Pie had hold of his arm, drawing him away, but he
wouldn’t go.
“Look at her. Jesus. Look at her, Pie. Look!”
The mystif glanced towards the woman.
“It’s Judith,” Gentle said.
“That’s impossible.”
“It is! It is! Use your fucking eyes! It’s Judith!”
As if his raised voice was a spark to the bone-dry rage of the crowd all around, violence suddenly erupted, its focus the trio of soldiers who were still attempting to claim the dead youth. One was bludgeoned to the ground while another retreated, firing as he did so. Escalation was instantaneous. Knives were slid from their sheaths, machetes unhooked from belts. In the space of five seconds the crowd became an army and five seconds later claimed its first three lives. Judith was eclipsed by the battle, and Gentle had little choice but to go with Pie, more for the sake of Huzzah than for his own safety. He felt strangely inviolate here, as though that circle of expectant stares had lent him a charmed life.
“It was Judith, Pie,” he said again, once they were far enough from the shouts and shots to hear each other speak, Huzzah had taken firm hold of his hand and swung on his arm excitedly. “Who’s Judith?” she said. “A woman we know,” Gentle said. “How could that be her?” The mystif s tone was as fretful as it was exasperated. “Ask yourself: How could that be her? If you’ve got an answer, I’m happy to hear it. Truly I am. Tell me.”
“I don’t know how,” Gentle said. “But I trust my eyes.”
“We left her in the Fifth, Gentle.”
“If I got through, why shouldn’t she?”
“And in the space of two months she takes over as the Autarch’s wife? That’s a meteoric rise, wouldn’t you say?”
A fresh fusillade of shots rose from the siege site, followed by a roar of voices so profound it reverberated in the stone beneath their feet. Gentle stopped, walked, and looked back down the slope towards the harbor.
“There’s going to be a revolution,” he said simply.
“I think it’s already begun,” Pie replied.
“They’ll kill her,” he said, starting back down the hill.
“Where the hell are you going?” Pie said.
“I’m coming with you,” Huzzah piped up, but the mystif took hold of her before she could follow.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Pie said, “except home to your grandparents. Gentle, will you listen to me? It’s not Judith.”
Gentle turned to face the mystif, attempting a reasoning tone. “If it’s not her then it’s her double; it’s her echo. Some part other, here in Yzordderrex.”
The mystif didn’t reply. It merely studied Gentle, as if coaxing him with its silence to articulate his theory more fully.
“Maybe people can be in two places at one time,” Gentle said. Frustration made him grimace. “I know it was her, and nothing you can say’s going to change my mind. You two go in to the Kesparate. Wait for me. I’ll—”
Before he could finish his instructions, the holler that had first announced Quaisoir’s descent from the heights of the city was raised again, this time at a higher pitch, to be drowned out almost instantly by a surge of celebratory cheering.
“That sounds like a retreat to me,” Pie said, and was proved right twenty seconds later with the reappearance of Quaisoir’s vehicle, surrounded by the tattered remnants of her retinue.
The trio had plenty of time to step out of the path of wheels and boots as they thundered up the slope, for the pace of the retreat was not as swift as that of the advance. Not only was the ascent steep but many of the elite had sustained wounds in defending the vehicle from assault and trailed blood as they ran.
“There’s going to be such reprisals now,” Pie said.
Gentle murmured his agreement as he stared up the slope where the vehicle had gone. “I have to see her again,” he said.
“That’s going to be difficult,” Pie replied.
“She’ll see me,” Gentle said. “If I know who she is, then she’s going to know who I am. I’ll lay money on it.”
The mystif didn’t take up the bet. It simply said, “What