This was about all I could make out, for the only light was from the high window facing the Egyptian district. Everything was bathed in shades of umber, orange, and smoldering red; and this light was not steady, but trembled and wavered and waxed and waned.
I had not yet been seen, and I stopped where I was.
“Of all the crimes you committed,” Hollingshead was saying, “and they’re too numerous to account, the one that ‘brings me here,’ since you ask, is the murder of my daughter.”
Magnus and Julian leaned into one another on their bench. Their faces were shadowed and obscure, and Julian’s voice, when he spoke, was hardly a whisper.
“Then you’re here on a useless mission,” he said. “Whatever else I may have done, I haven’t harmed your daughter in any way.”
The Deacon gave a wild laugh. “Haven’t harmed her! You ordered the attack on Colorado Springs, didn’t you?”
Julian nodded slowly.
“Then you killed her as surely as if you had driven a dagger into her breast! Her house, my house, was demolished by artillery fire. It burned to the ground, Mr. President. No one survived.”
“I’m sorry for the destruction of your property—”
“My property!”
“—and for all the lives that were lost in the attack—pointlessly, I suppose—though history will have the final word on that. The Dominion could have yielded, you know, and all that bloodshed would have been prevented. But as far as your daughter is concerned—your daughter is alive, Deacon Hollingshead.”
The Deacon had probably expected some fumbling denial or perhaps a plea for mercy. But this mild retort took him by surprise. He lowered his pistol a few degrees, and I thought about tackling him and fighting him for it, but the risk seemed too great just now.
“Do you mean something particular by that,” he asked, “or are you completely mad?”
“The story of your daughter’s troubles circulated widely—”
“Thanks in part to that vulgar song your friend’s whorish wife performed at last year’s Independence Day celebrations—”
“And I admit I took an interest in her. I investigated her situation very carefully. Not long before the attack on Colorado Springs I sent two of my Republican Guards to interview her.”
“To interview her! Is this true?”
“My men apprised her of the pending military action and offered her a means of escape.”
Hollingshead took a step closer to his captives. “Lies, no doubt; but I swear to you, Julian Comstock, if in fact you took my daughter as a hostage, tell me where she is—tell me, and I might let you live a while yet.”
“Your daughter’s not a hostage. I said she was offered a means of escape. By that I mean relocation to another city—far from the heart of the Dominion, and far from you, Deacon Hollingshead—where she can live under an assumed name, and associate freely with anyone she likes.”
“Sin freely, you mean! If that’s true, you might as well have killed her! You’ve murdered her immortal soul, which is just the same thing!”
“Just the same to you. The young lady has a different opinion.”
That cranked up the Deacon’s rage another notch. He took a menacing step forward, and so did I, coming up behind him. By this time Julian and Magnus had seen me. But they were wise enough to give no sign.
“If you imagine you’ve achieved some sort of victory,” the Deacon said, “think again. President Comstock! Julian Conqueror! Hah! Where’s Julian Conqueror now, when you think about it? Hiding in an apostate church, with his Presidency down around his head and the city burning not a hundred yards away!”
“What I did for your daughter I did for her sake, not on account of you. Your daughter carries scars from the whippings you gave her. If I hadn’t intervened I doubt she would have lived to see thirty years of age, under your tutelage.”
I wondered if Julian was trying to get himself killed, he vexed the Deacon so. I took another quiet step forward.
“I’ll have her back before long,” the Deacon said.
“I expect you won’t. She’s pretty carefully hidden. She’ll live to curse your name. She’s cursed it more than once already.”
“I should kill you for that alone.”
“Do so, then—it won’t make any difference.”
“It makes every difference. You’re a failure, Julian Comstock, and your Presidency is a failure, and your rebellion against the Dominion is a failure.”
“I guess the Dominion will stagger on a while longer. But it’s doomed in the long run, you know. Such institutions don’t last. Look at history. There have been a thousand Dominions. They fall and are forgotten, or they change beyond recognition.”
“The history of the world is written in Scripture, and it ends in a Kingdom.”
“The history of the world is written in sand, and it evolves as the wind blows.”
“Tell me where my daughter is.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll kill your sodomitic friend first, in that case, and then—”
But he didn’t finish his speech. I took from my pocket the Christmas gift Lymon Pugh had given me. It was a Knocker, of course. Lymon had continually improved his technique in the art of Knocker-making, and had honored me with one of his best. The hempen sack was stitched and beaded in a cunning pattern, and the lead slug inside it might have been forged in an Ostrich egg.
I lunged forward, and employed this useful gift in knocking the pistol out of the Deacon’s hand.
He got off a shot in the process, but the bullet went wild and lodged in the floor. Hollingshead whirled around, gripping his injured hand, and stared. First he stared at me (I suppose he recognized me as Calyxa’s husband), and then he stared at the device in my hand.
“What is that thing?” he demanded.
“It’s called a Knocker,” I said, and I gave him a brisk demonstration of its uses, and before long he was lying at my feet, inert.
Lymon Pugh came up the stairs just then. “I had some trouble,” he began, “but I put away all the Ecclesiastical Police, one by one—but I heard a shot from up here—say, is that the Deacon? He looks all caved in.”
“Keep a guard on the door, please, Lymon,” I said, for I wanted to hold a private conversation with Julian. Lymon took the hint and left the room.
Julian didn’t stand, or otherwise alter his position. He sat propped against Magnus Stepney, who was likewise propped against him, and they looked like a pair of rag dolls tossed aside by an impatient child. I stepped around the fallen Deacon and walked toward them.
“Not too close,” Julian said.
I hesitated. “What do you mean?”
Magnus Stepney answered this time, instead of Julian: “I nearly failed to recognize you in that plague mask. But you had better keep it on, Adam Hazzard.”
“Because of the smoke, you mean?”
“No.”
Magnus reached down to pick up a lantern, which was at his feet. He lit it with a match, and held it high, so that the light fell over him and Julian.
I understood instantly what the problem was, and I admit that I gasped and fell back a step.
Julian was pale, and his eyes were half-lidded, and fever-spots burned on both cheeks. But that wasn’t the telling symptom. The telling symptom was the crop of pale yellow pustules, like snowdrops in a winter garden, that rose above his collar and descended down his arms.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
“The Pox,” Julian said. “I wasn’t sure until tonight that I was infected, but when the lesions appeared I couldn’t fool myself any longer. That’s why I kept myself separate in my box at the theater—that’s why I left without warning. And that’s why I can’t join you aboard the Goldwing, in case you were about to ask. I might infect the whole crew and passengers. Kill half the people I love, and die myself, into the bargain.”