One of the gathering number was clearly a man of authority. Heels clicked together as he appeared, salutes were exchanged. He looked up the staircase towards his hooded prisoner.
"General Racidio," one of the captains said. "We have
two of the rebels here."
"These aren't Eurhetemecs." His gaze went from Gentle to the body of Nikaetomaas, then back up to Gentle again. "I think we have two Dearthers here."
He started up the stairs towards Gentle, who was surreptitiously drawing breath through the open weave of the cloth around his face in preparation for his unveiling. He would have two or three seconds at best. Time perhaps to seize Racidio and use him as a hostage if the pneuma failed to kill every one of the gunmen.
"Let's see what you look like," the commander said, and tore the cloth from Gentle's face.
The instant that should have seen the pneuma loosed instead saw Racidio drop back in stupefaction from the features he'd uncovered. Whatever he saw was missed by the soldiers below, who kept their guns trained on Gentle until Racidio spat an order that they be lowered. Gentle was as confounded as they, but he wasn't about to question the reprieve. He dropped his hands and, stepping over the body of Nikaetomaas, came to the bottom of the stairs. Racidio retreated further, shaking his head as he did so, and wetting his lips, but apparently unable to find the words to express himself. He looked as though he was expecting the ground to open up beneath him; indeed, was silently willing it to do so. Rather than risk disabusing the man of his error by speaking, Gentle summoned his guide Lazarevich forward with the hooked finger Nikaetomaas had used minutes before. The man had taken refuge behind a shield of soldiers and only came out of hiding reluctantly, glancing at his captain and Racidio in the hope that Gentle's summons would be countermanded. It was not, however. Gentle went to meet him, and Racidio uttered the first words he'd been able to find since setting eyes on the trespasser's face.
"Forgive me," he said. "I'm mortified."
Gentle didn't give him the solace of a response but, with Lazarevich at his side, took a step towards the knot of soldiers at the top of the next flight of stairs. They parted without a word and he headed between their ranks, fighting the urge to pick up his pace, tempting though it was. And he regretted too not being able to say his farewells to Nika-etomaas. But neither impatience nor sentiment would profit him now. He'd been blessed, and maybe in the fullness of time he'd understand why. In the short term, he had to get to the Autarch and hope that the mystif was there also.
"You still want to go to the Pivot Tower?'* Lazarevich said.
"Yes."
"When I get you there, will you let me go?"
Again he said, "Yes."
There was a pause, while Lazarevich oriented himself at the bottom of the stairs. Then he said, "Who are you?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," Gentle replied, his answer as much for his own benefit as that of his guide.
There had been six of them at the start. Now there were two. One of the casualties had been Thes 'reh' ot, shot down as he etched with a cross a corner they'd turned in the maze of courtyards. It had been his inspiration to mark their route and so facilitate a speedy exit when they'd finished their work.
"It's only the Autarch's will that holds these walls up," he'd said as they'd entered the palace. "Once he's down, they'll come too. We need to beat a quick retreat if we're not to get buried."
That Thes 'reh' ot had volunteered for a mission his laughter had dubbed fatal was surprising enough, but this further show of optimism teetered on the schizophrenic. His sudden death not only robbed Pie of an unlooked-for ally, but also of the chance to ask him why he'd joined the assault. But then several such conundrums had accrued around this endeavor, not least the sense of inevitability that had attended every phase, as though this judgment had been laid down long before Pie and Gentle had ever appeared in Yzordderrex, and any attempt to flout it would defy the wisdom of greater magistrates than Culus. Such inevitability bred fatalism, of course, and though the mystif had encouraged Thes 'reh' ot to plot their route of return, it entertained few delusions about making that journey. It willfully kept from its mind the losses that extinction would bring until its remaining comrade, Lu 'chur' chem—a purebred Eurhetemec, his skin blue-black, his eyes double-iri-sed—raised the subject. They were in a gallery lined with frescoes that evoked the city Pie had once called home: the painted streets of London, depicted as they'd been in the age into which the mystif had been born, replete with pigeon hawkers, mummers, and dandies.
Seeing the way Pie gazed at these sights, Lu 'chur' chem said, "Never again, eh?"
"Never again what?"
"Out in a street, seeing the way the world is some morning."
"No?"
"No," Lu 'chur' chem said. "We're not coming back this way, and we both know it."
"I don't mind," Pie replied. "I've seen a lot of things. I've felt even more. I've got no regrets."
"You've had a long life?"
"Yes, I have."
"And your Maestro? He had a long life too?"
"Yes, he did," Pie said, looking again at the scenes on the walls.
Though the renderings were relatively unsophisticated, they touched the mystif s memories awake, evoking the bustle and din of the crowded thoroughfares it and its Maestro had walked in the bright, hopeful days before the Reconciliation. Here were the fashionable streets of Mayfair, lined with fine shops and paraded by finer women, abroad to buy lavender water and mantua silk and snow-white muslin. Here was the throng of Oxford Street, where half a hundred vendors clamored for custom: purveyors of slippers, wildfowl, cherries, and gingerbread, all vying for a niche on the pavement and a space in the air to raise their cries. Here too was a fair, St. Bartholomew's most likely, where there was more sin to be had by daylight than Babylon ever boasted by dark.
"Who made these?" Pie wondered aloud as they proceeded.
"Diverse hands, by the look of 'em," Lu ‘chur' chem replied. "You can see where one style stops and another starts."
"But somebody directed these painters, gave them the details, the colors. Unless the Autarch just stole artists from the Fifth Dominion."
"Perfectly possible," Lu 'chur' chem said. "He stole architects. He put tribes in chains to build the place."
"And nobody ever challenged him?"
"People tried to stir up revolutions over and over again, but he suppressed them. Burnt down the universities, hanged the theologians and the radicals. He had a stranglehold. And he had the Pivot, and most people believe that's the Unbeheld's seal of approval. If Hapexamendios didn't want the Autarch to rule Yzordderrex, why did He allow the Pivot to be moved here? That's what they said. And I don't—"
Lu 'chur' chem stopped in his tracks, seeing that Pie had already done so.
"What is it?" he asked.
The mystif stared up at the picture they had come abreast of, its breath quickened by shock.
"Is something wrong?" Lu 'chur' chem said.
It took a few moments to find the words. "I don't think we should go any further," it said.
"Why not?"
"Not together, at least. The judgment fell on me, and I should finish this alone."
"What's wrong with you? I've come this far. I want to have the satisfaction."
"What's more important?" the mystif asked him, turning from the painting it had been so fixated by. "Your satisfaction, or succeeding in what we came here to do?"
"You know my answer to that."