“In everything.”
I spread myself as a wall between Caesar and Saladin. “Please don’t listen to them, Caesar. They’re mad, developmentally disturbed, they don’t know what they’re—”
One blow knocked me from my knees to the floor; a second kept me there.
“Who are you?” MASON demanded.
A serpent smile spread across Saladin’s hairless face. “Mycroft Canner.”
“It’s practically true, Caesar,” Madame cooed, lace fluttering about her elbows as she restrained MASON’s poised fists. “We ran a skin sample, it’s a genetic match, and the tracker system refuses to admit this is a human being at all, it thinks he’s a dog. Isn’t that delightful?”
“I won’t ask again.” The Emperor loomed. “Who are you?”
Saladin still smiled. “Nobody. A wild dog. A ghost.”
I saw a computer search flicker in MASON’s lenses. “Mycroft had a ba’sib named Saladin who died in the explosion twenty-two years ago. There was a fire; you did a skin graft and used Mycroft’s skin as the source.” It was fast guesswork, but Caesar is no fool. “So, which of you two killed which of the Mardis? Or did you do them all together?”
“Caesar,” Madame interrupted, her voice honey in his ear, “now is not the time. The Seven-Ten list mess is what needs you now. Save yourself for that, and leave this to me. In a few days I’ll have the beast’s answers flowing on command.”
MASON turned to her, letting fatigue show for a moment as he limped a step away. “Madame, if the law offers no protections to this creature you have caught, do to it what you will.”
She let a smile peek over her fan.
I raised my head. “Caesar…”
I had to dodge to keep his heel from falling on my hand. “I’m dealing with the present now, Mycroft. The past can wait. Voltaire!”
“Yes, Caesar?”
Apollo’s coat creaked in Caesar’s grip. “Take it away.” He bundled it into Voltaire’s open arms. “We’ll never speak of it again.”
“Give it back!” I shrieked. I did not stand but sat straight, startled at the unaccustomed force in my own tone. “The coat is ours, Caesar!”
He turned. “It is Apollo’s.”
“When you slay the enemy hero you rip the splendid armor from his back and haul it back to Troy! You know this, Caesar! It’s ours! Our spoils! Our right! Apollo would agree.”
Mason stood frozen, unable to face the ghost of Apollo which welled, I’m sure, before his mind’s eye as it did before mine. I was right. He knew I was right.
What is Woman’s office if not to step in where Man’s pride makes him helpless? “Let’s compromise.” Madame lifted the coat from Voltaire’s arms, carefully, like a bundled infant. “You know Mycroft can’t walk the streets anymore, Caesar. You’ve asked me to keep them safe here, and I shall keep the coat safe here too, in reach of our Utopians and out of reach of any prying public. That’s fair, and safe, and fully in your power without separating trophy from victor. Now come, Caesar, you have affairs of state.”
MASON’s chest was heaving, quaking breaths which he forced down with the iron of his will. His hands hungered to rip the coat from her, as he would have ripped life from me, if Apollo let him. The call of state let him retreat in silence. Well done, Madame.
“Art thou injured, Mycroft?” She approached and bent low over me, or squatted, the architecture of her gown made it impossible to distinguish.
I licked blood from my lip. “I’m fine, Madame. Thank you.”
She laid the precious bundle in my arms, the Griffincloth turning my Franciscan habit to a uniform, not quite a Servicer’s, dappled with dirty camouflage. “Thou’lt want this, too.” She drew Apollo’s vizor from the depths of her frills. “Caesar never saw it.”
I shuddered with true gratitude. “Thank you, Madame.”
“Thou’st had a hard few days.” She rose again and moved toward a sideboard, where I saw my bowl waiting. “What time zone dost thou sleep by these days, Mycroft?”
“Any I can, Madame.”
“Wouldst thou like to spend the night inside the cage with thy stray?”
“Yes, Madame, I’d like that very much!”
Her chuckle told me I had answered too eagerly. “Just don’t tire thyself out too much to work.”
“I—” I caught myself on the verge of promising too much. “I’ll try my best, Madame.”
“Do.” With a face as much smirking as critical, she handed me my bowl, loaded with lopsided petits fours and mangled omelet, twice my usual portion.
“Thank you, Madame.”
“Not at all, Mycroft. Rather I should thank thee and thy stray.” She leaned low as she unlocked the cage to let me in, whispering so only Saladin and I could hear. “Mycroft knows this already, but Apollo Mojave was my only rival for the complete affections of the Seven.” She winked at wide-eyed Saladin. “Thanks to you two, I won.”
I felt a sense of safety as the bars locked fast behind me, Fate’s promise that Saladin and I would not be ripped apart again until that lock clicked open once more. For thirteen years we had enjoyed only those rare hours when I could slip my tracker, or stolen seconds between its bleeping my excitement and Papadelias’s cavalry charging in. Now a whole night stretched before us, infinite as the sea. It was an undeserved mercy, snowfall to cool my burning patch of Hell.
?Mycroft,? Saladin whispered as we wrapped ourselves around each other. ?Where are we?? His Greek felt hollow, like a child’s song lost in a cavern.
?The secret capital of the world,? I answered.
?Who was that woman??
?The secret Empress. I’m sorry, Saladin. I wanted to die for you, but after what happened to me here I was too weak, and now they’re going to do it to you, too.?
His eyes seemed old, too old, life without medical treatments letting the years show in his face as in portraits of ancients. ?Who is Jehovah? You mentioned the name Jehovah.?
I stroked his hairless cheek. ?Tomorrow. The world can end tomorrow. For tonight, let’s let the world cease to exist.?
He tasted my ear. ?Why are you crying? I’m all right. These wounds are nothing.?
?We killed Apollo.? My voice cracked as I said it. ?Apollo’s dead and we killed them, I killed them, and the reasons were all lies … ? I drew Apollo’s coat tighter around us, as if we could hide in its reality. ?What kind of God would plan this??
His eyes grew wide. ?Mycroft, since when have you believed—?
?Even if Apollo had to die, They could have used disease, or an accident, or lightning. Why us? Why murder, and why make us, both of us, live to see that we were wrong?? I pulled him around me like a shell. ?We killed Apollo, and tomorrow, and the next day, forever, we’ll still have killed Apollo. Tell me it’s a nightmare, Saladin. Just for tonight, tell me it isn’t true.?
He held me as I wished, but his breath against my cheek was slow with thought. ?Mycroft, where did Bridger come from? Apollo didn’t have a child. Seine wasn’t pregnant, we know that, but the resemblance is too strong, so where—?
?Shhh. Not here.?
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
Treason
“Yes, I’ll sign for it. Wheel it in.”
Lesley signaled the bash’house security to let the postman wheel the box across the threshold. In the stress of the crisis, her doodles had strayed off the margins of her clothes to streak her skin with veins and spirals.
“Member Lesley Juniper Saneer,” he read off after she signed. “I thought I recognized you. I still remember that speech you made to the cameras after your bash’parents died. I showed that video to my little ones. ‘If you ever lose your ba’pas,’ I told them, ‘I hope you do something as brave and good for the world as that Lesley Juniper.’”
Lesley smiled at the postman, and at the signature tracks his Humanist boots stamped on the hallway carpet, quotes from Milton woven into branching spirals something between fire and a tree. “Thanks, that means a lot.”