“It was ever my plan that if I were to miscalculate the dose, and if I opened the coffin to find you dead in fact as well as in appearance, then I should employ the arts of the necromancer to bring you back to life.”
It took de Gex some moments to absorb this.
“But, cousine, I had always believed that you had only affected an interest in the Black Arts, when it was fashionable, years ago, when you were young and foolish. That you considered it all perfect nonsense.”
“You have been furious at me, édouard, for deeming it all nonsense! For to call Satan a figment of man’s phant’sy is but one step from saying the same of God, is it not?”
“Indeed, cousine, I should rather you were a sincere Satanist than a pretend one; for the former recognizes God’s majesty, and may be reformed, while the latter is an atheist, and doomed to the Lake of Fire.”
“Then look about yourself, and draw your own conclusions.”
“I see the relics and signs of the Black Mass, the candles still burning, the inverted cross. I conclude that there is hope for you. But I do not know yet whether there is hope for me.”
“What do you mean, édouard?”
“You have been strangely reticent on the question of whether I was alive or dead when the lid came off the coffin; whether, that is, I am alive now because of smelling salts, or because you used necromancy on my corpse.”
“Perhaps I shall tell you one day,” said Oyonnax. She lifted a bundle of clothes off the floor and dropped it into his lap. “Change out of those Jesuit weeds and into these.”
It was too much, in too short a time, for the opiated mind of de Gex. “I do not understand.”
“Understand this: You ask too many favors of me. Perhaps I’m not as different as you phant’sy from Eliza. She is a businesswoman—she does nothing for free. You, cousin, have put me to an immense amount of trouble and expense. I have given you death, a splendid bespoke coffin, resurrection, safe transit out of Eliza’s web, and now a new identity.” She patted the bundle: it was a clerical robe, but light gray, not the black of the Jesuits. “You are now Edmund de Ath, a Belgian Jansenist.”
“A Jansenist!?”
“What better disguise for a Jesuit than to become a Jesuit’s nemesis? Put these on, shave your beard, and the transformation is complete. You can go on your quest to the East a new man. I’m sure the Jansenists in Goa, Macao, Manila, will be glad of your company!”
“The disguise should serve,” said de Gex. “I thank you for it. For it and for all the rest.”
“Have I not done much for you?”
“Obviously you have, cousine, but—”
“Then shave, put on your new garments, and let us be on our separate ways.”
“I want only to know whether it was a chymist’s receipt, or the Powers of Darkness, that brought me back to life!”
“Yes. You have already made that plain.”
“And—?”
“And I thought I made it clear to you, Edmund de Ath, that I do not wish to answer your question at this time.”
“But it is a simple thing for you to do! And it makes all the difference.”
Oyonnax smiled and shook her head. “You contradict yourself—how like a Jansenist! Because it makes such a difference, it can never be simple. édouard, apply your Jesuitical logic for a moment. If I brought you to life with necromancy, it means you belong to the Legions of Hell now—and that I am a necromancer—which means I believe that both Satan and God are real—and therefore have hope of redemption, if only I agree to switch sides. Am I correct so far?”
“Indeed, cousine, you have reasoned as soundly as any man.”
“On the other hand, if I did it all with drugs from the apothecary, then your soul belongs to God as it ever did. These trappings—” she indicated the pentagram, the candles “—are stage-props, nothing more—fetishes and relics of a ludicrous pseudo-religion that I hold in contempt, which I trotted out only to throw a fright into you—much as priests frighten peasants at church by prating about hellfire. In which case I am a cynical atheist. Am I correct?”
“Yes, cousine.”
“And so one of us shall go to hell, the other to heaven. But we cannot both end up in the same place. I know which, you do not. I have the power to tell you, but I choose to withhold the knowledge. You may embark, whenever you feel ready, on your quest to recover the Solomonic Gold, but you’ll do so not knowing the answer to your question.”