So much the rather thou celestial light
Shine inward, and the
mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist
from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things
invisible to mortal sight.
John Milton
Paradise Lost, Book III
Gabrielle deCourteney had been installed in lush rooms, luxury appropriate to the sovereign’s mistress and a pre-eminent sorceress.
The knock surprised her. Springbuck had said he’d be occupied with counsels, and would see her at breakfast. Her handmaiden opened the door and Gil MacDonald stepped in, right arm in a sling, a limp in his stride. Gabrielle inspected him coldly; there’d never been much liking between them.
“Can I talk to you alone? Please.”
Dismissing the handmaiden, she curtly invited him to sit. “Have you had an accident? You have seen the chirurgeons?”
He skirted her questions. “I’ll be okay. The arm’s numb, and my hook shot’s ruined, but I’m bound up tight, and it’ll do.”
Gabrielle wore a gown of softest white kid, embroidered in the flowery, intricate Teebran style. Masses of red curls tumbled around her shoulders, and the deep, green eyes held him. He’d always felt jumpy around her. Her aloofness knocked him off stride; she was too good at manipulating people.
He told her what had happened, words tumbling over each other, up to where he’d left Brodur sitting propped up in bed, wound sutured closed, puffing on an old, deep-bowled pipe, out of danger. Gil finished by holding up the waxy bead of Earnai. Soliciting his permission with a lift of an eyebrow, she took the Dreamdrowse, and held it up to a candle.
“Why me? Why not Springbuck or Andre?”
“Springbuck’s preoccupied and—no offense—your brother’s too cautious. He might not go for what I’ve got in mind.”
“And I?”
He hesitated. “I figure you’ll try anything that sounds interesting. That’s the way you strike me.” She didn’t reply. He knew he’d have to say it all without prompting; that much she would demand.
“I was sitting in the White Tern, thinking about what Wintereye was saying. I’m running around Coramonde like a monkey in a hardware store. You have to understand, I was brought up to go from ‘one’ to ‘two’ to ‘and so on.’ You’ve got necromancy and tiromancy and all those other ’mancies, but I always steered clear of ’em. But this Earnai, it was like it found me. I thought maybe I could tap in on whatever, uh, insights I can unlock.” He made a vague gesture, hand dropping to the chair arm. “I want in on those Doors Between and Beyond. I need the mystical connection. I want to perceive things a different way.”
She scrutinized him coolly. It was, she thought, a decision that could as easily have come from desperation as from reason. “Do you think you would find Dunstan? Or Yardiff Bey?”
He shrugged. “I’ve seen you do things a million times weirder. At one time or another, I’ve believed in nuclear fusion and Virgin Birth, but I never saw either one. I admit possibilities. Look, we’ve never been great pals, but I thought it might intrigue you.”
She rose and glided from the room. He waited. In a moment she returned with a tarot deck. She held the Earnai up to the candle again and smiled. “And I thought this would be an idle evening. Come.”
She led him to an inner chamber, furbished to suit her, not a sanctum, but a personal place of solitude. The carpet was deep; the door seemed to shut airtight. She’d arranged lamps, shades and mirrors to decorate with illuminated and shadowed spaces. Gil found himself studying unidentifiable knickknacks, paintings, and objects that might be musical instruments or, equally likely, rococo mobile sculptures. Or something utterly else. Nobody really knew how old she was. What might a finely alert mind, living for centuries, light upon as curious?
“There are many forms of Earnai.” She brought out a tiny brazier carved from a block of onyx, its basin no larger than a teacup. She lit a flame beneath it. “It comes from the heart of a plant found throughout the southern reaches, did you know that? Some Southwastelanders call it ‘mahónn,’ which means ‘rescue.’ Among others it is ‘k’nual, the visitor.’ It is, in different places and climes, ‘Vision Flower,’ ‘God-call,’ and ‘the Passageway.’ But it takes a measure of art to use it safely. A single mote of the pure substance would slay you, me, and anyone else in the room. It must be diluted, it must be handled carefully, like a cunning beast. It is used in countless ways, you see. Effects depend on concentration and combination.”
She dropped the pellet into the brazier. Thin ribbons of smoke curled up into the air. “It can be a euohoric, or make you giddy. It can banish pain or render the strongest man unconscious. It has been used in aphrodisiacs, and inquisitor’s compounds.”
At her invitation, they arranged themselves on thick pillows on opposite sides of a low table of old, pleasant-feeling mahogany. “That pellet, that is a thing of the south, but the Horseblooded sometimes use it. Did Wintereye wear thimbles or coverings on his fingertips? Ah, then he worked it from the pure himself. The Dreamdrowse is mingled with one of the noropianics. Its color and inner striations are good, its odor untainted, perfect for what you have in mind. Have you ever experienced the Other Sides?”
Not certain what she meant, he kept it to the issue at hand. “Guess not. Do we stick our heads over it, catch it in a bag, or what?”
“What do you taste?”
He rolled his tongue experimentally. “Musk. A little tartlike, I think.”
“Dreamdrowse. It entered your pores, and your blood has carried it to your tongue already.” She put the tarot deck down precisely between them. Her fingers stroked and patted the deck slowly, renewing old ties.
Perhaps the Dreamdrowse was working, or the events of the night had exhausted his restraint. On impulse, he clapped his hand down on the deck before she could take it up. She withheld her objections, recognizing inspiration. Gabrielle had no qualms about subordinating ceremony to revelation.
In a motion he never questioned, he fanned the cards out, faces down, an arc from one side of the table to the other. She said nothing, but her green eyes flashed at him again.
He let his hand rove the deck. He felt warmth rising against his palm, and picked up the card from which it radiated. She took it gently.
“The Ace of Swords. Hmm.” She laid it before him. On it, a hand emerging from a cloud held a greatsword encircled by a crown. In the background, tongues of flame blazed in the sky like a firmament. Every feature screamed possible interpretations at him. He sensed an outpouring from himself toward the tarot. A small part of him saw its resemblance to the regimental crest of his old outfit, the 32d.
Gabrielle whispered piercingly, “Your card—it is yours now—says ‘All power to the extremes!’ Dare to seize your moment, the prize, the victory. Card of conquest, of excess in love and hatred, love of haunting intensity, but also hatred of terrible immutability.
“Reversed, it takes on other connotations, proliferation and increase, variety and, perhaps, tragedy. But you pulled this tarot yourself and I cannot tell which message is intended. You are not meant to know yet, Gil MacDonald. There are things especially pertinent to the Ace of Swords; the glow on a lover’s face, and blood on a steel blade.”
The tarot rose through his senses. Gabrielle’s voice was a narrative faculty for it. He opened himself to it. It enveloped him.
Then there were quick images, like a slide show. An enormous fortification spread before him on a level plain facing a gray, wind-chased sea. It stretched in grim angles and martial tessellations. It was, he intuited, a repository of fear.
From far away, words drifted to him.
Forget the fear.
There is no fear.
And the fear was gone. The American almost identified the voice, but the scene shifted. Another view, of a dark, vaulted ceiling in a dank, subterranean room. It was lit by banked fires. There was the creak and clash of equipment of torture. In a white-hot universe of agony, the voice returned.
Reject the pain.
There is no pain.
The anguish retreated. Gil knew it as Dunstan’s voice, and tried to call, but had no voice of his own in the eerie pseudo-world of the Ace. He sensed cruel bindings against wronged flesh. The words persisted.
Banish restraint.
There is no restraint.
But there was a note of doubt to it. The restraint didn’t disappear.
A last vision came, of a fluttering banner. Its device was a flaming wheel, half black, half white, on a black-and-white field, so that each half of the wheel was against the opposite color. Then the world faded before his eyes.
He was at Gabrielle’s table, had never left it. She watched him with an attitude very much like pity. From stellar distances he heard her say, “You are no thaumaturge, yet rarely, rarely have I seen the Cards do that for anyone. The Sudden Enlightenment, it was. We are very much alike, you and I.”
His eyes were still drifting. His brain overloaded with speculation, mystical synapses, cognitive spasm-shocks. Ideas strobing in his head left tantalizing residues of after-image.
But one fact was manifest. He knew whose banner he’d seen through Dunstan’s eyes, without himself ever having seen or heard of it before. Gabrielle watched the lips form a single word under vacant, murderous eyes.
Bey.
Springbuck was alone in his cavernous throne room, without crown or pageantry, steps clacking hollowly.
It was the first time he’d ever been in the chamber without anyone else. He could feel echoes of the past pressing in; it was for that reason he’d come. He saw the darker spot on the floor where, months before, the younger Hightower, the old hero’s son, had been beheaded by the ogre Archog. Peering hard to accommodate weak vision, he could see places where Gil’s and Van Duyn’s shots had blasted chips of stone from the walls.
He climbed the dais where he and Strongblade had fought. In the ornate wood of the throne was a deep penetration where the Ku-Mor-Mai had left his knife when he’d chosen to face the usurper with only his sword Bar.
There was a bare spot where Strongblade’s portrait had been. Throughout Earthfast and the city, statues, paintings, busts and plaques of him had, in fear or anger, been unceremoniously removed. Traditionalists had wanted to strike the name from history; Springbuck had forbidden that. Strongblade’s name, deeds and fate would be an infamous lesson for posterity.
Gil entered, the only person besides Gabrielle and Hightower whom the door warders would let interrupt the Ku-Mor-Mai’s musings. He saw that the young monarch was lost in introspection. “Hey, I could catch you later.”
“No, come in. I hungered for early-morning silence before the day’s obligations. They are bringing Midwis before me today, a thorny problem, one of the Legion-Marshals who went against me. He’s been decorated half a hundred times, and his battle standard’s heavy with ribbons of valor. His family’s influential as well, and at the very last he renounced the conspiracy. I can neither deny him some measure of clemency, nor let him go unpunished. A twisty dilemma.”
“You’ll think of something.”
“May it be so. Tonight will be little less busy. A famous poet will be here. Court will be crowded and last late.” He sat on the top step of the dais. “Gil, do you remember Freegate, in my exile? Reacher brought in that prestigious harper, but you and Duskwind were tipsy. You insisted the poor man come with the two of you to the kitchens, and teach the scullions to dance? What music was that?”
“A slide. A Kerry slide.”
“Oh yes, slide.” Springbuck chuckled. “The courtiers were quite astonished.”
“Yeah, but Katya liked it. And it was the only time I ever saw Reacher dance.” Gil, too, chortled.
“And in the end, didn’t that harper add it to his repertoire? Aha, and offer you both places with his company?” He burst into mirth again.
Gil sobered, nodding to himself, speaking so the other could hardly hear. “We had ourselves some times, then.”
He went up the dais and plopped down on the throne, one leg dangling nonchalantly over its arm. Springbuck was no longer shocked at such irreverence.
“Gil, I should like to hear your version of what happened last night with Brodur. He’s mending nicely, by the way.”
Recounting the incident at the White Tern and the séance, the other became strained and brittle. There was anger, curbed violence, just beneath the surface of him. As he spoke, he felt with his forefinger the scar on his forehead.
When he’d heard it all, Springbuck said, “A foolish idea. You could have died, you idiot!”
“Sue me. I just tried for a lead on Bey. How was I supposed to know we’d be set up?”
“I did not mean going to the White Tern, though that was no stroke of genius either. I meant using the Dreamdrowse. It could easily have been poisoned; Bey’s traps are subtlety itself.”
“Gabe would have spotted it if it had been a hotshot. Besides, I figure it was worth it.”
“Ah, marvelous epitaph! ‘He figured it was worth it’ Splendid!”
“Hey, take it easy. Don’t be such a hardcase,” There was a tray of food and a pitcher set out on a small table. Gil poured them each a stone mug of lager. “Here, put some money in your meter. What I did doesn’t matter. Bey does.” He drew breath for the big question. “How many men can you spare me?”
Springbuck took a long bowie knife from beneath his robes and toyed with it. It had been a gift from Gil, a genuine Hibben, and had left that mark in the wood of the throne.
“Have you considered this in detail?” he finally asked.
“What’s to consider? I got through to Dunstan. Gabe felt it too. She thinks he’s at a place called Death’s Hold, an old hangout of Bey’s.” He pointed vaguely southwest. “It’s thataway, on the coast of the Outer Sea. I’m going. Do I get men, or not?”
Springbuck put the tips of his fingers together and pressed them to his lips. He avoided the American’s glance, racked between commitment to his friend and duty to the suzerainty.
He spoke into the little steeple of fingers, resenting what he must say. “Had I left that Legion under you, when first you returned from the Dark Rampart, you would have taken it back into the mountains, would you not? Hearing Van Duyn’s news, you’d have had us all depart for the Highlands Province, is that not true also? But this morning you are of the persuasion that Death’s Hold is the place. Gil, my very hold on Coramonde is in jeopardy. Subject-states threaten to fall, not one by one but in rows. Where you would have been wrong the first time, and the second, how can you ask me to squander a Legion I need so badly? Every man under arms is crucial.” He faltered, then met the American’s glare. “Had you not returned with that Legion when you did, I’d have dispatched orders to its Marshal.”
Gil whitened, the scar and powderburn standing out vividly. “All right, Coramonde’s in trouble; so are you. Where do you think it’s coming from? Bey, where else? Nail him and you settle all your hassles right there and then. Are you too dumb to see we have to get him for your sake too?”
“Which Yardiff Bey?” the Ku-Mor-Mai shouted back. “The one in the Dark Rampart? In the Highlands Province? Death’s Hold? I dare not be prodigal with what loyal units are left me. If you were in command you’d say the same.”
The American lost hold of his bitterness. “You’re going to do nothing while Bey and his people chip away at you? When are you going to learn to take the first swing? Are you scared to go after him for a change?”
Both knew they were on their way to irrevocable words. Springbuck was first to avert it.
“Yes, I am afraid. I fear for Coramonde, and myself as well. Everything I ever learned about the sorcerer makes me wary. He can do more damage with a lie than most men could with a regiment at their back. He draws out that ductile gullibility in all of us. You’ve deceived him, because you used tricks of war altogether new here, but he never makes the same error twice. Never. I am afraid this fresh spoor is one more trick. There are uncounted lives hinging on this; I cannot divert Coramonde’s remaining manpower, not on such tenuous grounds.”
Gil, too, pulled back, ashamed. The Ku-Mor-Mai was right; in his place Gil would have been just as cautious; the man in charge had to be. He scratched his cheek, and thought.
“Springbuck, I’m sorry. You had it straight, I had it garbled. I never meant you’re, y’know, a coward.” He sat down alongside the other. They knocked mugs.
“It’s funny about Dunstan, he was so full of contradictions. He’d be so placid, introverted really, until he flew into one of those berserkergangs. I took it into my head that somehow he was like a key to the Crescent Lands; if I could understand him, it would clarify everything for me here. And when he began hanging out with us, when he’d learned how to laugh, I felt this Chinese Obligation.”
Gil drew himself back to the present. “Springbuck, it was so clear, Dunstan in Death’s Hold. You’d have believed it too.”
The son of Surehand shook his head. “I believe you as much as myself. I trust not my own senses either, where the Hand of Salamá is involved. What’s needed is proof.”
Gil jumped up, pacing the thick carpet. “Proof? All right, now we’re clicking. You want hard evidence, I’ll get it.”
He broke off. “Do you still think you’ll have to go south, against Shardishku-Salamá?”
“I am uncertain. The question is whether or not I will be able to. Coramonde’s upheavals continue.”
“But if we take Bey out of the picture, it’ll take pressure off you.”
“Past all question.”
“So when I find Bey, be set to move fast. The next problem’s how to get to Death’s Hold. What’s the normal route?”
The Ku-Mor-Mai rubbed his jaw. “Most trading fell off during the thronal war, but the Western Tangent is open. I would be dubious of traveling with merchant convoys, though; insecure. An alternative suggests itself. You might go south with Andre deCourteney.”
“Andre? Why’s Andre going south?”
“To bring the sword Blazetongue back to its rightful owner, as I told you he would. He insists Blazetongue has important consequences in the struggle against Salamá. He and a small party are leaving within days.”
“How many?”
“A minimal number. He, too, knows no men can be spared, but requires few. There are a number of borders between here and Veganá, where he’s going. Foreign governments would respect Coramonde’s letter of transit, but they’re hardly likely to permit a large armed force to enter their territories. Andre wants no regular soldiers; he could not take enough to guarantee safety, only enough to insure conspicuousness.”
Gil had missed that angle. He saw now that any large group would make travel harder. “Smart. But would Andre go out of his way and check out Death’s Hold?”
“Not before he delivers Blazetongue. He is adamant. But he is as eager to break and hinder Bey as you are. If you accompany him, he will probably be more than ready to investigate Death’s Hold afterward.”
Gil sorted it out. If he couldn’t use a large escort, the next best thing was Andre deCourteney. No one in the Crescent Lands had a more formidable constellation of skills and experience.
“Okay, quit shoveling. It’s a deal. Where’s Andre? I’ll give him the pitch.”
Andre deCourteney had appropriated Yardiff Bey’s abandoned sanctum sanctorum, at the summit of Earthfast, to examine its contents and learn what he could from them. He still hadn’t replaced the door that had been bent back on its hinges by the reptile-man Kisst-Haa.
Gil knocked on the frame, and went in to find the wizard at a puzzling piece of apparatus. The American sat on a bench to watch. The room was filled with jars, bottles, scrolls, astrolabes and star charts. Blazetongue, the huge onetime Sword of the Ku-Mor-Mai, rested against the bench.
“I have plumbed a riddle here, I think,” Andre said, “but it has generated another. Behold.”
He lit a flame under each of two retorts. The liquids in them boiled, one forming a yellow gas, the other a red. Opening two petcocks, he let them blend. A faint orange mist rose from a nozzle at the top of the equipment.
“Now, see,” He held a piece of parchment into the orange flow. It was old, with a ragged edge as if it had been ripped from a book.
Andre fanned the sheet in the orange vapor, which began to peel a covering from the parchment in flakes. Soon there was a little snowdrift of them on the work-table, and a page-within-a-page was revealed. Andre held it up proudly. Gil politely applauded.
“Andre, I thought science projects are Van Duyn’s line.”
“This is of interest to me because it was important to Yardiff Bey.” He held up the binding from which the page had come. It was richly embossed, encircled by a wide metallic strip. A thick, raised seal was impressed on the strip, filled with runes and sigils, in wax the color of burgundy. Bey had apparently removed the pages somehow without disturbing it.
“This is the cover from Rydolomo’s Arrivals Macabre,” Andre explained. “It survived the Great Blow. There are not more than two or three copies in existence; Rydolomo was an arch-mage and premier thinker. Bey is, by appearances, under the impression Rydolomo left something in one of his books. The sorcerer circumvented its guardian seal somehow.”
The page he held was blank, but Gil understood. Somewhere, a book of Rydolomo’s had something Bey coveted, hidden within.
A servant appeared at the door frame. Andre went, and accepted a blanket-wrapped bundle. It was a baby, a chubby girl.
“Recognize her? She’s the one we brought back from the Infernal Plane, the one the demon Amon had been holding.”
Gil inspected her from a distance, not used to children. Andre began tickling and chucking her under the chin, making senseless, happy sounds. “Isn’t she the charmer? Oh, come on, Gil; say something to her.”
“Goo,” offered the American solemnly. “Why’s she here?”
“Reacher brought her from Freegate. I believe she’s tied in with all this, the endeavors of Bey and the Masters. I wanted her here while I go through Yardiff Bey’s things, to see if there are correlations.” He put her in a makeshift bassinet, a dry-sink. “But now, what brings you up here?”
Gil jabbed a thumb at Blazetongue. It was a long, imperial-looking weapon, its blade chased with inscriptions and enchantment. “I’ve been elected. I’m going to Death’s Hold, but first I’m going with you to Veganá.”
“Your company will be welcome; we share common goals beside Veganá. As to Blazetongue, there are some things I could tell, and one thing for certain I cannot. I do not have the spell that makes the blade burn, as Bey and Strongblade did.”
“Well, Springbuck told me the rest. Too bad; that would be a handy trick to have.” His eye fell on Arrivals Macabre.
“Delivering Blazetongue is a job that has wanted doing for a long time,” the wizard assured him. He went back to playing with the child, chuckling at her giggles,
“Your sister and I both think Bey is in Death’s Hold. Are you interested in seeing?”
“After delivering Blazetongue? Hmm, yes, if evidence points to it. First, I must think it through. Speaking of the Hand of Salamá, Bey’s sword Dirge is there on the chest.”
Gil spied it, a shorter sword than Blazetongue, with a vicious, runcinate blade. The sorcerer had dropped it in his fight with Dunstan. Terrible properties were attributed to it. It occurred to Gil that it might be linked to Bey’s magic; weapons and owners had strange affinities here.
Andre was still fussing over the baby. Gil picked up the binder of Arrivals Macabre, feeling its ancient weight.
“Andre, do you think we’ll find Bey?”
The wizard didn’t turn. He bounced the child, answering, “You will have your moment with Bey. The hatred is mutual, and in both your destinies.”
Hearing it cut Gil to the bone. His hand closed angrily on the binder. The rough edges of the seal rested under his fingertips.
“What kind of crack’s that, Andre?” His nails had detected a slight give in the seal’s edge. Unthinkingly, framing his next words, he dug at it. The outermost corner gave way with a minute pop, but Andre somehow heard.
The wizard spun, consternation on his face, shouting “No!”
Gil was blown back off the bench with enormous force by something that had suddenly come into the room. He twisted to avoid landing on his injured side, but was still jarred by shooting pain. He sat up awkwardly to a hair-raising scene, with those feelings so characteristic of his Coramonde experience, utter astonishment mixed with stark terror.
Between Andre and Gil a ball of swirling transplendence hung, a miniature sun. Andre had taken in the situation—which Gil hadn’t sorted out yet—and acted. Putting the baby back in the dry-sink he began mystic passes, uttering words from a dead language. As he did, he backed away, deliberately shoving the dry-sink toward the door with his legs and plump buttocks, wishing he hadn’t left the occult jewel Calundronius with his sister.
Gil found time to think, He’s such a homey little guy, balding and fat. You forget he’s the man of action.
Andre’s spell had been hasty or incomplete. The entity sizzled, and lashed out at him, knocking him sideways. The baby began wailing, attracting the thing’s attention. It floated in that direction.
Gil grabbed for his pistol, then stopped. It wasn’t likely to do much good. Andre was still groggy. As a tendril of energy edged into the dry-sink, the child’s complaint shifted register from dismay to rage.
Blazetongue, still lying against the bench, flared incandescent. Flame licked up and down its glowing blade.
The being instantly pulled back, compressing into an alarmed ball. Gil snatched up Blazetongue, leaping sparks singeing his hands. The bench had begun to burn, where the sword had rested against it.
Gil circled, the short-hairs of his neck on end with electricity, trying to get between the child and the thing that hovered near it. Instead, the thing floated over the dry-sink and retreated to the far wall, dangerously at bay, gathering itself to strike out. He followed, waving the weapon dubiously. Putting himself to block the baby from immediate harm, he tried to decide what to do.
A hand on his shoulder; Andre. The hand was steady as stone, its grip imperatively strong. Gil gave him room. Andre moved nearer the being, pointed his index finger at it. It swelled tor attack. He roared a string of syllables that meant nothing to the American, and the intruder was rent like smoke in the wind. It pulled itself together again, radiating its perturbation. Gil waved Blazetongue, cheering. “Eat him up, deCourteney!”
Wrath, usually a stranger to Andre’s face, had transformed it. His lips quivered, his eyes slitted, but the finger was unswerving. He loosed the string of syllables again. This time the being was dissipated beyond its ability to recover, dismissed.
It was the old, unscary Andre who took the baby to his shoulder, to soothe her. Gil watched fire die along Blazetongue.
“What—what was that thing?” he got out finally. The wizard ignored him. “Y’know, Andre, you could have just said you didn’t want to give out the burning spell. You didn’t have to lie.”
The thaumaturge came to him, bouncing up and down a fraction, which the baby enjoyed. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“The goddam sword’s what I’m talking about, man! You did one helluva job just now, but you were still jazzing me about not knowing the spell of the sword.”
Andre stopped bouncing. Gil tensed.
“Let me inform you of two facts,” the wizard said. “The first is that what you saw was a guardian entity. It appeared when you meddled with Rydolomo’s seal; it was to avoid just such an accident that I forebore to wear Calundronius today. Next time you go poking about such perils, I should be grateful if you would arrange to deal with whatever problems arise by yourself.”
Gil eyed the disturbed seal of Rydolomo guiltily. Andre plodded on. “And the second item is that, as I said, I do not know the conjuration for the fire of Blazetongue. Do I make myself quite lucid?”
“So, who lit it up? ’Cause I sure as hell didn’t.”
Andre smiled smugly and patted the baby’s back. She burped softly. Gil stared in disbelief from wizard to child and back.
“You’re kidding. Aren’t you? Kidding?”
The other sighed. “I am not certain how, yet it was indisputably she. Now, I presume you have no objections to my cleaning up here. You have, I take it, other things to which you should be attending?”
“I’m going. I’ve gone.”
In the stairwell, he blew thoughtfully on his blistering hands. One other item’s for damn sure; the next thing I unseal’s going to have a drink inside it.