“Bad timing, Zacharias,” he said. “You left too late and now you come back, too late again.”
“Why did they do this?”
“The Autarch doesn’t need reasons.”
“He was here?” Gentle said. The thought that the Butcher of Yzordderrex had stood in Beatrix made his heart beat faster.
But Tasko said, “Who knows? Nobody’s ever seen his face. Maybe he was here yesterday,counting the children, and nobody even noticed him.”
“Do you know where Mother Splendid is?”
“In the heap somewhere.”
“Jesus. . .”
“She wouldn’t have made a very good witness. She was too crazy with grief. They left alive the ones who’d tell the story best. Atrocities need witnesses, Zacharias. People to spread the word.”
“They did this as a warning?” Gentle said.
Tasko shook his huge head. “I don’t know how their minds work,” he said.
“Maybe we have to learn, so we can stop them.”
“I’d prefer to die,” the man replied, “than understand filth like that. If you’ve got the appetite, then go to Yzordderrex. You’ll get your education there.”
“I want to help here,” Gentle said. “There must be something I can do.”
“You can leave us to mourn.”
If there was any profounder dismissal, Gentle didn’t know it. He searched for some word of comfort or apology, but in the face of such devastation only silence seemed appropriate. He bowed his head, and left Tasko to the burden of being a witness, returning up the street past the heap of corpses to where Pie ‘oh’ pah was standing. The mystif hadn’t moved an inch, and even when Gentle came abreast of it, and quietly told it they should go, it was a long time before it looked round at him.
“We shouldn’t have come back,” it said.
“Every day we waste, this is going to happen again. . ..”
“You think you can stop it?” Pie said, with a trace of sarcasm.
“We won’t go the long way around, we’ll go through the mountains. Save ourselves three weeks.”
“You do, don’t you?” Pie said. “You think you can stop this.”
“We won’t die,” Gentle said, putting his arms around Pie ‘oh’ pah. “I won’t let us. I came here to understand, and I will.”
“How much more of this can you take?”
“As much as I have to.” “I may remind you of that,”
“I’ll remember,” Gentle said. “After this, I’ll remember everything.”
21
The Retreat at the Godolphin estate had been built in an age of follies, when the oldest sons of the rich and mighty, having no wars to distract them, amused themselves spending the gains of generations on buildings whose only function was to flatter their egos. Most of these lunacies, designed without care for basic architectural principles, were dust before their designers. A few, however, became noteworthy even in neglect, either because somebody associated with them had lived or died in notoriety or because they were the scene of some drama.
The Retreat fell into both categories. Its architect, Geoffrey Light, had died within six months of its completion, choked by a bull’s pizzle in the wilds of West Riding, a grotesquerie which attracted some attention—as did the retirement from the public eye of Light’s patron, Lord Joshua Godolphin, whose decline into insanity was the talk of court and coffeehouse for many years. Even at his zenith he’d attracted gossip, mainly because he kept the company of magicians. Cagliostro, the Comte de St. Germain, and even Casanova (reputedly no mean thaumaturgist) had spent time on the estate, as well as a host of lesser-known practitioners.
His Lordship had made no secret of his occult investigations, though the work he was truly undertaking was never known to the gossips. They assumed he kept company with these mountebanks for their entertainment value. Whatever his reasons, the fact that he retired from sight so suddenly drew further attention to his last indulgence, the folly Light had built for him. A diary purporting to have belonged to the choked architect appeared a year after his demise, containing an account of the Retreat’s construction. Whether it was the genuine article or not, it made bizarre reading. The foundations had been laid, it said, under stars calculated to be particularly propitious; the masons— sought and hired in a dozen cities—had been sworn to silence with an oath of Arabic ferocity. The stones themselves had been individually baptized in a mixture of milk and frankincense, and a lamb had been allowed to wander through the half-completed building three times, the altar and font placed where it had laid its innocent head.