Too Like the Lightning (62 page)

Dominic's brow twitched. “Is that so?”

“Mmm. Tully Mardi. Exposed Mycroft in the street in front of a dozen people, with the Servicer uniform in plain sight no less. Mycroft will need our protection even more now than usual, poor thing. And I'd recommend switching them from an outdoor pet to an indoor pet; outside's not safe anymore.”

Dominic laughed darkly. “Such a thoughtful protectress thou hast in Julia, Mycroft, when she's so cold to everybody else. It's quite unfair.” His light kick showered me with shards of desk. “Clean up this mess. This is thy fault after all, is it not,
stray dog
?” His actual words were ‘
Chien errant,
' in French, his common title for me.

“Yes, Brother Dominic.”

“Apologize to the Pontifex Maxima for ruining her office.”

“I apologize, Your Holiness.”

He sheathed his blade. “Now, work.”

I dared not raise my eyes, but could see Dominic's smile reflected in a fallen cup as he watched me crawl. Dominic has never sodomized me, hard as you may find that to believe. He gets no satisfaction subjugating something which has never shown the faintest hint of fighting back.

But thou must fight back, Mycroft.
Would that be your advice here, my brave reader?
Fight for thy freedom. So much hangs upon thee at this moment, not just Bridger but innocent Carlyle, brave Sniper whom these perverts' dark deal threatens. Save them! This is thy moment, when thine oppressor's blade sleeps in its sheath. This Dominic may be a master swordsman, but thou, thou art Mycroft Canner.

No, reader. Your visit to my era is brief, but I must live through tomorrow, and the next day, and the next of my long penance. Dominic is the seneschal who controls access to that house in Paris which has been my harbor, longer than Cielo de Pájaros. If Bridger were unguarded, for him I would destroy myself, but Bridger has the Major, and the Major defeated even me. As for Carlyle and Sniper, worthy as they are, I will not do them short-term good at the price of sacrificing all my future usefulness. Perhaps I could overpower Dominic, escape for now, but I would have to return someday, and soon, to face his waiting discipline. I do not fear short-term retribution—pain and degradation I accept to save good men. But rebellion against Dominic would forever forfeit my place as a trusted servant at Madame's. A cell would wait for me the next time I braved her threshold, where forever after I would wait like a tool in its box, ready to be used but impotent to start tasks of my own. I must have the freedom of that house, reader, I must. I can work there, for all the Powers, for Earth—no, not for Earth, for Him, reader, for Him, for Ἄναξ Jehovah. This is the first time that I have shown you my own title for Him, Ἄναξ (
Anax
). It is Greek, of course. Old Greek. ‘Lord' is a feeble translation. Think of the trial-weary Trojans, with the smoke of the war fires rising around their walls, year in, year out, and the prophets warn them, soon, soon, soon the day of death and slavery will come to swallow Troy and all her children, yet, in spite of Fate, remaining pious at heart toward that one power that has shown them loyalty and kindness, the grateful Trojans raise their hands in prayer to distant Lord Apollo. Then they use Ἄναξ, and so do I.

Julia stopped me with a soft hand on the back of my neck. “No need to fuss about cleaning up the mess, Dominic, really. If you're in a rush, take Mycroft and go.”

“Are you sure? This is partly my fault too. I haven't had a chance to thank you properly yet.”

“Go.” She handed him my tracker. “I have another regular coming in half an hour, I can have them clean it up.”

He thanked her with a last kiss. “I'm going to pay you back for this, I mean it, and for giving me Carlyle Foster. Clear your schedule for … how much of tomorrow can you clear?”

“From noon on if I have to.”

“Clear it all. I'll send you word where to meet me.”

“What for?”

“Your payment.” He kicked me in the side, gently for him. “Fetch thy hat, stray. We're leaving.”

I crawled to fetch it from the closet, not daring to rise until he took me by the collar and hauled me to my feet. It was Dominic who first taught me the art of hat-wearing, and gave me the round and shapeless cap that has shielded me from recognition so many times. It was thirteen years ago, almost to the day. I had come to petition his aid in trying to understand Ἄναξ Jehovah. He saw me, with my trembling and my suppliant eyes, and threw his head back, laughing. “Mycroft, thou must have a hat so thou mayest remove it in the presence of thy betters!” He was right. It is a comforting symbol, a way to gesture my submission without alarming people with the antiquated titles ‘master,' ‘madam,' ‘sir.' It is a comfort to have something to fidget with as I stand in obedience before free men. A welcome gift. I thank Dominic for it still, from time to time.

Dominic paused on the threshold, throwing his sword arm around my shoulders like a brother, close and ready to grasp my throat. “Oh, Julia, any advice on interrogating a prisoner you can't touch?”

Her eyebrows perked. “Can't touch?”

“I'd squish him.” Dominic's eyes danced as he looked to me. “What's a good comparison, Mycroft? Let's say he has one of those bone diseases so he'll shatter if you shake him too hard. Mentally he's a toughie, though. Sleep deprivation's getting me nowhere slowly.”

Dominic had my tracker still, playing between his fingers like a toy. How long, my mind raced, how long since I had last counted all eleven tiny soldiers?

“If you want fast results, threaten a loved one,” she suggested. “Otherwise theology as usual, or hot wax. Hot wax is almost too gentle.”

He frowned. “Not gentle enough for this little one, but I'll think of something. Thank you, Pontifex Maxima.” He turned to me. “Come, stray. I've a thousand questions for thee. I look forward to seeing thee struggle to get out of answering.”

 

C
HAPTER THE
THIRTIETH

DEO EREXIT SADE

Things change here, reader. Or, more aptly, you change, while this world you visit stays the same. I promised I would show the wires beneath the cloth. Eureka smells them, tastes them, itches with them, whatever name we pick for her computer senses. She knows the flights of cars are wrong, that there is one extra pull of gravity, to make us realize Dark Matter is out there changing things. Now you are ready. Kohaku Mardi was always wrong. 33-67; 67-33; 29-71, it will not tip us into war, no matter what the numbers say. Sometimes the magician wheels a house of cards onto his stage, and he shakes, and blows, and threatens, pulls the tablecloth from under it, and it doesn't fall. Because it never really was a house of cards. It was one long piece of paper, folded and disguised to feign fragility.

“Felix, come away from there,” the Anonymous called. “You're making Danaë uncomfortable.”

Brillist Institute Headmaster Felix Faust lingered by his favorite feature of the Salon de Sade
:
a picture window, framed by damask curtains, looking down over the Flesh Pit. “There are two 9-3-3-11-10-4-3-10s topping each other down there
,
” he said. “That's the third time I've seen that combo, I wonder why that set are so attracted to their own.”

“Come away,” the Anonymous repeated. “You can do research on your own time.” Here the Anonymous, like Faust, wore the costume of the period, lace cuffs and styled wig, his coat a rich green-black over a waistcoat of burgundy-violet silk, almost imperial. He wore a mask, not grotesque or fancy, and certainly not enough to keep one who knew him from recognizing him, just a little black strip around the eyes, a symbol. Many imagine that all Madame's clients would wear masks, but that badge of honor belongs to the Anonymous alone.

Faust's eyes, windows of the ever-churning brain which feeds upon his body like a parasite, rolled across to the Anonymous. “Closing the curtain isn't going to get Bryar ready faster. Neither is you venting your impatience on the rest of us.”

The Anonymous squeezed his cane, as if to strangle its heavy gilded head. “You're the one who wanted Danaë at this meeting, Felix. The least you can do is be courteous now that they're here.”

Faust let the curtain fall and turned back to the salon with its ring of couches, amber velvet on ebony frames, perfect against the ivory-tinted rug. “I apologize, Princesse. It's strange to think you've hardly ever been in this room, since you're always so thoroughly with us in spirit.”

“It's all right, Felix,” Danaë answered, forcing a smile for the Brillist Institute Headmaster who reigns as teacher, steersman, and lawspeaker over Gordian. But the blush on Danaë's unhappy cheeks showed that it was not all right, in fact, not until I pulled the curtain closed to seal away the spectacle below.

Here the assembled Powers were as alone as Powers can be, no aides, no bodyguards, no secretaries, the constant watching plague of ‘personnel' shut out beyond the door beyond the door beyond the door of Madame's innermost sanctum. Only the most completely trusted servants may attend the nobles in the Salon de Sade: today that meant me. In the car en route to Paris I had … endured, rather than answered, Dominic's first questions about Bridger. But Dominic knew I would be slow to succumb to either force or guile, so he had dropped me at Madame's with instructions that I be held until he returned. Then he had vanished once again, like a black and heavy condor, content that no common vulture will dare touch its prey. Since I was on hand, they might as well make use of me.

“Were you never brought in here before you married?” Faust asked.

“Never,” Danaë answered. “The Salon de Sade was not judged proper for a maiden's eyes. Besides”—she smiled at Andō seated beside her on their sofa—“until I was united with my husband, I had no contact with affairs of state. I still find this room rather overwhelming, which is why I do appreciate your kindness in exercising restraint when I attend.”

“No trouble at all, my dear, no trouble at all.”

It was a brash lie, of course, here in a room designed to fill the mind with two things of which politics was not the primary. This was not a room built for restraint. The picture window down to the lovemaking of the
hoi polloi
filled one wall with living pornography. Two more walls were covered with museum cases which preserved the relics of Great Men: portraits, busts, quills, locks of hair, manuscripts in the hands of Patriarch and Philosophe, Jean-Jacques and the Divine Marquis, glittering reliquaries of Madame's favorite Catholic saints, and, when they have survived, tools of love from the boudoirs of history's greatest. The last wall held the tools of love for this one.

Faust's eyes laughed as he settled onto the sofa. “Wearing a hole in the rug isn't going to get Bryar ready faster either, Déguisé.”

The Anonymous froze, embarrassed now by his own pacing. At Madame's, in case any outside the inner circle might wander within earshot, the Anonymous answers to the slightly subtle title of the Comte Déguisé, the Count Disguised. Trust Europe to have a system of etiquette prepared even for the eventuality of royalty who must stay ‘in disguise' amid a company all of whom know the truth.

“Well put, dear Felix.” Madame's laugh lit the room, as did the silver embroidery sparkling on her gown of powder blue. “The Headmaster is right. Come, My Lord, sit before you make us all dizzy.” Madame was too far from the Anonymous to grab his sleeve, but she steered him toward an empty couch with a gesture.

My Lord the Comte Déguisé obeyed, but sat only on the sofa's edge, ready to spring up, like a loved one lurking outside a surgery, waiting for news.

Madame's smile pitied his tension, but she could do no more, so she stretched back in the embrace of the two gentleman who flanked her on her couch. To her left, his legs lost in the ocean of her skirts, sat His Imperial Majesty Cornel MASON. His costume was an adapted Eighteenth-Century military uniform, cording and rows of bright buttons, fashioned in Masonic Imperial Gray with the left sleeve dyed black. Their bodies as they sat—Madame's and Caesar's—were intertwined, his lips a neck stretch from her ear, her hand in his lap a light squeeze from excitement. Theirs is a comfortable, habitual closeness, enjoying the taste of a cheek or the tease-thrill of crotches brushing under cloth, all in the course of chat, as if they had forgotten one might sit upon a couch in any other way. See, even as Madame chuckles at the Anonymous's impatience, the Emperor chuckles with her, not even noticing the sympathy of flesh and flesh. I had never seen Caesar unstiff, reader, until I saw him with Madame. On the same couch on the Lady's other side, his costume barely more elegant than his everyday European suit, sat the King of Spain.

“I hear the Outsider is calling the European Parliament again,” the Emperor remarked as he nuzzled his Lady's ear. “Something about the land crisis.”

Spain nodded. “It is also to approve funds for the distribution of that new anti-aging drug.”

“I thought they passed that eight months ago.”

“This is another new drug. Utopians work fast.”

Caesar tickled something among Madame's skirts. “I just found out about the new drug yesterday. The Outsider works fast too.”

“They do,” Spain granted, “commendably so.” English, reader, they spoke English, despite the pull of Paris, for such a universal company can only speak the universal tongue.

“Her Excellency,” an usher called now from the doorway, “Cousin Chairwoman Bryar Kosala.”

“Sorry to make you wait, everyone!”

Bryar Kosala entered in a rush of ruffles, her black hair mounded as elaborately as a wedding cake, her gold-trimmed gown of poppy-red satin making her deep Indian skin glow like amber.

“Oh! My Lord!” she squealed as the Comte Déguisé pounced like a hunter, lifting her by her corseted waist and drowning her neck with kisses. Kosala laughed, the others too, delighted, even after so many repetitions, at a pair so very much in love.