flying buttresses (Gothic) and its hints of gilded geometry (art deco), like the sanctuary of a church. The heavy wooden doors leading outside only enhanced that feeling. Cameron would have approved, she thought. She walked straight toward the doors, her path, for the moment, clear of obstacles—
“Sloane.”
A man she didn’t recognize stepped in front of her. Military, she decided, judging by his impeccable posture, ample musculature, and—right, the uniform. Navy-blue pants, casual, tucked into his boots. Long-sleeved gray shirt, sleeves pushed up to his elbows. The same symbol that the others by the river walk had pinned to their chests was stitched on the right side of his chest.
She considered sprinting for the doors, but she decided the time wasn’t right for such an act of desperation—not yet, anyway. So she just made a show of not being intimidated.
“Listen,” she said, “the more determined you are to keep me here, the more determined I’m going to be to leave. So why don’t we skip the whole ramp up in tensions?”
“Okay,” the man said. “What if I told you that my job is not to stop you from leaving but to accompany you to ensure that you don’t get into any trouble?”
Sloane looked out the windows to the street beyond them, the view obscured by the thick ripple in each pane of glass. She could almost taste the air coming off the water of Lake Michigan.
“I should add,” the man said, “that if you don’t agree to let me do my job, there will be a lot of fuss and tedious arguing.”
“All right,” she said. “Fine.”
“My name is Kyros,” he said, offering his hand for her to shake. Firm grip, she thought. Not surprising. “I’m a captain in the new Army of Flickering. Not that that will mean much to you.”
He wore a siphon on his wrist, simpler than the ones she had observed thus far, just polished metal plates covering the back of his hand and palm but leaving his fingers free. The logo she had seen on the siphon she had used the day before—the creature with the head of a bird, torso of a man, and tail of a snake—was etched into one of the plates.
“Magic army,” she said. “Right. What makes it new?”
“The previous army was massacred by the Resurrectionist,” he replied. “Where would you like to go?”
Guess we’re just going to breeze past the massacre, then? she thought. “To the lake,” she said.
The lakefront had always been a kind of anchor for her; if she ever lost her way, all she had to do was find it, and she would know which way was east. She could name the streets that ran parallel to it: Lake Shore, Columbus, Michigan, Wabash, State, Dearborn, Clark, LaSalle, all the way to the river. Going there, to the water, might help her find something steady inside her, even in Genetrix.
Kyros flicked his index finger at the double doors, and they opened. His control, she noted, was impressive; the doors opened just enough for both of them rather than flying apart as they had done for Aelia. But regardless, it seemed like a frivolous use of magic.
“For future reference,” she said as she passed through them, “I can open my own doors.”
“My apologies,” Kyros said. “It’s just a reflex.”
A world of magic at your fingertips, she thought, and you’re using it to open a door.
Outside, they fell into step right away with the rest of the population on the sidewalk. Sloane noted their shoes—they favored pointed toes with hard bottoms that made sharp sounds, almost like tap shoes—and the heavy drape of fabric around their necks and shoulders, which left their throats bare to display throat siphons; the wide sleeves that stopped in the middle of their forearms to show off wrist siphons; the intricately braided hair that revealed bejeweled ear siphons, the most ornate kind, by Sloane’s observation. Across the street was the comforting sight of the Daley Center, a dark brown block of a building that had, evidently, made it through the splitting of their two universes. But across the street, where at home there had been a tall, modern structure with pale blue windows, there was a cluster of spires that reminded her of the church in Barcelona, La Sagrada Família, made of dense and ornate stone.
The thought brought a familiar pang. Cameron had once brought home a book on architecture from the library and he must have forgotten to return it, because Sloane had found it in