Kobinski leaned forward, his knees screaming in protest, to peer around the wall.

A Fiore was sneaking up to his bed. The dark shape raised its arms high—he could see a knife in the furry hands—and plunged it down into the bedclothes.

My Lord gasped. The sound was covered by a wet thunk as the knife made contact. There was a soft cry from the bed. The intruder took a few steps back, arms wide in alarm, the long, bloody dagger in one hand. He made a panicked animal noise and turned to Tevach. As he leaned over the sleeping mouse, the intruder’s face fell into the moonlight from the window: it was Sevace, Argeh’s bodyguard. Sevace would have seen My Lord in the window, had he turned his head, but he did not. He dropped the blade at Tevach’s side and fled. Even brutal Sevace was frightened, murdering a god.

For a few moments My Lord sat stunned. Argeh had finally tried it. It was almost a relief that it was done, that the long years of waiting were over. He moved, painfully, off the window ledge. He could see the shape beneath the covers as he approached the bed. He saw, too, the blood spreading across the skins. Erya. He lowered the blanket and saw that she was dead, stabbed through the back into her heart. It had been a quick death at least. He pulled the blanket over her. Tevach still snored, though his twitching limbs indicated disturbed dreams. My Lord picked up the dagger that had been left near his trusted servant’s hand.

This is what comes to you, Tevach. This is what happens when you play with treason. Your allegiance with the heretic, your sneaking about, made it simple enough—get rid of me and blame you.

The strategic nature of this thought cleared away his shock.

His guards were slumped in front of the doorway. He checked Decher—his pulse was steady. Perhaps they’d been drugged, but they were alive. He tried to rouse his captain and was rewarded with a groggy growl.

“Get up,” My Lord whispered tersely. “Go check on the messenger and make sure he is safe.”

Decher reported that Aharon Handalman was sleeping, unharmed, his guards alert and ready. My Lord was not surprised. The night Wallick died he’d seen a certain realization on Argeh’s face, though he hadn’t known what it meant at the time. The realization was this: as long as there was a mask, who really cared what—or who—was behind it?

Argeh came to My Lord’s quarters at the first light of dawn. He was received by Decher and four of My Lord’s guards. My Lord could hear the surprised words spoken in the corridor; then Argeh burst into the room. My Lord sat on his bed, waiting. With Argeh was Sevace, his would-be assassin. They both looked at him with horror.

“Why do you burst in on me?” My Lord picked up his mask from a table near the bed and put it on as the guards averted their eyes.

Argeh stood speechless. At the foot of the bed, Tevach snored.

“I apologize… My Lord. I only wanted to… We had word that you were in danger.”

My Lord tilted his head back in the ironic Fiore style, the blankness of the mask giving it a crueler bent. “Your regard touches my heart, Argeh. Good Festival to you. Now leave.”

My Lord peered out at the streets anxiously as they approached the arena. His eyes fell on faces, on hands, searching for hints of rebellion. He saw one male Fiore signal another over the crowd. Followers of the heretic?

He leaned back in the seat of the carriage, sighing. The eyes of the Jew were on him.

“I was hoping you would come back to visit me,” Aharon said, “and we could talk some more.”

My Lord fluttered his fingers in a gesture of indifference. “There is nothing to be said.” The depth of that answer did not come through. He tried again. “It has been enough just to see you. Your presence has meant more than you know. It has been a long time since I’ve seen one of my own.”

Aharon inclined his head, accepting the compliment, but he looked a little guilty. “I—I have something to confess. Tevach took me to see the heretic at the prison.”

My Lord had already guessed. He had known it the night he had stood there and had heard teachings from The Book of Torment echoing through the House of Cleansing.

“You saw Wallick, too,” My Lord said tightly. “I don’t know what you said to him, but he was quite changed.”

Aharon’s eyes widened. Two spots of flame appeared on his cheeks. “No. I didn’t go into that room, Yosef. I didn’t even look. Because what’s yours is yours. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know that I don’t judge you, no matter what. I don’t have the right.”

The hard places in Kobinski ground together as though in agony. It took a moment for My Lord to collect himself. “Thank you,” he said simply. He reached into his robe and brought forth a piece of parchment. “You will not be able to stay here after the Festival. I prepared this map for you. It shows the way to a small rural town called Chebia. Tevach’s family is there. It is a modest place, but the Fiori are decent. They will help you.”

“I thought maybe… the gateway. What you said before… “ Aharon looked embarrassed.

My Lord leaned his head back on the rough seat, studying the Jew’s face. It was strange how you could see chesed. Like water it softened the lines made by life’s bitterness, made the eyes wetter and more open as though they had been flooded. Fiori had done its work on Aharon in a way it had never done for My Lord, in a way he had never allowed it to do. It hurt My Lord to see it, the way hope hurts one who is hopeless, the way the sight of a newborn hurts one who is childless.

“You’ve changed, Aharon. Perhaps enough to trigger the gateway; I don’t know. It takes a significant difference between your own wave and that of the planet to trigger a gateway. But even if you did go through, there is no telling where you would end up. Even if you made it to the fifty-fifty universe, you have to understand that there are thousands of worlds there. The odds of your appearing on Earth are infinitesimal. I’m sorry. Still, I have marked the place on the map also. It is up to you whether you wish to try it someday or not.”

Aharon’s eyes were bright and somber as this news sank in. He sighed. “I see. I have felt… Your book has been a great help to me, Yosef, but I still have much work to do. Maybe you and I could work together? Maybe we could both go to Tevach’s family?”

“Time is not a river, Aharon; it’s a tapestry. All the threads we’ve woven over a lifetime create the present. I wish I could go back and change those threads, but I cannot.”

Aharon looked baffled.

“There is no time left for me,” My Lord clarified.

“Don’t say such a thing! You have so much to give. What about your mind, your work?”

My Lord closed his eyes, amazed at how quaint those words sounded. “Believe me when I say that the time for me to be Yosef Kobinski, the teacher and scholar, came and went long ago. Whatever I had to give to the world, it was given in that book. What is left—what is left is between me and God and no one else.”

“I can’t accept that.”

My Lord looked at Aharon and smiled. “If there is one thing you can do for me, it is to accept, accept that Kobinski died in Auschwitz. Because that is what truly happened, and that is what I want.”

“We have a choice,” Aharon insisted, in a soft rabbi’s voice. “At each and every moment. Nu? You taught me that.”

“I understand my choices at this moment very well, Aharon. And if I’m lucky, if God is merciful, I will make the right one.”

My Lord scanned the arena, trying to judge how much of the ominous atmosphere was coming from the crowd and how much from his own mind. The closing ceremonies were the highlight of the Festival, so the packed house was not abnormal. But the massed Fiore were agitated, literally on the edges of their seats. The Fiore were capable of ravenous violence, and the threat of it hung above the crowd like a mist. My Lord was leaning forward, upright in his seat, the better to see, and when he noticed Argeh in exactly the same posture an ironic smile came to his lips.