Before you see my next failure, reader, you must understand the power of the room we are about to enter. Here my trial took place. Here was the neutral ground the Powers chose to meet in secret and decide the monster’s fate, while the world outside called in unprecedented unison for blood. Madame had suggested it, hanging on the Emperor’s sleeve as she pleaded for a chance to see this rarest of human beasts before they put it down, and the excuse of satisfying her girlish whim had let all of them pretend the choice to hold my trial here was not political—in truth it could not have been more political, for where else than in her sanctum were the Seven free to help each other cheat their own laws?
When the police stormed my vivisection room and caught the murderer, still elbow-deep in Mercer Mardi, they dosed me with more drugs than even my preemptive antidotes could counter. I awoke in my coffin-cage, arms locked behind me in a gel, as gentle as water against my skin but inescapable as steel, which the Utopians, in their rage, had invented in those few days, just for me. Within the cage was silence, the walls clear from the outside but opaque to me, so I knew nothing of the crowds past which the police paraded me, though I could feel the gentle bumping of the box, and peace when I was set down in what I assumed must be my prison. I would guess I had two hours’ peace before a switch turned the speakers on and made the walls transparent, leaving me squinting at the sudden light and bare as a lab rat before the red-faced and panting Anonymous.
“This letter, is it yours?” Rarely have I heard words so urgent. “Tell me!” He slammed the tired green sheets against the glass, youth-arrogant scribbles dating from the days when Saladin and I, fourteen and giddy with the power of our intellects, had begun many ingenious little projects to show the adult world our brilliance.
“Yes. Yes, it’s mine,” I answered.
“Who helped you?” he barked at once. “Was it Kohaku? Did Kohaku Mardi know I’m the Anonymous?”
“No one helped me,” I answered, almost too quickly. “Not Kohaku, not anyone. I figured it out myself.” If Saladin and I are one flesh then I spoke the truth, for we had deduced it together, and written this letter, addressed to the Anonymous’s true identity, to boast that we had guessed, but we never sent it. We realized mid-draft that such a stunt might endanger our greater project, so we left the letter in the negligible clutter of my adopted bash’house, scraps which only Papadelias would think to go through.
“They knew you’re the Anonymous?” It was the King of Spain who asked it, striding forward to frown beside the Anonymous like a teammate after a bad game, the blue and gold sash which marks Europe’s Prime Minister set aside for mourning black.
The Anonymous nodded, grave. “It even gives the reasoning they used. It’s brilliant.”
My eyes adjusted to the dazzle slowly. I took in the room: silk-paneled walls, sofas of gold and velvet, and figures lounging over brandy like friends drawn close by troubled times. I did not recognize most of them at first, but seeing the Anonymous answer to his secret title with eight people watching was enough to make me doubt the structure of the world. How many knew? How many people here were privy to what was supposed to be, after the name of MASON’s successor, Earth’s second-strictest secret?
“Canner figured it out?” It was Ganymede who asked, still the Humanist Co-Consul, not yet President. I knew him only slightly then, and it was a strange aesthetic privilege seeing Ganymede in his mourning clothes, that shade of midnight blue that chases the sun toward sunset, so the dark cloth made the translucence of his skin glow bright as moonlight. For mourning, should it not be black? It should, reader, but remember that, however deeply the others mourned the Mardi bash’, it is unlikely the Duke actually cared.
The Anonymous faced the others. “This is why the police have had me in protective custody the last four days. They found this letter in Mycroft’s things and thought I might be targeted as well.” He backed away from my cage, and, with a clearer view, I recognized Andō Mitsubishi on the couch beside Ganymede, his black hakama stark against the sumptuous hall.
“That’s why they wouldn’t let me see you?” The voice let me recognize Cousin Chair Bryar Kosala, hoarse with tears. She was huddled on a couch, resting against Gordian’s Headmaster Felix Faust, as a niece rests against an uncle. “That’s why you’ve been locked away?”
“I’m sorry, Bryar, they wouldn’t let me tell you.” The Anonymous went to her and lifted her into his embrace. “They didn’t want anyone to know that they knew Mycroft knew.”
The Anonymous still wore his outside clothes, tiger-striped with the wrinkles of his captivity, which Kosala ruined further as she pressed against him.
My mind raced as I counted: the Anonymous, the King of Spain for Europe, Chair Kosala for the Cousins, Headmaster Faust for Gordian, Duke Ganymede for the Humanists, Director Andō for the Mitsubishi … six of the seven pillars of the Earth stood before me here, in black together like a bash’ in mourning. It was wrong. I had been in the Twenty-Fifth Century that morning, yet here I found myself in a world of petticoats and incest. I was not some amateur. I was trained by the Mardi bash’, by Senator Aeneas Mardi, by Deputy Censor Kohaku Mardi, by Felix Faust’s prize pupil Mercer Mardi, by Apollo. I knew more of the world than the world did, its trends, its fears, the currents churning beneath the ripples of property and population. Yet, of these secret relationships between the Powers—Ganymede and Andō, Kosala and the Anonymous—I had no idea. My teachers, my great teachers, had known nothing. In another life, I mused, I would want to study this, to see what other secrets lie behind these frills and petticoats. But I was a dead man, and nothing would make me miss my appointment with the executioner who would carry out the General Will and make the whole world murderers.
With Kosala warm against him, the Anonymous relaxed enough to let his own tears fall. “You can’t kill Mycroft Canner. I know what they’ve done, I know the public wants it, but you can’t. I’ll take it to my Proxy if I have to.”
“When did they realize?” Spain asked, grave as a portrait on a coin. “When did Canner figure out your true identity, what year?”
The Anonymous swallowed hard. “The letter’s dated twenty-four thirty-five.”
Felix Faust let out a long, delighted whistle. “Before even our Donatien? Spectacular.”
Ganymede rolled his murder-blue eyes. “Please, Faust, in ’thirty-five Canner was what, fourteen years old? Much less impressive than the Prince’s six.”
The Anonymous shook his head. “First is first.”
“The next Anonymous?” Kosala held her lover’s eyes. “No! I know the rules of your succession, but you can’t make Mycroft the next Anonymous, they’re a monster!”
The Anonymous caught her hand, in those days not yet brightened by the sparkle of a wedding ring. I pitied him. No monarchy has ever had so suspenseful a succession. An impotent king may wait decades for an heir, but at least he can try aphrodisiacs, affairs, placebos. The Anonymous can only wait and hope for the day some bright young thing will reason him out and come to claim the apprenticeship, as he came to his predecessor, and she to hers, back through six generations. Such a helpless wait, and now the bright young thing had appeared before him, but I had already thrown my life away. Yes it’s true. I could have been the next Anonymous, the second most powerful political voice on Earth. But I gave that up to teach you, gentle reader, what violence the human beast can sow when we are free. It was hardly the greatest sacrifice I made—I sacrificed my life as well, and worse, I would die in a hangman’s arms, and not my Saladin’s.
“I know Mycroft can’t be the successor now,” the Anonymous answered, “but however sick they are there’s so much potential there! They’re seventeen, for goodness sake! A child! We all heard the hopes the Mardis had for Mycroft.” He turned from Power to Power, searching for one whose eyes would not shy away. “Andō, you were there when Kohaku and Chiasa first brought Mycroft to my office. Ten years as Deputy Censor and Kohaku was barely faster than Mycroft aged nine. We all know Aeneas was grooming them for the highest office, and Felix!” He turned to Headmaster Faust, on the couch behind. “You had Mycroft at the Institute. You know we can’t throw a mind like that away.” He choked. “Murderer or no, Mycroft’s all we have left of the Mardi bash’ now, and of Apollo. We—”