“My verdict will depend on your actions in the next twelve minutes. Weigh them carefully.”

Ull stepped toward her, speaking in Iatric. “You do not look like what I designed. Had I known, I would have not imprisoned you with the others, my daughter.”

She looked at him with her blind-seeming eyes of pure darkness, and her silver and gold and blue antennae twitched as if studying him closely on many invisible bands. Alalloel wore no expression. “Had that been, I would not have seen firsthand what you inflicted on my fellow Thaws. Reciprocity requires that you perish for your homicide of Crucxit, Axcit, and Litcec of Seven-Twenty-One North Station, who were protected, while on this ground, by the sanctity of the Judge of Ages from the execution of the laws of the Simplifiers. You alone are responsible for the act. Since you did not interfere to halt the Blue Men, I will not interfere to halt the Judge of Ages.”

“Am I not the father, maker, and creator of your species?”

“I will make careful note of your conduct during your execution, so that future antiquarians will honor your memory when the origins of our race are contemplated. We have such appointed times and memorials.”

“Before I was forced into hibernation, I set and established the Cliometric influences and outcomes to guide the destiny of your race to its achievements!”

“Again, reciprocity applies. You did not leave us a free decision of our fate; we leave no decision as to your fate to you.”

Then she turned away from him and addressed the Blue Men at large.

“Hear me, members of the Order of Simplified Vulnerary Aetiology! You have practiced deception by omission by pretending to be archeologists when you sought not knowledge of the past, but the capture of the Judge of Ages. Deception is an information hindrance! Thus you likewise shall be hindered. You have forfeited your right to learn the identity of the Judge of Ages.

“Your attempts are vain, and the Final Stipulation takes no note of them: here, in a place set aside for him to sit in judgment, no one who has ever been a client in his Tombs has the ability to do permanent harm to him, as events will soon make clear.”

The Blue Men, alarmed and amazed, all turned toward each other, and began speaking at once, maintaining several channels of verbal communication at the same time, and in the confusion, even Ull was in the conversation.

Scipio said to Menelaus aloud, “What do we do?” And he heard a crackling over his implants: the voice of Sir Guiden saying something, drowned out by the radioactivity. Menelaus said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell is happening.”

Then there was a sound like a gong. Falling silent, the Blue men turned toward the small sky-blue coffin still parked in the middle of the chamber, by itself, near the fountain.

6. The Sylph

Out from the open lid of the coffin came a soft sigh.

A young woman, perhaps seventeen, perhaps younger, with luminescent purple hair and wild eyes came half-naked out of the interior, drying her hair with a long blue-gray length of floating translucent silk.

The length was apparently a garment. Of its own accord, it swirled and flowed around her, wrapping itself low and tight about her hips to drop a long sash between her legs, then draping itself like a sari from the left hip to the right shoulder, to throw a long train over and behind her, where it hung in midair as if upheld by impalpable breezes or invisible maidens-in-waiting.

It was a shining semitransparent blue-gray material. It seemed to be woven of thousands of tiny sparks of motion, like a disturbed ant nest, or some ever-flowing liquid.

Some of those in the room recognized that garment: Ctesibius and Rada Lwa, who drew back in fear, Ull and Naar, who pointed jeweled pistols toward her.

The garment floated weightlessly to her left and right. She stared around her with wide-eyed innocence, an eerie smile on her lips. She spoke in Merikan, one of the precursor languages to Anglatino, “What a lot of odd people! Is it a barter party?”

Ull spoke, “Anubis, tell her to identify herself.”

Illiance said, “But is not her name Frequently Changed? Anubis reported that this was written on her…”

The purple-haired girl, eyes dreamy and unfocused, lips curved like those of one who smiles in her sleep, stepped forward, wandering first one way and then the other, pausing now and then to spin in a slow circle and giggle, and her long train of weightless silk was sparkling and flowing after her with underwatery slowness.

Ull shouted at the dog things, who then backed away from the girl and her garment. Rada Lwa and Ctesibius, seeing the dogs move, warily retreated from the girl, so that she was alone in the midst of an expanse of empty floor, smiling softly.

Even the Giant Bashan, golden eyes narrowed, stepped carefully over a squad of dog things, to place himself to one side and slightly before the dais, near Menelaus and out of her reach.

Scipio said aloud in English, “Am I the only one who does not know what is going on?”

Menelaus said, “She is wearing hunger silk, which is a molecular disassembly cloth. She is one of the floaters. A Sylph.”

Her head turned at that voice, and the gemstone at her forehead twinkled like her eyes. She smiled up at him. “I told the coffin to wake me up when you were awake! It’s you! Menelaus Montrose!”

A hush fell over the whole chamber. Even to the many there who did not understand her language, the last two words were clear enough. Menelaus Montrose.

She put out both hands toward him and began skipping gaily toward him. There was no mistaking whom she addressed.

He said back, “Do I know you? Who the hell are you?”

6

Deliberation

1. Death in the Chamber of the Dead

The girl with glowing hair rushed forward, and but then stopped on the first stair of the dais, hands on hips. She tossed back her head and pouted. “You don’t remember! How rude! And I thought you had a perfect, posthuman memory! It’s me, Trey!”

“Who?”

She made a noise of exasperation and stamped her foot. “Trey Soaring Azurine! I was aboard when our chaplain, Brother Roger, showed you that your wife had stolen a star out of heaven, which I think was very romantic. Aboard the aeroscaphe!”

“Sorry. You had a different name then. Why are you here?”

“Roger also told me I could not stay sexfriends with Tessa and Woggy, and so what else did I have to live for? You are the only man I know who lives up to Brother Roger’s ridiculous rules, being in love with only one woman forever, and so I wanted to see if you could live long enough to meet your wife.”

Then she looked out at the chamber.

“Who are all those dogs with guns? They’re cute! Do they work for you?” One squad of dog things, twenty-four of them, reacting to a gesture from Ull, were no longer aiming at the Witches, but had made an about-face, and had their weapons trained on Trey.

Yuen scowled, and whirled his named weapon in an elaborate flourish, cracking the whip with a loud snap, and gazed with ferocious hatred toward Montrose. “Here is the Judge of Ages, at last! No Beta, but a race-impostor!”

But Daae curtly but softly said, “Yuen! At ease. The Judge is our savior and ally. No other race was he worthy to hide among. Women! Aim at Ull. He is the enemy.” The two Beta maidens drew their bowstrings back to their ears with an ominous creak of bowshafts, and Lady Ivinia, as graceful as an Olympian statue, drew back her javelin, preparing to cast.

2. Bashan

With a motion impossibly swift for one his great size, the Giant turned toward and swept a dozen dog things up in his arm and threw them onto their fellows. With his other hand, he caught up Menelaus Montrose from next to a bewildered and giggling Trey Azurine, and, cradling Menelaus in one arm, the Giant plunged across the chamber, overleaped the fountain, and ran toward the statue of the Grim Reaper like an elephant charging.