Not ten minutes later, Twist chided himself sternly for saying something so final. The mist thickened to such an extreme that it was difficult to see more than an arm's length away, and a strange, shifting wind picked up only to confuse them more. The crew of the Vimana drew back the ship's sails, fearful that they could be damaged in this bizarre weather. Arabel came to take Jonas, Aazzi, and Twist back to the ship, but Twist refused to leave Myra for an instant.

  “Aazzi and Jonas are the only ones who can see in this mist,” Arabel persisted. “If one of them wants to stay, then fine. But what can you do by staying? It'll be much safer on the ship.”

  “I'm not leaving her alone,” Twist said flatly.

  “You're insufferable sometimes, you know that?” Arabel snapped at him. “You said yourself, she's asleep. Trust me, no one can even move in this mist. No one will be able to bother her at all until it clears.”

  “Ara,” Jonas said, his tone calming.

  “What?” Arabel snapped at Jonas. “Am I wrong? Or are you just siding with him for the sake of it?”

  Twist's attention drifted for a moment onto the mist that was creeping in through the broken windows.

  “That's hardly fair,” Jonas said instantly.

  Twist couldn’t identify the cause, but the mist and the wind seemed wrong, somehow. It was as if they didn't belong.

  “Stop it, you two,” Aazzi said with a heavy breath. “I'll stay with the puppet, and Twist can go with you.”

  The mist seeped close enough to prick at Twist's skin. In an instant, his Sight flew through the mist at enormous speed: through the windows, past the palace, across the gullies, around a mountain top, onto the deck of another airship, and right up to a man with pure-white skin, full golden eyes with no whites in them, and glowing tattoos across his face and bare scalp. The man's face took on a surprised expression and he muttered something in a language that sounded ancient and savage to Twist. In response, the wind picked up to a much stronger gale.

  Twist forced his eyes closed in his vision and he reached out for Jonas, pulling himself back. He shot to his feet—a little too quickly, making him teeter—and shook his head to clear away the vision. The mist still stung at him, but he wrapped the warm sensation of Jonas's presence around his mind until he couldn't see it any more. The vision in the mist danced chaotically before him, but he managed not to look.

  “What is it?” Jonas was asking.

  “The mist,” Twist said, struggling to hold the thought long enough to voice it, with all that his attention was busy doing. “It's not real. A man is making it.”

  “What?” Arabel asked. “How can that—“

  “Twist,” Aazzi said sharply, cutting her off. “Did you see this man?”

  Twist nodded. The effort it took to keep the vision at bay was staggering to him, but the vision felt like it was drifting steadily farther away.

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  “Were there tattoos on his skin?” Aazzi asked.

  “Yes, on his face,” Twist said. “They were glowing. His skin was white as a lily, and his eyes were…very strange. They were fully gold.”

  “A djinn?” Arabel gasped. “Then it has to be Quay's crew! They've got the only djinn I've ever seen. But how did they managed to follow us from Baku?”

  As Twist's attention grew easier to control, he began to notice something in the warm buzzing that he was using as a shield. There was an uneasy tension in it that hadn't been there before. He looked to Jonas, whose eyes were turned away as if he were lost in his own thoughts.

  “This is the attack,” Aazzi said, drawing the silver pistol from beneath the back of her bodice. “We have to move the puppet to the ship. Now.”

  Jonas and Arabel both moved to the puppet, but Twist got there first. With fast, effortless skill, he removed the crystal from the delicate cage of clockwork.

  “What are you doing?” Jonas asked.

  “Now that she's in here,” he said, looking to the crystal, “it doesn't matter what happens to the body, or how far away it is. She's safe in here.”

  “Good idea,” Arabel said. “Even if they manage to steal the puppet, we'll still have the most important part. Here, hide it,” she said, handing him a cloth handkerchief from her pocket.

  Twist wrapped the crystal and tied the ends of the cloth off in a knot. The wind began to howl through the windows with such a force that it made it almost impossible to stand against it. The mist chilled so fast that it was as if the air had turned to ice. Everyone ran for the doorway of the palace, leaving the puppet behind. Pistol fire rang out at them through the mist from the garden outside. Aazzi, Arabel, and Jonas all blindly returned fire with pistols of their own as they protected themselves behind the edges of the stone doorway.

  “Twist, we'll cover you,” Jonas yelled over the sudden din. “Run for the ship!”

  “I can't see!” Twist protested, peering around him into the solid, freezing mist. “I could run right over the edge and never know it.”

  “Jon, go with him,” Arabel yelled to them. “Aazzi and I can hold them off for you.”

  Twist began to protest again, but the two women both leaned out into the doorway to fire randomly into the mist. The attacking fire died for an instant, and Jonas took hold of Twist's sleeve as he dove outside.

  More alarmed by the fact that Jonas was holding his sleeve—Jonas's hand so very close to his own—than by the reality of running blindly into the freezing mist and bullet fire, Twist hurried to keep in step with Jonas as they both flew through the indistinct darkness. A flick of metal shot by them from the side, striking the wall that was hidden by the fog, with a sharp sound.

  “What was—?” Twist began to ask.

  “Quiet!” Jonas hissed, jogging quickly to the side.

  Twist followed his motion, but unwittingly stumbled over a loose block of stone. His hands both shot out to break his fall, and he heard the crystal fall to the ground beside him, rolling to the side as Jonas lost hold of him as well. Twist sprang to his feet and followed the sound, blocking out the gun fire behind him, until he saw a dim shadow of the small, rolling mass not two steps ahead. He dove for the bundle just as it fell silent in its motion.

  His fingers caught the tied handkerchief in open air, and his feet lost their footing as the ground disappeared beneath him. It took far too long for Twist to realize that he'd run off the edge of the walkway, through a broken balustrade. His open hand flew back for some purchase in the disorientation of frozen mist and sudden gravity.

  Another hand took hold of his arm just before he dropped over the edge. Twist's Sight screamed through his mind like fierce lightning, burning with an electric fire so intense that all he could see was impossibly white light. For only an instant, he saw Jonas's uncovered eyes in the blinding light, staring down at him in fright. Then, the whole world went totally white, silent, and empty. The last thought Twist managed to have was the will to cling to the cloth in his fingers, to Myra's heart.