“As our genetic sequences carry a record of every mutation, every adaptation, every ancestor to the first thing that ever lived,” said Suur Moyra, “so the stuff of which they were made would encode what Fraa Jad calls the Narrative of their cosmos, back to the point in Hemn space when we all diverged.”

“Farther,” Fraa Jad said. Which was followed by the customary silence that followed most Jad-statements; but it was shattered, this time, by a laugh from Lodoghir.

“Ah, I see it! Finally! Oh, what a fool I’ve been, Fraa Jad, not to notice the game you’ve been playing. But now at last I see where you have been leading us, ever so subtly: to the Hylaean Theoric World!”

“Hmm, I don’t know which is more annoying,” I said, “Lodoghir’s tone, or the fact that he figured this out before I did.”

I’d been shocked, a few hours ago, when Lodoghir had wandered up to me during Periklyne and begun chit-chatting about our encounter on the Plenary stage. How could he come anywhere near me without body armor and a team of stun-gun-brandishing Inquisitors? How could he not have foreseen that I’d devote the rest of my life to plotting violent revenge? Which had forced me to understand that it really wasn’t personal, for him: all the rhetorical tricks, the distortions, salted with outright lies, the appeals to emotion, were every bit as much parts of his tool kit as equations and syllogisms were of mine, and he didn’t imagine I’d really object, any more than Jesry would if I pointed out an error in his theorics.

I had stared dumbly at Lodoghir throughout, judging the distance separating my knuckles and his teeth. I had had the vague idea that he was bossing me around a little, concerning this evening’s messal, but I hadn’t heard any of it. After a while he had lost interest, since I hadn’t said a word, and had wandered off.

“I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this, between him, and the Inquisition!” I said.

“You’re already in trouble with the Inquisition?” Arsibalt asked, sounding amazed and appreciative at the same time.

“No—but Varax let me know he’s watching me,” I said.

“How in the world did he do that?”

“Earlier, I had a really annoying encounter with Lodoghir.”

“Yes. I saw it.”

“No, I mean I had a second one. And a few seconds later, guess who walked up to me?”

“Well, given the context in which you are telling the story,” Arsibalt said, “I would have to guess it was Varax.”

“Yeah.”

“What did Varax say?”

“He said, ‘I understand you’re up to Chapter Five! Hope it didn’t ruin your whole autumn.’ And I told him that it had taken me a few weeks but I didn’t blame him for what had happened.”

“That was all?”

“Yeah. Maybe some chitchat afterwards.”

“And how do you interpret these words of Varax?”

“He was saying ‘don’t pop your doyn in the nose, young man—I’m watching you.’”

“You’re an idiot.”

“What!?”

“You got it all wrong! This was a gift!”

“A gift!?”

Arsibalt explained: “A doyn has the power to discipline his servitor by assigning chapters in the Book. But you, Raz, hardened criminal that you are, are already up to Five. Lodoghir would have to give you Six: a very heavy punishment—”

“Which I could appeal,” I said, getting it, “appeal to the Inquisition.”

“Arsibalt’s right,” said Tris, who’d been listening (and who seemed to be looking at me in a whole new way, now that she knew I was up to Five). “It sounds to me like this Varax was giving you a big fat hint that the Inquisition would throw out any sentence from Lodoghir.”

“They would almost have to,” said Arsibalt.

I picked up Lodoghir’s dessert and headed for the messallan in a whole new mood. The others followed me. We came into a room of flushed faces and bitten lips: a tableau of strained and awkward body language. Lodoghir had been having his usual effect on people.

“Just when I’d thought we were getting somewhere,” Ignetha Foral was saying, “I see that once again the messal has been sidetracked into some old and tedious dispute between Procians and Halikaarnians. Metatheorics! Sometimes I wonder whether you in the mathic world really understand the stakes that are now in play.”

Clearly I had come in at the wrong moment. But it was too late now, and others were piling up behind me, so I barged on in and gave my doyn his dessert just as he was saying, “I accept your rebuke, Madame Secretary, and I assure you that—”

“I don’t accept it,” said Fraa Jad.

“Nor should you!” put in Zh’vaern.

“These matters are important whether or not you take the trouble to understand them,” Fraa Jad went on.

“How am I to distinguish this from the partisan bickering that goes on in the capital?” Ignetha Foral asked. Others at the table had been horrified by Fraa Jad’s tone, but she seemed to find it bracing.

Fraa Jad ignored the question—it was none of his concern—and turned his energies to his dessert. Fraa Zh’vaern—who was surprising us all with his interest in the topic—took it up. “By examining the quality of the arguments.”

“When the arguments come out of pure theorics, I am unable to make such judgments!” she pointed out.

“I would not assume that the existence of the Hylaean Theoric World comes out of what is called pure theorics,” Lodoghir said. “It is as much a leap of faith as believing in God.”

“As much as I admire the ingenuity with which you find a way to skewer Fraa Jad and Fraa Zh’vaern with the same sentence,” said Ignetha Foral, “I must remind you that most of the people I work with believe in God, and so, among them, your gambit is likely to backfire.”

“The hour is late,” Suur Asquin pointed out—though no one seemed tired. “I propose that we take up the topic of the Hylaean Theoric World in tomorrow evening’s messal.”

Fraa Jad nodded, but it was hard to tell whether he was accepting the challenge, or really enjoying the cake.

“Have you all been enjoying your books?” Suur Moyra inquired, then seized a pan and began scraping dead vegetables into the compost. Karvall gasped—Moyra had sneaked in and ambushed us. She dropped the pot she’d been scrubbing, spun away from the sink, and ran over to take the pan out of her old doyn’s frail hands. Arsibalt and I turned almost as adroitly to watch. Karvall might be swathed in a ton of black bolt, but, as we’d been noticing, the lashings that held it in place around her body were most intricate, and rewarded close examination. Even Barb looked. Emman Beldo was driving Ignetha Foral back to her lodgings. Zh’vaern’s servitor, Orhan, was a hard man or woman to read with his or her head totally covered, but the wrinkles in his or her bolt told me his or her head was tracking Karvall. Tris took advantage of this to steal the best scrub-brush.

“Were you responsible for the books?” I asked.

“I had Karvall place them in your trailer,” Moyra said, and gave me a smile.

“So that’s where those came from,” Tris said, then explained, “I found a stack of books in my cell this morning.” From the way other servitors were now looking at Moyra, I guessed they’d had similar experiences.

“Wait a minute, that is chronologically impossible!” Barb pointed out, and then, showing a flash of the old Barb wit, added, “Unless you violated the rules of causality!”