to marry you.” He grinned. “That was when she hit me.”
Emily laughed and looked up at the sky. It was the most beautiful shade of blue. They strolled thoughtfully for a while, the late afternoon sun slanting low and golden across their path.
“She also predicted that our home would be filled with the happy thunder of robust boy-children,” Stanton remembered, offering it up as if it were an exceptionally tempting treat.
Emily frowned. “As the one who will presumably be called upon to produce the robust boy-children in question, I must say that it sounds like an awful lot of work.”
“There are elements of the process that can be somewhat enjoyable, I’m told.” Stanton stopped her in the middle of the path. He put his hands on her waist and drew her very close. His hot breath tickled the little hairs on her forehead.
“Now see here,” he said, his voice so quiet it rumbled in his throat. “I am very much aware of the fact that you haven’t said yes yet.”
“To which, the marriage or the boy-children?”
“Well, I thought you might object to one without the other, but …”
Emily silenced him with one finger pressed against his warm lips. White and pink petals drifted all around them.
“Yes,” she said.
Epilogue
Benedictus Zeno closed his eyes and breathed in the air.
He’d forgotten the particular smell of Russian spring: high and thin and green, rich with the fragrance of black earth and cold water and mushrooms. There was still snow in patches, but a warming wind from the Caspian Sea stirred the tops of the birches.
He was sitting on the ivy-draped terrace of a dacha outside of Saint Petersburg, next to a man whose hair and beard were white-blond and whose eyes were intensely blue. The man was called Perun, but that was not his real name. Few in the Sini Mira used their real names. For decades, Zeno had called him only by the name he used within the Sini Mira, the name of the heavenly smith, the god of thunder.
They sipped tea sweetened with raspberry jam from glasses set in silver holders. On a table beside them, a brightly enameled samovar steamed pleasantly.
“Well,” Zeno grumbled in Russian. “That didn’t go very well, did it?”
“Certainly didn’t,” Perun said. “Not at all.” He paused. “Such is life in the service of the Great Mother.”
“Your most revered Ososolyeh,” Zeno said, “can be a fickle, whimsical, opaque bitch.”
Perun frowned deeply. “Mind your manners in my house, credomancer,” he growled. “She is mother of us all, and her wisdom is great.”
“The whole point of allowing sangrimancers into my Institute was to learn from them, to use the earth’s consciousness during the séance to gain insight into the Temple’s plans for Temamauhti. To learn how the power in the stone should be used for our defense. And here we are, power gone, Mirabilis dead, and my Institute fallen into the hands of Dreadnought Stanton. And you’re going to sit there and tell me to mind my manners?”
“Peace, Benedictus. The power has been returned to the earth where it belongs. The terramantic extraction plant in Charleston has been destroyed. Do not make the best the enemy of the good.”
But Zeno was not mollified. In fact, his next words were even louder. “But Ososolyeh must have felt the compulsion working on Miss Edwards! Komé must have known … why didn’t she warn us?”
Perun shrugged, spread his hands.
“You cannot expect the Mother to think as we humans do,” he said. “Though I grant it would be more convenient.”
“The way things turned out, it might have been better if we’d let Caul have the stone,” Zeno muttered bitterly. “At least he was fighting the right enemy.”
“Do you really believe a narrow-minded bigot like Caul could have defeated the Black Glass Goddess?” Perun lifted an eyebrow. “His masters were happy to let him stockpile power, but they would never have let him use it. Putting the stone in his hands would have been as good as handing it to Itztlacoliuhqui herself.” He reached for an engraved silver case, snapped it open. He withdrew a brown cigarette, lit it, then exhaled smoke with great pleasure. “I think Captain Caul was lucky to have died with his illusions intact.”
“I wish I’d been allowed to keep a few more of mine,” Zeno said, waving a hand to dispell the acrid stink. “Stanton! Master of my Institute! The thought turns my stomach. And on top of that, he’s in love.” Zeno spoke the word with mincing distaste. “As