"Help her if you want," he said, staring back at Gentle with slackened features. "It's no skin off my nose."

Then he lifted himself up. For an instant Gentle thought he intended some reprisal, and drew breath to defend himself.

But the other simply said, "I'm on my belly, brother. Would you harm me here?"

As if to prove how low he'd fallen and was willing to stay, he began to slink over the earth, like a snake driven from a hearth.

"You're welcome to her," he said, and disappeared into the brighter murk beyond the door.

Celestine's eyes had closed by the time Gentle looked back, her body hanging limply from the tenacious ribbons. He went towards her, but as he approached her lids flickered open.

"No..." she said, "...I don't want... you... near... me."

Could he blame her? One man with his face had already attempted murder, or violation, or both. Why should she trust another? Nor was this any time to be pleading his innocence; she needed help, not apology. The question was, from whom? Jude had made it clear on the way up that she'd been sent from this woman's side the same way he was being sent. Perhaps Clem could nurse the woman.

"I'll send somebody to help you," he said, and headed out into the pa.s.sageway.

Sartori had disappeared: lifted himself off his belly and taken to his heels. Once again Gentle went in his footsteps, back towards the stairs. He'd covered half that distance when Jude, Clem, and Monday appeared. Their frowns evaporated when they saw Gentle.

"We thought he'd murdered you," Jude said. "He didn't touch me. But he's hurt Celestine, and she won't let me near her. Clem, will you see if you can help? But be careful. She may look sick, but she's strong."

"Where is she?"

"Jude'll take you. I'm going after Sartori."

"He's gone up the tower," Monday said.

"He didn't even look at us," Jude said. She sounded almost offended. "He just stumbled out and up the stairs. What the h.e.l.l did you do to him?"

"Nothing."

"I never saw an expression like that on his face before. Or yours, come to that."

"Like what?"

"Tragic," said Clem.

"Maybe we're going to win a quicker victory than I thought," Gentle said, starting past them to the stairs.

"Wait," Jude said. "We can't tend to Celestine here. We need to take her somewhere safer."

"Agreed."

"The studio, maybe?"

"No," Gentle said. "There's a house I know in Clerkenwell where we'll be safe. He drove me out of it once. But it's mine, and we're going back to it. All of us."

51

The sun that met Gentle in the foyer put him in mind of Taylor, whose wisdom, spoken through a sleeping boy, had begun this day. That dawn already seemed an age ago, the hours since then had been so filled with journeys and revelations. It would be this way until the Reconciliation, he knew. The London he'd wandered in his first years, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with possibilities-a city Pie had once said hid more angels than G.o.d's skirts-was once again a place of presences, and he rejoiced in the fact. It gave heat to his heels as he mounted the stairs, two and three at a time. Strange as it was, he was actually eager to see Sartori's face again: to speak with his other and know his mind.

Jude had prepared him for what he'd find on the top floor: bland corridors leading to the Tabula Rasa's table, and the body sprawled there. The scent of G.o.dolphin's undoing was there to meet him as he stepped into the pa.s.sageway: a sickening reminder, though he scarcely needed one, that revelation had a grimmer face and that those last halcyon days, when he'd been the most lauded metaphysician in Europe, had ended in atrocity. It would not happen again, he swore to himself. Last time the ceremonies had been brought to grief by the brother waiting for him at the end of this corridor, and if he had to commit fratricide to remove the danger of a recurrence, then so be it. Sartori was the spirit of his own imperfections made flesh. To kill him would be a cleansing, and welcome, perhaps, to them both.

As he advanced along the corridor the sickly smell of G.o.dolphin's putrefaction grew stronger. He held his breath against it and came to the door in utter silence. It nevertheless swung open as he approached, his own voice inviting him in.

"There's no harm in here, brother; not from me. And I don't need you on your belly to prove your good intentions."

Gentle stepped inside. All the drapes were drawn against the sun, but even the st.u.r.diest fabric usually let some trace of light through its weave. Not so here. The room was sealed by something more than curtains and brick, and Sartori was sitting in this darkness, his form visible only because the door was ajar.

"Will you sit?" he said. "I know this isn't a very wholesome slab-" the body of Oscar G.o.dolphin had gone, the mess of his blood and rot remaining in pools and smears "-but I like the formality. We should negotiate like civilized beings, yes?"

Gentle acceded to this, walking to the other end of the table and sitting down, content to demonstrate good faith unless or until Sartori showed signs of treachery. Then he'd be swift and calamitous.

"Where did the body go?" he asked.

"It's here. I'll bury it after we've talked. This is no place for a man to rot. Or maybe it's the perfect place, I don't know. We can vote on it later."

"Suddenly you're a democrat."

"You said you were changing. So am I."

"Any particular reason?"

"We'll get to that later. First-"

He glanced towards the door, and it swung closed, plunging them both into utter darkness.

"You don't mind, do you?" Sartori said. "This isn't a conversation we should have looking at ourselves. The mirror's bad enough."

"You didn't mind in Yzordderrex."

"I was incarnate there. Here I feel... immaterial. I was really impressed by what you did in Yzordderrex, by the way. One word from you, and it just crumbled away."

"Your handiwork, not mine."

"Oh, don't be obtuse. You know what history'll say. It won't give a f.u.c.k about the politics. It'll say the Reconciler arrived, and the walls came tumbling down. And you're not going to argue with that. It feeds the legend; it makes you look messianic. That's what you really want, isn't it? The question is: if you're the Reconciler, what am I? what am I?"

"We don't have to be enemies."

"Didn't I say the very same thing in Yzordderrex? And didn't you try and murder me?"

"I had good reason."

"Name one."

"You destroyed the first Reconciliation."

"It wasn't the first. There've been three other attempts to my certain knowledge."

"It was my first. My Great Work. And you destroyed it."

"Who did you hear that from?"

"From Lucius Cobbitt," Gentle replied.

There was a silence then, and in it Gentle thought he heard the darkness move, a sound like silk on silk. But his head was never quite silent these days, and before he could clear a path through the whispers Sartori had recovered his equilibrium.

"So Lucius is alive," he said.

"Just in memory. In Gamut Street."

"That f.u.c.khead Little Ease let you have quite an education, didn't he? I'll have his guts." He sighed. "I miss Rosengarten, you know. He was so very loyal. And Racidio and Mattalaus. I had some good people in Yzordderrex. People I could trust; people who loved me. It's the face, I think; it inspires devotion. You must have noticed that. Is it the divine in you, or is it just the way we smile? I resist the notion that one's a symptom of the other. Hunchbacks can be saints and beauties perfect monsters. Haven't you found that?"

"Certainly."

"You see how much we agree? We sit here in the dark, and we talk like friends. I truly think if we never again stepped out into the light we could learn to love each other, after a time."

"That can't happen."

"Why not?"

"Because I've work to do, and I won't let you delay me."

"You did terrible harm last time, Maestro. Remember that. Put it in your mind's eye. Remember how it looked, seeing the In Ovo spilling out..."

By the sound of Sartori's voice, Gentle guessed that the man had risen to his feet. But again it was difficult to be certain, when the darkness was so profound. He stood up himself, his chair tipping over behind him.

"The In Ovo's a filthy place," Sartori was saying. "And believe me, I don't want it dirtying up this Dominion. But I'm afraid that may be inevitable."

Now Gentle was certain there was some duplicity here. Sartori's voice no longer had a single source but was being subtly disseminated throughout the room, as though he was seeping into the darkness.

"If you leave this room, brother-if you leave me alone-there'll be such horror unleashed on the Fifth."

"I won't make any errors this time."

"Who's talking about error?" Sartori said. "I'm talking about what I'll do for righteousness' sake, if you desert me."

"So come with me."

"What for? To be your disciple? Listen to what you're saying! I've got as much right to be called Messiah as you. Why should I be a piddling acolyte? Do me the courtesy of understanding that, at least."

"So do I have to kill you?"

"You can try."

"I'm ready to do it, brother, if you force me."

"So am I. So am I."

There was no purpose in further debate, Gentle thought. If he was going to kill the man, as it seemed he must, he wanted to do it swiftly and cleanly. But he needed light for the deed. He moved towards the door, intending to open it, but as he did so something touched his face. He put his hand up to s.n.a.t.c.h it away, but it had already gone, flitting towards the ceiling. What defense was this? He'd sensed no living thing when he'd entered the room, other than Sartori. The darkness had been inert. Either it had now taken on some illusory life as an extension of Sartori's will, or else his other had used the darkness as a cover for some summoning. But what? There'd been no evocations spoken, no hint of a feit. If he'd managed to call up some defender, it was flimsy and witless. He heard it flapping against the ceiling like a blinded bird.

"I thought we were alone," he said. "Our last conversation needs witnesses, or how would the world know I gave you a chance to save it?"

"Biographers, now?"

"Not exactly..."

"What then?" Gentle said, his outstretched hand reaching the wall and sliding along it towards the door. "Why don't you show me?" he said, his palm closing around the handle. "Or are you too ashamed?"

With this, he pulled not one but both doors open. The phenomenon that followed was more startling than dire. The meager light in the pa.s.sageway outside was drawn into the room in a rush, as though it were milk, sucked from day's teat to feed what waited inside. It flew past him, dividing as it went, going to a dozen places around the room, high and low. Then the handles were s.n.a.t.c.hed from Gentle's grip, and the doors slammed.

He turned back to face the room and as he did so heard the table being thrown over. Some of the light had been drawn to what lay beneath. There was G.o.dolphin, gutted, his entrails splayed around him, his kidneys laid on his eyes, his heart at his groin. And skittering around his body, some of the ent.i.ties this arrangement had called forth, carrying fragments of the light stolen through the door. None of them made much sense to Gentle's eye. They had no limbs recognizable as such, nor any trace of features, nor, in most cases, heads upon which features might have sat. They were sc.r.a.ps of nonsense, some strung together like the cloggings of a drain, and mindlessly busy, others lying like bloated fruit, splitting and splitting and showing themselves seedless.

Gentle looked towards Sartori. He hadn't taken any light for himself, but a loop of wormy life Hung over his head and cast its baleful brightness down.

"What have you done?" Gentle asked him.

"There are workings a Reconciler would never stoop to know. This is one. These beasts are Oviates. Peripeteria. You can't raise the weightier beasts with a corpse that's cold. But these things know how to be compliant, and that's all either you or I have ever really asked for from our abettors, isn't it? Or our loved ones, come to that."

"Well, you've shown me them now," Gentle said. "You can send them home."

"Oh, no, brother. I want you to know what they can do. They're the least of the least, but they've got some maddening tricks."

Sartori glanced up, and the loop of wretchedness above him went from its cherished place, moving towards Gentle, then to the ground, its target not the living but the dead. It was around G.o.dolphin's neck in moments, while in the air above it an alliance of its fellows formed, congealing into a peristaltic cloud. The loop tightened like a noose and rose, hauling G.o.dolphin up. The kidneys fell from his eyes; they were open beneath. The heart dropped from his groin; there was a wound where his manhood had been. Then the remaining innards spilled from his carca.s.s, preserved in a jelly of cold blood. The peripeteria overhead offered themselves as a gallows for the ascending noose and, having it in their midst, rose again, so that the dead man's feet were pulled clear off the ground.

"This is obscene, Sartori," Gentle said. "Stop it."

"It's not very pretty, is it? But think, brother, think think what an army of them could do. You couldn't even heal this single little horror, never mind this a thousandfold." He paused, then said, with genuine inquiry in his voice, "Or could you? Could you raise poor Oscar? From the dead, I mean. Could you do that?" what an army of them could do. You couldn't even heal this single little horror, never mind this a thousandfold." He paused, then said, with genuine inquiry in his voice, "Or could you? Could you raise poor Oscar? From the dead, I mean. Could you do that?"

He left his place at the other end of the room and moved towards Gentle, the look on his face, t.i.t by the gallows, one of exhilaration at this possibility. "If you could do that," he said, "I swear I'd be your perfect disciple. I would."

He was past the hanged man now and coming within a yard or two of Gentle. "I swear," he said again.

"Let him down."

"Why?"

"Because it's pointless and pathetic."

"Maybe that's what I am," Sartori said. "Maybe that's what I've been from the beginning, and I never had the wit to realize it."