“I know I’ve gone on endlessly about how dangerous the city’s become,” Oscar said as they ducked beneath the low-slung branches, “and you’re tired of hearing about it, but this isn’t a civilized city, Judith. About the only man I trust there is Peccable. If for any reason we were to be separated—or if anything were to happen to me—you can rely upon him for help.”
“I understand.”
Oscar stopped to admire the pretty scene ahead, dappled sunlight falling on the pale walls and dome of the Retreat. “You know, I used only to come here at night,” he said. “I thought that was the sacred time, when magic had the strongest hold. But it’s not true. Midnight Mass and moonlight is fine, but miracles are here at noon as well; just as strong, just as strange.”
He looked up at the canopy of trees.
“Sometimes you have to go away from the world to see the world,” he said. “I went to Yzordderrex a few years back and stayed—oh, I don’t know, two months, maybe two and a half, and when I came back to the Fifth I saw it like a child. I swear, like a child. This trip won’t just show you other Dominions. If we get back safe and sound—”
“We will.”
“Such faith. If we do, this world will be different too. Everything changes after this, because you’ll be changed.”
“So be it,” she said.
She took hold of his hand, and they started towards the Retreat. Something made her uneasy, however. Not his words—his talk of change had only excited her—but the hush between them, perhaps, which was suddenly deep.
“Is there something wrong?” he said, feeling her grip tighten.
“The silence. . ..”
“There’s always an odd atmosphere here. I’ve felt it before. A lot of fine souls died here, of course.”
“At the Reconciliation?”
“You know about that, do you?”
“From Clara. It was two hundred years ago this midsummer, she said. Perhaps the spirits are coming back to see if someone’s going to try again.”
He stopped, tugging on her arm. “Don’t talk about it, even in jest. Please. There’ll be no Reconciliation, this summer or any other. The Maestros are dead. The whole thing’s—1′
“All right,” she said. “Calm down. I won’t mention it again.”
“After this summer it’ll be academic anyway,” he said, with a feigned lightness, “at least for another couple of centuries. I’ll be dead and buried long before this hoopla starts again. I’ve got my plot, you know? I chose it with Peccable. It’s on the edge of the desert, with a fine view of Yzordderrex.”
His nervous babble concealed the quiet until they reached the door; then he let it drop. She was glad he was silent. The place deserved reverence. Standing at the step, it wasn’t difficult to believe phantoms gathered here, the dead of centuries past mingling with those she’d last seen living on this very spot: Charlie for one, of course, coaxing her inside, telling her with a smile that the place was nothing special, just stone; and the voiders too, one burned, one skinned, both haunting the threshold.
“Unless you see any just impediment,” Oscar said, “I think we should do this.”
He led her inside, to the middle of the mosaic. “When the time comes,” he said. “We have to hold on to each other. Even if you think there’s nothing to hold on to, there is; it’s just changed for a time. I don’t want to lose you between here and there. The In Ovo’s no place to go wandering.”
“You won’t lose me,” she said.
He went down on his haunches and dug into the mosaic, pulling from the pattern a dozen or so pieces of pyramidal stone the size of two fists, which had been so designed as to be virtually invisible when set in their places.
“I don’t fully understand the mechanisms that carry us over,” he said as he worked. “I’m not sure anybody does completely. But according to Peccable there’s a sort of common language into which anybody can be translated. And all the processes of magic involve this translation.”
He was laying the stones around the edge of the circle as he spoke, the arrangement seemingly arbitrary.