beyond you, and he said no more.
* * *
How much God believed your side of events—how much you believed, in relating the story, hot with adrenaline and regret and the helpless self-doubting rage of the psychotic who knew what she saw and was still able to dismiss it—was not clear. He was very weary. The buttons of his shirt had been done up with the wrong buttons in the wrong holes. You were acutely aware of his displeasure, but did not entirely understand it.
As God, Mercymorn, and Augustine looked over the incinerator, they left you alone, sitting in the filtration room with Ortus. You did not often trust instinct, but you were not afraid of him then, seeing him sit on an upturned box the same way you were sitting, wiry, and empty-faced, and defeated. You were just angry.
“You saw what you saw,” you said. “You must have seen her stab you. The blow was from the front, with your own spear.”
Ortus said, “I don’t know.”
“You were conscious. You spoke to me.”
He said, “I don’t know.”
“We had a conversation. I want to know what it meant.”
He said, “I don’t remember.”
You looked into his clear green eyes; his expression had not changed, and neither had his voice. You could not keep the disbelieving contempt from yours when you said, “You don’t remember?”
The Saint of Duty turned his body toward you. He was clutching his rapier; but it was idle, in the crook of his elbow, in more the manner of an abandoned broom than of a weapon ready for war. His eyebrows were very slightly drawn together, a sort of exhausted crinkle. He looked at you, and he said in a voice you had known since you were eight years old: “I sometimes—forget.”
It was the tone—clinical, enamelled, half-defensive, half-endangered—the tone of someone admitting a final frailty. It was familiar because you had used it yourself. Understand I am insane.
Later on, when the Mithraeum was searched, Cytherea’s body was no longer on its altar; and God said he could not detect it anywhere on the station at all.
* * *
When you were back in your rooms—your now-familiar, almost-welcome, neat and empty rooms—you opened a vein and set about replacing all your bone wards with blood. It took you hours. You did not fully ward the plex outside, which would have needed complex and careful remote construct work, but you placed an extra skein of wards around the interior windows, and hoped the quick fix would do for one quiet night. You were standing in your little foyer blowing a fine grit of bone dust over a wet blood ward when you heard footsteps outside your rooms.
You stood very still, and you listened.
“I hope you’re happy.”
“Not a bit.”
“What a farce … what a grotesque, awful, miserable farce.”
“Well, for goodness’ sake, how was I to know they’d trip the incineration alarm? God, it’s always the one you don’t turn off.”
“As though I meant that.”
“If you mean the other—you were in serious danger of overegging the pudding. Nobody would ever believe you would get that drunk accidentally.”
“Piss off,” came the response. “I nearly slapped you. Don’t you dare use her as a lever, ever again. Bringing her into it … and your nincompoop brother with her … almost isn’t worth the payment.”
“She should be so lucky as to be any kind of use, as she wasn’t any in life. Damned proud of my straight face. Oh, Cristabel, all is forgiven! Good night, Mercy; my lips are sealed, but if you’re going to make deals with the devil, do ask to see the goods beforehand. I hope you choke before I regret it, and I hope you know that one day I’ll wrench Cristabel’s rotten ghost from your corpse, and eat her … Where did you stash Cytherea?”
More footsteps. A voice rose: “I told you once and I’ll tell you again: I haven’t touched her, you vile, condescending son of a bitch…” And then—nothing. You ducked back into your room.
At last you were able to wrench off the scarf that posed as a dress, and button yourself into a nightgown of your own, and you were able to brush your hair, and scrape off your paint, and wash off the blood from where Ianthe kissed you, and you were able to lie in the silence of the night with your sword beside you and the evening behind you.
Next to you, the Body said quietly, “The water is risen. So is the sun. We will endure.”
ACT FOUR
32
TWO