gobbledygook (n.) language that is meaningless or is made unintelligible.

He had spent four days with them by the end of it. No one had expected it to last this long, but no one had complained, either, though occasionally he found himself staring at the clock and ignoring their murmured talk and wondering if this meant he had been lying, prone, in his own bed, in his own time, for three days. They were in no rush to see him leave: he thought that perhaps their Hierophant had done something to insult them, just before his arrival, which was, it had to be said, rather in the nature of the Hierophant – and most especially in the nature of this one. When one came unstuck in time, one lost all sense of scale, he thought.

He knew that they had not expected him to stay for long, but they had seemed glad of him. They were living, not in the prison cells to which Gijsbert's generation had been consigned, and not in the government compound to which Chjara's people had been confined, but in a little stone house in a town full of little stone houses. He slept on the floor, next to their Chariot, who seemed ill at ease departing from his side for even a second, and cooked dinner with their Lover, who did her best in the kitchen god-love-her though her best was paltry, and whiled away nights playing cards with their Tower, who needed their Moon to hang over-shoulder and devise strategem for each hand. They had not played cards before he arrived. They had not told stories around the hearth – though, indeed, they told no stories now either. They just listened, rapt, to Gijsbert. He told them what he knew. He told them lies. He told them about the cursemaker, and he told them about the Fall, and he told them about the Rise, and he told them stories that he had heard, first, from them, echoed back in turn so that they heard them now for the first time.

They listened, fascinated. They did not ask him what he would wish for, when his tenure was done, when the curses were reunited as twelve at the sacellum and the chancellor repaid His xrafstars for their labour and their sacrifice. They did not ask him, and he did not ask them. It was not a topic for this time; it did not bear thinking about.

These Warriors had seemed happier when he was there, and so he had wanted to stay. Before his arrival, they had orbited around each other, silently, strangely. Playing at domesticity, he thought, even as the curses rotted them from the inside out. Waiting to be useful. Waiting to save the world. They had been promised the same as he had, then. The last great war. The last great mission. Just wait. Bide your time. Let the curses take root, and ignore how inhuman it makes you feel in the morning, when some part of your face is gone, or when your heart calcifies in your chest, or when you cannot remember who you were before this.

It was almost better, he thought, to be taken from the gaols, as he had been. Better than the way that they had reaped this lot, children all. Death seemed less scary when you were old acquaintances. Glory mattered less. There had been a sense of relief which had bonded his Warriors quite immediately, though they had regarded one another warily across the square when first they were introduced. There was no such thing as honour among thieves. They had to separate them at night, to make sure that none of them would try to kill the others.

By comparison, this lot were quite relaxing. They took long walks sometimes, between empty houses, across a landscape blighted by a war which should never have come to this world. When they looked down at the places on the soil where people had died, a kind of tension arose which was wordless, for which they had no words, but which sent the Lover to bed early that night crying for her father and which had the Chariot slipping to stand hand-in-hand, and saying, almost plaintively, "it had to be done, didn't it? It had to be done."

Gijsbert had said, "yes, I think so, I think it did."

"And it mattered, Gijs?"

He had lied. "Of course it mattered."

He felt it, when he was about to go. It was like lifting out of his skin, feeling his heart drop lower and lower in his self until it was his heart no longer. Four days, he thought, that wasn't so bad. Four days. He could live with that much. It had been a nice moment of calm, after seeing so much personal ruination through Chjara's eyes, after watching the annihilation of Opona. It had felt like a last moment of peace before sleeping forever.

He had been cutting carrots when he felt it. He said, "I think he's on his way back. I think he's finally waking up."

Their Star had said, tremulously, "we'll see you again, won't we?"

At initiation, yes, the survivors had been gathered, ready to welcome the new Warriors to share their forsaken path. They had been few in number, he did not tell her, so few. And older, so much older, no longer the children they had been – though never the adults they ought to have become. The oldest had been seventeen. The Chariot had been dead four years by the time Gijsbert's Salomão had taken her place. She had been thirteen years old when she died. He did not tell her that now. Let her have her next two years, he thought. Let her struggle with them. Let her, in ignorance, hope.

He had said, "yes, you will see me again."

He had reached out a hand – not scarred, he noted, unbranded, not dripping with rings. He put a hand, gently, on the poor Chariot's head. Dead, he thought, in two years.

"Be nice to Tymoteusz, when he comes back. He is nice to me, when I'm your age."

How strange it had been, to dwell amongst them, alive and angry and expecting more, expecting more without even realising, truly, that it was owed to them.

Their anger settled in his chest, as much a part of him now as his own liver.

When he next awoke, Ybont Ddrylliog was ablaze below. They were on the slopes of a mountain bruised all purple with dry heather, and looking onto the City of Sighing Bridges below. The flames kissed the very horizon of the empyrean; the world was hemmed in between the grey clouds overhead, the grey smoke below. Red fire below, red blood above. He could not stop staring. It was a beautiful city. He had loved it, when he had visited. Just once. They had tried to hang him. And now it was burning.

And the Moon of Kur had been stabbed.

He was holding a sword. He wondered if the two were related.

Their Lover was wild-eyed as she called again. "Dimitar."

She didn't look like Gijsbert's Lucie, who was tall and thin and red-haired. This Lover was broad of face and of shoulder, each expression dimpled with two crescents on either side of a full mouth, even when she focused this intently. Her eyes were a very bright green, her hair a dark brown. She looked like a natural creature. She could have been hewn from an old tree, moss and all.

How had he known, then, that she was the Lover? If she looked nothing like Lucie? What carried through each life, and on to the next? What part of her was the curse – what part of her was the rest?

How lost was Dimitar?

He dropped the sword. It fell to the grass. It was a piece of art: a schiavona sword, with an intricate gold-leaf basket surrounding the hilt. It was a weapon designed for piercing, with a tip so finely honed and sharp that it was practically invisible. Blood had run in long rivulets down the channels made for them, smearing the intricate engravings which had been made on its blade, as though to implicitly bless whatever awful butchery it was elected to perform. He did not drop it so much as he threw it aside.

He knelt beside their Lover. Their Moon's blood sank into the soil around them. He said, and heard the ghost of that poor dead Chariot echo in his voice, "will this matter? Dead girl, will this matter much?"

The Lover stared at him, wide-eyed. "Darling?"

He said, "what should I tell them? What can I tell you?" Any messages for the future? Any warnings for the past?

"Dimitar, I don't understand – help me, now."

He was in a strong body this time, so much stronger than the last, so much stronger than his own. He could wrap his arms around this Moon and lift her – she was older than the Lover by some five years, too old, in truth, for Warriordom, why had no one talked her out of it? – and follow their Lover. She scrambled first for the sword, seizing it roughly around the hilt, and then up the slopes, so that she was returned to the moss and the heather, disappearing amongst them as though it was her birthright. He followed her, glad to be help this much, and when he felt the shade of Dimitar Hristov returned to wrench back control of this body he, for a split second, resisted.

He wanted to help. He wanted to be a Hierophant that had done something. He wanted, desperately, to have mattered. Having seen what came – having seen what was ahead – why hadn't they stopped her? Why had they let him go?

How could any of this matter if it was going to end the same way: those eyes, that light?

But Dimitar Hristov, wherever he had been, whatever he was, had never kept faith in another generation, another Hierophant. He knew what they all were; he knew what became of them, in the end, and he knew better than to trust them. Not with his wife. Not with his Warriors.

It was not a gentle lifting out of this time, as it had been when Tymoteusz returned; instead, Gijsbert rather found himself flung from this place, from this time, and as he went he noted that Dimitar Hristov did not so much as falter in his step in reasserting himself, only tightened his hands over their Moon and hastened his pace to follow his Lover into the smoke.

" – think you should be looking so confused."

He was getting better at this: he could recognise the archetypes more quickly. Even this one, he recognised in a single moment. She didn't look like his Inga, not really. Inga had been small and blonde and darting of eye, all coltish limbs and rapunzel hair. This Moon was all straight strong lines, all black and red and green. Even the apple in her hand was coloured so, though the knife in her hand flashed silver.

He said, "who said I was confused?"

"You did. Just now."

"Yes," he said. "Well, I am. Kut, I just didn't know where I was..."

She had paused, momentarily, in her butchery of the fruit in her hand, and looked at him. "I hadn't realised that you had dropped in." She was sitting on a stone worktop in a very small workshop space, her legs folded beneath her, a green coat draped over her lap. The calmness in her voice reassured him slightly that he was, at last, in a time after his own – he was, at last, in a place where he was recognised. Which generation was this, then, to remember humble Gijsbert Barnhardt? Seventh generation, he thought, perhaps eighth, if his mother had lived a little long while. He took a moment to glance over his hands, as though this could tell him anything. It could not, though one nail had been nearly ripped from its place by some great force; he peeled it off, and dropped it to the ground. It would sting, of course, but he would bear that for this poor bastard, whoever he was. He was shorter than Dimitar; he was leaner. He ran his hands through this hair, and wondered at the tension in these shoulders. These were unhappy people. These were people existing on the precipice of the gallows.

The Moon leaned forward and offered him a piece of fruit, speared on the tip of her knife. "Apple?"

"Apple," he agreed. It made him smile. Did she know that some ancestor of hers had greeted him similarly? For Petra, of course, it had been a fish, speared on a fork in the twelfth generation, and he had spent twenty minutes there with her in the dark woods, over a miserable fire spitting wet sparks, while she turned slowly back into a person. She had been glad for the company; he had been glad to offer it. It was getting harder, she had told him. She had been quite calm about it all: soon it would be her cousin's duty to hunt her down and gut her, quite like a fish.

It had tasted good; the skin had been very crispy. He had not asked her what she and the Hierophant were doing here, hands covered in soil and a shovel at his side, deep in the mountains so far away from the world.

Here, though, the world was close; the world was hemmed in all around them. The room in which they were sitting was square and brick-walled, and there were lanterns lit beside the door. There were people coming down the stairs, and as they arrived, he could not help but draw in an inhale and steel himself, properly steel himself, for here was Khalore the Hanged Man, and Wondrous Ina, who Ina was saying something indistinctly: Zoran. Pjotr. Do you want to come upstairs? We're putting a plan together. And here, now, beside Inga's descendant, was their Chariot dressed in gray.

So this was their Chariot.

Inga's descendant stripped off another stripe of fruit and said, rather calmly, "it isn't Zoran."

The Chariot threw her a suspicious look. Suspicious, Gijs thought. Wasn't that a precious irony? "Then, who…?"

Gijsbert had been able to get some practice at this next step, this far into the process. What had he said to Lovely Ina and Khalore the Hanged Man, the first time he had spoken to them? He would say the same words, as though totemic; he would make it easy on them and on himself, when they met him first, as he had already met them – the same moment, experienced from different angles, experiencing different shadows.

Ah. Precisely: he remembered tasting ashes, when he had last spoke thus, when he had heard this voice before. "My name is Gijs. How do you do?"

"He's lost his mind," was the not-unpredictable response. Their Chariot was staring at him. Usually, Gijs would have welcomed it. "He's finally lost his mind."

"Who am I, then?"

"You're –"

"Our Hierophant," their Moon said. "Ignore them, he caused a bit of trouble before you jumped in."

This was, it had to be said, rather in the nature of the Hierophant. Too busy living then or there to deal with the trouble you were causing here and now. Zoran, Gijsbert thought ruefully, was Zoran ever going to learn? He might not get the chance; he might not get the choice.

"That's helpful," he said. "Makes everything a bit more convenient. I've been in this one before…"

He turned over Zoran's hands. Zoran, he thought again, and yes, that made sense – there were the callouses of one pretending to be a carpenter rather than a prophet, these were his long, pale, fingers more suited to playing piano than to strangulation, these were his patched trousers, damp around the ankles where he had recently waded into a body of water. He would have liked a body like this, Gijsbert thought. It was a good size; it was a good strength. It was not always a balance the gods got right.

Gijsbert glanced up, and smiled. "Was there to be a meeting, then?"

Delightful Inanna said, "Gijsbert, this is the World and the Tower."

Gijsbert squinted at the young men in question, and found that she was only partially correct. He nodded politely, in case this was a test of some kind. "Delighted to meet you both," he said. He was quite sure that the Tower had not heard him. He was quite sure that the Tower had not been permitted to hear him. The Tower was sitting in a chair beside the window, his eyes filmed over all blue, as though they had stitched over his sclera with little fragments of a shattered sky.

Wretched Eero, with eyes that were not his own, said, "I see. How far into the nine hours are you?"

"You are," Gijsbert said, "the third person to mention nine hours to me. It's all starting to feel rather ominous, you know."

The Chariot said, "have you been to a generation after us? What can you tell us about the future?" He bore a not inconsiderable resemblance to one of the boys who had been in the mines with Gijsbert, whose eyes had always worn purple shadows beneath them, whose mouth had tasted like black coffee. Gijsbert said, "what was your name again?"

"Ilja."

"Well, Ilja, the answer to that would be that the nineteenth generation is the farthest that I've reached, but that I haven't tried particularly far to reach farther."

"Curious," Ilja said, "that you're visiting us twice."

"Is it? You make for darling company."

"Were we the only ones?" Khalore the Hanged Man asked.

"So far. Your Matthias seemed to think –"

"He's not our Matthias," Lovely Ina interrupted, her voice severe.

"Regardless. He seems to think I have a few more visits to make."

Khalore the Hanged Man nodded, and looked down at the piece of paper clutched in one hand – she still clutched a weapon in the other, just in case. A smart girl, Gijsbert thought. She would have done marvellously in his generation. "Eighth, seventh, eleventh, eighteenth, ninth, third, second, first – it sounds like a countdown, at the end, there."

The Moon said, quietly delighted, "so you'll get a chance to meet our Matthias for yourself."

Gijsbert wasn't quite sure that any mortal man could live up to the utter diversity of expression worn by these Warriors. He tried to name each emotion as it flickered across their faces: Wretched Eero was openly dismissive, Ilja the Chariot was disdainful, Khalore the Hanged Man was wary, and the delightful Lover had an expression stranded between anger and hopelessness. Ah, now, Ina, he wanted to say, you haven't seen the worst of it yet.

Khalore the Hanged Man collapsed onto the bed, screwdriver in hand, as Lovely Ina painfully cleared her throat and said, with great delicacy, "I think we need to end this now."

Gijsbert said nothing, only observed; it was Ilja who was oddly kind enough to lean in close, and murmur to him, softly, "we are in Illéa. We're about to take the Radiance."

Gijsbert hoped that the assembled Warriors would forgive him his open laughter. "Illéa?"

And yet no one smiled.

His smile faded. He said, "that's impossible. It's a druj-strewn wasteland, blighted in every direction, fretted by unholy fire, only a single fortress remaining for the Schreaves and their devils to huddle in–"

They had, briefly, threatened the people of the gaols with deportation there – here – to these blasted shores. Only when the gaolers had come to fetch them and found men hanging in their dozens had the entire plan had they realised how clearly the horror of Illéa had been etched in the mind of the normal citizen.

"No," Khalore the Hanged Man said drily, "no, it's a kingdom. They have a population in its millions."

"Bit less now," Wretched Eero murmured. The Moon was silent.

"You're quite right about the rest of it," Ilja said. "Devils all."

Delightful Ina said, "we were – I used to have a bakery here."

She had fatted them for their slaughter and done so guiltlessly. He took a moment to admire her. She looked rather as though she did not know why she had said what she had said, only that it had seemed, in the moment, important. Well, people made their own importance. He took a single moment to regret that she had spoken in past tense – he was craving a pain au chocolat.

He said, "if that is your mission, then how can I assist?"

"Anything you know," Beautiful Ina said softly. "Anything."

What could he tell her? He knew what she wanted him to tell her – what she had wanted him to tell her – what she would want him to tell her. But what else? That he had ignored the grave that Petra and her Hierophant had carved out of the earth in favour of focusing on the fish and the flatbread and the friendly conversation that the Moon had, exhausted of inhumanity, been desperate to offer over a mouldering fire? That he had stood in the clocktower, strewn with the shadow of its every cog and ratchet and tusk, that he had stared at the chancellor, unsure of the wish of the Hierophant in whose body he stood, unable to evade the perfect electric-blue gaze of the man waiting to hear that wish? That living in the seventh generation – the generation of civil war – had been an hour of war on a piece of land whose name he did not know, whose name he would never know, watching the Warriors around him tear a swathe through fellow men and women of Kur, devastatingly effective only because they had cared not a whit for their fellow xrafstar? Or perhaps that he had stood with them on the roof of the dockmaster's building, staring out at familiar docks, and watching armaggedon appear on the horizon in the form of an angel as brilliant as it was terrible?

That last part, he thought. The last part was the most helpful. Helpful? Would it force them further down this path or turn them onto one so much worse? But what had he not already told them? He said, "you didn't have time to tell me much. I showed up. You seemed happy to see me, though there was little to be happy about. You asked me if this was what I had seen before, and I didn't – obviously."

"Obviously," Ilja echoed.

And she had said – why was he putting it off? "You said he had the Radiance," he said, and knew that the smile spreading slowly across Ilja's face would be short-lived. "You said he had taken it from you."

Khalore the Hanged Man frowned. "He?"

Gijs slid his eyes away from the group. He could almost hear his Salomão's voice in his ear, mocking: is he in the room with us right now? He said, "the World."

"That's good," Gorgeous Ina said, hesitantly. "That's –" She whipped her head around to stare at the young man in the corner of the room, standing beside the shell of his brother. Gijs imagined that those golden eyes of hers, sunken into her face and surrounded by charcoal pits of burn wounds as they were, made for a piercing gaze when she wanted them to. "Eero?"

Wretched Eero said, "I certainly thought so." He tilted his head. That long hair of his cast golden shadows across his face, accentuating those bright, bright blue eyes of His. "Our friend doesn't seem to agree. Am I still on the side of Illéa, Gijsbert? As far as you know?"

As far as you know.

Gijsbert nodded.

"Then..."

"Then we win," Ilja said.

Gijsbert stared at him. "You win," he agreed. "You..."

The angel's wings had touched either side of the horizon. The light had been like a supernova exploding on the mere edge of the harbour, bright enough to blind, forcing back every hint of shadow to the east. The sky might have fragmented, the sea might have boiled – he wasn't sure. He just remembered thinking that this was the Fall of Kur as it had been told them, writ over again.

And they had caused it.

So why was he helping them?

Nine hours, he thought, and thought of the little Sixth Chariot looking up at him and asking if it had mattered. Just nine hours.

Ah, but he wasn't to be here for long. If Tymoteusz had drifted back, and Dimitar had forced his way in by sheer force of will, then Zoran was clawing his way out of whatever pit he had sunk into, desperately. Gijsbert certainly did not want to be here when he found his way back,

"Budge over, Khalore," Gijsbert said, and Khalore the Hanged Man, frowning, did so. Gijsbert was glad he had learned this much; kicking off Zoran's shoes, he sat onto the bed beside her and lay down, setting Zoran's head safely on the pillow. "Okay. Better. Anything else?"

Kinga's head floated over his, her one good eye dark and staring. "Tell Matthias –"

"I probably won't be seeing Matthias." He'd be stepping into him. If he could believed, he being Matthias. He wasn't sure if he believed him, he being Gijsbert.

She rolled her eye. "Fine. Then, tell Jaga –"

Khalore the Hanged Man cut her off. "Tell them to warn the Commandant."

Gijsbert raised his eyebrow. He was delighted to learn that Zoran could raise one eyebrow independently of the other; it was a most pleasant way to express the kind of relaxed sardonicism Gijsbert had inhabited for much of his life. "Warn him of what?"

"That we can't do this," Lovely Ina said, softly. "That we don't know what to do. That they mixed up the curses, and sent Belle and Nez after us, and Nez killed Ghjuvan anyway. That we could have done with Myghal here. That our Hierophant is moving blind, and our curses aren't – that we can't do this. Tell him to try again."

"He will not," Gijsbert said.

Her voice was colder than he thought it could be. "You don't know him."

"No," Gijsbert said. "I don't. But I know you."

She shook her head. "You've met us twice."

He said, "I'm a quick study. I won't tell him you can't do this, because it's not the truth."

It also would not make a difference – that wasn't something he could really say and not feel like a total bastard on his way out. So: the niceties. When there was nothing left but the thought of that angel and its light – yes, he thought, yes, he could afford to be a little bit nice. Even now. Even here.

He folded his hands over his sternum – Zoran's hands over Zoran's sternum. "What number next, Khalore the Hanged Man?"

Khalore the Hanged Man glanced down at the sheet of paper. "Eighth."

"Eighth generation," he murmured. "Alright. Should be simpler."

Gorgeous Ina knelt beside the bed, and took Zoran's hand. "What are you going to tell them, then?"

"The truth."

She glared at him. It was quite an expression. He was so fortunate that he'd never felt for a woman, or else he rather thought he might be in some degree of trouble for the rest of – whatever remained of his nine hours spinning helplessly through time and space? Ah, Salomão had tried to warn him.

"Oh," Gijsbert said. "One other thing."

Delightful Ina said, "you have an impeccably dramatic sense of timing."

Ilja coughed out a laugh. "I swear to god, it's like Zoran is still with us."

"He'll be back with you in a moment," Gijsbert said dismissively. "Listen: you're going to take someone."

Wretched Eero was watching him closely. Lovely Ina frowned. "We'll take your word for it."

"Do it," he said. "I'm telling you to do it. Don't listen to anyone who tells you not to."

"Who?"

"I don't know that."

"Helpful," Khalore the Hanged Man bit out.

Gijsbert smiled. Yes. He was doing what he could. He was doing his best.

Delightful Ina leaned close. Her voice was warm on his throat. "Is Zoran going to be himself? When he comes back?"

"As much as he ever will be again."

She touched his forehead very gently. "Will he be alright?"

"Yes," Gijsbert said. A lie, at this late hour, couldn't hurt too much. "Yes. He'll be perfect."