inside Halliwell’s head. It will kill what’s left of you, extinguish that spark, and you will surrender your soul willingly. You will beg for oblivion.

Her troops shone with pride and renewed vigor that stemmed from their victory in the battle of the Oldwood, and Damia Beck indulged them such feelings, for now. Her fleet-footed messenger, Charlie Grant, raced from one detachment of the king’s army to the next, delivering and retrieving information. In an hour, Charlie could travel ground that would take a soldier on horseback a day or more, and never seemed to tire.

The southern invaders had been routed. King Hunyadi’s forces had turned them back at every step, in spite of the Atlanteans scattered in amongst the Yucatazcan army. Now the army of Hunyadi was driving them further and further south, and the soldiers believed that victory had arrived.

Damia tried to dispense with such illusions, but could not bring herself to be brutal with them. Not yet. There would be time enough for that later, when the army of Atlantis began its own incursions into Euphrasia. A few Atlanteans in amongst ordinary troops was one thing, but the army of Atlantis merged with Yucatazcan forces, and the reinforcements that were even now crossing the Isthmus of the Conquistadors-that would be a very different sort of war.

Her cavalry units rode at the front of their southern march. They had suffered a number of casualties at the Oldwood, but more for riders than horses. Half a dozen infantry men and women had been promoted to cavalry. The infantry hiked tirelessly southward, singing soldiers’ songs and calling out to one another with ribald jokes and braggadocio.

Soon, when they drew closer to the new battlefront, Damia would gather her troops and give them a speech that would sober them up quickly. She would give them an idea of the odds that they were facing. Hunyadi had sent notes with Charlie Grant, coded messages that detailed their troop strength and indicated where the king felt the true battle would unfold. The facts were clear. With Atlantis joining the war, the odds would be stacked against the king’s army.

Damia missed Blue Jay. She wished she could hold him in her arms and stroke the length of his lean, muscular back. The smell and feel of him seemed so distant to her now and she did not want to forget. In his eyes, she’d always seen mischief, but she had also seen adoration. Men had always lusted after her, and sometimes feared her, but no one had ever looked at her the way Blue Jay did.

A shout rang out.

Her fingers tightened on the reins and she spurred her horse on, breaking away from the rest of her mounted troops. Somewhere a bugle sounded-celebratory and playful-and she decided she needed to speak to her troops sooner rather than later.

A single figure stood on the road ahead; a tall, stooped, ugly thing-one of the ogres from her Borderkind platoon.

She snapped the reins, and her mare surged into a gallop. Damia sat forward on the saddle, letting the rush of the moment wake her up from her musings.

“Report!” she said as she approached the ogre.

The ugly northlander did not salute, but Borderkind were not regular army. Such protocol was not required of them.

“We’ve caught and killed three outriders, Commander.”

Damia frowned. “Not together?”

As she spoke, the ogre glanced at the trees alongside the road. Two of his brothers lumbered out from the shade beneath the branches. The Nagas, Old Roger, and Howlaa had been sent in other directions, spread out to search for any Yucatazcan or Atlantean riders who had been left behind or sent back to the north as spies.

“No, Commander. Over the past several hours, we’ve caught two headed north and one, a messenger we think, headed south.”

“Were you able to decipher the message?”

“Afraid not,” one of the other ogres said.

Something was wrong. Damia frowned as she studied the three of them.

“So you brought the messenger back, of course,” she said hopefully. Their orders were very clear. If a spy had been caught with a communique, they were to attempt to decipher it, or to coerce the messenger to decode it. And if neither of those things was possible, they would bring the messenger to her.

The ogres shifted nervously, glancing at one another.

“Not exactly.”

The rest of her troops had almost caught up with her. Damia lifted a hand to signal that they should keep going and the cavalry began to thunder by. Damia shifted in her saddle. The mare danced to one side, just a bit, as she looked around at the ogres.

“Where is Gaka?”

A grunting laugh came from the woods. “Slow,” came a rasping voice.

The Japanese oni stepped from the trees, a snarl on his face. He carried a corpse in Yucatazcan battle dress over his shoulder. All three of his eyes stared at the ogres for a moment and then he turned to Damia.

“I could not move as quickly as these ugly donkeys, or I would have told the story a bit differently,” the demon said, hefting the corpse on his shoulder. “I questioned her, but she would not cooperate. My efforts to coerce her were unsuccessful. I’m sorry to say that I broke her.”

Gaka tossed the woman to the ground. Inside the armor, she was a bloody mess of broken limbs, which flopped at terrible angles when she landed.

Damia stared at her a moment, then looked at the ogres. Their eyes were on the passing troops-infantry now, the cavalry had already gone by. The commander turned and saw that her soldiers were staring at the broken, shattered corpse.

“Get her out of here,” she told Gaka.

He narrowed his three eyes, but nodded. “Yes, Commander.”

As he lifted the corpse, she addressed all four of the Borderkind. “Dispose of the body. When you’re through, spread out again. We’ve got a ways to go and I want all outriders stopped. This was ugly and unnecessary, but they’re better dead than free to roam. Next time you find a messenger, though, I expect you to bring her to me alive.”

The three ogres actually saluted her.

Gaka nodded solemnly, shouldered the dead soldier once more, and turned to go back into the forest.

Damia watched them vanish into the shadows of the woods, steadied herself, then spurred her horse on. Killing in battle was one thing. Torturing to death a girl who only fought because she’d been commanded to do so by generals tricked into doing the bidding of Atlantis was something else entirely.

She rode to catch up with the cavalry units, not meeting the eyes of the infantry who she knew would be gazing up at her as she passed. All of them would be thinking the same thing.

Ogres ate carrion.

That dead soldier girl couldn’t be considered anything but.

Damia could have ordered them to give her a decent burial, but not if she wanted the ogres to continue to fight under her command and in the army of King Hunyadi.

She tried not to think about it as she rode south. After a while, she noticed that the sense of excitement and joy and victory had dispersed. It seemed that her battalion did not feel like celebrating anymore.

The fox and the coyote crossed the Atlantic Bridge side by side, and the old gods of Rome and Greece followed behind. Shaken by the Sandman’s attack, Kitsune had transformed not long after they had set off again, preferring animal instinct and the relative isolation of the fox to the questions and concerns she would no doubt have encountered in her more human facade.

When she had begun the long crossing over the bridge, she had been touched to discover that Coyote had also taken animal form. The change that the past weeks had wrought upon him had been subtle at first, but now he seemed a different creature entirely. Her cousin had thrown off the cowardly guise he had worn for so long. He had sacrificed an eye trying to protect her. Though he had cleaned it, the wound was hideous to behold. Yet Kitsune would always see it as a mark of his valor, and a reminder of what he had lost. For a short time, the knowledge that he would be half-blind from then on had weighted her with guilt. But despite his pain, Coyote expressed no regret. He seemed only grimly determined, and so she took his demeanor as her inspiration. Had anyone ever suggested she might look to him for example, she would have laughed. But Coyote had changed. War had changed them all.

He fell into step beside her without a glance or a nudge, offering the comfort of his presence. A kind of relief went through her. In all her life, she had never felt such terror as she had when the Sandman had come for her. Coyote had been there for her then, and he shared the burden of the aftermath with her now.

A strong wind gusted across the bridge. The morning had dawned gently, soft white light on the horizon. Now the sun began to rise in earnest and the sky deepened to a glistening azure. Breathing the sweet air off of the river seemed to ease some of the tension and fear that lingered in the fox, and the further they traveled from the eastern bank, the better she felt.

The pilings of the bridge were set on tiny islands that dotted the river, many of them thick with trees. When the fox came to one particular island she paused a moment to peer into the branches of the many cherry trees that grew there. Once upon a time-not long ago, and yet it seemed distant in her memory-she and Frost had nearly died there at the hands of the demon of the cherry trees. Oliver Bascombe had saved their lives. The demon had been destroyed, but the memory came back to her powerfully. It might have been on that island that she had first begun to realize-even if only in her heart-that Oliver was something more than just an ordinary man.

The coyote nudged her.

The fox glanced at him. She smiled a smile that only an animal would recognize, gave a twitch of her tail, and trotted on. After a few steps she glanced back to see the gods trailing behind. Cronus came last, as always, huge and lumbering with his almost simian gait. Kitsune felt a fondness toward him she would never have imagined. The others were all so aloof, whether grim or giddy, but the simplicity of the Titan bonded her to him.

As the morning wore on, that formidable band of somber ancients arrived on the western bank of the Atlantic River. The moment they stepped off of the bridge, Kitsune altered her form again. With a thought, her fur slipped around her shoulders as a cloak and parted around her face as a hood. When she turned to look, the rangy little coyote had changed as well. He nodded to her, his missing eye a dark pit.

“You feeling any better?”

Kitsune nodded, scanning the bank of the river and the wide expanse of the Truce Road, which rose up the hill to the west.

“He could have killed me,” she said without looking at Coyote.

“I thought you told me he was dead?”

“He was. I saw him die. Him and the Dustman and a human called Halliwell.”

Coyote pushed his hands into his pockets, glancing back at the gods as the last of them marched to the riverbank. “Then what did we just fight? What did this to me?” He pointed to his missing eye. “And what made him pause like that? He could have broken you apart before any of us could help.”

She shivered. A sick grin touched her lips. “Thanks for the image.”

Coyote shrugged. “It’s just the truth.”

“I know. But I don’t have any answers.”

The gods surrounded her, then. Assurances were exchanged and the march began again. They kept to the middle of the Truce Road and did not encounter a soul along the way, neither Lost One nor legend. In the trees on the roadside, animals foraged and capered, and a trio of hawks circled in the sky perhaps a mile off.

At the top of the hill, Kitsune stopped again.

Below them, the road turned slightly southward. Thick groves of apple and pear trees lay on either side, and other fruits grew there as well. Past the orchards was a broad expanse of crops-corn and wheat and barley and a hundred other things.

“What is it?” Bellona asked, impatience in her voice.

Kitsune turned to look into the dark eyes of the goddess of war. Behind her, Hesperos and Salacia seemed troubled, gazing down across the orchards and crops.

“You’ve never traveled this way before?”

Bellona shook her head. “But I feel something-a powerful presence here.”

“The gods of the Harvest,” Kitsune explained. “They linger, gathered together from a hundred cultures. They travel afar, but they have made a kind of home here.”

Bellona flinched. She glanced back at Hesperos and Salacia, the closest of her companions, and Kitsune saw anxiety in their eyes. It could not have been called fear-not for beings of their power and history-but their hesitation was plain.

“What is it?” the fox-woman asked.

The goddess of war did not reply, so Kitsune glanced at the others.

“If this is the sanctuary of other gods,” Salacia said, “we should not enter without being given leave.”

Most of the other gods kept to themselves. Ares, in particular, made no move to approach the conversation the Borderkind were having with his kin. Coyote reached into his pocket and produced a hand-rolled cigarette and then a match with a flourish that drew all eyes to him. He lit the cigarette and drew a lungful, then shook out the match. It vanished in his hand like some parlor trick. Smoke plumed from his nostrils.

“Kitsune and I will go. If there’s a concern about going into their territory without permission, it’s best you all stay here. Tricksters are expected to break the rules.”

Slowly, Bellona nodded. Kitsune thought she might be reluctant to admit Coyote was right, but she had no choice.

“All right,” the fox-woman said, glancing at her cousin. “With me, then.”

She started down the hill.

“You’re the boss,” Coyote said, following.

Kitsune wondered when that had happened. Once she’d been nothing but mischief, a little trickster in copper fur, capering in the forests and dallying with men and legends. Now the last of the bitter old gods followed her lead, and the never-reliable Coyote watched her back.

Together the tricksters followed the Truce Road, accompanied only by the sound of the breeze rustling the trees on either side and their own soft footfalls on the hard earth. A loud bark came from behind them. Only when Kitsune turned did she realize it had been the voice of Cronus. He made as if to follow them, perhaps taking her safety as his mission, but Bellona and Ares had halted him.

Kitsune smiled softly. It could not hurt to have a Titan watching over her.

The air filled with the sweet smell of apples and pears at their fullest ripeness. Orange nectar drifted on the breeze. Kitsune shivered with the heady pleasure of those and a dozen other scents all in impossible simultaneous bloom. Her mouth watered.

Coyote began to stray toward a peach tree.

“No,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Not without an invitation. Stay to the road.”

He nodded, still smoking his cigarette. Its herbal smell mixed with the aromas of fruit, and she realized this was his way of offering peace to the gods of the Harvest even before they had encountered those earth deities. Silently, she approved.

Long minutes passed.

When they at last reached the end of the orchards and the sides of the road turned to field upon field of crops that rippled and swayed in the breeze, they saw the first of the gods moving in amongst the corn. Stalks danced aside as it passed.

On the road ahead, figures began to emerge. Some of them she recognized. There were lovely, ethereal females and animals whose bodies were made entirely of stalks and husks and branches. Twice while traveling with Oliver she had encountered a group of these gods-once upon this very spot-and now she saw the Kornbocke step from the rows, its head high despite the heavy rack of antlers upon its head. The Appletree Man ought to have been back in the orchards, but he was there as well, and shuffled upon thick, knotted roots to the edge of the road.

The hard-packed dirt of that ancient road-once the symbol of truce between the Two Kingdoms-trembled.

“This can’t be normal,” Coyote whispered. “They don’t come out like this every time a traveler passes by.”

Kitsune agreed. Something transpired here that she did not understand.

Even as the thought touched her mind, the road ahead erupted with thick cornstalks, rustling against one another.

“What the hell?” Coyote asked, stub of a cigarette dangling in his hand. When he dropped it, roots thrust from it down into the soil of the road, and a tiny garden of herbs grew up on the spot. The ravaged socket of his missing eye had changed his face so that his expression was difficult to read.

Kitsune stared at the herbs, then looked at the corn that grew wild right before their eyes. A trickle of fear ran down her back. Once she had feared very little, but the Sandman had unsettled her.

Determined, she stepped forward.

The cornstalks twined around one another, twisting and layering and building themselves into a tall, humanoid figure.

“Ahren Konigen,” she whispered as the features became clear.

Coyote shot a glance at her. “The harvest king?”

Kitsune nodded.

Konigen stood watching them, though he had only blank, shadowed pits where the corn husks that comprised his face were indented to imply the presence of eyes.

The gods of the Harvest gathered round them. Coyote shifted nervously.

“You are welcome here, Kitsune,” Ahren Konigen said, his voice a rustle.

The wind rippled the crops. The gods of the Harvest seemed to sigh.

“You have our thanks,” Kitsune replied.

Konigen did not seem to hear her. “We have been awaiting your arrival. You travel slowly, for legends and gods.”

Kitsune blinked. She frowned and glanced back up the hill to where the old gods of Greece and Rome waited in the road.

“We met with difficulty across the bridge,” Coyote replied for her, reaching up to touch the raw flesh at the edge of his empty eye socket.

She turned and saw the knotted brows of the harvest king draw more tightly together, stalks twisting. “The roots have carried the news. We might have come to your aid, but your trouble ended quickly.”

“It’s kind of you, Konigen,” Kitsune said. “And you are right. We do not travel swiftly enough. We journey toward the border to help King Hunyadi repel an invasion-”

The king raised his hands to take in all of the other gods of the Harvest, and the two tricksters as well.

“Do you think word has not reached us?” he asked in that rustling voice. The husks of his face rearranged themselves into what might have been a smile. “Word travels fast along the roots underground, and sometimes on the breeze from tree to tree. We have been waiting for you, Kitsune, because a vote has been taken.”

Confused and a bit worried, Kitsune studied him. She glanced at Coyote, trying to form the question that needed to be asked. Konigen did not wait.

“You have been our ally in the past. You and Oliver Bascombe, who revealed the crimes of Aerico and returned Appleseed to us. The schemes of Atlantis threaten us all. When we learned that you traveled this way, in league with the gods of Europe, the Harvest voted. We will join you in this journey. The Harvest will stand or fall with Hunyadi. With Euphrasia. For if Atlantis should win, surely they will burn us to the ground.”

Kitsune drew back her hood, staring at Konigen with wide eyes. Her copper fur glistened in the sunlight as the wind billowed it around her.

“Your Highness, I cannot find the words to thank you.”

The king of the harvest inclined his head, almost courtly. “There is no need. You have proven your mettle, trickster. We call you friend. And this matter concerns us all.

“Now, call down the gods from across the river and we will all be as one, allied in this cause, with destruction or victory the only possible outcomes.”

Kitsune felt the shadow of the night’s terror dispelled at last. A vibrant energy surged up through her. She wished, in that moment, that the next turn in the road would bring them to the enemy, so that they could join in the battle that very moment.

“It would be our honor,” she said.

Coyote glanced around at the Harvest gods gathered there. Further into the fields, other things moved through the crops. Kitsune wondered how many there were, guessing at least two hundred. Most would not have the power that Konigen or the Kornbocke had, but they were all very difficult to kill and could be cunning and cruel when the need arose.

“Let’s be off, then,” Konigen said. “I have sent word ahead to Oliver that we would join his band by midday, and the sun is already overhead.”

Kitsune froze. The words hardly seemed real. Knots formed in her stomach and her skin flushed as all of her guilt and shame returned.

“What do you mean? Oliver’s in Yucatazca. Ty’Lis has him in the king’s dungeon in Palenque.”

Corn husks twined together on Konigen’s face. “The roots bring the truth. Oliver escaped. He travels with his lover and a coterie of Borderkind. They came through the sandcastle that had stood for centuries just south of here, but once they left the place, the castle fell.”

Kitsune stared at him. “It fell?”

“Collapsed,” Konigen replied. “It is nothing but sand, now. And the roots bring whispers that the same thing has happened to all of the monster’s other castles-at least within the Two Kingdoms. They wait for us in the ruin of the Sandman’s castle, and from there we shall all march to war.”

“And he knows we’re coming?” Kitsune asked, mystified that Oliver would be waiting for her, but wondering, as well, if after all of the intervening months he could have forgiven her.

Konigen nodded. “He waits.”

Kitsune felt numb. She did not know how Oliver would greet her, what bitterness might have stayed with him during his time in Palenque’s dungeon. But how could she hesitate?

“Coyote,” she said, “hurry back to Bellona and the others. Tell the gods they have found allies amongst the Harvest.”

But even as he ran up the hill, five words echoed in her mind.

He travels with his lover.