"Just stop it!" Maeve said, as though speaking to a fractious child. Much to Phoebe's surprise, the tone worked. King Texas let go of the ground, leaving Musnakaff sobbing. with relief. "Why do we always end up arguing?" Texas said, his tone suddenly placatory. "We should be spending this time reminiscing."

"I've got nothing to reminisce about," Maeve said.

"Not true, not true. We had fine times, you and me. I built you a highway. I built you a harbor." Maeve looked up at him unmoved. "What are you thinking of?" King Texas said, leaning a little closer to her.

"Tell me, blossom."

Maeve shrugged. "Nothing," she said.

"Then let me think for us both. Let me love for us both. What I feel for you is more than any man ever felt for any woman in the history of love. And without it-"

"Don't do this," Maeve whined.

"Without it, I am in grief, and you-"

"Why won't you listen?" "You are forgotten."

At this, Maeve bristled. "Forgotten?" she said.

"Yes. Forgotten," Texas replied. "This city will be gone in a few hours. Our harbor, your fine buildings... " He waved his huge hands in the air, to evoke their passing. "The lad will wipe it all away. And as for Everville-"

"I don't want to talk about that."

"Is it too painful? I don't blame you. You were there at the beginning, and now they've forgotten you."

"Stop saying that! " Maeve raged. "Jesus and Mary, will you never learn? I am not going to be bullied or shamed or tempted or seduced into ever loving you again! You can build me a thousand harbors! You can write me a love letter every minute of every day till the end of the world and I WILL NOT LOVE YOU!" With this, she turned to the closest of her bearers. "What's your name?" she said.

"Noos Cataglia."

"Your back, Noos."

"I beg your-?"

"Turn around. I want to climb on your back." "Oh-yes. Of course." The man duly presented his back to Maeve, who with his help began to scramble up onto it. "What are you doing?" King Texas said quietly.

"I'm going to prove you wrong," Maeve said, grabbing hold of her mount's collar. "I'm going back to Everville."

For the first time in several minutes, Phoebe piped up. "You can't," she protested.

"You tell her," King Texas said. "She won't listen to me."

"You promised to help me find Joe," Phoebe went on.

"I'm afraid he's lost, Phoebe," Maeve said, "so let it go." She pursed her lips. "Look, I'm sorry," she said, though plainly the apology was hard. "But didn't I say to you, don't put your faith in love?"

"If you did I wouldn't believe you."

"Listen to this woman!" King Texas said to Maeve. "She's wise! Wise!"

"She's as much a fool for love as you are," Maeve said, her rheumy gaze going from Phoebe to Texas and back again. "You deserve each other!" Then she tugged on her mount's collar. "Move yourself!" she said.

As the poor man started away up the gradient, King Texas looked down at Musnakaff, who had cautiously scrambled to his feet during this exchange. "Woman!" Texas yelled to Maeve. "if you go, I'll kill your little boot-licker."

Maeve cast a glance over her shoulder. "You wouldn't be so petty," she said.

"I'll be whatever I like!" Texas roared. "Now you come back! I'm warning you! Come back!" Maeve simply dug her knees into Cataglia's flanks. "He has seconds left to see the sky, woman!" Texas yelled. "I mean it!"

Musnakaff had started to let out a pitiful mewling sound and was retreating from the closest of the holes.

"You are cruel!" Texas hollered after Maeve. "Cruel! Cruel!"

With that he seemed to lose all patience, and reached down to tug at the ground. "Don't-2' Phoebe said, but her appeal was drowned out by Musnakaff s shriek as he was thrown from his feet. He scrabbled at the cobbles as the street tipped beneath him, but his fingers found too little purchase and he tumbled towards the hole. Phoebe couldn't stand by and watch him go to his death. Yelling to him to hold on, she raced towards him, arms outstretched. He raised his head, a brief glimpse of hope appearing on his ashen face and reached out towards her.

Before her fingers could find his, however, he lost what hold he had and fell. For a fraction of a second their eyes locked and she saw how terrible this was. Then he was gone, screaming and screaming.

She retreated from the hole, letting out a sob of horrorand more, of rage-as she did so.

"Now, hush," King Texas said.

She looked up at him. He was just a looming form, blurred by her tears, but that didn't stop her speaking her mind. "You did this for love?" she said.

"Do you blame me? That woman-"

"You just killed somebody!"

"I was trying to make her change her mind," he said, his voice thickening.

"Well you didn't! You just made more grief-"

Texas shrugged. "He'll be safe down there. It's quiet. It's dark-" She heard him sigh, heavily. "All right. I was wrong." Phoebe sniffed hard, and wiped the tears from her eyes. "I can't bring him back," Texas went on, "but please, let me comfort you-"

He raised his vast hand as he spoke, as if to touch her. It was the last thing she wanted. She tried to wave it away, but in doing so lost her balance. She flailed, attempting to recover it, but her foot somehow missed the street cornletely. She looked down, and to her utter horror saw that the hole where Musnakaff had gone was there beneath her.

"Help," she yelled, and reached out for Texas. But his sluggish body was too slow to catch her. The sky slipped sideways. Then she was failing, failing, the last of her tears whipped from her eyes, but her cleared sight showing her nothing except darkness and darkness and darkness, all the way down.

As Joe and Wexel Fee emerged from the laddered tunnels of b'Kether Sabbat's belly into the incandescent streets of that city, Joe asked Fee, "What does b'Kether Sabbat mean?"

The man shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine," he replied. The fact of Fee's ignorance was curiously comforting. Plainly they would both be exploring the city new to its mysteries. And perhaps it was better that way. Better to wander here without hope of comprehending what lay before them, and instead simply enjoy it for the miracle it was. The basic elements of construction were not so different from those of an American city. There was brick and wood, there were windows and doors, there were streets and sidewalks and gutters and lamps. But the architects and the masons and the carpenters and the road-layers had brought to every slab and cornice and threshold a desire to be particular: to find some quality that made that slab, that cornice, that threshold unlike any other. Some of the buildings were of course stupendous, like the towers Joe had first seen from the trees beside the shore, but even when they were of more modest scale, as most were, they'd plainly been built with a kind of tenderness which made each of them a presence unto itself. Though the streets were virtually empty of citizens (and the winged Ketherians had almost all cleared from the skies) there was a strange sense, more comforting than eerie, that the creatures who had raised this miraculous place were still present, and would live on while their masterworks still stood.

"If I'd built even a little piece of this city," Joe said, "I couldn't leave it for anything."

"Not even for that?" Wexel said, glancing up at the churning wall of the lad.

"Especially for that," Joe said. He stopped walking, to study the wall.

"It's going to destroy the city, Afuque. And us along with it."

"It doesn't seem to be in any hurry," Joe said.

"True enough."

"I wonder why?"

"Don't bother," Fee said. "We'll never know what's going on inside it, Afrique. It's too different from us."