"Ah, yes. Athanasius."

"Athanasius?"

"He's now our man in Yzordderrex, representing the Second. Don't look so appalled. He knows the ceremony, and he's completely committed to it."

"There's not a sane bone in his body, Scopique. He thought I was Hapexamendios' agent."

"Well, of course, that's nonsense—"

"He tried to kill me with Madonnas. He's crazy!"

"We've all had our moments, Sartori."

"Don't call me that."

"Athanasius is one of the most holy men I've ever met."

"How can he believe in the Holy Mother one moment and claim he's Jesus the next?"

"He can believe in his own mother, can't he?"

"Are you seriously saying—"

"—that Athanasius is literally the resurrected Christos? No. If we have to have a Messiah among us, I vote for you." He sighed. — "Look, I realize you have difficulties with Athanasius, but I ask you, who else was I to find? There aren't that many Maestros left, Sartori.""I told you—"

"Yes, yes, you don't like the name. Well, forgive me, but for as long as I live you'll be the Maestro Sartori, and if you want to find somebody else to sit here instead of me, who'll call you something prettier, find him."

"Were you always this bloody-minded?" Gentle replied.

"No," said Scopique. "It's taken years of practice."

Gentle shook his head in despair. "Athanasius. It's a nightmare."

"Don't be so sure he hasn't got the spirit of Jesu in him, by the way," Scopique said. "Stranger things have been known."

"Any more of this," Gentle said, "and I'll be as crazy as he is. Athanasius! This is a disaster!"

Furious, he left Scopique at the blind and moved off through the dust, trailing imprecations as he went, the optimism with which he'd set out on his journey severely bruised. Rather than appear in front of Athanasius with his thoughts so chaotic, he found a spot on the Lenten Way to ponder. The situation was far from encouraging. Tick Raw was holding his position on the Mount as an outlaw, still in danger of arrest. Scopique was in doubt as to the efficacy of his place now that the Pivot had been removed. And now, of all people to join the Synod, Athanasius, a man without the wit to come out of the rain.

"Oh, God, Pie," Gentle murmured to himself. "I need you now."

The wind blew mournfully along the highway as he loitered, gusting towards the place of passage between the Third and Second Dominions, as if to usher him with it, on towards Yzordderrex. But he resisted its coaxing, taking time to examine the options available to him. There were, he decided, three. One, to abandon the Reconciliation right away, before the frailties he saw in the system were compounded and brought on another tragedy. Two, to find a Maestro who could replace Athanasius. Three, to trust Scopique's judgment and go into Yzordderrex to make his peace with the man. The first of these options was not to be seriously countenanced. This was his Father's business, and he had a sacred duty to perform it. The second, the finding of a replacement for Athanasius, was impractical in the time remaining. Which left the third. It was unpalatable, but it seemed to be unavoidable. He'd have to accept Athanasius into the Synod.

The decision made, he succumbed to the message of the gusts and at a thought went with them, along the straight road, through the gap between the Dominions, and across the delta into the city-god's entrails.

"Hoi-Polloi?"

Peccable's daughter had put down her bludgeon and was kneeling beside Jude with tears pouring from her crossed eyes.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she kept saying. "I didn't know. I didn't know."

Jude sat up. A team of bell ringers was tuning up between her temples, but she was otherwise unharmed. "What are you doing here?" she asked Hoi-Polloi. "I thought you'd gone with your father."

"I did," she explained, fighting the tears. "But I lost him at the causeway. There were so many people trying to find a way over. One minute he was beside me, and the next he'd vanished. I stayed there for hours, looking for him; then I thought he'd be bound to come back here, to the house, so I came back too—"

"But he wasn't here."

"No."

She started to sob again, and Jude put her arms around her, murmuring condolences.

"I'm sure he's still alive," Hoi-Polloi said. "He's just being sensible and staying under cover. It's not safe out there." She cast a nervous glance up towards the cellar roof. "If he doesn't come back after a few days, maybe you can take me to the Fifth, and he can follow."

"It's no safer there than it is here, believe me."

"What's happening to the world?" Hoi-Polloi wanted to know.

"It's changing," Jude said. "And we have to be ready for the changes, however strange they are."

"I just want things the way they were: Poppa, and the business, and everything in its place—"

"Tulips on the dining room table."

"Yes."

"It's not going to be that way for quite a while," Jude said. "In fact, I'm not sure it'll ever be that way again." She got to her feet.

"Where are you going?" Hoi-Polloi said. "You can't leave."

"I'm afraid I've got to. I came here to work. If you want to come with me, you're welcome, but you'll have to be responsible for yourself."

Hoi-Polloi sniffed hard. "I understand," she said.

"Will you come?"

"I don't want to be alone," she replied. "I'll come."

Jude had been prepared for the scenes of devastation awaiting them beyond the door of Peccable's house, but not for the sense of rapture that accompanied them. Though there were sounds of lamentation rising from somewhere nearby, and that grief was doubtless being echoed in innumerable houses across the city, there was another message on the balmy noonday air.

"What are you smiling at?" Hoi-Polloi asked her.

She hadn't been aware she was doing so, until the girl pointed it out.

"I suppose because it feels like a new day," she said, aware as she spoke that it was also very possibly the last. Perhaps this brightness in the city's air was its acknowledgement of that: the final remission of a sickened soul before decline and collapse.

She voiced none of this to Hoi-Polloi, of course. The girl was already terrified enough. She walked a step behind Jude as they climbed the street, her fretful murmurs punctuated by hiccups. Her distress would have been pro-founder still if she'd been able to sense the confusion in Jude, who had no clue, now that she was here, as to where to find the instruction she'd come in search of. The city was no longer a labyrinth of enchantments, if indeed it had ever been that. It was a virtual wasteland, its countless fires now guttering out but leaving a pall overhead. The comet's light pierced these grimy skirts in several places, however, and where its beams fell won color from the air, like fragments of stained glass shimmering in solution above the griefs below.

Having no better place to head for, Jude directed them towards the nearest of these spots, which was no more than half a mile away. Long before they'd reached the place, a faint drizzle was carried their way by the breeze, and the sound of running water announced the phenomenon's source. The street had cracked open, and either a burst water main or a spring was bubbling up from the tarmac. The sight had brought a number of spectators from the ruins, though very few were venturing close to the water, their fear not of the uncertain ground but of something far stranger. The water issuing from the crack was not running away down the hill but up it, leaping the steps that occasionally broke the slope with a salmon's zeal. The only witnesses unafraid of this mystery were the children, several of whom had wrested themselves from their parents' grip and were playing in the law-defying stream, some running in it, others sitting in the water to let it play over their legs. In the little shrieks they uttered, Jude was sure she heard a note of sexual pleasure.