"Of course."

"It's His will that we cleanse this place."

"I'll start right away."

"And I'll go back to the Fifth and finish my preparations."

"Is the Retreat still standing?"

"Yes. But that's not where I'll be. I've returned to Gamut Street."

"That was a fine house."

"It's still fine in its way. I saw you there on the stairs only a few nights ago."

"A spirit there and flesh here? What could be more perfect?"

"Being flesh and spirit in the whole of Creation," Gentle said.

"Yes, That would be finer still." "And it'll happen. It's all One, Lucius." "I hadn't forgotten that lesson." "Good."

"But if I may ask-"

"Yes?"

"Would you call me Chicka Jackeen from now on? I've lost the bloom of youth, so I may as well lose the name."

"Maestro Jackeen it is." "Thank you."

"I'll see you in a few hours," Gentle said, and with that put his thoughts to his return.

This time there were no diversions or loiterings, for sentiment's sake or any other. He went at the speed of his intention back through Yzordderrex and along the Lenten Way, over the Cradle and the benighted heights of the Jokalaylau, pa.s.sing across the Mount of Upper Bayak and Patashoqua (within whose gates he had yet to step), finally returning into the Fifth, to the room he'd left in Gamut Street.

Day was at the window and Clem was at the door, patiently awaiting the return of his Maestro. As soon as he saw a flicker of animation in Gentle's face he began to speak, his message too urgent to be delayed a second longer than it had to be.

"Monday's back," he said.

Gentle stretched and yawned. His nape and lumbar regions ached, and his bladder was ready to burst, but at least he hadn't returned to discover his bowels had given out, as Tick Raw had predicted.

"Good," he said. He got to his feet and hobbled to the mantelpiece, clinging to it as he kicked some life back into his deadened legs. "Did he get all the stones?"

"Yes, he did. But I'm afraid Jude didn't come back with him."

"Where the h.e.l.l is she?"

"He won't tell me. He's got a message from her, he says, but he won't trust it to anyone but you. Do you want to speak to him? He's downstairs, eating breakfast."

"Yes, send him up, will you? And if you can, find me something to eat. Anything but sausages."

Gem headed off down the stairs, leaving Gentle to cross to the window and throw it open. The last morning that the Fifth would see Unreconciled had dawned, and the temperature was already high enough to wilt the leaves on the tree outside. Hearing Monday's feet clattering up the stairs, Gentle turned to greet the messenger, who appeared with a half-eaten hamburger in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette in the other.

"You've got something to tell me?" he said.

"Yes, boss. From Jude."

"Where did she go?"

"Yzordderrex. That's part of what I'm supposed to tell you. She's gone to Yzordderrex."

"Did you see her go?"

"Not exactly. She made me stand outside while she went, so that's what I did."

"And the rest of the message?"

"She told me"-he made a great show of concentration now-"to tell you where she'd gone, and I've done that; then she said to tell you that the Reconciliation isn't safe, and that you weren't to do nothing until she contacted you again."

"Isn't safe? Those were her words?"

"That's what she said. No kiddinV "Do you know what she was talking about?"

"Search me, boss." His eyes had gone from Gentle to the darkest corner of the room. "I didn't know you had a monkey," he said. "Did you bring it back with you?"

Gentle looked to the corner. Little Ease was there, staring up at the Maestro fretfully, having presumably crept down into the Meditation Room sometime during the night.

"Does it eat hamburgers?" Monday said, going down on his haunches.

"You can try," Gentle said distractedly. "Monday, is that all Jude said: It isn't safe?" "That's it, boss. I swear."

"She just arrived at the Retreat and told you she wasn't coming back?"

"Oh, no, she took her time," Monday said, pulling a face as the creature he'd taken to be an ape skulked from its corner and started towards the proffered hamburger.

He made to stand up, but it bared its teeth in a grin of such ferocity he thought better of doing so and simply extended his arm as far as he could to keep the beast from his face. Little Ease slowed as it came within sniffing distance and, instead of s.n.a.t.c.hing the meal, claimed it from Monday's hand with the greatest delicacy, pinkies raised. "Will you finish the story?" Gentle said. "Oh, yeah. Well, there was this fella in the Retreat when we got there, and she had a long jaw with him." "This was somebody she knew?" "Oh, yeah." "Who?"

"I forget his name," Monday said, but seeing Gentle's brow frown protested, "That wasn't part of the message, boss. If it had been I'd have remembered."

"Remember anyway," Gentle said, beginning to suspect conspiracy. "Who was he?"

Monday stood up and drew nervously on his cigarette. "I don't recall. There were all these birds, you know, and bees an' stuff. I wasn't really listening. It was something short, like Cody or Coward or-" "Dowd,"

"Yeah! That's it. It was Dowd. And he was really f.u.c.ked up, let me tell you."

"But alive."

"Oh, yeah, for a while. Like I said, they talked together."

"And it was after this that she said she was going to Yzordderrex?"

"That's right. She told me to bring the stones back to you, and the message with 'em."

"Both of which you've done. Thank you."

"You're the boss, boss," Monday said. "Is that all? If you want me I'm on the step. It's going to be a scorcher."

He thundered off downstairs.

"Shall I leave the door open, Liberatore?" Little Ease said, as it nibbled on the hamburger.

"What are you doing here?"

"I got lonely up there," the creature said.

"You promised obedience," Gentle reminded it.

"You don't trust her, do you?" Little Ease replied. "You think she's gone off to join Sartori."

He hadn't until now. But the notion, now that it was floated, didn't seem so improbable. Jude had confessed what she felt for Sartori, in this very house, and clearly believed that he loved her in return. Perhaps she'd simply slipped away from the Retreat while Monday's back was turned and had gone to find the father of her child. If that was the case, it was paradoxical behavior, to seek out the arms of a man whose enemy she'd just helped towards victory. But this was not a day to waste a.n.a.lyzing such conundrums. She'd done what she'd done, and there was an end to it.

Gentle hoisted himself up onto the sill, from which perch he'd often planned his itinerary, and attempted to push all thoughts of her defection out of his head. This was a bad room in which to try and forget her, however. It was, after all, the womb in which she'd been made. The boards most likely still concealed motes of the sand that had marked her circle and stains, deep in their grain, of the liquors he'd anointed her nakedness with. Try as he might to keep the thoughts from coming, one led inevitably to another. Imagining her naked, he pictured his hands upon her, slick with oils. Then his kisses. Then his body. And before a minute had pa.s.sed he was sitting on the sill with an erection nuzzling against his underwear.

Of all the mornings to be plagued with such distraction! The beguilements of the flesh had no place in the work ahead of him. They'd brought the last Reconciliation to tragedy, and he would not allow them to lead him from his sanctified path by a single step. He looked down at his groin, disgusted with himself.

"Cut it off," Little Ease advised.

If he could have done the deed without making an invalid of himself, he'd have done so there and then, and gladly. He had nothing but contempt for what rose between his legs. It was a hotheaded idiot, and he wanted rid of it.

"I can control it," he replied.

"Famous last words," the creature said.

A blackbird had come into the tree and was singing blithely there. He looked its way and beyond, up through the branches into the burnished blue sky. His thoughts abstracted as he studied it, and by the time he heard Clem coming up the stairs with food and drink the spasm of carnality had pa.s.sed, and he greeted his angels with a cooling brow.

"So now we wait," he told Clem.

"What for?"

"For Jude to come back."

"And if she doesn't?"

"She will," Gentle replied. "This is where she was born. It's her home, even if she wishes it weren't. She'll have to make her way back here eventually. And if she's conspired against us, Clem-if she's working with the enemy-then I swear I'll draw a circle right here"-he pointed to the boards-"and Til unmake her so well it'll be as though she never drew breath."

19.

The law-defying waters were compa.s.sionate. Though they carried Jude through the palace at considerable speed, roaming through corridors their pa.s.sage had already stripped of tapestries and furnishings, they treated their cargo with care. She wasn't thrown against the walls or the pillars, but was borne up on a ship of surf that neither faltered nor foundered but hurried, remotely helmed, to its destination. That place could scarcely be in doubt. The mystery at the heart of the Autarch's maze had always been the Pivot Tower, and though she'd witnessed the beginning of the tower's undoing, it was still, surely, her place of debarkation. Prayers and pet.i.tions had gone there for an age, attracted by the Pivot's authority. Whatever force had replaced it, calling these waters, it had set its throne on the rubble of the fallen lord.

And now she had proof of that, as the waters carried her out of the naked corridors and into the still severer environs of the tower, slowing to deliver her into a pool so thick with detritus it was almost solid. Out of this wreckage rose a staircase, and she hauled herself from the debris and lay on the lower steps, giddy but exhilarated. The waters continued to surge around the staircase like an eager spring tide, and their clear desire to be up the flight was contagious. She got to her feet, after a little time, and proceeded to climb.

Although there were no lights burning at the top, there was plenty of illumination spilling down the stairs to meet her, and like the light at the springing places it was prismatic, suggesting there were more waters ahead that had come into the palace via other routes. Before she was even halfway up the flight, two women appeared and stared down at her. Both were dressed in simple off-white shifts, the fatter of the pair, a woman of gargantuan proportions, unb.u.t.toned to bare her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the baby she was nursing. She looked almost as infantile as her charge, her hair wispy, her face, like her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, heavy and sugar-almond pink. The woman beside her was older and slimmer, her skin substantially darker than that of her companion, her gray hair braided and combed out to her shoulders like a cowl. She wore gloves, and gla.s.ses, and regarded Jude with almost professorial detachment.

"Another soul saved from the flood," she said.

Jude had stopped climbing. Though neither woman had made any sign that she was forbidden entry, she wanted to come into this miraculous place as a guest, not a trespa.s.ser.

"Am I welcome?"

"Of course," said the mother. "Have you come to meet the G.o.ddesses?"

"Yes."

"Are you from the Bastion, then?"

Before Jude could reply, her companion supplied the answer. "Of course not! Look at her!"

"But the waters brought her."

"The waters'll bring any woman who dares. They brought us, didn't they?"

"Are there many others?" Jude asked.

"Hundreds," came the reply. "Maybe thousands by now."

Jude wasn't surprised. If someone like herself, a stranger in the Dominions, had come to suspect that the G.o.ddesses were still extant, how much more hopeful must the women who lived here have been, living with the legends of Tishalulle and Jokalaylau.

When Jude reached the top of the stairs, the bespectacled woman introduced herself.

"I'm Lotti Yap."

"I'm Judith."

"We're pleased to see you, Judith," the other woman said. "I'm Paramarola. And this fellow"-she looked down at the baby-"is Billo."

"Yours?" Jude asked.

"Now where would I have found a man to give me the likes of this?" Paramarola said.

"We've been in the Annex for nine years," Lotti Yap explained. "Guests of the Autarch."

"May his thorn rot and his berries wither," Paramarola added.

"And where have you come from?" Lotti asked.