They leave the sleep­ing beast and make their way to the Cir­cus’ back gravitic door. There isn’t any clear lever or astrate gem to open it from the inside. Gil tries to open it with the card, wav­ing it and twist­ing it in ele­gant arcs and slashes.

Noth­ing hap­pens.

Gil takes a close look at the busi­ness edge of the stone card. He curses.

Gil crouches down and cups his hands together, and Kiddu care­fully places her foot on his palms. She kicks her other foot off the ground, pro­pelling her­self up the wall.

He instantly falls over on his back, and she lands on his chest.

She rolls off of him and helps him up. After Gil spends a few min­utes catch­ing his breath, they try again. This time Kiddu lands on his stom­ach.

The fifth time turns out to be a charm. From her perch, Kiddu pulls Gil up the wall, and they both sit pant­ing on top of the rough bricks.

They hud­dle close and duck down low. If any sol­diers patrolling the Divid­ing Wall had been watch­ing the Cir­cus, they surely would have seen their clumsy wall-climbing escapade. But Gil doesn’t see any sor­cerer helmet-lights look­ing his way.

Foot­steps echo from some­where in the night. Gil scans the streets for their source, but finds noth­ing. After mid­night on a week­day, the streets are usu­ally empty. But they have to make sure if they’re going to take off run­ning after the explo­sion.

For all its dirt­i­ness and chaos, Gil is sur­prised at how beau­ti­ful Libri looks at night. Granted, the Divid­ing Wall to the east is an ugly night­mare of brick and bar­ri­cades. But the Akka­dian part sur­round­ing the big tri­an­gle of the Wall looks peace­ful, even a lit­tle quaint, with its soft adobe build­ings and cactus-lined boule­vards.

The excep­tion is Emperor Zargon’s giant statue, which is not quaint at all. Because the Cir­cus sits on a hill, Gil can see the whole giant struc­ture loom­ing over Vic­tory Square, ris­ing nearly as high as the Divid­ing Wall.

She flicks the wheel on top of the flicker. A faint spark flies out, but not enough to light the wick of the flame­craft. She tries again, but still no luck.

He takes it, and nearly turns back to look down at the slum­ber­ing lamashu below—but some­thing catches his eye.

There’s move­ment around the base of the Emperor’s statue: a shadow cir­cles around it. To the east, the sol­diers on the Divid­ing Wall have a clear line of sight to the shadow in the Square. But their atten­tion is still focused on the native side.

Gil squints at the fig­ure. In the faint starlight he thinks he can make out a long, curved shape on its back.