Episode 4: Peitho, The Beginning

Episode Four: Peitho,

The Beginning

I am sitting in the dark of my office, in my chair,      with my feet kicked up and crossed at the ankle on my desk when She came into my life.

Everything that I have said up until this moment, everything that V has recorded, has been an effort on my part to set up – but, yes, to avoid – this moment. Her.

It is a marvelous thing, trying not to plagiarize one's self. Because Arthur Conan Doyle wrote down and published my words, my most coherent ramblings about Love, my most eloquent speech about Her, does that make them any less my own? You may say yes, that possession is nine-tenths of the Law, that Intellectual Property has some kind of cogence, to which I tell you, friend, Listener: Never entrust a story for which you wish to someday get credit to a Writer – to anyone clever or cunning enough to claim it for their own. If my life has taught me anything at all – and there are arguments to be made on either side of that particular scale – it is to never entrust anything at all to anyone, least of all your heart to a woman. Nothing good can come of it.

Oh, but great – and terrible – wonderful! – things will.

But I fly too far ahead of myself.

The heat of an early summer afternoon breeze signaled Her arrival into my life, and my name, barely heard, on it.

“Mister Longshore?”

It sounds like a song, like a memory of a dream, and nothing more.

“Mister Robert Longshore?”

I hear it again and smile. That voice could sing my name to the angels. Except – That's not my name. And I don't know the voice. And why, if she is calling me, can I not see her?

“Please, Mister. I've come a very long way to find a Mister Robert Longshore, Detector of Secrets, Philalitheia, Hope for the Hopeless—“

All at once, as I am hearing this list of titles – which certainly went on, but which I will not repeat in my own attempt at humility – by which I have in no way ever gone, I realize I must have drifted off to sleep. I shoot upright in my chair, very nearly destroying my hamstrings as I realize too late that my legs are suspended above the ground. I drop them to the floor as the voice – apparently belonging to a young woman, high pitched and dancing among the syllables of the Venetian dialect with the grace of a gifted singer, but filled with a tremble of some great fear or worry – continues:

“I was told that I would find him here – that I could not miss him. Please— If you are not him, will you please tell me where I can find him?”

I am looking around, left and right. I hear her. I feel the sun and the breeze of my open door; but why do I not see her? The answer occurs to me as suddenly as my return to consciousness from the precipice of sleep, and it is surely that on which I can blame my slowness to remember. It was certainly not opium, as I have still had none. And it most definitely cannot be that I am a fool and an idiot for a beautiful woman, as I have not yet seen her.

I snatch the hat from my head, and am immediately dazzled by the light which pours into my eyes. I cry out, shielding my face. Then, after a second of wincing, I say:

“Yes— Ahem— Yes. M'lady, if Robert Longshore you seek, Robert Longshore you have found.”

My visitor says nothing as I allow my eyes to adjust, as I attempt to make out her figure. And what a remarkable figure she has. Her silhouette is all that I can see, but it steals my breath and fills my throat with a lump the size of a fist. The woman who has come to my door is a rare one indeed.

She is a black hole cut into the corridor of light. For a moment I am not sure that I am not still dreaming. For a moment, and a moment only, I wonder whether I am not looking into a tunnel to another world, that the light shining before me is not the Light of The One, that I am not literally in Plato's Cave, and the being before me is not a shadow cast by an ineffable Ideal – that I am not, in fact, looking upon the very Spirit which called herself Lamia, come to take her claim. Her silhouette is that of an enormous cobra, hood flared, body winding its way down the corridor to disappear out of sight beneath my desk. I blink, shaking my head, and see – only somewhat more clearly – what it is in my doorway:

A human woman. She is a human woman, nothing more, I convince myself. Her “hood” is, instead, a great cowl of hair, concealing her shoulders. Her arms, invisible though they are, must be held in front of her, in front of her hourglass waist and hips which are only accentuated by the flounced skirt which descends in a dramatic flare to the floor. There is no tail, only her shadow, creeping across my office in an illusion not unlike that which is made to represent Kukulkan at Chichen Itza – not, I must insist, that I knew what that was. The image is for your benefit alone.

When she speaks again, I cannot help but detect the impatience I had been too preoccupied to notice in her earlier speech. Like she had been calling my name for many long minutes before my return to consciousness.

“Mister Longshore, are you not going to invite me in?”

Invite her in?

What is she, some kind of vampire?

Where did she learn about Threshold magick – and what could she possible need with me?

These questions makes me immediately uneasy. But, I remind myself, I can hear her accented Venetian – not Genoese – and I don't know every custom in the world – as much as I would have liked to tell myself otherwise. Maybe she's trying to be polite.

“Yes – yes. Apologies. Where are my manners? Please, come in. Make yourself comfortable.”

As she begins to do as I have indicated, I enjoy myself by watching the subtle wiggle of her body as she walks. The feminine, almost feline grace of her stride. Avoiding in my mind, perhaps deliberately, likening her to a serpent; I had had enough of thoughts of serpents for a lifetime. Or so I thought. The proud way, like a dancer – or a fighter – she holds her head and shoulders high. And then, as she crosses halfway to my desk, some six paces, I realize she has left the door open. Not at all with the intention of seeing her walk back – though the thought passes through my mind – I ask her to please close the door.

“But—“ she begins in protest. “You do not have windows in here. It will be dark.”

An instant later, before I can even begin to consider reaching for the Draig to light a candle, the door swings shut with a dull slam. Apparently of its own volition. Swallowing me in dark. Alone. With a woman I do not know.

Fear wells up within me. My skin tingles with anticipation. My eyes go wide – to no avail.

They say that when you lose one sensory perception, your others pick up the slack. I can't say whether or not this is the case. What I can say is that, very faintly, I can hear – not the woman's footsteps – but the swish-swish of her skirts as she approaches my desk. If it sounded to me like the undulation of a snake's belly as it slithered across the floor, it must have been my imagination.

What are you doing? My Instincts do not scream, but they are alarmed. This is the woman who killed Francis. She has come to kill you!

Reason is conspicuously silent. And I am strangely calm. I do not know whether I believe Instinct. In fact, I remember deciding that there was no point in deciding whether I believed the thug leader about his story right before nodding off to sleep. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug; the crash is real.

She is an Agent of the Scholeio! Assassin!

Was it al'Shamshir who told me that a man's end comes when it comes? Sounds like something he'd say. It was Socrates who said that philosophy is a kind of training for dying. Did I feel the need to stay sober so I could face my death with clear eyes and mind? That's the kind of thing that only happens in the stories – heroes going boldly to The End. I know, even then, that this is not strictly true.

I realize, then, that my attention has wandered. I no longer hear the woman. And I have to be imagining the faintly glowing red dots before me, just behind where the guest chair waits. There is not enough light to reflect in eyes. There is no light. And no human eyes glow in the dark.

“It is dark in here.” The woman speaks from nearby – right where I imagine those eyes to be. “This is to be expected, I think, of a sorcerer. Deprive your visitor of her senses that you may control her experience of the divine? This is an old trick of your kind.”

“My kind?” I hear myself ask.

As relaxed as I am – at peace, you might say – at odds though I know this to be with my situation – my day – I physically relax. The tension in my spine, the goose flesh of my arms, go away.

“Yes.” I imagine her looking from side to side – those imaginary red dots drifting with her gaze. “This room is empty except for you – and this chair.” Her cadence has slowed, as though she is picking her words carefully. “Is this not meant to evoke ancient, ancestral, memories of the cave shrine? The worship places of Hades and Eileithyia – Hekate and her like? Is this desk piled high with ancient scripture not the altar upon which you work?”

Eileithyia. Now there's a name you don't hear every day.

There is not time to ponder this. But there is something in the way she pronounces the name – maybe in the name itself – that tickles the back of my mind like the presence of pollen tickles the throat.

“Are you not a sorcerer? Are you not a worker of the Dark Arts?”

In response – perhaps thinking myself clever – or to impress her with my talent – men my age are always attempting to impress women – I flick a Draig to life. In the feeble light, her face is barely illuminated. All shadows and darkness though she remains, my breath is taken from me as effectively as with a blade piercing my lung.

This woman is beautiful. I have said she was grace, and she is beauty. You have heard the phrase, and I am no William Shatner. Aphrodite herself spite me, but I can't imagine anyone – or anything – more beautiful.

The estimation of what a woman's face should look like in the Ideal differs with time and place and from person to person. But to me, she was perfection. The roundness of her cheek and jaw, the plumpness of her lips.... Allow me not to wax poetic – to not linger on the erotic. But seeing her again for the first time.... It is too much to bear. My heart stops, tears itself asunder anew. It is my job to report what I see, to paint for you, Listener, a portrait of... Her with my words. I feel them filling my mind and, if I could let them, they would spill like anguished tears.

Often along the course of my so-long – too-long – life have I returned to this moment. To see her again. Have I vainly wished to be with her once more. Only once more. Gods, if you are listening, please – give me that one request, then let me die. ...Know, then, as I must speak true and I must eventually move beyond this still frame – in my heart, in my mind, in time – that her features, symmetrical though they were, were not perfect.

Her chin was too shallow, her mouth and jaw too wide; her lips too thin, nose too small and upturned so that her nostrils presented themselves prominent in her face. Her face was dominated by her high cheek bones and her too-big eyes. Eyes as green and gleaming with intelligence and life and danger – the sort of danger that only a beautiful woman presents. Any wise being knows that of all the gods' – the universe's – creations, none is more deadly than a beautiful woman. Even the angels in Heaven forsook their Creator's Love for the chance to be with beautiful women.

You might, if I had the skill with paint and brush, think her ugly. But she was not sent to you. For you. She was not, as I have often privately thought, made for you. For me, she was perfection, and for the first time in my life, I was struck as by one of Zeus's lightning bolts – or, perhaps more appropriately, by one of Eros's arrows – with the awe of the sublime.

Suddenly my fingers are bitten with burning pain.

I cry out, flicking my hand and flinging the Draig to die in flight.

My visitor laughs in the dark. The sound is like the tinkling of silver bells. Like nymphs in the night. Like Faeries dancing around their Circles. There is no malice in it; only the same girlish delight which melted Delphus's heart – and the hearts of billions more, men and women alike – since time began. And will so long as there are girls to be delighted. I think of Sappho, of every poet whose odes to love I scoffed at until this moment. And for the first I understand.

Then the embarrassment settles in.

“Please,” I choke, somewhere between a grumble and a groan and a stutter, “sit. Make yourself comfortable.”

Tittering is not a fair word to use, but I know no other. Still tittering her amusement – the same amusement every woman feels when she knows an oaf has fallen under her enchantment, yet returns none of the same – she rounds and lowers herself to the chair. I do not watch her. It's not that I don't dare – I can't bring myself to try. Her laughter sounds muted, as though, attempt though she might, she can neither contain it nor muffle it with her hand. I am certain she isn't trying all that hard.

Oh, the resentful nature of lovestruck youth. What fools Eros makes of us all.

“Talk about biting the hand that feeds,” she giggles.

I have brought another Draig to life.

“This chair is most decidedly the most uncomfortable seat I have ever sat in,” my visitor says, watching me with eyes I dare not attempt to meet.

Realizing that the candles I have in the holders trisecting my desktop clutter have burnt out, I fumble to replace them. Naturally I couldn't do this smoothly. Eventually, after several Draig, I have new candles lit and return to my seat.

“The one leg is shorter than the other so it wobbles. The back is twisted. And there is no cushion. Is this on purpose, Mister Longshore? Do you not want your guests to be comfortable?

Of course I didn't. Where do you think modern police forces got the idea for their interrogation rooms? I didn't say this, however. Instead I just look at her, trying to keep my face neutral. Trying not to fall into the emerald pools of her eyes so deeply I can never find my way back out.

She smiles. “You are a sorcerer in title only, then?” She makes a gesture, miming my Draig. “An alchemist's trick, your flames? It is clever. But it is too bad you have not unlocked the secret of bringing forth light from the dark by your Will alone.”

Now it's my turn to laugh – more scornfully than I might have wished. “That's not possible.”

“Is that so?” Her huge, green eyes, resplendent and luminous in the flickering orbs, narrow playfully to match her toothless smile. Then she shrugs. “If so you say, then so it must be. I'm just a girl. You are the sorcerer.”

With a wink, her eyes turn to my clutter. Her face settles serious. I almost expect her to say something about the mess, for her features to show some criticism. I almost feel the panicked rush that this mess says something about me of which she will not approve. Almost. She does not. In fact, as her gaze drifts lazily among the piles, she says nothing – her eyes give no clue as to her thoughts.

My hand drifts to my face, rubbing the days-old beard on my cheeks. I find myself wondering whether she likes a man with a beard.

Well – I did tell her to make herself comfortable.

So I do that thing which makes all woman comfortable in the company of strange men: I let my gaze wander over her.

Her hair, as I first noted, is a hood of black curls, as marvelous in itself as the swirls of a Japanese ink painting. Pushed back from her face and unbound, it descends over her shoulders to her breasts and down her back. It is her clothing, however, not her figure – worthy though it is – over which my gaze lingers. She is dressed unlike anyone I have ever seen. But not unlike any thing.

A sudden memory fills my vision.

The Master and I, sitting in a covered wagon. Apparently from his plain gray robes – the pockets of which endless produce artifacts which fascinate me – he has drawn a small statuette. It is of a woman. She wears a sleeved bodice, her breasts naked, exposed. From her waist hangs a decorated apron, and, beneath, flounced tiered skirts. In each of her upraised hands, she holds serpents.

“These women are gone today,” the Master says, smiling from his voluminous, white beard. “But at one time they were among the wisest people produced by one of the world's most powerful civilizations. Their name is forgotten. But, perhaps, if you're good and take to your studies, you will meet their descendants. Not all that is gone is lost – some things are merely in hiding.” He winks his soft, almost gray, blue eyes at me beneath his voluminous white eyebrows.

My mouth twists as the memory fades. I would grow to hate that phrase – Take to your lessons, Son.

This woman, I realize, is dressed like that statuette. It's the same apron, the same skirts. Hers have a slit that runs – scandalously, for later Ages; but in the Early Medieval, it was not at all uncommon for women to be either topless or entirely nude in public – up the front, disappearing under the apron. They even have the same pattern of alternating shades of brown – every shade, from sun-bleached sand to the not-black of my hair – that give the impression of, or perhaps invoke, a snake's scales. She even wears the same almost-black bodice. Except, perhaps to my disappointment, her breasts are not exposed. In fact, even her neck to the jawline is covered in leather. There appears to be no seam – not in the front, anyway – and, likewise, no sleeves.

What an unwieldy article, if it requires another's help to get out of it. Not that I'd turn down the opportunity.

Speaking of shades of brown, and before I forget:

Her flesh, from her face to her hands in her lap to her one naked leg crossed over the other, is a uniform, un-tan-lined, Mediterranean sun-darkened brown that has me imagining her running around in wherever her home is completely naked. This is not an unpleasant thought. Lust is not a sin of which I am – nor was – unfamiliar. Remember, I'd spent a night in a Caliph's son's harem – and I most definitely did not exhaust myself reading poetry with those women. But I had never wanted a woman like I want her. Never had such uncontrollable lewd thoughts. Not like this. Much of the spirituo-philosophical education I had received was in learning to ignore the impulses of the body, most especially of desire. I was not the best – but I certainly wasn't normally this bad at it.

As though she could sense my desire – and I am not convinced that women cannot do just that by birthright – her eyes shift to mine. They are soft, pliant, almost wet with... with what? With possibility. With the unspoken may be of a woman desired.

“This is an impressive collection. I see many works which I recognize. Many which I do not. And no few in languages and scripts I do not know and cannot read. Many of these were burned – not that long ago, either. It is perhaps lucky for you that the Church is no longer interested in hunting down and martyring men such as yourself.”

I shrug. “What has been will be again.”

“Solomon. Ecclesiastes. You can read them all then?”

I nod, trying not to grin. I, at least, am impressed with her: No woman had ever recognized one of my quotes.

“Have you?”

“What sort of man has this sort of collection without reading all of it?” I ask in response.

“The sort who limits what is possible for himself and others?”

Touche.

I had to admit one thing: She is clever.

Let's hope she's not also cunning.

A cunning person is another – not always kind – name for a witch or folk magician.

“So,” I say, leaning back in my chair and giving her a devilish, lopsided grin – and hoping she doesn't notice that her jab pierced my defenses – “You've come a long way. What brings you by, Miss...?”

Her face – I can only say it – transmogrifies, like an actor donning a mask, into something akin to sadness.

“Peitho. My name is Peitho.”

I laugh. A single, harsh bark erupts from my throat – the sound of insane expectation confirmed. She does not react as one might anticipate. Her sadness does not shift; but her emerald eyes boil.

“Is my name funny to you?”

“Funny is not the word I would use.”

“What word would you use? Please – enlighten me.”

“Appropriate,” I respond, leaning forward in my chair.

If she did kill Francis, if, indeed, she were an Agent of the Scholeio – as Instinct gibbered from their caverns at the back of my mind— If, as she glowered at me from her sad-adjacent face, the candles sputtered, their light dimmed, eaten by her dangerous eyes, it only served to fuel these suspicions. I almost wished Reason would argue with Instinct. The war in my head, at least, would be comforting. As it was....

“Appropriate, Mister Longshore?”

“Yeah.” My hand reaches for the top left drawer, then I stop it. No. Not now. Not even just dhumrapana? No hash? ...Maybe later.

“Do you plan to explain?”

I hadn't. How could I? It was just a feeling. Just Instinct.

I decide that busying my hands will make me look more casual than I feel. I open the drawer, retrieving one of the sacks and the box of rolling paper. My eyes linger on the sack of hashish. No, I remind myself – again. Not now.

“Peitho was the name of one of Aphrodite's handmaidens, was she not?”

“Sometimes, Mister Longshore,” Peitho agrees with the slightest possible nod. “She was also... how you say – combined with Aphrodite.”

“Speak freely, Peitho. I imagine Venetian is not your native dialect.”

“Do you?”

“You've come a long way. And, after all, you are not named for a Roman goddess of persuasion.”

“Indeed.” Her eyes narrow, but she says no more.

The game is afoot, then.

If only I knew what it was.

“Handmaiden is an interesting word, don't you think?” I'm sprinkling the aromatic mixture into a paper. “In one sense, it means what it means – a servant. But in another... it could mean a maiden who is the hand of the goddess.”

“You are not the first to think this. Often she – the Peitho of the stories – the mythos – worked in conjunction with Hermes as an angelos. She even married Dionysus. She was a very... useful character, Mister Longshore.”

“Yes, I suppose she was.”

I hear, in these words, mythos, angelos, Hermes, Dionysus, her Greek accent, and I am almost pleased with myself. Almost, and only almost: I can't place it.

“Please – ” I say, putting the rolled Mwg between my lips – “call me Robert.”

“Robert.” Then suddenly, she asks, “What is that?”

“This?” I look at he Mwg. “I call them Mwg. It's the Welsh word for smoke.”

She flicks her eyebrows in an interesting gesture. Obviously that is not what she wanted to know.

“The mixture in them is aromatic spices – clove, cardamom, I like cinnamon. But the active ingredient, so to speak, is crushed areca nut and betel leaves. They chew the nut and leaves in the East. In India they call this – smoking it – dhumrapana – Smoke Eating.”

“I see. Why?”

Well, usually I'd pack it with hashish so I can get high. But, you know, I'm not doing that today. Because I need my wits about me if I'm going to keep from letting you kill me.

“It's a relio-ceremonial thing. They don't do it like this – with paper.” If I had expected her to be impressed that I had access to paper, indeed, that I had access to India, I was disappointed. Not the first, and definitely not the last, time I would be disappointed by her. I decide not to brag about the history of paper – neither of my knowledge thereof nor my access. “The areca nut and betel leaf, though – they have a certain stimulating quality to them. I like it. It helps me think. Would you like one?”

“No – thank you, Robert. It's a... disgusting habit.”

“Suit yourself,” I say with my customary shrug.

“I will. Thank you.”

“You seem to know quite a lot about her – Peitho.” I say.

“More than you, you mean?”

I shrug, lighting the Mwg.

“Are you surprised that a woman might know her stories, Robert?”

I taste the dhumrapana in my mouth. It's really just not he same without the hashish. Exhaling a plume of smoke:

“Yes and no. I am impressed.”

“I see. Should a girl not want to know what she can of her namesake? Should she not be interested in the great goddesses of the past?

“I suppose,” I allow, realizing that I can't tell how old she is. Her beauty is that of a woman – but of what age? She could be a decade my junior, or my senior. “Especially if her parents wish her to follow in her namesake's footsteps.”

“My parents are none of your concern.”

“I suppose that depends on what you have come to persuade me of, Persuasion.”

Peitho is not just the name of the goddess. It is also the word. And there is some evidence that the goddess came first.

With no hesitation whatsoever, not even to react to what I thought was a clever joke, she says:

“My sister is in grave danger. She has done something... foolish. My mother sent me on a journey of many days to seek your aid. Please – Robert Longshore, you are our only hope.”

“I see,” I say in a cloud of smoke.

“I am afraid that you do not.”

“Peitho me.”

You're an asshole. Regina's memory almost makes me flinch – with guilt – with fear.

Peitho's face does not react. Her voice, even her eyes, reflect the almost-sadness in her countenance. She is not sad, I realize. She's concerned. Afraid. Prepared to be sad. And I have been poking at her like a terero with a bull.

“About a week ago, now, a man came to my... our... village. I do not know what he promised her. It must have been great, indeed. My... family... we are stewards of a priceless relic – an artifact of unimaginable antiquity and importance. To us, of course. He could not think to sell it, nor can I believe that he could possibly know how to use it. To be honest with you, I cannot begin to imagine how he knew we have – had it. I'm sorry. I am still... adjusting to the knowledge that it – that she – is gone. She must have told him. I do not know. It is the only sensible explanation. My family have kept it hidden from the world for... a long time. Longer than you would believe if I told you.”

“Why don't you try me?”

“I cannot, Robert. To speak of the item – to speak of my family – to outsiders is forbidden. You must know what it is to hold secrets which you cannot share with the... uninitiated.”

Peitho's eyes communicate a secret, a knowing, which makes my skin crawl.

“You don't trust me?”

Rather than responding to this, she continues her tale:

“She must have told him. If she had shown him to it's hiding place.... Why would he have taken her? Again, I say he must have made her unimaginable promises. She is not an unattractive girl. I can imagine he wished to possess them both, if he could. Again I say he must have made her unimaginable promises. What I know is that she is gone. And Matere has sent me to get it back.”

I lean forward, stabbing the Mwg dead among the ashes of its kin.

“How do I fit in this picture?”

“You find things, no? Are you not a Ziton?”

She did it again. Twice now she has used ancient Greek words. I notice them, not because it should be surprising – I have, after all, decided that she is Greek by either birth or education – but because the words themselves are conspicuous. Matere – Ma-te-re – I have never heard – or seen – before. But it probably means Mother. She uses it as a title. I know this because when she said, “My mother has sent me,” she used the Venetian. A slip of the tongue?

As a point of fact, the word does mean mother. It's pre-Greek. Minoan, as we call them – because we don't know what they called themselves. Just like the statuette the Master showed me. Just like he said: Not all things that are gone are lost.

Why did he do that? He couldn't have known this moment was coming.

Still, Reason remains reticent.

The other, Ziton, is less ancient – and what some Christians called themselves: Seekers. As in Seekers of Truth, Wisdom... God.

I hold up a hand for silence.

I need a lot more than a moment to think about this. A moment, however, is all I have. ...For the moment. Soon enough, I will have a week to think on it – and even then I will make no progress.

I have to say something, to ask a question – to keep her talking.

“I am what you say I am. Some might say that of me. But... do you know where they went?”

“I do not. Do you think me so foolish I could not find them without you if I did?”

“I don't know what to think – yet. Do you know where they might have gone?”

“For my sister, I suspect anywhere would be better than home.”

I sigh. “Tell me about him.”

“I can tell you very little. I know only that the people who saw him say his eyes were those of a madman. Bloodshot and blistered.”

Why am I suddenly remembering a story that feels like it's from a dream? A story the tavernmaster told me? About a giant snake and a man with mad, bloodshot eyes? And why am I suddenly terrified? As afraid as I have ever been.

“No.” I hear the word vomit from my mouth before I have even thought it.

“Excuse me?” Suddenly Peitho's face is no longer her next-to-tears mask. It's blank. The face of a killer.

“No,” I repeat, finding conviction in the word this time.

“I'm sure I'm misunderstanding you,” Peitho says. Her voice is cool, slow. I have to work to convince myself that I don't hear the cadence of the Spirit that called herself Lamia.

I am suddenly reminded of the miniature crossbow I have secreted beneath my desk, within easy – if conspicuous – grasp of my right hand. Its mechanism – while ingenious – is irrelevant. I won't get the opportunity to use it. Another of my inventions that prove out of place and useless.

Peitho, I realize, no longer has her legs crossed. Her hands dangle by the sides of the chair. Only then do I notice how taut her muscles are, how unlike a typical “lady” she is. This woman is not to be trifled with.

“I'm sorry, Miss—“

“Do not call me that. I am not some lady you can sweet talk.”

“...Peitho. I am afraid I can't help you.”

She is on her feet. The motion is like water flowing uphill. My eyes cannot comprehend the ease.

“You should be afraid, Robert Longshore. Or should I say Carl Cartwright or Steven Somerset or....” As she lists the names, the identities which I had used since leaving my childhood home, she slowly walks around my desk. Her voice is as smooth and sharp as an obsidian blade. As she walks, her hand trails the desk's perimeter, casually knocking the collected manuscripts to the floor like so much junk.

I sit, transfixed. It would be a lie if I did not admit to being, once more that day, scaroused. Just like a man – to be turned on when I should not be. She stops, beside my chair. The last name that escapes her lips, her eyes as emotionless as any viper, is that to which I was born.

“Yes. I know who you are. I know what you are. Matere – and, yes, your Master, Archi of the Scholeio Demiourgoi – told me all about you.” She smiles. There is no pleasure in those gleaming teeth and entrancing emerald eyes – the wicked glee of a beast of prey let loose to do its terrible work. There is nothing in that face. This, it would seem, is what she is – what she was made for.

“I knew it,” I hiss with great effort, my head turned, looking up at her.

I want to reach for my crossbow, to do anything. But I cannot. I cannot even blink. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know that this is more than panic, more than fear. But this is not the time to think about it. There is no time.

With one hand, effortlessly – as effortlessly as though it were made with a swivel and on wheels – she pulls my chair several feet back from my desk and turns it ninety degrees. Before I can even comprehend what has happened, she is in my lap, straddling me.

Her body is cool, even cold. Her breasts below my chin, her face inches from mine. She smells of earth – of stone and subterranean mist.

“You knew what?” she asks. “That I am an Agent of the School? Do not be a fool. My family – Matere – have not been involved with the School for centuries. Millennia, if you would believe Her. Your Master suggested you to Her.”

I don't know what to say – couldn't speak if I wanted to. Her hands caress my chest, run up my neck, through my beard, as though we were locked in coitus – not moments away from my death.

Is this how Francis met his end, too?

“I am not a woman to be trifled with. You will find Pepin for me. Tonight,” she coos.

Why do I feel like there is a massive, ropy tendril constricting my legs?

“I don't want to hurt you to get what I want, Fulcrum. But I will.”

Suddenly I am able to speak. All of my fear, all of my overwhelmed thoughts and emotions ejaculate from my mouth in one insane question: “Tonight? That— That's impossible!”

She leans down, pressing her cold lips against my ear. “Nothing is impossible,” she whispers like a lover approaching climax. Her breath is as cold as the rest of her. “Not for you. Not if you put your mind to it.”

She bites me on the neck. Gently, at first, then tugging at the skin and pinching hard enough to hurt.

And then she's standing before me again – just like that, like she were never in my lap at all – adjusting her skirts.

“But— It will take hours – days! I will have to interview dozens – hundreds! – of people to even know where to begin.” My words are coming quickly. I know without knowing how that I cannot convince her of this. Whatever method she expects me to use – whatever magick she believes I possess – I do not know it. And my ignorance will get me killed. Of this, I am certain. “I will have to leave Genoa. What of my wife?”

This sounds to me like a reasonable excuse. She laughs, a harsh, cruel sound.

“What of her? What of the countless other women you've loved and left? What of Carlita?”

She's dead. Dead, and you let it happen.

Instinct's help is really not welcome right now.

Peitho turns, walking back around the desk. From apparently nowhere she produces a purse, large enough that my eyes bulge with greed. She drops it to my desk. It's thump is hefty, the clinking those of an incalculable fortune of gold. Only gold makes that kind of noise.

“This should be more than enough to entice you – if the promise of my –“ she adjusts her bodice-vest – “rewards cannot. Find him.”

“What of your sister? The—“

“Forget them. Locate him and you will be done. That is all I need.”

I didn't need to wonder what she had planned for him – for me, if I failed.

Peitho is halfway to the door when it occurs to me to ask: “How will I find you to tell you what I learn?”

She stops, as though she had forgotten to mention this detail. Over her shoulder, she answers:

“I will return tomorrow. You will not look for me. If I learn that you have tried, that instead of bending your Will to finding him you have tried to investigate me... if you do not have what I want by then, well... the result will be the same: I will have no further need for you.”

“But—!”

Before I can ask how she expects me to do this thing, she wheels around with a fan of skirts. In her hand, produced, again, apparently from nowhere, is a miniature crossbow dishearteningly similar to my own. Marking it as unique from – and not in fact – mine is the gleam of some poison on the point of the tiny dart. Her eyes, all I can see clearly of her in the deepest dark of my office, are bright with anger.

My eyes widen. My hands shoot up. But too late. I hear the click an instant before the prick of pain in my throat.

“Ask your Guide,” she hisses, all patience with me long since lost.

I have barely enough time to be impressed with her aim – she got me right in the jugular – before my vision is blurring. My arms are already too weak to even attempt to investigate the bolt, let alone pull it from my neck. Then I am blinded by afternoon sunlight.

And wrapped in the warm embrace of black nothing.