"The Unbeheld speaks," he said, his voice as flat as the God's.

"I don't want this," Gentle said.

"I don't think this is any place to talk about denying Him," Sartori said, giving the Pivot a queasy glance.

"I didn't say I was denying Him," Gentle replied. "Just that I didn't want it."

"Still better discussed in private," Sartori whispered, turning to open the door.

He didn't lead Gentle back to the mean little room where they'd met, but to a chamber at the other end of the passageway, which boasted the only window he'd seen in the vicinity. It was narrow and dirty, but not as dirty as the sky on the other side. Dawn had begun to touch the clouds, but the smoke that still rose in curling columns from the fires below all but canceled its frail light.

"This isn't what I came for," Gentle said as he stared out at the murk. "I wanted answers."

"You've had 'em."

"I have to take what's mine, however foul it is?"

"Not yours, ours. The responsibility. The pain"—he paused—"and the glory, of course."

Gentle glanced at him. "It's mine," he said simply.

Sartori shrugged, as though this were of no consequence to him whatsoever. Gentle saw his own wiles working in that simple gesture. How many times had he shrugged in precisely that fashion-raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, looked away with feigned indifference? He let Sartori believe the bluff was working.

"I'm glad you understand," he said. "The burden's mine."

"You've failed before."

"But I came close," Gentle said, feigning access to a memory he didn't yet have in the hope of coaxing an informative rebuttal.

"Close isn't good enough," Sartori said. "Close is lethal. A tragedy. Look what it did to you. The great Maestro. You crawl back here with half your wits missing."

"The Pivot trusts me."

That struck a tender place. Suddenly Sartori was shouting.

"Fuck the Pivot! Why should you be the Reconciler? Huh? Why? One hundred and fifty years I've ruled the Imajica. I know how to use power. You don't."

"Is that what you want?" Gentle said, trailing the bait of that possibility. "You want to be the Reconciler in my place?"

"I'm better equipped than you," Sartori raged. "All you're good for is sniffing after women."

"And what are you? Impotent?"

"I know what you're doing. I'd do the same. You're stirring me up, so I'll spill my secrets. I don't care. There's nothing you can do I can't do better. You wasted all those years, hiding away, but I used them. I turned myself into an empire builder. What did you do?" He didn't wait for an answer. He knew his subject too well. "You've learned nothing. If you began the Reconciliation now, you'd make the same mistakes."

"And what were they?"

"It comes down to one," Sartori said. "Judith. If you hadn't wanted her—" He stopped, studying his other. "You don't even remember that, do you?"

"No," Gentle said. "Not yet."

"Let me tell you, brother," Sartori said, coming face to face with Gentle. "It's a sad story."

"I don't weep easily."

"She was the most beautiful woman in England. Some people said, in Europe. But she belonged to Joshua Godolphm, and he guarded her like his soul."

"They were married?"

"No. She was his mistress, but he loved her more than any wife. And of course he knew what you felt, you didn't disguise it, and that made him afraid—oh, God, was he afraid—that sooner or later you were going to seduce her and spirit her away. It'd be easy. You were the Maestro Sartori; you could do anything. But he was one of your patrons, so you bided your tune, thinking maybe he'd tire of her, and then you could have her without bad blood between you. It didn't happen. The months went by, and his devotion was as intense as ever. You'd never waited this long for a woman before. You started to suffer like a lovesick adolescent. You couldn't sleep. Your heart palpitated at the sound of her voice. This wasn't good for the Reconciliation, of course, having the Maestro pining away, and Godolphin came to want a solution as badly as you did. So when you found one, he was ready to listen."

"What was it?"

"That you make another Judith, indistinguishable from the first. You had the feits to do it."

"Then he'd have one ..."

"And so would you. Simple. No, not simple. Very difficult. Very dangerous. But those were heady days. Dominions hidden from human eyes since the beginning of time were just a few ceremonies away. Heaven was possible. Creating another Judith seemed like small potatoes. You put it to him, and he agreed—"

"Just like that?"

"You sweetened the pill. You promised him a Judith better than the first. A woman who wouldn't age, wouldn't tire of his company or the company of his sons, or the sons of his sons. This Judith would belong to the men of the Godolphin family in perpetuity. She'd be pliant, she'd be modest, she'd be perfect."

"And what did the original think of this?"

"She didn't know. You drugged her, you took her up to the Meditation room in the house in Gamut Street, you lit a blazing fire, stripped her naked, and began the ritual. You anointed her; you laid her in a circle of sand from the margin of the Second Dominion, the holiest ground in the Imajica. Then you said your prayers, and you waited." He paused, enjoying this telling. "It is, let me remind you, a long conjuration. Eleven hours at the minimum, watching the doppelgSnger grow in the circle beside its source. You'd made sure there was nobody else in the house, of course, not even your precious mystif. This was a very secret ritual. So you were alone, and you soon got bored. And when you got bored, you got drunk. So there you were, sitting in the room with her, watching her perfection in the firelight, obsessing on her beauty. And eventually—half out of your mind with brandy—you made the biggest mistake of your life. You tore off your clothes, you stepped into the circle, and you did about everything a man can do to a woman, even though she was comatose, and you were hallucinating with fasting and drink. You didn't fuck her once, you did it over and over, as though you wanted to get up inside her. Over and over. Then you fell into a stupor at her side."

Gentle began to see the error looming. "I fell asleep in the circle?" he said.

"In the circle."

"And you were the consequence."

"I was. And let me tell you, it was quite a birth. People say they don't remember the moment they came into the world, but I do. I remember opening my eyes in the circle, with her beside me, and these rains of matter coming down on me, congealing around my spirit. Becoming bone. Becoming flesh." All expression had gone from his face. "I remember," he said, "at one point she realized she wasn't alone and she turned and saw me lying beside her. I was unfinished. An anatomy lesson, raw and wet. I've never forgotten the noise she made—"

"I didn't wake up through any of this?"

"You'd crawled away downstairs to douse your head, and you'd fallen asleep. I know because I found you, later on, sprawled on the dining room table."

"The conjuration still worked, even though I'd left the circle?"

"You're quite the technician, aren't you? Yes, it still worked. You were an easy subject. It took hours to decode Judith and make her doppelganger. But you were incandescent. The sway read you in minutes and made me in a couple of hours."

"You knew who you were from the beginning?"

"Oh, yes. I was you, in your lust. I was you, full of drunken visions. I was you, wanting to fuck and fuck, and conquer and conquer. But I was also you when you'd done your worst, with your balls empty and your head empty, like death had got in, sitting there between her legs trying to remember what it was you were living for. I was that man too, and it was terrifying to have both those feelings in me at the same time."