Forced? That isn’t right, is it, Kohaku? You were grateful for that dignity, that exit, the chance to smear your vital numbers on the wall for Vivien to find and someday understand. Was I a good second to you, in your makeshift seppuku?
I kept my eyes on the floor, my voice soft. “I’m sorry, Cousin Foster. I have to go. I will return at my first liberty, if you request, to answer any questions.”
“You shouldn’t be going anywhere except a prison with no key!”
“I have a call I cannot disobey.”
“Overridden,” Ockham ordered. “Mycroft, you’re staying put until we calm this down. Carlyle, sit. If you ask questions calmly we will answer them.”
“I’m not going to sit in a room with Mycroft Canner!”
“I can have them restrained for this briefing, if that would make you more comfortable. Shall I call the team?”
I steeled myself. “I’m sorry, Member Ockham. I have a call I cannot disobey.”
Ockham shook his head. “My house, my orders.”
I had no choice. Slowly, so the motion would not further spook the Cousin, I pulled from my pocket the Imperial Gray armband with the Masonic Square & Compass in death black upon it, the mark of we Familiares who, by lawful contract, submit ourselves to suffer imprisonment, torture, or death at Caesar’s will. “I have a call I cannot disobey.”
Even Ockham hushes at Death’s presence in a room.
“The Emperor…” Carlyle gulped breaths, like a man about to battle for his life. “The Emperor did this!” A target for his blame at last. “You were under MASON’s Law! MASON was supposed to be your judge, jury, and … We trusted them! We trusted them to…”
I waited for him to speak the dreaded word, but he wasn’t brave enough. Not like back then, when Earth cried in one voice for the sentence everybody wanted. They wanted it so much, reader, the wide world in a true blood frenzy, begging the gentle Hives to bring back the long-abandoned greatest punishment, just for me. You cheered when Caesar made it easy, Caesar with his one black sleeve, when he announced that Mycroft Canner was already under the Lex Familiaris, the last capital punishment left on our enlightened Earth. When Caesar faced the cameras, “Factum est (It is done),” nobody wondered what.
“Go.” Ockham nodded his permission, and I bowed my gratitude. There are many masters, reader, many authorities I answer to, but only one can kill me with a word.
Carlyle stared as I paced slowly to the door, and leapt out of my path as if sin were contagious. I hadn’t expected this pain. I had known Carlyle must learn someday who I was, but I had come to respect this proud and giving vocateur, to care. I wanted to say something as I left, to heal his wounded trust, not in me, but in the powers he had trusted to do justice, to put the mad dog down. Questions are commands in their way, “What…? How could you…? Why…?” and Carlyle was a free man and a good one, so I owed him the obedience of an answer. But what can Mycroft Canner say? I took a deep breath. “Death was judged too swift and light a punishment. I owe more.”
Carlyle sobbed, that’s what I think the motion was, one quick, hiccupping twitch as the too-much of it overwhelmed his body.
I left him there, reader, hot with his just hate. But I cannot leave you. You can leave me, if you wish, you who have followed me this far, but see now why you should hate me. I chopped pieces off of Luther Mardigras only for two days, reader, the first three days were teeth, and nails, and flaying him alive. If I repel you, you may set this book aside and turn to other histories of this transformation, there must be some. Or did you know already what I was? Perhaps you chose this history less for J.E.D.D. Mason than to taste the mind of Mycroft Canner? Would you rather I had set this thirteen years ago? Earlier? Do you want to hear my childhood trauma, what tragedy created the misguided creature I became? Would you have me tell you what a human heart tastes like? Or which was the most satisfying stage at which to rape Ibis Mardi, when she was beaten, limbless, half-cooked, or already dead? Reader, there is no autobiography of that Mycroft Canner. Nor should there be. This is a history of Bridger and our transformation, not of my lost self. Yes, you will learn more of me. Yes, I will bare details which not even the police have known until I write these words, but facts about me are servants to your understanding of far greater matters. Why did I do it? Is that what you wonder most, reader? I do not know. At seventeen I was so sure of my philosophy that I gave myself content over to my executioners, yet I now find myself alive at thirty-one, and in a universe I understand only enough to know that I am too small, too finite, too tiny a creation to understand why I was made the thing I was, to do the things I did. I have tasted Bridger’s mud pies. I, Mycroft Canner, so improbably alive, was the first human to stumble on this miracle. I am sure of only one thing, reader: there is Providence. There is a Plan at work behind this world, and a Mind behind that plan, Whose infinite workings I cannot hope to penetrate. I could tell you what my old self thought was the purpose of my crimes. I could tell you what I think now. But only our Creator truly understands the ends to which He turns His instruments: why He had me kill those seventeen people, not sixteen, not eighteen; why He sent Bridger this bloodstained guardian; or why He chose that night of March the twenty-fifth to reveal to His devoted priest Carlyle Foster that, in His strange Mercy, He had spared, of all men, Mycroft Canner.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST
That Which Is Caesar’s
I am grateful, so grateful, tolerant reader, that you read on despite learning of my crimes. With your trust so freshly shaken, this may be the worst moment to disappoint you, but, alas, I must. For, as the first black hour of March the twenty-sixth catches me arriving in MASON’s capital, what am I to do about the parts in Latin? Martin Guildbreaker, glaring over my shoulder as I write, insists Latin is only for Masons, and must not be translated. Yet what good is that when even Masons can barely understand? J.E.D.D. Mason does not speak Masons’ Latin, He speaks something closer to Classical Latin, as strange for Masons as Homer to a modern Greek. I have promised to treat you, reader, as if you were a brother of our Eighteenth Century, so I should assume you read Latin, else I insult you, though I realize that is probably untrue. Martin will not let me make the Latin into English, but I shall at least translate J.E.D.D. Mason’s Latin into modern Latin, so Masons may understand what Masons should.
(I have translated the Latin, but since I’m doing so in secret from both Martin and Mycroft, you’ll have to bear with my mediocre skills.—9A)
I felt ease as the car set down in the Masonic capital, leaving at last the spectacle cities of Tōgenkyō and Cielo de Pájaros for a real city, organic and irrational. What city would you have chosen for your capital if you were the first MASON? You cannot have the oldest, Ur and Uruk, for most of Mesopotamia is still a Reservation after the Church War, and in the rest Nature’s war wounds will take another century or two to heal. In Greece you would have to choose between Athens and Sparta, wisdom and strength, two assets which no Emperor can afford to privilege one over the other. Rome herself has been through too much to head another empire, and, if you used her, your successors could not then make use of her design in Romanova to such great effect. Vienna and Cusco are too fragile, Chang’an and Paris occupied, Istanbul and Kiev overbalanced by their more recent histories. You have only one choice, young Emperor, one city as imperial as you pretend to be.
“The Six-Hive Transit System welcomes you to Alexandria. Visitors are required to adhere to a minimum of the Masonic Lex Minor while in this zone. Visitors are reminded that Masonic Laws do not allow the ignorance plea. To review a list of local regulations not included in your customary law code, select ‘law.’ ”