Gentle drew breath, not to issue a pneuma this time but a call. He shouted Pie's name down the passageway, the smoke dividing as his summons went, as though the syllables from a Maestro's mouth had a literal presence. Pie stopped and looked back. Sartori took hold of the mystif s arm as if to hurry it on, but Pie's eyes had already found Gentle, and it refused to be ushered away. Instead it shrugged off Sartori's hold and took a step in Gentle's direction. The curtain of smoke divided by his cry had come together again and made a blur of the mystif s face, but Gentle read its confusion from its body. It seemed not to know whether to advance or retreat.

"It's me!" Gentle called. "It's me!"

He saw Sartori at the mystif s shoulder and caught fragments of the warnings he was whispering: something about the Pivot having hold of their heads.

"I'm not an illusion, Pie," Gentle said as he advanced. "This is me. Gentle. I'm real."

The mystif shook its head, looking back at Sartori, then again at Gentle, confounded by the sight.

"It's just a trick," Sartori said, no longer bothering to whisper. "Come away, Pie, before it really gets a hold. It can make us crazy."

Too late, perhaps, Gentle thought. He was close enough to see the look on the mystif s face now, and it was lunatic: eyes wide, teeth clenched, sweat making red rivulets of the blood spattered on its cheek and brow. The sometime assassin had long since lost its appetite for slaughter—that much had been apparent back in the Cradle, when it had hesitated to kill though their lives had depended upon it—but it had done so here, and the anguish it felt was written in every furrow of its face. No wonder Sartori had found it so easy to make the mystif forsake its mission. It was teetering on mental collapse. And now, confronted with two faces it knew, both speaking with the voice of its lover, it was losing what little equilibrium it had left.

Its hand went to its belt, from which hung one of the ribbon blades the execution squad had wielded. Gentle heard it sing as it came, its edge undulled by the slaughter it had already committed.

Behind the mystif, Sartori said, "Why not? It's only a shadow."

Pie's crazed look intensified, and it raised the fluttering blade above its head. Gentle halted. Another step and he was in range of the blade; nor did he doubt that Pie was ready to use it.

"Go on!" Sartori said. "Kill it! One shadow more or less...."

Gentle glanced towards Sartori, and that tiny motion seemed enough to spur the mystif. It came at Gentle, the blade whining. He threw himself backwards to avoid the swipe, which would have opened his chest had it caught him, but the mystif was determined not to make the same error twice, and closed the gap between them with a stride. Gentle retreated, raising his arms in surrender, but the mystif was indifferent to such signs. It wanted this madness gone, and quickly.

"Pie?" Gentle gasped. "It's me! It's me! I left you at the Kesparate! Remember that?"

Pie swung again, not once but twice, the second slash catching Gentle's upper arm and chest, opening the coat, shirt, and flesh beneath. Gentle pivoted on his heel to avoid the following cut, putting his already bloodied hand to the wound. Taking another stumbling step of retreat, he felt the wall of the passageway hard against his spine. He had nowhere else to run.

"Don't I get a last supper then?" he said, not looking at the blade but at Pie's eyes, attempting to stare past the slaughter fugue to the sane mind that cowered behind it. "You promised we'd eat together, Pie. Don't you remember? A fish inside a fish inside—"

The mystif stopped. The blade fluttered at its shoulder, "—a fish."

The blade fluttered on, but it didn't descend. "Say you remember, Pie. Please say you remember." Somewhere behind Pie, Sartori began a new round of exhortations, but to Gentle they were just a din. He continued to meet Pie's blank gaze, looking for some sign that his words had moved his executioner. The mystif drew a tiny, broken breath, and the knots that bound its brow and mouth slipped. "Gentle?" it said.

He didn't reply. He just let his hand drop from his shoulder and stood open-armed against the wall.

"Kill it!" Sartori was still saying. "Kill it! It's just an illusion!"

Pie turned, the blade still raised. "Don't!" Gentle said, but the mystif was already starting in the Autarch's direction. Gentle called after it again, pushing himself from the wall to stop it. "Pie! Listen to me—"

The mystif glanced around, and as it did so Sartori raised his hand to his eye and in one smooth motion snatched at it, extending his arm and opening his fist to let fly what it had plucked. Not the eye itself but some essence of his glance went from the palm like a ball trailing smoke. Gentle reached for the mystif to drag it out of the sway's path, but his hand fell inches short of Pie's back, and as he reached again the sway struck. The fluttering blade dropped from the mystif's hand as it was thrown backwards by the impact, its gaze fixed on Gentle as it fell into his arms. The momentum carried them both to the ground, but Gentle was quick to roll from under the mystif s weight and put his hand to his mouth to defend them with a pneuma. Sartori was already retreating into the smoke, however, on his face a look that would vex Gentle for many days and nights to come. There was more distress in it than triumph; more sorrow than rage.

"Who will reconcile us now?" he said, and then he was gone into the murk, as though he had mastery of the smoke and had pulled it around him to duck away behind its folds.

Gentle didn't give chase but went back to the mystif, lying where it had fallen. He knelt beside it.

"Who was he?" Pie said.

"Something I made," Gentle said, "when I was a Maestro."

"Another Sartori?" Pie said.

"Yes."

"Then go after him. Kill him. Those creatures are the most—"

"Later."

"Before he escapes."

"He can't escape, lover. There's nowhere he can go I won't find him."

Pie's hands were clutching at the place in mid-chest where Sartori's malice had struck.

"Let me see," Gentle said, drawing Pie's fingers away and tearing at the mystif's shirt. The wound was a stain on its flesh, black at the center and fading to a pustular yellow at its edges.

"Where's Huzzah?" Pie asked him, breath labored.

"She's dead," Gentle replied. "She was murdered by a Nullianac."

"!"

"So much death," Pie said. "It blinded me. I would have killed you and not even known I'd done it"

"We're not going to talk about death," Gentle said, "We're going to find some way of healing you."

"There's more urgent business than that," Pie said. "I came to kill the Autarch—"

"No, Pie...."

"That was the judgment," Pie insisted. "But now I can't finish it. Will you do it for me?"

Gentle put his hand beneath the mystifs head and raised Pie up.

"I can't do that," he said.

"Why not? You could do it with a breath.";

"No, Pie. I'd be killing myself.""What?"

The mystif stared up at Gentle, baffled. But its puzzle ment was short-lived. Before Gentle had time to explain.

Pie let out a long, sorrowful sigh, in the shape of three soft words.

"Oh, my Lord."

"I found him in the Pivot Tower. I didn't believe it at first...."

"The Autarch Sartori," Pie said, as if trying the words for their music. Then, its voice a dirge, it said, "It has a ring."

"You knew 1 was a Maestro all along, didn't you?"

"Of course.";

"But you didn't tell me."

"I got as close as I dared. But I had sworn an oath never to remind you of who you were."°

"Who made you swear that oath?"

"You did, Maestro. You were in pain, and you wanted to forget your suffering."

"How did I come to forget?"

"A simple feit."