“The Conclave guessed?” Thisbe repeated. “Collectively?”
“Yes. Well, no, not the whole Conclave.”
“Julia Doria-Pamphili,” Thisbe supplied.
“Julia sent me, I … that’s what I do, I take on tricky cases where other sensayers have … fallen … before.”
Thisbe sniffed. “A professional spy?”
“No! No, I didn’t come to spy, I came to protect you!”
“By eavesdropping from inside Mukta?”
The Cousin winced. “I needed to know the truth. And you needed to tell me, all of you, Cato especially. Could I have gotten you to share the secret any other way?”
Thisbe’s sigh could be no heavier. “I never expected to hear ‘the ends justify the means’ from a sensayer.”
“Sometimes they do! Not often, but when the gain is so much bigger than the harm done, yes, they do. The harshest sensayer sessions are often the most productive, it’s amazing, you should try it too.” Carlyle tried a deep breath to steel herself, but it collapsed into a sob. “I learned that again today.”
Thisbe leaned back against a patch of rain-smoothed trash wall. “From Julia Doria-Pamphili?”
“Yes! Well, no, not today, today for me was … but anyway, the first time was with Julia. It was incredible, painful, but back then I was on the verge of suicide and Julia saved me, transformed me. We can do that for Cato, too, for all of you, but you have to let us in first, and you weren’t going to do that on your own.”
“And you and Julia arranged this for us out of the kindness of your hearts?”
“It’s our job. The Sensayers’ Conclave cares for the well-being of the world. You’re one of the most vital bash’es to protect. Imagine if Cato flipped out one day and decided to end it by making all the cars crash at once! The world can’t take a disaster like that. The world needs your bash’ to have a sensayer you can talk to!”
“Who? You or Julia?”
“Me, me, of course, at least…” Tears’ beginnings awoke the diamond sparkle in Carlyle’s blue eyes. “No, that’s not true. It would have been me at first, but then I’d have referred you to Julia.” She crouched down in the grass, picking seed heads as she avoided Thisbe’s eyes. “I knew it when Julia assigned me here, whenever they assigned me anywhere, they always said it was so I could help people, and I pretended I believed it, but we both knew. Julia sends me in to get people’s trust, so I can refer you to have a session with Julia, and then…”
“Then what?” Thisbe’s tone grew coaxing.
Carlyle’s chest heaved, her still-weak stomach threatening again to purge itself as the truth flowed forth. “Julia will make you keep coming back to them. If Julia wants, they can make anyone keep coming back, but you have to consent to that first session first.” She sank into the softness of the grass. “I knew what Julia was really doing. I pretended I believed them, but I knew. I have such an innocent demeanor, people who don’t trust anyone are willing to trust me. That’s why Julia took an interest in me, trained me to lure people in.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her Cousin’s wrap. “I know about the incident, a few years back, Julia tricked Cato into coming in for a session, but Cato ran. That was smart. Julia tried for years to get your old sensayer Esmerald Revere to refer one of you to them, but they wouldn’t, so Julia leapt on the chance when they died. When you killed them.”
Thisbe offered Carlyle a tissue from her pocket. “Ockham has pledged to execute any bash’member who talks to Julia Doria-Pamphili.”
“What?”
She sat on the ground beside Carlyle, not quite close enough to share warmth. “Eureka and Sidney can smell what’s rotten in the CFB; you think they couldn’t smell what’s rotten in the Conclave? Julia Doria-Pamphili, sensayer to the great and influential, commanding a network of parishioners with links to every center of power.” She smiled. “Sounds a lot like Madame D’Arouet.”
Carlyle had a good nose blow. “Yes, that’s what it is, just like Madame, a secret empire, but worse, taking advantage of people’s religion directly. Julia pitched it as defensive, that we’re fighting back against corruption, building an empire to oppose an empire.”
“To fight Madame?”
“Madame? No. No, we didn’t know about Madame. Julia still doesn’t. At least, I think they don’t.”
“Who are you fighting, then?”
“Dana? Mitsubishi.”
“Dana? Mitsubishi?”
Carlyle sniffled. “Mm-hmm. Dana? and Andō Mitsubishi, you know they’ve adopted all these ba’kids? Ten of them.”
“I heard something like that.”
“What you didn’t hear is that they’re all set-sets.”
“Set-sets?”
“Yeah. Some weird new kind, and now they’re systematically infiltrating everywhere, even inside the CFB. I’m sure they’re part of whatever Perry and your President are so worried about.”
Thisbe stroked her lips. “Set-sets … Are you a Nurturist after all, then?”
“No. Well, maybe a little, uncomfortable with set-set training, not opposed. But that doesn’t really matter. The Mitsubishi set-sets were an excuse, the excuse Julia used to justify it all, the excuse I used to justify it to myself. I pretended I was doing good. Protecting the world. Just being part of that, it made me feel…”
“Powerful?”
“Less powerless, I guess?” Carlyle wiped her eyes. “The world is full of so many bad things, sometimes it seems like good can’t even make a dent unless we do something a little underhanded. Julia’s network was supposed to let us keep the peace, fight back against Dana? and the set-set corruption, but it was all a lie, wasn’t it? Dominic was right, from the beginning, not just every word Julia’s said to me but every word I said to Julia, both ways it was all a lie.”
Thisbe cocked an eyebrow. “Dominic?”
“I talked to Dominic today. Dominic’s a perverted sadist living in a psycho whorehouse, but at least there we could talk about the truth. With Julia it was all lies, even this!” Carlyle tore the long scarf from her shoulders and hurled it away, the worn knit flopping in the grass. “Julia told me it used to belong to Fisher G. Gurai. Maybe I did believe it at first, but I’ve studied Gurai, all sensayers have. I’ve seen the photos, that scarf wasn’t in them. It just made me feel important pretending it was true.”
Thisbe stretched her shoulders. “So you’ve been luring in important people for Julia’s network, but for how long? Years?”
Carlyle nodded, wiping tears from the salty tracks still fresh on her cheeks. “Years and years. I’ve been Julia’s pimp.” Carlyle’s tense hands took her rage out on the grass. “Julia told me once about this special order of monks in the Middle Ages. They took in priests that had fallen, broken their vows, and been expelled from other orders. They helped them reform, retrained them, then sent them out on dangerous missions, not just dangerous to life and limb but full of temptations, to brothel centers, corrupt courts, bandit camps, places likely to make anybody fall. Because these priests had fallen once before, they knew how painful it was afterwards, so they would be less likely to do it again, that was the logic. And even if they did fall again, at least … at least they kept somebody pure from falling.” She swallowed hard. “That story kept me going. After my fall, if I could do that, I thought, if I could be like that, stronger than the pure are, going to spiritually dangerous places to help people where no one else can, it would be worth it. But it was all a lie. There was no order of fallen monks. Julia made it up. I knew. Whenever I asked about dates or documents they changed the subject. I knew it was a lie, I just wanted to believe.” Her breaths grew short. “Maybe Dominic’s right, maybe that’s all I ever did before Bridger, just want to believe in things, in doing good, in God, but I never believed deep down, and now that I have proof I can’t handle it.”