"I thought I saw Jesus Christ yesterday," she said. "He was standing on a roof with his arms open wide. I thought he'd come for me, so that I could make my confession, That's why I came here: to find Jesu. I heard his messenger."

"That was me."

"You were ... in my thoughts?"

"Yes."

"So I found you instead of Christos. That seems like a greater miracle." She reached out towards Jude, who took her hand. "Isn't it, sister?"

'Tm not sure yet," Jude said. "I was myself this morning. Now what am I? A copy, a forgery."

The word brought Klein's Bastard Boy to mind: Gentle the faker, making profit from other people's genius. Is that why he'd obsessed upon her? Had he seen in her some subtle clue to her true nature and followed her out of devotion to the sham she was?

"I was happy," she said, thinking back to the good times she'd shared with him. "Maybe I didn't always realize I was happy, but I was. I was myself."

"You still are."

"No," she said, as close to despair as she could ever remember being. "I'm a piece of somebody else."

"We're all pieces," Quaisoir said. "Whether we were born or made." Her fingers tightened around Jude's hand. "We're all hoping to be whole again. Will you take me back up to the palace?" she said. "We'll be safer there than here."

"Of course," Jude replied, helping her up.

"Do you know which direction to go?"

She said she did. Despite the smoke and the darkness, the walls of the palace loomed above them, massive but remote.

"We've got quite a climb ahead of us," Jude said. "It may take us till morning."

"The night is long in Yzordderrex," Quaisoir replied.

"It won't last forever," Jude said.

"It will for me."

"I'm sorry. That was thoughtless. I didn't mean—"

"Don't be sorry," Quaisoir said. "I like the dark. I can remember the sun better. Sun, and angels at the table. Will you take my arm, sister? I don't want to lose you again."

IN ANY OTHER PLACE BUT THIS, Gentle might have been frustrated by the sight of so many sealed doors, but as Lazarevich led him closer to the Pivot Tower the atmosphere grew so thick with dread he was glad whatever lay behind those doors was locked away. His guide spoke scarcely at all. When he did it was to suggest that Gentle make the rest of the journey alone.

"It's a little way now," he kept saying. "You don't need me any more."

"That's not the deal," Gentle would remind him, and Lazarevich would curse and whine, then head on some distance in silence, until a shriek down one of the passages, or a glimpse of blood spilled on the polished floor, made him halt and start his little speech afresh.

At no point in this journey were they challenged. If these titanic halls had ever buzzed with activity—and given that small armies could be lost in them, Gentle doubted that they ever had—they were all but deserted now. Those few servants and bureaucrats they did encounter were busy leaving, burdened with hastily gathered belongings as they hurried down the corridors. Survival was their foremost priority. They gave the bleeding soldier and his ill-dressed companion scarcely a look.

At last they came to a door, this one unsealed, which Lazarevich refused point—blank to enter.

"This is the Pivot Tower," he said, his voice barely audible.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"Can't you feel it?"

Now it was remarked upon, Gentle did indeed feel a subtle sensation, barely strong enough to be called a tingle, in his fingertips, testicles, and sinuses.

"That's the tower, I swear," Lazarevich whispered.

Gentle believed him. "All right," he said. "You've done your duty; you'd better go."

The man grinned. "You mean it?"

"Yes."

"Oh, thank you. Whoever you are. Thank you."

Before he could skip away, Gentle took hold of his arm and drew him close. "Tell your children," he said, "not to be soldiers. Poets, maybe, or shoeshiners. But not soldiers. Got it?"

Lazarevich nodded violently, though Gentle doubted he'd comprehended a word. His only thought was of escape, and he took to his heels the moment Gentle let go of him and was out of sight in two or three seconds. Turning to the beaten brass doors, Gentle pushed them a few inches wider and slipped inside. The nerve endings in his scrotum and palms knew that something of significance was nearby— what had been subtle sensation was almost painful now— even though his eyes were denied sight of it by the murk of the room he'd entered. He stood by the door until he was able to grasp some sense of what lay ahead. This was not, it seemed, the Pivot Tower itself but an antechamber of some kind, as stale as a sickroom. Its walls were bare, its only furniture a table upon which a canary cage lay overturned, its door open, its occupant flown. Beyond the table, another doorway, which he took, led him into a corridor, staler still than the room he'd left. The source of agitation in his nerve endings was audible now: a steady tone that might have been soothing under other circumstances. Not knowing which direction it was coming from, he turned to his right and crept down the corridor. A flight of stairs curved out of sight to his left. He chose not to take them, his instinct rewarded by a glimmer of light up ahead. The Pivot's tone became less insistent as he advanced, suggesting this route was a cul-de-sac, but he headed on towards the light to be certain Pie was not being held prisoner in one of these antechambers.

As he came within half a dozen strides of the room somebody moved across the doorway, flitting through his field of vision too quickly to be seen. He flattened himself against the wall and edged towards the room. A wick, set in a bowl of oil on a table, shed the light he'd been drawn to. Beside it, several plates contained the remains of a meal. When he reached the door he waited there for the man—the night watch, he supposed—to come back into view. He had no wish to kill him unless it was strictly necessary. There'd be enough widows and orphans in Yzordderrex by tomorrow morning without his adding to the sum. He heard the man fart, not once but several times, with the abandon of someone who believed himself alone, then heard him open another door, his footsteps receding.

Gentle chanced a glance around the doorjamb. The room was empty. He quickly stepped inside, intending to take from the table the two knives that were lying there. On one of the plates was an already rifled assortment of candies. He couldn't resist.

He picked the most luscious and had it to his mouth when the man behind said, "Rosengarten?"

He looked around, and as his gaze settled on the face across the room his jaw clenched in shock, breaking on the candy between his teeth. Sight and sugar mingled, tongue and eye feeding such a sweetness to his brain he reeled.

The face before him was a living mirror: his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his hairline, his bearing, his bafflement, his fatigue. In everything but the cut of his coat and the muck beneath his fingernails, another Gentle. But not by that name, surely.

Swallowing the sweet liqueur from the candy, Gentle very slowly said, "Who ... in God's name ... are you?"

The shock was draining from the other's face, and amusement replacing it. He shook his head. "... damn kreauchee ..."

"That's your name?" Gentle replied. "Damn Kreauchee?"

He'd heard stranger in his travels. But the question only served to amuse the other more.

"Not a bad idea," he replied. "There's enough in my system. The Autarch Damn Kreauchee. That's got a ring to it."

Gentle spat the candy from his mouth. "Autarch?" he said.

The amusement fled from the other's face. "You've made your point, wisp. Now fuck off." He closed his eyes. "Get a hold of yourself," he half whispered. "It's the fucking kreauchee. It's happened before, it'll happen again."