Thisbe gazed at him, a long, indulgent pause. “Follow me up to the bridge.”
In his distraction Carlyle started up the stairway before thinking to ask, “Why?”
The speed of her ascent made Thisbe pant. “Someone’s … here from … Romanova.”
“What?”
“Eureka just … called me … They’ve … touched down.”
“At midnight?” This is Chile, reader, and the Americas’ night still young.
“I told you there are … protocols … when someone recognizes…”
“Mycroft Canner,” a new voice called down from above them, a woman’s but almost too deep to be a woman’s. “Age thirty-one, born August 2nd, 2423, brownish black hair, many distinctive scars including a round, two-centimeter section missing from right ear.”
Thisbe accelerated. “That’s no officer I know…”
The stranger leaned forward over the side of the bridge, the better to call down at the now-rushing pair. “Captured on March 26th, 2440, sentenced to lifetime service March 28th, 2440. Registered personal possessions, five: one non-uniform hat, one pair of nonregulation shoes, one writing and computation tablet, one photograph of the members of their birth-bash’, and one bilingual paper copy of Homer’s Iliad with a bookmark made from a lock of Seine Mardi’s hair and annotation by Apollo Mojave.”
Thisbe reached the bridgeway first. “Who are you?”
“Julia Doria-Pamphili.” The stranger stepped into a shaft of streetlight, which revealed an elegantly tailored European suit, double-breasted with champagne cording accenting its blue-black silk. Her hair was dark, thick, bound back in a bun which spiraled like a nautilus, and her grave face tempered by the creases of a perpetual smile. “I’m Mycroft Canner’s court-appointed sensayer.”
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD
Pontifex Maxima
“Julia!” Carlyle gaped. “Why are you here?”
Julia Doria-Pamphili paced toward Carlyle and Thisbe, her old-fashioned ankle boots clicking on the walkway. “It’s five in the morning by your sleep schedule and your tracker registered a heartbeat as if you were being chased by rampant wildebeests. And then I got a ping about Mycroft Canner. You think I’m not going to check that you’re all right?”
Thisbe stared at this European, the Conclave pin on her breast, its little band of gold. “The Conclave Head?”
Julia surveyed Thisbe down to the mazelike landscapes of her boots. “You must be Human Thisbe Saneer.” Her pronunciation was slow and luxurious, especially on the Humanist Hive title, as if she enjoyed the act of differentiating people. “Do I have you to thank for the timely call?” Julia offered a well-lotioned handshake.
Thisbe accepted the hand. “Nice to meet you, Jul—… is it July or Julia?”
“Julia.”
It was a fair question; even newspapers sometimes substitute the socially correct de-gendered ‘Jules’ or ‘July,’ but Roman nobility as ancient as the Doria-Pamphili line, who can boast princes, popes, and (thanks to forged medieval genealogies) consuls and senators, scoffs at the modern fashion which would strip the sex from ‘Julia.’ In person she exudes antiquity: her tailored suit, her hair as black as baking chocolate, with the perfect ancient wave one sees on busts and caryatids. She wears it always bound back in coils, so one cannot guess how much of it there is. Such a busy vocateur has little time for strats or their insignia, so she wears none but the narrow Italian and Roman strat bracelets. The long sensayer’s scarf which winds three times around her shoulders is vibrant violet silk, lined with equally violet velvet, and she wears only the most precisely tailored European suits, so every curve shows through. The Doria-Pamphili palace, with its stunning galleries of art treasures, was fully reconstructed after the Church War and belongs to the family still, but Julia gave up Rome for Romanova when she accepted her post as Conclave Head, and with it her office in the Regia Pontificis at the heart of the new Forum. Her kin thought her a fool.
“You’re Mycroft’s sensayer?” Thisbe asked. “Personally? Isn’t that a bit cruel?”
The European laughed. “Is my reputation really as bad as all that?”
“Not bad,” Thisbe corrected, “just, from what I’ve heard your specialty is one-time visits where you … um…”
“Dismember my parishioners?” Laughter sparkled in Julia’s eyes. “How’d they put it in that editorial, Carlyle? I slash my clients to the heart, baring their hidden hypocrisies until they leave … what was it, a shattered wreck?”
Carlyle had been glaring stubbornly, but this answer at least matched his mood. “A shivering wreck.”
“Shivering, yes, that’s good. And then they go back to their regular sensayer, who nurses them back to sanity over months of great epiphanies.” Julia stretched her neck to pop her shoulders. “I know it sounds dramatic, but, while my specialty is deep-cutting sessions, I can do normal ones too. I took on Mycroft Canner because I didn’t want to give the most difficult case I’d ever seen to someone … too sensitive.” She gave a little sigh. “And don’t worry, I’m not stalking Cato Weeksbooth.”
Thisbe snorted. “Good.”
“Stalking Cato Weeksbooth?” Carlyle repeated.
Julia smile-winced a small apology. “Mmm. You know Cato’s phobic of sensayers. We ran into one another once, and the poor thing fell down a flight of stairs trying to run away, broke an arm and a leg.”
“That wasn’t in the file.” Carlyle’s brows narrowed. “Neither was the fact that Mycroft Canner frequents this bash’. Did you know when you sent me?”
Julia drew close enough to pick grass seed from Carlyle’s fraying scarf. “I did know, and I’m sorry about that. I filed the paperwork to get permission to tell you, but it’s still processing. There’s enough red tape around Mycroft Canner to wrap up Renunciation Column like a stick of peppermint. But what was it that threw you into such a panic an hour ago? Something to do with Mycroft?”
“They met,” Thisbe answered simply.
“No!” Carlyle’s voice is too light to thunder, but in this moment he tried. “We didn’t just meet, it turned out I’d met Mycroft Canner days ago but no one saw fit to tell me. You knew they frequented this bash’; how could you send me with no warning?”
Julia reached up to brush back the strands of blond which sweat glued to Carlyle’s forehead. “I couldn’t leave the bash’ without a sensayer for the month right after their old one died. I had to send someone. This is exactly your specialty, so I knew if anyone could cope it would be you.”
Thisbe crossed her arms, watching the pair. “So it was you who assigned Carlyle? You know we requested a Humanist.”
Carlyle winced as if the words were blows. “If you don’t think I’m doing a good job—”
“You’re doing a great job, Carlyle, I just think it’s important for requests to be honored, especially politically sensitive requests.”
Julia turned her smile on Thisbe, a deep, self-satisfied smile, as if every person she meets is some new platter at a banquet. “You also requested someone with security precleared, and who could handle Cato Weeksbooth, and the other … particularities of your bash’. I didn’t have a Humanist with the right skills. Carlyle is my own student, one of the very best, as well as one of my most skilled specialists.”
Carlyle gave a bashful smile.
Thisbe will not be deflected. “In what? Getting us over losing our sensayer? That’s a pretty short-term issue to trump our actual request.”
Kindly Carlyle bit his lip.
Julia is not so gentle. “Bash’ loss. Our Carlyle is a bash’ loss specialist. You all should have had one five years ago. I understand why you worked so hard to keep the accident from the public. ‘World Transit System Left in the Hands of Traumatized Twentysomethings’ is a headline sure to bring world panic. But I looked over your files. Cato Weeksbooth, if nothing else, proves you really should have switched to a specialist when it happened.”