"Dead. Where's Pie?"
"You seem different."
"I am. Where's Pie?"
"Not here." "Where then?"
"The mystif s gone up to the palace," the man replied. "Why?"
"That was the judgment upon it." "Just to go?" Gentle said, taking a step towards the man. "There must have been more to-it than that."
Though the silk sword protected the man, Gentle came with a burden of power that beggared his own, and sensing this he answered less obliquely.
"The judgment was that it kill the Autarch," he said. "So it's been sent up there alone?" "No. It took some of our tribe with it and left a few of us to guard the Kesparate."
"How long ago since they went?" "Not very long. But you won't get into the palace. Neither will they. It's suicide."
Gentle didn't linger to argue but headed back towards the entrance, leaving the man to guard the blossoms and the empty streets. As he approached the gate, however, he saw that two individuals, a man and a woman, had just entered and were looking his way. Both were naked from the waist up, their throats painted with the blue triple stripe he remembered from the siege at the harbor, marking them as members of the Dearth. At his approach, both acknowledged him by putting palm to palm and inclining their heads. The woman was half as big again as her companion, her body a glorious machine, her head—shaved but for a ponytail—set on a neck wider than her cranium and, like her arms and belly, so elaborately muscled the merest twitch was a spectacle.
"I said he'd be here!" she told the world. "I don't know what you want," he said, "but I can't supply it."
"You are John Furie Zacharias?"
"Yes."
"Called Gentle?"
"Yes. But—"
"Then you have to come. Please. Father Athanasius sent us to find you. We heard what happened on Lickerish Street, and we knew it had to be you. I'm Nikaetomaas," the woman said. "This is Roccus Dado. We've been waiting for you since Estabrook arrived."
"Estabrook?" said Gentle. There was a man he hadn't given a thought to in many a month. "How do you know him?"
"We found him in the street. We thought he was the one. But he wasn't. He knew nothing."
"And you think I do?" Gentle said, exasperated. "Let me tell you, I know fuck-all! I don't know who you think I am, but I'm not your man."
"That's what Father Athanasius said. He said you were in ignorance—"
"Well, he was right."
"But you married the mystif."
"So what?" said Gentle. "I love it, and I don't care who knows it."
"We realize that," Nikaetomaas said, as though nothing could have been plainer. "That's how we tracked you."
"We knew it would come here," Floccus said. "And wherever it had gone, you would be."
"It isn't here," Gentle said. "It's up in the palace."
"In the palace?" said Nikaetomaas, turning her gaze up towards the lowering walls. "And you intend to follow it?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll come with you," she said. "Mr. Dado, go back to Athanasius. Tell him who we've found and where we've gone."
"I don't want company," Gentle said. "1 don't even trust myself."
"How will you get into the palace without someone at your side?" Nikaetomaas said. "I know the gates. I know the courtyards."
Gentle turned the options over in his head. Part of him wanted to go as a rogue, carrying the chaos he'd brought to Lickerish Street as his emblem. But his ignorance of palace geography could indeed slow him, and minutes might make the difference between finding the mystif alive or dead. He nodded his consent, and the parties divided at the gate: Floccus Dado back to Father Athanasius, Gentle and Nikaetomaas up towards the Autarch's fortress.
The only subject he broached as they traveled was that of Estabrook. How was he, Gentle asked: still crazy?
"He was almost dead when we found him," Nikaetomaas said. "His brother left him here for dead. But we took him to our tents on the Erasure, and we healed him there. Or, more properly, his being there healed him."
"You did all this, thinking he was me?"
"We knew that somebody was going to come from the Fifth to begin the Reconciliation again. And of course we knew it had to be soon. We just didn't know what he looked like."
"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that's twice you've got it wrong. I'm no more your man than Estabrook."
"Why did you come here, then?" she said.
That was an inquiry that deserved a serious reply, if not for her sake, then for his own.
"There were questions I wanted answered, that I couldn't answer on earth," he said. "A friend of mine died, very young. A woman I knew was almost murdered—"
"Judith."
"Yes, Judith."
"We've talked about her a great deal," Nikaetomaas said. "Estabrook was obsessed with her."
"Is he still?"
"I haven't spoken to him for a long time. But you know he was trying to bring her to Yzordderrex when his brother intervened."
"Did she come?"
"Apparently not," Nikaetomaas said. "But Athanasius believes she will eventually. He says she's part of the story of the Reconciliation."
"How does he work that out?"
"From Estabrook's obsession with her, I suppose. The way he talked about her, it was though she was something holy, and Athanasius loves holy women."
"Let me tell you, I know Judith very well, and she's no Virgin."
"There are other kinds of sanctity among our sex," Nikaetomaas replied, a little testily.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean any offense. But if there's one thing Jude's always hated it's being put on a pedestal."
"Then maybe it's not the idol we should be studying, but the worshiper. Athanasius says obsession is fire to our fortress."
"What does that mean?"
"That we have to burn down the walls around us, but it takes a very bright flame to do so."
"An obsession, in other words."
"That's one such flame, yes."
"Why would we want to burn down these walls in the first place? Don't they protect us?"
"Because if we don't, we die inside, kissing our own reflections," Nikaetomaas said, the reply too well turned to be improvised.
"Athanasius again?" Gentle said.
"No," said Nikaetomaas. "An aunt of mine. She's been locked up in the Bastion for years, but in here"—Nikaetomaas pointed to her temple—"she's free."
"And what about the Autarch?" Gentle said, turning his gaze up towards the fortress.
"What about him?"
"Is he up there, kissing his reflection?"
"Who knows? Maybe he's been dead for years, and the state's running itself."
"Do you seriously believe that?"
Nikaetomaas shook her head. "No. He's alive, behind his walls."
"What's he keeping out, I wonder?"
"Who knows? Whatever he's afraid of, I don't think it breathes the same air that we do."
Before they left the rubble-strewn thoroughfares of the Kesparate called Hittahitte, which lay between the gates of the Eurhetemec Kesparate and the wide Roman streets of Yzordderrex's bureaucratic district, Nikaetomaas dug around in the ruins of a garret for some means of disguise. She found a collection of filthy garments which she insisted Gentle don, then found some equally disgusting for herself. Their faces and physiques had to be concealed, she explained, so that they could mingle freely with the wretched they'd find gathered at the gates. Then they headed on, their climb bringing them into streets lined with buildings of classical severity and scale, as yet unscorched by the torches that were being passed from hand to hand, roof to roof, in the Kesparates below. They would not remain pristine much longer, Nikaetomaas predicted. When the rebels' fire reached these edifices—the Taxation Courts and the Bureaus of Justice—it would leave no pillar unblack-ened. But for now the travelers moved between monoliths as quiet as mausoleums.
On the other side, the reason for their donning of stinking and louse-ridden clothes became apparent. Nikaetomaas had brought them not to one of the great gates of the palace but to a minor opening, around which a group dressed in motley indistinguishable from their own was gathered. Some of them carried candles. By their fitful light Gentle could see that there was not a single body that was whole among them.