He paused a moment.

"It still is, brother."

"I would have helped you, surely, if I'd known what I'd done."

"Or put me out of my misery," Sartori said. "Taken me into the garden and shot me like a rabid dog. I didn't know what you'd do. I went downstairs. You were snoring like a trooper. I watched you for a long while, wanting to wake you, wanting to share the terror I felt, but Godolphin arrived before I got up the courage. It was just before dawn. He'd come to take Judith home. I hid myself. I watched Godolphin wake you; I heard you talk together, I saw you climb the stairs like two expectant fathers and go into the Meditation Room. Then I heard your whoops of celebration, and I knew once and for all that I wasn't an intended child."

"What did you do?"

"I stole some money and some clothes. Then I made my escape. The fear passed after a time. I began to realize what I was, the knowledge I possessed. And I realized I had this ... appetite. Your appetite. I wanted glory."

"And this is what you did to get it?" Gentle said, turning back to the window. The devastation below was clearer by the minute, as the comet's light strengthened. "Brave work, brother."

"This was a great city once. And there'll be others, just as great. Greater, because this time there'll be two of us to build it. And two of us to rule."

"You've got me wrong," Gentle said. "I don't want an empire."

"But it's bound to come," Sartori said, fired up with this vision. "You're the Reconciler, brother. You're the healer of the Imajica. You know what that could mean for us both? If you reconcile the Dominions there'll have to be one great city—a new Yzordderrex—to rule it from end to end. I'll found it and administrate it, and you can be pope."

"I don't want to be pope."

"What do you want then?"

"Pie 'oh' pah for one. And some sense of what all this means."

"Being born to be the Reconciler's enough meaning for anyone. It's all the purpose you need. Don't run from it."

"And what were you born to do? You can't build cities forever." He glanced out at the desolation. "Is that why you've destroyed it?" he said. "So you can start again?"

"I didn't destroy it. There was a revolution."

"Which you fueled, with your massacres," Gentle said. "I was in a little village called Beatrix, a few weeks ago—"

"Ah, yes. Beatrix." Sartori drew a heavy breath. "It was you, of course. I knew somebody was watching me, but I didn't know who. The frustration made me cruel, I'm afraid,"

"You call that cruel? I call it inhuman."

"It may take you a little time to understand, but every now and again such extremes are necessary."

"I knew some of those people."

"You won't ever have to dirty your hands with that kind of unpleasantness. I'll do whatever's necessary."

"So will I," said Gentle.

Sartori frowned. "Is that a threat?" he said.

"This began with me, and it'll end with me."

"But which me, Maestro? That one"—he pointed at Gentle—"or this? Don't you see, we weren't meant to be enemies. We can achieve so much more if we work together." He put his hand on Gentle's shoulder. "We were meant to meet this way. That's why the Pivot kept silent all these years. It was waiting for you to come, and us to be reunited." His face slackened. "Don't be my enemy," he said. "The thought of—"

A cry of alarm from outside the room cut him short. He turned from Gentle and started towards the door as a soldier appeared in the passageway beyond, his throat opened, his hand ineptly staunching the spurts. He stumbled and fell against the wall, sliding to the ground.

"The mob must be here," Sartori remarked, with a hint of satisfaction. "It's time to make your decision, brother. Do we go on from here together, or shall I rule the Fifth alone?"

A new din rose, loud enough to blot out any further exchange, and Sartori left off his counseling, stepping out into the passageway.

"Stay here," he told Gentle. "Think about it while you wait."

Gentle ignored the instruction. As soon as Sartori was around the corner, he followed. The commotion died away as he did so, leaving only the low whistle from the soldier's windpipe to accompany his pursuit. Gentle picked up his pace, suddenly fearing that an ambush awaited his other. No doubt Sartori deserved death. No doubt they both did. But there was a good deal he hadn't prized from his brother yet, especially concerning the failure of the Reconciliation. He had to be preserved from harm, at least until Gentle had every clue to the puzzle out of him. The time would come for them both to pay the penalty for their excesses. But it wasn't yet.

As he stepped over the dead soldier, he heard the mystifs voice. The single word it said was: "Gentle."

Hearing that tone—like no other he'd heard or dreamt— all concern for Sartori's preservation, or his own, was overwhelmed. His only thought was to get to the place where the mystif was; to lay his eyes on it and his arms around it. They'd been parted for far too long. Never again, he swore to himself as he ran. Whatever edicts or obligations were set before them, whatever malice sought to divide them, never again would he let the mystif go.

He turned the corner. Ahead lay the doorway that led out into the antechamber. Sartori was on the other side, partially eclipsed, but hearing Gentle's approach he turned, glancing back into the passageway. The smile of welcome he was wearing for Pie 'oh' pah decayed, and in two strides he was at the door to slam it in his maker's face. Realizing he was outpaced, Gentle yelled Pie's name, but the door was closed before the syllable was out, plunging Gentle into almost total darkness. The oath he'd made seconds before was broken; they were divided again, before they could even be reunited. In his rage Gentle threw himself against the door, but like everything else in this tower it was built to last a millennium. However hard he hit it, all he got was bruises. They hurt; but the memory of Sartori's leer when he'd talked about his taste for mystifs stung more. Even now, the mystif was probably in Sartori's arms. Embraced, kissed, possessed.

He threw himself against the door one final time, then gave up on such primitive assaults. Drawing a breath, he blew it into his fist and slammed the pneuma against the door the way he'd learned to do in the Jokalaylau. It had been a glacier beneath his hand on that first occasion, and the ice had cracked only after several attempts. This time, either because his will to be on the other side of the door was stronger than his desire to free the women in the ice, or simply because he was the Maestro Sartori now, a named man who knew at least a little about the power he wielded, the steel succumbed at the first blow, and a jagged crack opened in the door.

He heard Sartori shouting on the other side, but he didn't waste time trying to make sense of it. Instead he delivered a second pneuma against the fractured steel, and this time his hand passed all the way through the door as pieces flew from beneath his palm. He put his fist to his mouth a third time, smelling his own blood as he did so, but whatever harm this was doing him, it had not yet registered as pain. He caught a third breath and delivered it against the door with a yell that wouldn't have shamed a samurai. The hinges shrieked, and the door flew open. He was through it before it had struck the floor, only to find the antechamber beyond deserted, at least by the living. Three corpses, companions to the soldier who'd raised the alarm, lay sprawled on the floor, all opened with single slashes. He leapt over them to the door, his broken hand adding its drops to the pools he trod.

The corridor beyond was rank with smoke, as though something half rotted was burning in the bowels of the palace. But through the murk, fifty yards from him, he saw Sartori and Pie 'oh' pah. Whatever fiction Sartori had invented to dissuade the mystif from completing its mission, it had proved potent. They were racing from the tower without so much as a backward glance, like lovers just escaped from death's door.