In a few hours the closing ceremonies of the Festival would begin. The heretic would be executed, and whatever was going to happen would happen.
My Lord could not sleep. His brain would not give up the fight but continued to flail about like a man in the sea. He knew meditation techniques to quiet his mind, but it had been years since he’d used them and to do so now felt hypocritical. They called on God. Hadn’t he rejected any assistance from God years ago? So the thoughts did their worst to him: Tevach, Aharon, Argeh, the heretic, Wallick, The Book of Torment.
Aharon had asked him, What will happen to you, Yosef? When you die?
He had not contemplated such a thing before. Oh, he had always been aware that he was damning himself. He had damned himself with great willfullness. But with Wallick gone, the thought of his own death became much more concrete. He had been Job cursing at God. And that had been enough, in his anger and despair; that was the role he had chosen for himself.
Just curse God and die, Job.
So Job’s friends had advised him, and there was, in that statement, an implied end, a yearned-for finality.
The trouble was, it was not the end. Certain as the sun rose, even here, pale and distant, he, too, would rise again. And he would not, in his new incarnation, have the benefit of his anger. He would not even recognize the name: Isaac Kobinski. Everything came to an end, even our most cherished torments. That was the law. Just as it was the law, also, that nothing ever truly ended. His soul, his energy, would remain on the ladder long after this lifetime’s woes had sunk into a past so ancient that the entire life of the multiverse so far was but the first shuddering breath of it.
He might reincarnate in his next life on Gehenna, a tiny Fiore infant, sentenced to this world of rocky hardship without the benefit of his memories to give that life a diabolical purpose. The thought of being sentenced here, with no idea that there were places better than this, with no hope of an education, no deep theological reasons for rejecting God—that was true horror. It was one thing to choose rebellion, to have chosen it from a place of high learning, as he had. It was another to wallow in rebellion’s hellhole in ignorance.
Aharon was right. You might as well be angry at the phenomenon of photosynthesis. You cannot win.
My Lord gazed out over the town. It was nearly dawn and quiet now. But earlier in the night there had been stirrings, shadows in the streets: scuttling mice and scuttling rats, hiding and whispering, making plans. He was seated in the deep recess of a window seat, the cold stone around him cushioned and warmed by a blanket. It was one of the largest windows in the House of Divine Ordinance, and although the glass was not clear by Earth standards, he could see the town below, lit by the conjunction of Gehenna’s moons. He turned his head to look at the bed where Erya slept—not for carnal purposes, he couldn’t even imagine such with a Fiore, but to provide some warmth for his aching joints. He looked, too, at Tevach, snoring on his mat at the foot of My Lord’s bed. That little mouse had scuttled out, when he thought My Lord was asleep, and had scuttled back in an hour ago. My Lord had observed both, feigning sleep, and had not said a word.
He could wake either of them, talk, get a massage for the pain, anything to be spared these thoughts. But he didn’t wake them and the thoughts marched on. It was as though Wallick had been the black underpinning beneath the decaying tower of his soul and now that underpinning was gone. His soul was poised over the chasm and starting to fall in upon itself and he could not stop it.
For example, what if even Fiori was too good for his detached soul? When he had first discovered the heavens and hells in his physics, he had tried to work out models of what they might be like. He had anticipated heavier gravity; gravity is gevorah. And although he really had no idea what the Fiore or the landscape would be like, he had not been wrong about the general principle. He had also imagined a world worse than this, a true Gehenna, the far right rungs of Jacob’s ladder. He had imagined a world where gravity was so dense that life was nothing more than blobs of flesh attached to the planet’s surface like stones. There would be no mobility at all in that world, like the hideous punishment of Dante’s ninth circle, where men were buried up to their necks in a lake of ice. And these blobs would congregate like the bubbles in foam or like crystals—how else could they reproduce? And to those who lived in this bubble-mass of base sentience there would be almost nothing redeeming—almost no light and warmth, little food, none of the blessings of family, music, home. It would make Fiori look like Paradise. And God—Yahweh—that evasive magician, wouldn’t even have to condemn Yosef to such a fate. It was the simple nature of the universe: like to like, like to like, like to like. He could end up there.
My Lord was so lost in thought that he didn’t hear the sounds at first. He stiffened as they registered: stealthy footsteps, the creak of the door. There was something altogether too quiet about it—even Tevach sneaking in was not that quiet, and Tevach was asleep on his mat.
Kobinski leaned forward, his knees screaming in protest, to peer around the wall.
A Fiore was sneaking up to his bed. The dark shape raised its arms high—he could see a knife in the furry hands—and plunged it down into the bedclothes.
My Lord gasped. The sound was covered by a wet thunk as the knife made contact. There was a soft cry from the bed. The intruder took a few steps back, arms wide in alarm, the long, bloody dagger in one hand. He made a panicked animal noise and turned to Tevach. As he leaned over the sleeping mouse, the intruder’s face fell into the moonlight from the window: it was Sevace, Argeh’s bodyguard. Sevace would have seen My Lord in the window, had he turned his head, but he did not. He dropped the blade at Tevach’s side and fled. Even brutal Sevace was frightened, murdering a god.
For a few moments My Lord sat stunned. Argeh had finally tried it. It was almost a relief that it was done, that the long years of waiting were over. He moved, painfully, off the window ledge. He could see the shape beneath the covers as he approached the bed. He saw, too, the blood spreading across the skins. Erya. He lowered the blanket and saw that she was dead, stabbed through the back into her heart. It had been a quick death at least. He pulled the blanket over her. Tevach still snored, though his twitching limbs indicated disturbed dreams. My Lord picked up the dagger that had been left near his trusted servant’s hand.
This is what comes to you, Tevach. This is what happens when you play with treason. Your allegiance with the heretic, your sneaking about, made it simple enough—get rid of me and blame you.
The strategic nature of this thought cleared away his shock.
His guards were slumped in front of the doorway. He checked Decher—his pulse was steady. Perhaps they’d been drugged, but they were alive. He tried to rouse his captain and was rewarded with a groggy growl.
“Get up,” My Lord whispered tersely. “Go check on the messenger and make sure he is safe.”
Decher reported that Aharon Handalman was sleeping, unharmed, his guards alert and ready. My Lord was not surprised. The night Wallick died he’d seen a certain realization on Argeh’s face, though he hadn’t known what it meant at the time. The realization was this: as long as there was a mask, who really cared what—or who—was behind it?
Argeh came to My Lord’s quarters at the first light of dawn. He was received by Decher and four of My Lord’s guards. My Lord could hear the surprised words spoken in the corridor; then Argeh burst into the room. My Lord sat on his bed, waiting. With Argeh was Sevace, his would-be assassin. They both looked at him with horror.