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With raised brows, Kentarch held up his right arm, indicating his missing hand.

“Oi, Tarch begs to differ.” Joules took a seat by the fire to polish a javelin with a rag. His spears were flawless, so I figured he was soothing his nerves—or showing off to Sol.

The Sun continued, “True, when Zara’s full of luck, she can be nearly impossible to defeat. Nearly. But even a cat with nine lives will die if you kill it ten times. For instance, Zara can only avoid so many bullets heading straight for her face. The problem is the more luck she steals, the more fatal blows it will take. My WAG—wild-ass guess—is a hundred or so. But who can deliver them without dying first?”

“Maybe eight united Arcana,” I said. And one determined human. “But this is nothing new. Death already told us we’ve got to burn out their powers.”

“Has he told you that you can get close to Zara if you don’t have ill intent? It’s only when you decide to kill her that her environment will attack you.”

This was interesting. Had Dominija known that?

Joules paused his polishing. “What about Richter? How do we kill him if all our weapons melt?”

“Burning grain is easy for him, but melting bullets and javelins takes focus. He’s not a big thinker, that one. As with Zara, if we hit him with enough strikes, he will go down. For reference, just think a hundred unanswered hits. Because his answers usually mean you’re dead.”

I didn’t mind Sol’s WAGs. I needed a starting point, and one number did as well as any other. “That’d be a lot of firepower,” I said, dreaming about antiaircraft rockets and tanks. But we’d located none on the road.

“Richter doesn’t believe anything like that exists anymore,” Sol said. “Circe is the only one he fears. When she struck him with her flood, she wiped him out. Where is the Priestess now?”

“She has a temple beneath the sea,” Dominija said smoothly. Not a lie, but we didn’t know if she was in it or what had happened to her after Jubilee. “What is Richter’s plan?”

“He wants to kidnap pequeña. At least for a time.”

My fists clenched, but again, this wasn’t new information. “And Zara?”

“To find and kill you all. She’s been searching for Death’s lair, doing flyovers as much as her fuel supplies allow. So far, she hasn’t gotten close, but as her strength grows, she’ll just stumble upon it. That’s how she found Temperance’s chronicles. A weather front pushed Zara’s copter off course, then forced her to land. She took shelter in a house—the very place with those chronicles.”

“Oi, I hid them in a vent in the bathroom.”

Sol shrugged. “The ceiling collapsed after she left the room. The book and the weapons lay at her feet. This is not unusual with her.”

Joules muttered a curse under his breath. “Weaknesses and wild-arse guesses aside, I don’t think we can fight that.”

Kentarch and Gabe made sounds of agreement.

“You know what beats luck, podnas? Skill. We’ve just got to work harder and be more prepared than they are. In my mind, we’re two hundred hits from victory.” From saving the world.

“Indeed,” Dominija said. “You forget, Tower, that I’ve killed them both in past games.”

“I don’t forget anyone you’ve killed, Grim Reaper.”

Dominija ignored that barb. “I need more information, Sun. Where will the Emperor and Fortune go now?”

“I have Baggers stationed all around the former house and haven’t sensed any heat trails from Richter. Which means the two traveled by copter, so Fauna can’t track them.”

Not that we could mount an advance against them right now anyway. I had to figure out how steady Kentarch would be under fire.

Evie asked, “Do they have a backup place?”

“That was the backup. But once Zara recharges, she’ll come across whatever she needs. Before she strikes against any Arcana, her copter will be tanked up and reloaded.”

I took another swig. “What will she be packing?”

“Her usual temeridad—um, rashness—plus a lot of rockets, missiles, and bullets. Bang, bang, bang.”

I turned to Kentarch, whose Arcana ability included weapons expertise. “You got a more exact estimate?”

In a monotone, he said, “The helicopter she piloted is an AH-64 Apache. Fully armored, it will carry sixteen Hellfire missiles, seventy-six rockets, and twelve hundred chain gun rounds, with a rate of fire at six hundred per minute.”

I whistled low, my earlier optimism taking a knock.

“Zara’s family owned a helicopter manufacturing company,” Sol informed us. “She knows them like no one else alive. She’s modified her craft to make it even more destructive.”

Evie said, “If she wasn’t so evil, I’d admire her.”

Joules slammed his javelin across his knees. “Empress wants to be friends with another one!”

Evie didn’t respond to that, but I imagined her claws going sharp.

Dominija asked Sol, “When did they feed last?”

“Not even a week ago. They’ve rolled every fort in the area, harvesting even more victims and supplies. Well, every one but Fort Colman, aka the Sick House. Richter wanted to go feed on it, but Zara said no.”