Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

12

DESPITE OSCAR'S PREDICTION, the Tabula Rasa's tower was still standing, any trace of distinction it might have once owned eroded by the sun, which blazed with noonday fervor at well past three. Its ferocity had taken its toll on the trees that shielded the tower from the road, leaving their leaves to hang like dishrags from their branches. If there were any birds taking cover in the foliage, they were too exhausted to sing.

"When were you last here?" Oscar asked Jude as they drove into the empty forecourt.

She told him about her encounter with Bloxham, squeezing the account for its humorous effect in the hope of distracting Oscar from his anxiety.

"I never much liked Bloxham," Oscar replied. "He was so damn full of himself. Mind you, so were we all...." His voice trailed away, and with all the enthusiasm of a man approaching the execution block, he got out of the car and led her to the front door.

"There's no alarms ringing," he said. "If there's anybody inside, they got in with a key."

He'd pulled a cluster of his own keys out of his pocket and selected one.

"Are you sure this is wise?" he asked her.

"Yes, I am."

Resigned to this insanity, he unlocked the door and, after a moment's hesitation, headed inside. The foyer was cold and gloomy, but the chill only served to make Jude brisk.

"How do we get down into the cellar?" she said.

"You want to go straight down there?" he replied. "Shouldn't we check upstairs first? Somebody could be here."

"Somebody is here, Oscar. She's in the cellar. You can check upstairs if you want to, but I'm going down. The less time we waste the sooner we're out of here."

It was a persuasive argument, and he conceded to it with a little nod. He dutifully fished through the bunch of keys a second time and, having chosen one, went over to the farthest and smallest of the three closed doors ahead. Having taken his time selecting the right key, he now took even longer to get it into the lock and coax it into turning.

"How often have you been down there?" she asked him while he worked.

"Only twice," he replied. "It's a pretty grim place."

"I know," she reminded him.

"On the other hand, my father seemed to make quite a habit of exploring down there. There's rules and regulations, you know, about nobody looking through the library on their own, in case they're tempted by something they read. I'm sure he flouted all that. Ah!" The key turned. "That's one of them!" He selected a second key and started on the other lock.

"Did your father talk to you about the cellar?" she asked him.

"Once or twice. He knew more about the Dominions than he should have done. I think he even knew a few feits. I can't be sure. He was a cagey bugger. But at the end, when he was delirious, he'd mutter these names. Patashoqua, I remember. He repeated that over and over."

"Do you think he ever crossed into the Dominions?"

"I doubt it."

"So you worked out how to do that on your own?"

"I found a few books down here and smuggled them out. It wasn't difficult to get the circle working. Magic doesn't decay. It's about the only thing"—he paused, grunted, forced the key—"that doesn't." It began to turn, but not all the way. "I think Papa would have liked Patashoqua," he went on. "But it was only a name to him, poor sod."

"It'll be different after the Reconciliation," Jude said. "I know it's too late for him—"

"On the contrary," Oscar said, grimacing as he bullied the key. "From what I hear, the dead are just as locked up as the rest of us. There's spirits everywhere, according to Peccable, ranting and raving."

"Even in here?"

"Especially in here," he said.

With that, the lock gave up its resistance, and the key turned.

"There," he said. "Just like magic."

"Wonderful." She patted his back. "You're a genius."

He grinned at her. The dour, defeated man she'd found sweating in the pews an hour ago had lightened considerably now there was something to distract him from his death sentence. He withdrew the key from the lock and turned the handle. The door was stout and heavy, but it opened without much resistance. He preceded her into the darkness.

"If I remember right," he said, "there's a light here.

No?" He patted the wall to the side of the door. "Ah! Wait!"

A switch flipped, and a row of bare bulbs, strung from a cable, illuminated the room. It was large, wood-paneled, and austere.

"This is the one part of Roxborough's house still intact, besides the cellar." There was a plain oak table in the middle of the room, with several chairs around it, "This is where they met, apparently: the first Tabula Rasa. And they kept meeting here, over the years, until the house was demolished."

"Which was when?"

"In the late twenties."

"So a hundred and fifty years of Godolphin bums sat on one of those seats?"

"That's right."

"Including Joshua."

"Presumably."

"I wonder how many of them I knew?"

"Don't you remember?"

"I wish I did. I'm still waiting for the memories to come back. In fact, I'm begining to wonder if they ever will."

"Maybe you're repressing them for a reason?"

"Why? Because they're so appalling I can't face them? Because I acted like a whore; let myself be passed around the table with the port, left to right? No, I don't think that's it at all. I can't remember because I wasn't really living. I was sleepwalking, and nobody wanted to wake me."

She looked up at him, almost defying him to defend his family's ownership of her. He said nothing, of course. Instead, he moved to the vast grate, ducking beneath the mantelpiece, selecting a third key as he went. She heard him slot it in the lock and turn it, heard the motion of cogs and counterweights its turning initiated, and, finally, heard the groan of the concealed door as it opened. He glanced back at her.

"Are you coming?" he said. "Be careful. The steps are steep."

The flight was not only steep but long. What little light spilled from the room above dwindled after hahf a dozen steps, and she descended twice that number in darkness before Oscar found a switch below, and lights ran off along the labyrinth. A sense of triumph ran through her. She'd put her desire to find a way into this underworld aside many times since the dream of the blue eye had brought her to Celestine's cell, but it had never died. Now, finally, she was going to walk where her dream sight h'ad gone, through this mine of books with its seams to the ceiling, to the place where the Goddess lay.

"This is the single largest collection of sacred texts since the library at Alexandria," Oscar said, his museum-guide tone a defense, she suspected, against the sense of moment he shared with her. "There are books here even the Vatican doesn't know exist." He lowered his voice, as though there might be other browsers here that he'd disturb if he spoke too loudly. "The night he died, Papa told me he found a book here written by the Fourth King."

"The what?"

"There were three kings at Bethlehem, remember? According to the Gospels. But the Gospels lied. There were four. They were looking for the Reconciler."

"Christ was a Reconciler?"

"So Papa said."

"And you believe that?"

"Papa had no reason to lie."

"But the book, Oscar; the book could have lied."

"So could the Bible. Papa said this Magi wrote his story because he knew he'd been cut out of the Gospels. It was this fellow named the Imajica. Wrote the word down in this book. There it was on the page for the first time in history. Papa said he wept."

Jude surveyed the labyrinth that spread from the foot of the stairs with fresh respect. "Have you tried to find the book since?"

"I didn't need to. When Papa died I went in search of the real thing. I traveled back and forth as though Christos had succeeded and the Fifth was reconciled. And there they were, the Unbeheld's many mansions."

And there, too, the most enigmatic player in this interDominional drama: Hapexamendios. If Christos was a Reconciler, did that make the Unbeheld Christos' Father? Was the force in hiding behind the fogs of the First Dominion the Lord of Lords, and, if so, why had He crushed every Goddess across the Imajica, as legend said He had? One question begged another, all from a few claims made by a man who'd knelt at the Nativity. No wonder Roxborough had buried these books alive.

"Do you know where your mystery woman's lurking?" Oscar said.

"Not really."

"Then we've got a hell of a search on our hands,"

"I remember there was a couple making love down here, near her cell. One of them was Bloxham."

"Dirty little bugger. So we should be looking for some stains on the floor, is that it? I suggest we split up, or we'll be here all summer."

They parted at the stairs and made their separate ways. Jude soon discovered how strangely sound carried in the tunnels. Sometimes she could hear Godolphin's footsteps so clearly she thought he must be following her. Then she'd turn a corner (or else he would) and the noise would not simply fade but vanish altogether, leaving only the pad of her own soles on the cold stone to keep her company. They were buried too deeply for even the remotest murmur from the street above to penetrate, nor was there any suspicion of sound from the earth around them: no hum of cables; no sluicing of drains.

She was several times tempted to pluck one of the tomes from its shelf, thinking perhaps serendipity would put her in reach of the diary of the Fourth King. But she resisted, knowing that even if she had time to browse here, which she didn't, the volumes were written in the great languages of theology and philosophy: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Sanskrit, all incomprehensible to her. As ever on this journey, she'd have to beat a track to the truth by instinct and wit alone. Nothing had been given to her to illuminate the way except the blue eye, and that was in Gentle's possession now. She'd reclaim it as soon as she saw him again, give him something else as a talisman: the hair of her sex, if that's what he wanted. But not her egg; not her cool blue egg.

Maybe it was these thoughts that ushered her to the place where the lovers had stood; maybe it was that same serendipity she'd hoped might lead her hand to the King's book. If so, this was a finer leading. Here was the wall where Bloxham and his mistress had coupled; she knew it without a trace of doubt. Here were the shelves the woman had clung to while her ridiculous beau had labored to fulfill her. Between the books they bore, the mortar was tinged with the faintest trace of blue. She didn't call Oscar but went to the shelves and took down several armfuls of books, then put her fingers to the stains. The wall was bitterly cold, but the mortar crumbled beneath her touch, as though her sweat was sufficient agent to unbind its elements. She was shocked at what she'd caused, and gratified, retreating from the wall as the message of dissolution spread with extraordinary rapidity. The mortar began to run from between the bricks like the finest of sand, its trickle becoming a torrent in seconds.

"I'm here," she told the prisoner behind the wall. "God knows, I've taken my time. But I'm here."

Oscar didn't catch Jude's words, not even the remotest echo. His attention had been claimed two or three minutes before by a sound from overhead, and he'd climbed the stairs in pursuit of its source. He'd disgraced his manhood enough in the last few days, hiding himself away like a frightened widow, and the thought that he might reclaim some of the respect he'd lost in Jude's eyes by confronting the trespasser above gave purpose to the chase. He'd armed himself with a piece of timber he'd found at the bottom of the stairs and was almost hoping as he went that his ears weren't playing tricks on him, and that there was indeed something tangible up above. He was sick of being in fear of rumors, and of pictures half glimpsed in flying stones. If there was something to see, he wanted to see it and either be damned in the seeing or cured of fear.

At the top of the stairs he hesitated. The light spilling through the door from Roxborough's room was moving, very slightly. He took his bludgeon in both hands and stepped through the door. The room swung with the lights, the solid table and its solid chairs giddied by the motion. He surveyed the room from corner to corner. Finding every shadow empty, he moved towards the door that led out into the foyer, as delicately as his bulk allowed. The rocking of the lights settled as he went, and they were still by the time he reached the door. As he stepped outside a perfume caught his nostrils, as sweet as the sudden, sharp pain in his side was sour. He tried to turn but his attacker dug a second time. The timber went from his hand, and a shout came from his lips....

"Oscar?"

She didn't want to leave the wall of Celestine's cell when it was undoing itself with such gusto—the bricks were dropping onto each other as the mortar between them decayed, and the shelves were creaking, ready to fall—but Oscar's shout demanded her attention. She headed back through the maze, the sound of the wall's capitulation echoing through the passageways, confounding her. But she found her way back to the stairs after a time, yelling for Oscar as she went. There was no reply from the library itself, so she decided to climb back up into the meeting room. That too was silent and empty, as was the foyer when she got to it, the only sign that Oscar had passed through a block of wood lying close to the door. What the hell was he up to? She went out to see if he'd returned to the car for some reason, but there was no sign of him in the sun, which narrowed the options to one: the tower above.

Irritated, but a little anxious now, she looked towards the open door that led back into the cellar, torn between returning to welcome Celestine and following Oscar up the tower. A man of his bulk was perfectly capable of defending himself, she reasoned, but she couldn't help but feel some residue of responsibility, given that she'd cajoled him into coming here in the first place.

One of the doors looked to be a lift, but when she appreached she heard the hum of its motor in action, so rather than wait she went to the stairs and began to climb. Though the flight was in darkness, she didn't let that slow her but mounted the stairs three and four at a time until she reached the door that led out onto the top floor. As she groped for the handle she heard a voice from the suite beyond. The words were indecipherable, but the voice sounded cultivated, almost clipped. Had one of the Tabula Rasa survived after all? Bloxham, perhaps, the Casanova of the cellar?

She pushed the door open. It was brighter on the other side, though not by that much. All the rooms along the corridor were murky pits, their drapes drawn. But the voice led her on through the gloom towards a pair of doors, one of which was ajar. A light was burning on the other side. She approached with caution, the carpet underfoot lush enough to silence her tread. Even when the speaker broke off from his monologue for a few moments she continued to advance, reaching the suite without a sound. There was little purpose in delay, she thought, once she was at the threshold. Without a word, she pushed open the door.

There was a table in the room, and on it lay Oscar, in a double pool: one of light, the other of blood. She didn't scream, or even sicken, even though he was laid open like a patient in mid-surgery. Her thoughts flew past the horror to the man and his agonies. He was alive. She could see his heart beating like a fish in a red pool, gasping its last.

The surgeon's knife had been cast onto the table beside him, and its owner, who was presently concealed by shadow, said, "There you are. Come in, why don't you? Come in." He put his hands, which were clean, on the table. "It's only me, lovey."

"Dowd...."

"Ah! To be remembered. It seems such a little thing, doesn't it? But it's not. Really, it's not."

The old theatricality was still in his manner, but the mellifluous quality had gone from his voice. He sounded, and indeed looked, like a parody of himself, his face a mask carved by a hack.

"Do join us, lovey," he said. "We're in this together, after all."

Startled as she was to see him (though hadn't Oscar warned her that his type was difficult to kill?) she didn't feel intimidated by him. She'd seen his tricks and deceits and performances; she'd seen him hanging over an abyss, begging for life. He was ridiculous.

"I wouldn't touch Godolphin, by the way," he said.

She ignored the advice and went to the table.

"His life's hanging by a thread," Dowd went on. "If he's moved, I swear his innards will just drop out. My advice is let him lie. Enjoy the moment."

"Enjoy?" she said, the revulsion she felt surfacing, though she knew it was exactly what the bastard wanted to hear.

"Not so loud, sweetie," Dowd said, as if pained by her volume. "You'll wake the baby." He chuckled. "He is a baby, really, compared to us. Such a little life...."

"Why did you do this?"

"Where do I begin? With the petty reasons? No. With the big one. I did it to be free." He leaned in towards her, his face a chiaroscuro jigsaw beneath the lamp. "When he breathes his last, lovey—which'H be very soon now—that's the end of the Godolphins. When he's gone, we're in thrall to nobody."

"You were free in Yzordderrex."

"No. On a long leash, maybe, but never free. I felt his desires, I felt his discomforts. A little part of me knew I should be at home with him, making his tea and drying between his toes. In my heart, I was still his slave." He looked at the body again. "It seems almost miraculous, how he manages to linger."

He reached for the knife.

"Leave him!" she snapped, and he retreated with surprising alacrity.

She leaned towards Oscar, afraid to touch him for fear of shocking his traumatized system further and stopping it. There were tics in his face, and his white lips were full of tiny tremors.

"Oscar?" she murmured. "Can you hear me?"

"Oh, look at you, lovey," Dowd cooed. "Getting all doe-eyed over him. Remember how he used you. How he oppressed you."

She leaned closer to Oscar and said his name again.

"He never loved either of us," Dowd went on. "We were his goods and chattels. Part of his..."

Oscar's eyes flickered open.

"... inheritance," Dowd said, but the word was barely audible. As the eyes opened, Dowd retreated a second step, covering himself in shadow.

Oscar's white lips shaped the syllables of Judith's name, but there was no sound to accompany the motion.

"Oh, God," she murmured, "can you hear me? I want you to know this wasn't all for nothing. I found her. Do you understand? I found her."

Oscar made a tiny nod, then, with agonizing delicacy, ran his tongue over his lips and drew enough breath to say, "It wasn't true...."

She caught the words, but not their sense. "What wasn't true?" she said.

He licked again, his face knotting up with the effort of speech. This time there was only one word: "Inheritance. ..."

"Not an inheritance?" she said. "I know that."

He made the very tiniest smile, his gaze going over her face from brow to cheek, from cheek to lips, then back to her eyes, meeting them unabashed.

"I... loved ... you," he said.

"I know that too," she whispered.

Then his gaze lost its clarity. His heart stopped beating in its bloody pool; the knots on his face slipped with its cessation. He was gone. The last of the Godolphins, dead on the Tabula Rasa's table.

She stood upright, staring at the cadaver, though it distressed her to do so. If she was ever tempted to toy with darkness, let this sight be a scourge to that temptation. There was nothing poetic or noble in this scene, only waste.

"So there it is," Dowd said. "Funny. I don't feel any different. It may take time, of course. I suppose freedom has to be learned, like anything else." She could hear desperation beneath this babble, barely concealed. He was in pain. "You should know something," he said."I don't want to hear."

"No, listen, lovey, I want you to know.... He did exactly this to me, on this very table. He gutted me in front of the Society. Maybe it's a petty thing, wanting revenge, but then I'm just an actor chappie. What do I know?"

"You killed them all for that?"

"Who?"

"The Society."

"No, not yet. But I'll get to them. For us both."

"You're too late. They're already dead."

This hushed him for fully fifteen seconds. When he began again, it was more chatter, as empty as the silence he wanted to fill.

"It was that damn purge, you know; they made themselves too many enemies. There's going to be a lot of minor Maestros crawling out of the woodwork in the next few days. It's quite an anniversary, isn't it? I'm going to get stinking drunk. What about you? How will you celebrate, alone or with friends? This woman you found, for instance. Is she the partying type?"

Jude silently cursed her indiscretion.

"Who is she?" Dowd went on. "Don't tell me Clara had a sister." He laughed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but she was crazy as a coot; you must see that now. She didn't understand you. Nobody understands you but me, lovey, and I understand you—" '

"—because we're the same."

"Exactly. We don't belong to anybody any more. We're our own inventions. We'll do what we want, when we want, and we won't give a fuck for the consequences."

"Is that freedom?" she said flatly, finally taking her eyes off Oscar and looking up at Dowd's misshapen form.

"Don't try and tell me you don't want it," Dowd said. "I'm not asking you to love me for this, I'm not that stupid, but at least admit it was just."

"Why didn't you murder him in his bed years ago?"

"I wasn't strong enough. Oh, I realize I may not radiate health and efficiency just at the moment, but I've changed a lot since we last met. I've been down among the dead. It was very ... educational. And while I was down there, it began to rain. Such a hard rain, lovey, let me tell you. I never saw its like before. You want to see what fell on me?"

He pulled up his sleeve and put his arm into the pool of light. Here was the reason for his lumpen appearance. His arm, and presumably his entire body, was a patchwork, with the flesh half sealed over fragments of stone which he'd slid into his wounds. She instantly recognized the iridescence that ran in the fragments, lending their glamour to his wretched meat. The rain that had fallen on his head was the sloughings of the Pivot.

"You know what it is, don't you?"

She hated the ease with which he read her face, but there was no use denying what she knew.

"Yes, I do," she said. "I was in the tower when it started to collapse."

"What a Godsend, eh? It makes me slow, of course, carrying this kind of weight, but after today I won't be fetching and carrying, so what do I care if it takes me half an hour to cross the room? I've got power in me, lovey, and I don't mind sharing—"

He stopped and withdrew his arm from the light.

"What was that?"

She'd heard nothing, but she did now: a distant rumbling from below.

"Whatever were you up to down there? Not destroying the library, I hope. I wanted that satisfaction for myself. Oh, dear. Well, there'll be plenty of other chances to play the barbarian. It's in the air, don't you think?"

Jude's thoughts went to Celestine. Dowd was perfectly capable of doing her harm. She had to go back down and warn the Goddess, perhaps find some means of defense. In the meantime, she'd play along.

"Where will you go after this?" she asked Dowd, lightening her tone as best she could.

"Back to Regent's Park Road, I thought. We can sleep in our master's bed. Oh, what am I saying? Please don't think I want your body. I know the rest of the world thinks heaven's in your lap, but I've been celibate for two hundred years and I've completely lost the urge. We can live as brother and sister, can't we? That doesn't sound so bad, now, does it?"

"No," she said, fighting the urge to spit her disgust in his face. "No, it doesn't."

"Well, look, why don't you wait for me downstairs? I've got a bit of business left to do here. Rituals have to be observed."

"Whatever you say," she replied.

She left him to his farewells, whatever they were, and headed back to the stairs. The rumbling that had caught his attention had ceased, but she hurried down the concrete flight with high hopes. The cell was open, she knew it. In a matter of moments she'd set her eyes on the Goddess and, perhaps as importantly, Celestine would set her eyes on Jude. In one sense, what Dowd had expressed above was true. With Oscar dead, she was indeed free from the curse of her creation. It was tune to know herself and be known.

As she walked through the remaining room of Roxborough's house and started down the stairs into the cellar, she sensed the change that had come over the maze below. She didn't have to search for the cell; the energy in the air moved like an invisible tide, carrying her towards its source. And there it was, in front of her: the cell wall a heap of splinters and rubble, the gap its collapse had made rising to the ceiling. The dissolution she'd initiated was still going on. Even as she approached, further bricks fell away, their mortar turned to dust. She braved the fall, clambering up over the wreckage to peer into the cell. It was dark inside, but her eyes soon found the mummified form of the prisoner, lying in the dirt.

There was no movement in the body whatsoever. She went to it and fell to her knees to tear at the fine threads that Roxborough or his agents had bound Celestine with. They were too tough for her fingers, so she went at them with her teeth. The threads were bitter, but her teeth were sharp, and once one succumbed to her bites others quickly followed. A tremor passed through the body, as if the captive sensed liberation. As with the bricks, the message of unmaking was contagious, and she'd only snapped half a dozen of the threads when they began to stretch and break of their own volition, aided by the motion of the body they'd bound. Her cheek was stung by the flight of one, and she was obliged to retreat as the unfettering spread, the threads describing sinuous motions as they broke, their severed ends bright.

The trdmors in Celestine's body were now convulsions, growing as the ambition of the threads increased. They weren't simply flying wildly, Jude realized; they were reaching out in all directions, up towards the ceiling of the cell and to its walls. Stung by them once, the only way she could avoid further contact was by backing away to the hole through which she'd come and then out, stumbling over the rubble.

As she emerged she heard Dowd's voice, somewhere in the labyrinth behind her. "What have you been doing, lovey?"

She wasn't quite sure, was the truth. Though she'd been the initiator of this unbinding, she wasn't its mistress. The cords had an urgency of their own, and whether it was Celestine who moved them, or Roxborough who'd plaited into them the instruction to destroy anyone who came seeking his prisoner's release, they were not about to be placated or contained. Some were snatching at the edge of the hole, dragging away more of the bricks. Others, demonstrating an elasticity she hadn't expected, were nosing over the rubble, turning over stones and books as they advanced.

"Oh, my Lord," she heard Dowd say, and turned to see him standing in the passageway half a dozen yards behind her, with his surgeon's knife in one hand and a bloody handkerchief in the other.

This was the first sight she had of him head to foot, and the burden of Pivot shards he carried was apparent. He looked utterly maladroit, his shoulders mismatched and his left leg turned inward, as though a shattered bone had been badly set.

"What's in there?" he said, hobbling towards her. "Is this your friend?"

"I suggest you keep your distance," she said.

He ignored her. "Did Roxborough wall something up? Look at those things! Is it an Oviate?"

"No."

"What then? Godolphin never told me about this."

"He didn't know."

"But you did?" he said, glancing back at her as he advanced to study the cords, which were emerging all the time. "I'm impressed. We've both kept our little secrets, haven't we?"

One of the cords reared suddenly from the rubble, and he jumped back, the handkerchief dropping from his hand. It unfolded as it fell, and the piece of Oscar's flesh Dowd had wrapped in it landed in the dirt. It was vestigial, but she knew it well enough. He'd cut off the curiosity and carried it away as a keepsake.

She let out a moan of disgust. Dowd started to stoop to pick it up, but her rage—which she'd concealed for Celes—tine's sake-erupted.

"You scumbag!" she said, and went at him with both hands raised above her head, locked into a single fist.

He was heavy with shards and couldn't rise fast enough to avoid her blow. She struck the back of his neck, a clout that probably hurt her more than him, but unbalanced a body already too asymmetrical for its own good. He stumbled, prey to gravity, and sprawled in the rubble. He knew his indignity, and it enraged him.

"Stupid cow!" he said. "Stupid, sentimental cow! Pick it up! Go on, pick it up! Have it if you want to."

"I don't want it."

"No, I insist It's a gift, brother to sister."

"I'm not your sister! I never was and I never will be!"

Mites were appearing from his mouth as he lay on the rubble, some of them grown fat as cockroaches on the power he carried in his skin. Whether they were for her benefit or to protect him against the presence in the wall she didn't know, but seeing them she took a step away from him.

"I'm going to forgive you this," he said, all magnanimity. "You're overwrought, I know." He raised his arm. "Help me up," he said. "Tell me you're sorry, and it's forgotten."

"I loathe everything you are," she said.

Despite the mites, it was self-preservation that made her speak, not courage. This was a place of power. The truth would serve her better here than a lie, however politic.

He withdrew his arm and started to haul himself up. As he did so she took two steps forward and, picking up the bloodied handkerchief, claimed with it the last of Oscar. As she stoofl up again, almost guilty at what she'd done, she caught sight of a motion in the wall. A pale form had appeared against the darkness of the cell, as ripe and rounded a form as the wall that framed it was ragged. Celestine was floating, or rather was borne up as Quaisoir had been borne up, on ribbons of flesh, the filaments that had once smothered her clinging to her limbs like the remnants of a coat and draped around her head as a living hood. The face beneath was delicately boned, but severe, and what beauty it might have possessed was spoiled by the dementia that burned in it. Dowd was still in the process of rising and turned to follow Jude's astonished gaze. When he set eyes on the apparition his body failed him, and he fell back onto the rubble, belly down. From his mite-spawning mouth came one terrified word.

"Celestine?"

The woman had approached the limits of her cell and now raised her hands to touch the bricks that had sealed her in for so long. Though she merely brushed them, they seemed to flee her fingers, tumbling down to join the rest, There was ample room for her to emerge, but she hung back and spoke from the shadows, her pupils flicking back and forth maniacally, her lips curling back from her teeth as though in rehearsal for some ghastly revelation. She matched Dowd's single utterance with a word of her own: "Dowd."

"Yes ..." he murmured, "it's me," So he'd been honest in some part of his biography at least, Jude thought. She knew him, just as he'd claimed to know her.

"Who did this to you?" he said.

"Why ask me," Celestine said, "when you were part of the plot?" In her voice was the same mingling of lunacy and composure her body exhibited, her mellifluous tones accompanied by a fluttering that was almost a second voice, speaking in tandem with the first.

"I didn't know, I swear," Dowd said. He craned his heavy head to appeal to Jude. "Tell her," he said.

Celestine's oscillating gaze rose to Jude. "You?" she said. "Did you conspire against me?"

"No," Jude said. "I'm the one who freed you."

"I freed myself."

"But I began it," Jude said.

"Come closer. Let me see you better."

Jude hesitated to approach, with Dowd's face still a nest of mites. But Celestine made her demand again, and Jude obeyed. The woman raised her head as she approached, turning it this way and that, perhaps to coax her torpid muscles back into life.

"Are you Roxborough's woman?" she said.

"No."

"That's close enough," she told Jude. "Who's then? Which one of them do you belong to?"

"I don't belong to any of them," Jude said. "They're all dead."

"Even Roxborough?"

"He's been gone two hundred years."

At last the eyes stopped flickering, and their stillness, now it came, was more distressing than their motion. She had a gaze that could slice steel.

"Two hundred years," she said. It wasn't a question, it was an accusation. And it wasn't Jude she was accusing, it was Dowd. "Why didn't you come for me?"

"I thought you were dead and gone," he told her.

"Dead? No. That would have been a kindness. I bore His child. I raised it for a time. You knew this."

"How could I? It was none of my business."

"You made me your business," she said. "The day you took me from my life and gave me to God. I didn't ask for that, and I didn't want it—"

"I was just a servant."

"Dog, more like. Who's got your leash now? This woman?"

"I serve nobody."

"Good. Then you can serve me."

"Don't trust him," Jude said.

"Who, would you prefer I trust?" Celestine replied, not deigning to look at Jude. "You? I don't think so. You've got blood on your hands, and you smell of coitus."

These last words were tinged with such disgust Jude couldn't stem her retort. "You wouldn't be awake if I hadn't found you."

"Consider your freedom to go from this place my thanks," Celestine replied. "You wouldn't wish to know my company for very long."

Jude didn't find that difficult to believe. After all the months she'd waited for this meeting, there were no revelations to be had here: only Celestine's insanity and the ice of her rage.

Dowd, meanwhile, was getting to his feet. As he did so, one of the woman's ribbons unfurled itself from the shadows and reached towards him. Despite his earlier protests, he made no attempt to avoid it. A suspicious air of humility had come over him. Not only did he put up no resistance, he actually proffered his hands to Celestine for binding, placing them pulse to pulse. She didn't scorn his offer. The ribbon of her flesh wrapped itself around his wrists, then tightened, tugging at him to haul him up the incline of brick.

"Be careful," Jude warned her. "He's stronger than he looks."

"It's all stolen." Celestine replied, "His tricks, his decorums, his power. None of it belongs to him. He's an actor. Aren't you?"

As if in acquiescence, Dowd bowed his head. But as he did so he dug his heels into the rubble and refused to be drawn any further. Jude started to voice a second warning; but before it was out of her mouth, his fingers closed around the flesh and pulled hard. Caught unawares, Celestine was dragged against the raw edge of the hole, and before the rest of her filaments could come to her aid Dowd had raised his wrists above his head and casually snapped the flesh that bound them. Celestine let out a howl of pain and retreated into the sanctuary of her cell, trailing the severed ribbon.

Dowd gave her no respite, however, but went in instant pursuit, yelling to her as he shambled up over the heaped rubble, "I'm not your slave! I'm not your dog! And you're no fucking Goddess! You're a whore!"

Then he was gone into the darkness of the cell, roaring. Jude ventured a few steps closer to the hole, but the combatants had retreated into its recesses, and she saw nothing of their struggle. She heard it, however: the hiss of breaths expelled in pain; the sound of bodies pitched against the stone. The walls shook, and books all along the passageway were thrown from their shelves, the tide of power snatching loose sheets and pamphlets up into the air like birds in a hurricane, leaving the heavier tomes to thrash on the ground, broken-backed.

And then, suddenly, it was over. The commotion in the cell ceased utterly, and there were several seconds of motionless hush, broken by a moan and the sight of a hand reaching out of the murk to clutch at the broken wall. A moment later Dowd stumbled into view, his other hand clamped to his face. Though the shards he carried were powerful, the flesh they were seated in was weak, and Celestine had exploited that frailty with the efficiency of a warrior. Half his face was missing, stripped to the bone, and his body was more unknitted than the corpse he'd left on the table above: his abdomen gaping, his limbs battered.

He fell as he emerged. Rather than attempting to get to his feet—which she doubted he was capable of doing—he crawled over the rubble like a blind man, his hands feeling out the wreckage ahead. Sobs came from him now and then, and whimpers, but the effort of escape was quickly consuming what little strength he had, and before he reached clear ground his noises gave out. So, a little time after, did he. His arms folded beneath him, and he collapsed, face to the floor, surrounded by twitching books.

Jude watched his body for a count of ten, then moved back towards the cell. As she came within two yards of his body, she saw a motion and froze in her tracks. There was life in him still, though it wasn't his. The mites were exiting his open mouth, like fleas hastening from a cooling host. They came from his nostrils, too, and from his ears. Without his will t6 direct them they were probably harmless, but she wasn't going to test that notion. She stepped as wide of them as she could, taking an indirect route up over the rubble to the threshold of Celestine's asylum.

The shadows were much thickened by the dust that danced in the air, an aftermath of the forces that had been unleashed inside. But Celestine was visible, lying crookedly against the far wall. He'd done her harm, no doubt of that. Her pale skin was seared and ruptured at thigh, flank, and shoulder. Roxborough's purgative zeal still had some jurisdiction in his tower, Jude thought. She'd seen three apostates laid low in the space of an hour one above and two below:

Of them all, his prisoner Celestine seemed to have suffered least. Wounded though she was, she still had the will to turn her fierce eyes in Jude's direction and say, "Have you come to crow?"

"I tried to warn you," Jude said. "I don't want us to be enemies, Celestine. I want to help you."

"On whose command?"

"On my own. Why'd you assume everybody's a slave or a whore or somebody's damn dog?"

"Because that's the way the world is," she said.

"It's changed, Celestine."

"What? Are the humans gone then?"

"It's not human to be a slave."

"What would you know?" the woman said. "I don't sniff much humanity in you. You're some kind of pretender, aren't you? Made by a Maestro."

It would have pained Jude to hear such dismissal from any source, but from this woman, who'd been for so long a beacon of hope and healing, it was the bitterest condemnation. She'd fought so hard to be more than a fake, forged in a manmade womb. But with a few words Celestine had reduced her to a mirage.

"You're not even natural," she said.

"Nor are you," Jude snapped back.

"But I was once," Celestine said. "And I cling to that."

"Cling all you like, it won't change the facts. No natural woman could have survived in here for two centuries."

"I had my revenge to nourish me."

"On Roxborough?"

"On them all, all except one."

"Who?"

"The Maestro... Sartori."

"You knew him?"

"Too little," Celestine said.

There was a weight of sorrow here Jude didn't comprehend, but she had the means to ameliorate it on her tongue, and for all Celestine's cruelties Jude wasn't about to withhold the news.

"Sartori isn't dead," she said.

Celestine had turned her face to the wall, but now looked back at Jude. "Not dead?"

"I'll find him for you if you want," Jude said.

"You'd do that?"

"Yes."

"Are you his mistress?"

"Not exactly."

"Where is he? Is he near?"

"I don't know where he is. Somewhere in the city."

"Yes. Fetch him. Please, fetch him." She hauled herself up the wall. "He doesn't know my name, but I know him."

"So who shall I tell him you are?"

"Ask him ... ask him if he remembers Nisi Nirvana."

"Who?"

"Just tell him."

"Nisi Nirvana?"

"That's right."

Jude stood up and returned to the hole in the wall, but as she was about to step out Celestine recalled her.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Judith."—"Well, Judith, not only do you stink of coitus, but you have in your hand some piece of flesh which you haven't given up clutching. Whatever it is, let it go."

Appalled, Jude looked down at her hand. The curiosity was still in her possession, half hanging from her fist. She pitched it away, into the dust.

"Do you wonder I took you for a whore?" Celestine remarked.

"Then we've both made mistakes," Jude replied, looking back at her. "I thought you were my salvation."

"Yours was the greater error," Celestine replied.

Jude didn't grace this last piece of spite with a reply but headed out of the cell. The mites that had exited Dowd's body were still crawling around aimlessly, looking for a new bolthole, but the flesh they'd vacated had upped and gone. She wasn't altogether surprised. Dowd was an actor to his core. He would postpone his farewell scene as long as possible, in the hope that he'd be at center stage when the final curtain fell. A hopeless ambition, given the fame of his fellow players, and one Jude wasn't foolish enough to share. The more she learned about the drama unfolding around her, with its roots in the tale of Christos the Reconciler, the more resigned she was to having little or no role in it. Like the Fourth Magi, expunged from the Nativity, she wasn't wanted in the Gospel about to be written; and having seen the pitiful place a king's testament had come to, she was not about to waste time writing her own.