"He was going to leave with Hoi-Poltoi. I assume he did. He emptied the cellar."
"No, that was me. And I'm glad I did it."
He cast a glance towards the windowsill. Nestling among the domestic bric-a-brac were a series of diminutive figurines. Talismans, she guessed: part of the horde from Peccable's cellar. Some were looking into the room, others out. They were all little paradigms of aggression, with positively rabid expressions on their garishly painted faces.
"But you're my best protection," he said. "Just having you here, I feel we've got some chance of surviving this mess." He put his hand over hers. "When I got your note and knew you'd survived, I began to hope a little. Then of course I couldn't get hold of you, and I began to imagine the worst."
She looked up from his hand and saw on his plagued face a family resemblance she'd never glimpsed before. There was an echo of Charlie in him, the Charlie of the Hampstead hospice, sitting at his window talking about bodies being dug up in the rain.
"Why didn't you just come to the flat?" she said.
"I couldn't leave here."
"Are you that badly hurt?"
"It's not what's in here that held me back," he said, putting his hand to his chest. "It's what's out there."
"You still think the Tabula Rasa's going to come after you?"
"God, no. They're the least of our worries. I half thought of warning one or two of them: anonymously, you know. Not Shales or McGann, or that idiot Bloxham. They can fry in Hell. But Lionel was always friendly, even when he was sober. And the ladies. I don't like the idea of their deaths on my conscience."
"So who are you hiding from?"
"The fact is, I don't know," he admitted. "I see images in the bowl, and I can't quite make them out."
She'd forgotten the Boston Bowl, with its blur of prophetic stones. Now Oscar was apparently hanging on its every rattle.
"Something's crossed over from the Dominions, my dear," he said. "I'm certain of that. I saw it coming after you. Trying to smother you...."
He looked as though tears were going to overtake him again, but she reassured him, lightly patting his hand as though he were some addled old man.
"Nothing's going to harm me," she said. "I've survived too much in the last few days."
"You've never seen a power like this," he warned her. "And neither's the Fifth."
"If it came from the Dominions, then it's the Autarch's doing."
"You sound very certain."
"That's because I know who he is."
"You've been listening to Peccable," he said. "He's full of theories, darling, but they're not worth a damn."
His not-so-faint condescension irritated her, and she drew her hand out from under his. "My source is a lot more reliable than Peccable," she said.
"Oh?" He realized he'd caused offense and indulged her. "Who's that?"
"Quaisoir."
"Quaisoir? How the hell did you get to her?" His surprise seemed to be as genuine as his humoring had been feigned.
"Don't you have any idea?" she asked him. "Didn't Dowd ever talk to you about the old days?"
Now his expression became guarded, almost suspicious.
"Dowd served generations of Godolphins," she said. "Surely you knew that? Right back to crazy Joshua. In fact, he was Joshua's right-hand man, if man's the word."
"I was aware of that," Oscar said softly.
"Then you knew about me too?"
He said nothing,
"Did you, Oscar?"
"I didn't debate you with Dowd, if that's what you mean."
"But you knew why you and Charlie kept me in the family?"
Now it was he who was offended; he grimaced at her vocabulary.
"That's what it was, Oscar. You and Charlie, trading me; knowing I was bound to stay with the Godolphins. Maybe I'd wander off for a while and have a few romances, but sooner or later I'd be back in the family."
"We both loved you," he said, his voice as blank as the look he now gave her. "Believe me, neither of us understood the politics of it. We didn't care."
"Oh really?" she said, her doubt plain.
"All I know is: I love you. It's the one certainty left in my life."
She was tempted to sour this saccharine with chapter and verse of his family's conspiracies against her, but what was the use? He was a fractured man, locked away in his house for fear of what the sun might invite over his threshold. Circumstance had already undone him. Any further work on her part would be malice, and though she didn't doubt that there was much in him to despise—his talk of the revenge of the proles had been particularly unattractive—she'd shared too many intimacies with him, and been too comforted by them, to be cruel. Besides, she had something to impart that would be a harder blow than any accusation.
"I'm not staying, Oscar," she said. "I haven't come back here to lock myself away."^
"But it's not safe out there," he replied. "I've seen what's coming. It's in the bowl. You want to see for yourself?" He stood up. "You'll change your mind."
He led her up the stairs to the treasure room, talking as he went.
"The bowl's got a life of its own since this power came into the Fifth. It doesn't need anybody watching, it just goes on repeating the same images. It's panicking. It knows what's coming, and it's panicking."
She could hear it before they even reached the door: a din like the drumming of hailstones on sun-baked earth.
"I don't think it's wise to watch for too long," he warned. "It gets hypnotic."
So saying, he opened the door. The bowl was sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a ring of votive candles, their fat flames jumping as the air was agitated by the spectacle they lit. The prophetic stones were moving like a swarm of enraged bees in and above the bowl, which Oscar had been obliged to set in a small mound of earth to keep it from being thrown over by their violence. The air smelled of what he'd called their panic: a bitter odor mingled with the metallic tang that came before lightning. Though the motion of the stones was reasonably contained, she hung back from the bowl lest a rogue find its way out of the dance and strike her. At the speed they were moving, the smallest of them could have taken out an eye. But even from a distance, with the shelves and their treasures to distract her, the motion of the stones was all consuming. The rest of the room, Oscar included, faded into insignificance as the frenzy drew her in.
"It may take a little time," Oscar was saying. "But the images are there." "I see," she said.
The Retreat had already appeared in the blur, its dome half hidden behind the screen of the copse. Its appearance was brief. The Tabula Rasa's tower took its place a moment after, only to be superseded by a third building, quite different from the pair that had gone before, except that it too was half concealed by foliage, in this case a single tree planted in the pavement.
"What's that house?" she asked Oscar. "I don't know, but it comes up over and over again. It's somewhere in London, I'm certain of that." "How can you be sure?"
The building was unremarkable: three stories, flat-fronted, and, as far as she could judge, in a dilapidated state. It could have stood in any inner city in England or for that matter in Europe.
"London's where the circle's going to close," Oscar replied. "It's where everything began, and it's where everything'll end."
The remark brought echoes: of Dowd at the wall on Pale Hill, talking about history coming around, and of Gentle and herself, mere hours before, devouring each other into perfection.
"There it is again," Oscar said.
The image of the house had briefly flickered out but now reappeared, brightly lit. There was somebody near the step, she saw, with his arms hanging by his sides and his head back as he stared up at the sky. The resolution of the image was not good enough for her to make out his features. Perhaps he was just some anonymous sun worshiper, but she doubted it. Every detail of this parade had its significance.