“You still want to go to the Pivot Tower?’* Lazarevich said.
“Yes.”
“When I get you there, will you let me go?”
Again he said, “Yes.”
There was a pause, while Lazarevich oriented himself at the bottom of the stairs. Then he said, “Who are you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Gentle replied, his answer as much for his own benefit as that of his guide.
There had been six of them at the start. Now there were two. One of the casualties had been Thes ‘reh’ ot, shot down as he etched with a cross a corner they’d turned in the maze of courtyards. It had been his inspiration to mark their route and so facilitate a speedy exit when they’d finished their work.
“It’s only the Autarch’s will that holds these walls up,” he’d said as they’d entered the palace. “Once he’s down, they’ll come too. We need to beat a quick retreat if we’re not to get buried.”
That Thes ‘reh’ ot had volunteered for a mission his laughter had dubbed fatal was surprising enough, but this further show of optimism teetered on the schizophrenic. His sudden death not only robbed Pie of an unlooked-for ally, but also of the chance to ask him why he’d joined the assault. But then several such conundrums had accrued around this endeavor, not least the sense of inevitability that had attended every phase, as though this judgment had been laid down long before Pie and Gentle had ever appeared in Yzordderrex, and any attempt to flout it would defy the wisdom of greater magistrates than Culus. Such inevitability bred fatalism, of course, and though the mystif had encouraged Thes ‘reh’ ot to plot their route of return, it entertained few delusions about making that journey. It willfully kept from its mind the losses that extinction would bring until its remaining comrade, Lu ‘chur’ chem—a purebred Eurhetemec, his skin blue-black, his eyes double-iri-sed—raised the subject. They were in a gallery lined with frescoes that evoked the city Pie had once called home: the painted streets of London, depicted as they’d been in the age into which the mystif had been born, replete with pigeon hawkers, mummers, and dandies.
Seeing the way Pie gazed at these sights, Lu ‘chur’ chem said, “Never again, eh?”
“Never again what?”
“Out in a street, seeing the way the world is some morning.”
“No?”
“No,” Lu ‘chur’ chem said. “We’re not coming back this way, and we both know it.”
“I don’t mind,” Pie replied. “I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve felt even more. I’ve got no regrets.”
“You’ve had a long life?”
“Yes, I have.”
“And your Maestro? He had a long life too?”
“Yes, he did,” Pie said, looking again at the scenes on the walls.
Though the renderings were relatively unsophisticated, they touched the mystif s memories awake, evoking the bustle and din of the crowded thoroughfares it and its Maestro had walked in the bright, hopeful days before the Reconciliation. Here were the fashionable streets of Mayfair, lined with fine shops and paraded by finer women, abroad to buy lavender water and mantua silk and snow-white muslin. Here was the throng of Oxford Street, where half a hundred vendors clamored for custom: purveyors of slippers, wildfowl, cherries, and gingerbread, all vying for a niche on the pavement and a space in the air to raise their cries. Here too was a fair, St. Bartholomew’s most likely, where there was more sin to be had by daylight than Babylon ever boasted by dark.
“Who made these?” Pie wondered aloud as they proceeded.
“Diverse hands, by the look of ’em,” Lu ‘chur’ chem replied. “You can see where one style stops and another starts.”
“But somebody directed these painters, gave them the details, the colors. Unless the Autarch just stole artists from the Fifth Dominion.”
“Perfectly possible,” Lu ‘chur’ chem said. “He stole architects. He put tribes in chains to build the place.”
“And nobody ever challenged him?”
“People tried to stir up revolutions over and over again, but he suppressed them. Burnt down the universities, hanged the theologians and the radicals. He had a stranglehold. And he had the Pivot, and most people believe that’s the Unbeheld’s seal of approval. If Hapexamendios didn’t want the Autarch to rule Yzordderrex, why did He allow the Pivot to be moved here? That’s what they said. And I don’t—”