“It’s hot in here.”
What you cannot see from sitting inside Mukta is that, for some minutes, Cato’s hands have been playing with the controls of some mad devices he wears strapped to his forearm under his sleeve. “It’s hotter in here than the system thinks it should be,” Cato repeated, “I’d say two point six degrees hotter than seven people should make it.”
Perhaps about now, reader, you realize, as our witness does, that Ockham has backed out of sight behind you, stalking around the back of Mukta, maybe drawing some weapon from his belt while you cannot see. Panicked, you wonder: does he realize? Does he too see what a perfect hiding place this old museum piece provides? Perhaps in childhood he played hide-and-seek inside the ancient car with Lesley, or made a play-fort of it as he and one twin weathered a pillow-bombardment from Sniper and the other. If you had my pacemaker, eavesdropper, it would bleep alarm.
“?A spy!” Ockham rips the hatch open faster than you can turn, and presses a weapon to your back, just at the neck’s base where even a nonlethal dart could cripple. Before he even speaks, a prick injects you below the ear, and your vision wobbles as the muscles of your limbs lose two-thirds of their strength. “Hands where I can see them!” he orders in cold English. “No fast moves. Back down out of the car, now.”
And who is the intruder whose eyes and ears you have shared while spying on this deadly conference?
“What? Carlyle!” Thisbe recognized her first, rising with a despairing condescension on her face. “Oh, you idiot!”
It was Carlyle indeed, shivering like a fevered child as the drug magnified the after-stress of Dominic’s ‘session,’ a cocktail worse than vertigo. It has been four hours since we left Carlyle, switching off her tracker in Dominic’s cell, and the flight from Paris to Cielo de Pájaros takes barely one.
Lesley sighed like a melting snowdrift. “Again? I really liked this one, too.”
“Quiet, all of you!” Ockham ordered, digging his fingers into Carlyle’s scarf as he walked her down Mukta’s extending stair. “You used your clearance as our sensayer to get inside?” he asked.
“Yes.” Carlyle’s voice cracked as she answered. “I had an appointment with Sniper but I showed up early. The computer let me in but no one was here and … I just wanted to look at Mukta, and then I was so tired, I fell asl—”
“How much did you hear?”
“Wait!” Lesley cried, suddenly shrill with hope. “It was all in Spanish! Cousins don’t speak Spanish. They won’t have understood a thing, right, Carlyle?”
“Exactly!” Carlyle agreed at once. “I have no idea what you were discussing, I was just—”
A kick from Ockham brought the prisoner to her knees. “That’s one warning. You don’t get two. Your bash’ is half Humanist, you think I haven’t looked you up? I run security here, I check every molecule that passes through my door, and you’d do well to remember that I have the right to exercise lethal force on intruders I judge to be resisting.”
“But not to assassinate innocent people at the President’s command,” Carlyle shot back, braver, perhaps, than you imagined. “Or to drive your old sensayer to suicide when they found out.”
Ockham’s sigh did not weaken his grip on the prisoner. “You did understand.”
“Crap,” Kat or Robin groaned. “Now what do we do? We can’t bump off two sensayers in a month, even an idiot would notice.”
<?thiz, you have those memory drugs, right?>
“?Have you been snooping in my bedroom!”
<sorry.>
“Wait!” Carlyle cried. “It’s better that I know! I’m not going to tell anyone. I can’t tell anyone, I’m your sensayer! I’ve taken a vow to hold all parishioners’ secrets secret, no matter what they are.” The captive twisted in Ockham’s grip. “I can help you. I’ve helped murderers before. You think they sent a novice in here after your last sensayer killed themself? You murdered your ba’pas, don’t you want to talk about your guilt?”
Pride made Sniper draw its pistol too, though Lesley had to support its arm with hers. “We can do it now,” Sniper suggested, “say we shot them before we realized who it was. It’ll seem natural enough after the break-in two days ago.”
Cold sweat broke out across the sensayer. “You don’t need to kill me. I’m here to help. Look at Cato! How many times has Cato attempted suicide this year, a dozen? They need me! You all need me! Having a sensayer who knows the truth may be the best thing that could happen to this bash’.”
Ockham held his prisoner fast. “Not if it leaks.”
“You don’t believe I can keep your secret?”
“I believe that you think you can, but—”
“Leave Carlyle to me.” Thisbe rose, slowly, letting the softness of her house self fall away.
“That may not be the best way, Thiz—”
“Ockham!” She spoke it urgently, her black eyes blacker with warning. “I’m not going to kill them. We all want a sensayer we can trust, who knows our real work, so we can have proper sessions, and don’t have to go through all this again. That’s better for all of us, right?”
A quick debate of glances flashed among the bash’mates, Lesley wary, Sniper suspicious, Cato petrified, but a contaminant tainted their cautious instincts—a contaminant called hope.
Faces alone told Thisbe she had won. “Then leave Carlyle to me.”
The others backed off as Thisbe stomped toward the prisoner, her Humanist boots pressing contours of grass and roads into the carpet, a continuation of the landscape whose labyrinth wound its way across her boots’ false leather. She snatched Carlyle’s scarf from her brother’s hands as one snatches the collar of a wayward pup, and dragged the staggering sensayer down the stairway to the depths of her secluded room.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
No Rest for the Virtuous
I wonder sometimes whether the Furies were venting their wrath on Carlyle that night, since Providence had ordered them to leave me be. In my experience the Furies are a fairer portrait of Fate than any smiling angel. They are not good, not merciful. The sufferings they sow are not steps toward some incomprehensible Good; rather, in this kingdom where the virtuous must suffer, at least the Furies make the wicked suffer more. This I can believe in, Fates who spin and mark and cut our threads of life and hide no benevolence behind their shears; some other goal, perhaps, but not benevolence. I know enough of what we mortals mean by “Good” to know that I have never seen it. I do not deny the Plan—a world without a Plan would not have spared Apollo’s killer only to grant me Apollo’s legacy—I simply refuse to be party to the optimistic hubris which labels the Goal behind that Plan as “Good.”
“Carlyle, Carlyle, Carlyle. What are we to do with you?”
Not even Thisbe’s bedroom was private enough for her purposes tonight. She chose the flower trench, the grass at once alive with evening’s chorus and dead in the absence of the child whose golden smile transformed night to day. Carlyle followed her close, not by choice, for Thisbe still held Carlyle’s scarf like a mother lion carrying her cub.
“I’m sorry,” Carlyle began. “I was here searching for clues about Bridger, I didn’t mean…”
“Carlyle,” Thisbe interrupted, softly, “it’s time to stop lying.”
Carlyle gulped air, even raised a pointing finger ready to justify herself, but her conviction melted into the tremors of a sob. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I shouldn’t lie, not to you. You’ve shared Bridger with me, the most important secret in the world, and I couldn’t even tell you…”
“Couldn’t tell me what?” Thisbe released the sensayer, facing her with arms crossed but eyebrows pleading. “What couldn’t you tell me?”
“I was sent!” Carlyle broke down, her whole frame deflating as she confessed. “To protect you, mostly to protect you. After your last sensayer killed themself, the Conclave guessed there might be a secret reason, some kind of secret pressure on your bash’. I was sent to find out what.”