Yama said, “How far is it, Magon?”
“Not far, dominie. We use the straightest route.”
Eliphas whispered, “You should feel no obligation, brother. They are shadows. Thieves and tricksters and whores who live off the crumbs of those engaged in honest toil. They are like the indigens of the roof gardens—except those are more useful. Would you be the savior of such as they?”
“I suppose that if one was to attempt to emulate the Preservers, then one must start somewhere, and better to start in a low place than in a high one. But I aspire to no such thing. I see that you are a pragmatic man, Eliphas. You prize things for their utility.”
“Brother, things are what they are. The mirror people were created for the amusement and wonder of the bloodlines of men, nothing more. They spin fantasies, but they should not be taken seriously.”
“Yet they dream, Eliphas. They believe that I belong in their dreams.”
“They remember their creators, brother, as men remember their mothers and fathers. But once we are grown up we cannot continue to depend upon our parents. We must face the world ourselves.”
“If Lupe’s people are still as children,” Yama said, “then I envy them.”
They fell silent for a while, following Magon up the stairway to a dark, narrow tunnel which, binding gravity about itself, rose vertically through the Palace. At last, Magon stopped and said, “It is not far, dominie. You follow the way until you reach a place where it branches into two. Take the right-hand branch and you will find yourself in a throughway near the Gate of Double Glory.”
“I owe you much, Magon.”
The ragamuffin gambler bobbed and bowed. “You have repaid me a thousandfold, dominie, by allowing me to bring you to my people. I will watch for your return.”
When Magon’s footsteps had faded into the darkness, Yama said, “Whatever my intentions, it may fall out that I am never able to return.”
“Because of the territorial dispute,” Eliphas said. “It is no secret, brother. The whole Palace knows the plight of the Department of Vaticination. Many hope it survives, for that will check the growth of the Department of Indigenous Affairs.”
“It’s a pity that there’s only hope and no help.”
“No one wishes to anger the Department of Indigenous Affairs, for lately it has grown very powerful, and careless of the ancient protocols. That is why it has been able to pick off lesser departments one by one.”
“And there is the hell-hound. We cannot be certain that it has lost my trail. You do not have to follow me, Eliphas. It will not be an easy time. You could go back to the library and your friend, if you wish, and wait for me there.”
The old man smiled. “And suppose the hell-hound finds me? No, I will stay with you, brother. Besides, I made a pledge. Lead on, and I will help as best I can.”
Chapter Nine
The Public Inquisition
Huge mirrors had been set up on the flat roof of the House of the Twelve Front Rooms, deflecting sunlight into the cavern and mercilessly illuminating the shabby façades of the buildings ranged around the wide plaza. Yama squinted against the mirrors’ multiple glare when he and Eliphas came through the Gate of Double Glory. He had expected to find a crowd waiting for the pythonesses, but although a platform had been set up on the steps of the Basilica, its deck covered with landscape cloth and strewn with garlands of white lilies and trumpet flowers that already were beginning to wilt, the plaza was deserted.
Inside the Basilica, Tamora was roaring at a double file of thralls marching in two-step time, turning them again and again in precise right angles. Pandaras ran up and said to Yama, while staring openly at Eliphas, “We thought you lost, master!”
“So I was, for a little while. This is my friend, Eliphas. He searches libraries for facts. He has already been of help to me, and I hope he will help me further. Eliphas, this is Pandaras. The fierce woman over there is Tamora.”
“Yama exaggerates my importance in our adventures on the roof,” Eliphas said.
“I am Yama’s squire,” Pandaras said, staring up at Eliphas boldly. The boy had oiled his hair back from his forehead. It gleamed beneath his three fireflies. He turned to Yama and said, “I see you have had the sense to bandage your head, master. Let me look at it.”
“It is almost healed.”
“As you said two days ago.”
Now Tamora came stalking across the Basilica’s marble floor. She wore her corselet and a short leather skirt, and sandals with laces that crisscrossed her calves. Her scalp was freshly shaven, and the fall of red hair at the back of her skull had been braided into a complex knot. She looked both terrified and desirable.
“I thought you’d been killed, or that you’d run away,” she said, and took Yama’s arm and drew him a little way from the others. “Grah. You stink of the warrens of some subhuman race. Where have you been? And who’s your fish-eyed friend?”
“I was lost. Eliphas helped me find my way. There is a conspiracy—”
Tamora grinned, showing her rack of pointed teeth. “The servant you followed? The fucker is dead. When you didn’t come back, Pandaras told me you were following this fellow by the name of Brabant, and I told Syle. On his advice, Luria ordered the execution. Brabant was bound and pitched out of a window of the House of the Twelve Front Rooms. It’s how they do things here. They call it defenestration. Yama, I talk too much, but it’s because I am pleased to see you alive! I thought Brabant had lured you into an ambush. I wanted to torture him for the truth, but he went straight out the window.”
Yama said, “I think I know the whole story, Tamora. No one here is plotting against anyone else. Certainly not Luria, or she would not have agreed to have Brabant killed.”
“Of course not. Luria has so much meat on her she can’t walk five steps in a straight line. Why would she meet with someone in secret in a remote place when she could do so at ease in her own chambers? No, I think it’s Syle. You might trust him, but I don’t. Not him, and not that pregnant hen of his, either. He could have had Brabant killed to cover his tracks.”
“Brabant was not working for Syle, but for someone outside the Department. In fact, he—”
“He is dead. If there are other traitors here they’ll show themselves soon enough, and I’ll deal with them. Now, tell me about what happened to you.”
Yama suddenly found himself smiling. He could not help it. “I have found the library, Tamora! The library where Dr. Dismas discovered the secret of my bloodline. I have put a question to it, and perhaps the answer is already known.” If the hell-hound had not destroyed the records, he thought. Eliphas had said that they were safe, but Yama did not entirely trust the old man. Eliphas preferred to tell people what he thought they wanted to hear, even if it was not always the truth.
“I’m pleased for you,” Tamora said. “I get paid no matter how you go about your search, so the quicker the better as far as I’m concerned. But right now we have work to do.”
“Then I have not missed the inquisition? That is good. I mean to keep my word, Tamora.”
“It has already begun. Go and put on your armor. Luria is still worried that an attempt will be made on her life. The Department of Indigenous Affairs would claim this place at once if she was killed.”
“The assassination plot is only half the story, Tamora. Perhaps there is no plot at all, except against me.”
Tamora lost her temper. “Will you serve? Then do as I say! Put on your armor and follow my orders!”
“I have your armor close by, master,” Pandaras said, and ran off to fetch it.