“Your daughter’s not a hostage. I said she was offered a means of escape. By that I mean relocation to another city—far from the heart of the Dominion, and far from you, Deacon Hollingshead—where she can live under an assumed name, and associate freely with anyone she likes.”

“Sin freely, you mean! If that’s true, you might as well have killed her! You’ve murdered her immortal soul, which is just the same thing!”

“Just the same to you. The young lady has a different opinion.”

That cranked up the Deacon’s rage another notch. He took a menacing step forward, and so did I, coming up behind him. By this time Julian and Magnus had seen me. But they were wise enough to give no sign.

“If you imagine you’ve achieved some sort of victory,” the Deacon said, “think again. President Comstock! Julian Conqueror! Hah! Where’s Julian Conqueror now, when you think about it? Hiding in an apostate church, with his Presidency down around his head and the city burning not a hundred yards away!”

“What I did for your daughter I did for her sake, not on account of you. Your daughter carries scars from the whippings you gave her. If I hadn’t intervened I doubt she would have lived to see thirty years of age, under your tutelage.”

I wondered if Julian was trying to get himself killed, he vexed the Deacon so. I took another quiet step forward.

“I’ll have her back before long,” the Deacon said.

“I expect you won’t. She’s pretty carefully hidden. She’ll live to curse your name. She’s cursed it more than once already.”

“I should kill you for that alone.”

“Do so, then—it won’t make any difference.”

“It makes every difference. You’re a failure, Julian Comstock, and your Presidency is a failure, and your rebellion against the Dominion is a failure.”

“I guess the Dominion will stagger on a while longer. But it’s doomed in the long run, you know. Such institutions don’t last. Look at history. There have been a thousand Dominions. They fall and are forgotten, or they change beyond recognition.”

“The history of the world is written in Scripture, and it ends in a Kingdom.”

“The history of the world is written in sand, and it evolves as the wind blows.”

“Tell me where my daughter is.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll kill your sodomitic friend first, in that case, and then—”

But he didn’t finish his speech. I took from my pocket the Christmas gift Lymon Pugh had given me. It was a Knocker, of course. Lymon had continually improved his technique in the art of Knocker-making, and had honored me with one of his best. The hempen sack was stitched and beaded in a cunning pattern, and the lead slug inside it might have been forged in an Ostrich egg.

I lunged forward, and employed this useful gift in knocking the pistol out of the Deacon’s hand.

He got off a shot in the process, but the bullet went wild and lodged in the floor. Hollingshead whirled around, gripping his injured hand, and stared. First he stared at me (I suppose he recognized me as Calyxa’s husband), and then he stared at the device in my hand.

“What is that thing?” he demanded.

“It’s called a Knocker,” I said, and I gave him a brisk demonstration of its uses, and before long he was lying at my feet, inert.

Lymon Pugh came up the stairs just then. “I had some trouble,” he began, “but I put away all the Ecclesiastical Police, one by one—but I heard a shot from up here—say, is that the Deacon? He looks all caved in.”

“Keep a guard on the door, please, Lymon,” I said, for I wanted to hold a private conversation with Julian. Lymon took the hint and left the room.

Julian didn’t stand, or otherwise alter his position. He sat propped against Magnus Stepney, who was likewise propped against him, and they looked like a pair of rag dolls tossed aside by an impatient child. I stepped around the fallen Deacon and walked toward them.

“Not too close,” Julian said.

I hesitated. “What do you mean?”

Magnus Stepney answered this time, instead of Julian: “I nearly failed to recognize you in that plague mask. But you had better keep it on, Adam Hazzard.”

“Because of the smoke, you mean?”

“No.”

Magnus reached down to pick up a lantern, which was at his feet. He lit it with a match, and held it high, so that the light fell over him and Julian.

I understood instantly what the problem was, and I admit that I gasped and fell back a step.

Julian was pale, and his eyes were half-lidded, and fever-spots burned on both cheeks. But that wasn’t the telling symptom. The telling symptom was the crop of pale yellow pustules, like snowdrops in a winter garden, that rose above his collar and descended down his arms.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

“The Pox,” Julian said. “I wasn’t sure until tonight that I was infected, but when the lesions appeared I couldn’t fool myself any longer. That’s why I kept myself separate in my box at the theater—that’s why I left without warning. And that’s why I can’t join you aboard the Goldwing, in case you were about to ask. I might infect the whole crew and passengers. Kill half the people I love, and die myself, into the bargain.”

“So you came here?”

“It’s as good a place to die as any, I think.”

“The fire will kill you before the plague does.”

He only shrugged at that.

“What about you, Magnus?” I asked. “You’re sitting there right next to him—aren’t you afraid of getting sick?”

“In all likelihood I already am,” he said, “but thank you for asking, Adam. I mean to stay with Julian as long as I have the strength in me.”

It was a saintly thing to say. Julian took the hand of Magnus, and stretched himself out on the pew, moaning a little at the pressure on his sores, and rested his head in Magnus’s lap.

I had always hoped Julian would find a woman who loved him, so he could experience some of the pleasures in life that had been granted to me and denied to him. That didn’t happen; but I was consoled that he would at least have his friend Magnus beside him in his extremity. He might not have a wife to give him solace, or to smooth his dying pillow; but he had Magnus, and perhaps in Julian’s eyes that was just as good.

“I missed the third act curtain,” Julian said wistfully—I think his mind had begun to wander. “Was there applause?”

“Applause, and cheering, and plenty of it.”

It was hard to tell in the dim light, but I think he smiled.

“It was a good show, wasn’t it, Adam?”

“A fine show. None better.”

“And I’ll be remembered for it, do you think?”

“Of course you will.”

He nodded and closed his eyes.

“Is it true,” I asked him, “what you told the Deacon about his daughter?”

“She’s safe in Montreal on my orders.”

“That was a noble act.”

“It offsets the stink of war and death. My own small offering to Conscience. Do you suppose it’s good enough?” he asked, turning his feverish eyes to Magnus.

“Conscience isn’t particular,” Magnus said. “He accepts most any offering, and you made a generous one.”

“Thank you for coming, Adam,” Julian said, and I could see that he was tiring quickly. “But you had better make for the docks now. The Goldwing won’t wait, and the flames are spreading, I expect.”

“The wind carries embers over the canal. This very building will be on fire soon, if it isn’t already.”

“I expect you’re right,” said Julian.

But neither of them moved, and I couldn’t turn away.

“I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good President,” Julian whispered.

“But you were a good friend.”

“See to that baby of yours, Adam Hazzard. Do I hear her crying? I think I’d like to sleep just now.”

He closed his eyes and paid me no more attention. I thanked Magnus for his kindness and left without turning back.

In the hot and cindery air outside the building I said my goodbyes to Lymon Pugh. Lymon took my hand a final time, and said he was sorry about Julian, and wished me well in “foreign places.” Then he rode away uptown, a lone horseman on a vacant street all strewn with windblown embers.