"The last?" said Pie.

"Yes, the last!" Culus replied, her voice trembling as it rose. "While you were at play in the Fifth Dominion our people have been systematically decimated. There are now fewer than fifty souls here in the city. The rest are either dead or scattered. Your own line is destroyed, Pie 'oh' pah. Every last one of your clan is murdered or dead of grief."

The mystif covered its face with its hands, but Culus didn't spare it the rest of her report.

"Two other mystifs survived the purges," she went on, "until just a year ago. One was murdered here in the chian-cula, while it was healing a child. The other went into the desert—the Dearth are there, at the edge of the First, and the Autarch's troops don't like to go so near to the Erasure—but they caught up with it before it reached the tents. They brought its body back and hung it on the gates."

She stepped down from her chair and approached Pie, who was sobbing now.

"So you see, it may be that you did the right thing for the wrong reasons. If you'd stayed you'd be dead by now." "Ma'am, I protest," Thes 'reh' ot said. "What would you prefer 1 did?" Culus said. "Add this foolish creature's blood to the sea already spilt? No. Better we try and turn its taint to our advantage." Pie looked up, puzzled.

"Perhaps we've been too pure. Too predictable. Our stratagems foreseen, our plots easily uncovered. But you're from another world, mystif, and maybe that makes you potent.'1 She paused for breath. Then she said, "This is my judgment. Take whomsoever you can find among our number and use your tainted ways to murder our enemy. If none will go with you, go alone. But don't return here, mystif, while the Autarch is still breathing."

Thes 'reh' ot let out a laugh that rang around the chamber. "Perfect!" he said. "Perfect!"

"I'm glad my judgment amuses you," Culus replied. "Remove yourself, Thes 'reh' ot." He made to protest but she brought forth such a shout he flinched as if struck. "I said, remove yourself!"

The laughter fell from his face. He made a small formal bow, murmuring some chilly words of parting as he did so, and left the chamber. She watched him go.

"We have all become cruel," she said. "You in your way. Us in ours." She looked back at Pie 'oh* pah. "Do you know why he laughed, mystif?"

"Because he thinks your judgment is execution by another name?"

"Yes, that's precisely what he thinks. And, who knows, perhaps that's what it is. But this may be the last night of the Dominion, and last things have power tonight they never had before."

"And I'm a last thing."

"Yes, you are."

The mystif nodded. "I understand," it said. "And it seems just."

"Good," she said. Though the trial was over, neither moved. "You have a question?" Culus asked.

"Yes, I do."

"Better ask it now."

"Do you know if a shaman called Arae 'ke' gei is still alive?"

Culus made a little smile. "I wondered when you'd get to him," she said. "He was one of the survivors of the Reconciliation, wasn't he?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know him that well, but I heard him speak of you. He held on to life long after most people would have given up, because he said you'd come back eventually. He didn't realize you were bound to your Maestro, of course."

She said all this disingenuously, but there was a penetrating look in her rheumy eyes throughout.

"Why didn't you come back, mystif?" she said. "And don't spin me some story about jurisdiction. You could have slipped your bondage if you'd put your mind to it, especially in the confusion after the failure of the Reconciliation. But you didn't- You chose to stay with your wretched Sartori, even though members of your own tribe had been victims of his ineptitude."

"He was a broken man. And I was more than his familiar, I was his friend. How could 1 leave him?"

"That's not all," Culus said. She'd been a judge too long to let such simplifications pass unchallenged. "What else, mystif? This is the night of last things, remember. Tell it now or run the risk of not telling it at all."

"Very well," said Pie. "I always nurtured the hope that there would be another attempt at Reconciliation. And I wasn't the only one who nurtured such a hope."

"Arae 'ke' gei indulged it too, huh?"

"Yes, he did."

"So that's why he kept your name alive. And himself too, waiting for you to come back." She shook her head. "Why do you wallow in these fantasies? There'll be no Reconciliation. If anything, it'll be the other way about. The Imajica'll come apart at the seams, and every Dominion will be sealed up in its own little misery."

"That's a grim vision."

"It's an honest one. And a rational one."

"There are still people in every Dominion willing to try again. They've waited two hundred years, and they're not going to let go of their hope now."

"Arae 'ke' gei let go," Culus said. "He died two years

ago."

"I was... prepared for that eventuality," Pie said. "He was old when I knew him last."

"If it's any comfort, your name was on his lips at the very end. He never gave up believing."

"There are others who can perform the ceremonies in

his place."

"I was right," Culus said. "You are a fool, mystif." She started towards the door. "Do you do this in memory of your Maestro?"

Pie went with her, opening the door and stepping out into a twilight sharp with smoke. "Why would I do that?" Pie said.

"Because you loved him," Culus said, her gaze accusatory. "And that's the real reason why you never came back here. You loved him more than your own people."

"Perhaps that's true," Pie said. "But why would 1 do anything in memory of the living?"

"The living?"

The mystif smiled, bowing to its judge as it retreated from the light at the door, fading into the gloom like a phantom. "I told you Sartori was a broken man, not a dead one," it said as it went. "The dream is still alive, Culus 'su' erai. And so is my Maestro."

Quaisoir was waiting behind the veils when Seidux came in. The windows were open, and within the warm dusk came a din aphrodisiacal to a soldier like Seidux. He peered at the veils, trying to make out the figure behind them. Was she naked? It seemed so.

"I have an apology to make," she said to him.

"There's no need."

"There's every need. You were doing your duty, watching me." She paused. When she spoke again, her voice was sinuous. "I like to be watched, Seidux...."

He murmured: "You do?"

"Certainly. As long as my audience is appreciative."

"I'm appreciative," he said, surreptitiously dropping his cigarette and grinding it out beneath the heel of his boot.

"Then why don't you close the door?" she said to him. "In case we get noisy. Maybe you should tell the guards to go and get drunk?"

He did so. When he returned to the veils he saw that she was kneeling up on the bed, her hand between her legs. And, yes, she was naked. When she moved the veils moved with her, some of them sticking momentarily to the oiled gloss of her skin. He could see how her breasts rode up as she raised her arms, inviting his kisses there. He put his hand out to part the veils, but they were too abundant, and he could find no break in them, so he simply pressed on towards her, half blinded by their luxury.

Her hand went down once more between her legs, and he couldn't conceal a moan of anticipation at the thought of replacing it with his own. There was swelling in her fingers, he thought: some device she'd been pleasuring herself with, most likely, anticipating his arrival, easing herself open to accommodate his every inch. Thoughtful, pliant thing that she was, she was even handing it to him now, as though in confession of her little sin; thinking perhaps that he'd want to feel its warmth and wetness. She pushed it through the veils towards him, as he in turn pressed towards her, murmuring as he went a few promises that ladies liked to hear.