Episode 3 - One Starry Night (Full)

Episode Three: One Starry Night

Part One: A Polite Distance

It's long after dark when I find Peitho.

I don't know how I see her. I probably don't. I see the hill just behind the stables as I'm returning to the inn. I don't especially want to toss and turn on that stinking straw mat. I already know what is going to happen: I'm going to lie there thinking about what just happened. I could do that just as easily – and more comfortably – beneath the canopy of one of the trees on yon hill.

In a daze I made it to the inn, and in a daze I changed and set course.

When I reach the hill and find Peitho reclining beneath the tree I'd chosen, I'm not surprised. It's like I knew she'd be here. Like she had to be. No doubt for the same reasons I am. She looks up at my approach and smiles. The emeralds of her eyes shine in the moonlight.

“Peitho – I—“

She pats the ground beside her. I sit, crossing my legs beneath me a polite distance away.

“I did not know whether I should anticipate you – or how long to wait.”

I turn to her. She is staring out into the night, her face impassive.

“You were waiting for me?”

“No.” She quirks the corner of her mouth. “I was waiting to decide whether I would be disappointed if you didn't come.”

“I didn't come on—“

“I know you didn't mean to. Not really, you didn't. But here you are.”

“Have you decided whether you're glad?”

She must feel me watching her, but she looks straight ahead. She's been sitting with her feet kicked straight out before her, hands on the ground at her sides, back perfectly straight. You could measure corners with her – or whatever right-angle protractors are used for.

She looks about like a mermaid on a rock, doesn't she?

With a sigh that is appropriate neither to my question nor the vacuum of her silence, she reclines against the tree.

“The night is really lovely.”

I turn to gaze out at the night and can't disagree. Don't want to.

It's lovelier when it's got you in it.

Don't you dare say that.

“What is happening with you?”

There's no reason to search her face for meaning. I know what she's asking. She doesn't wait to see how long I'll stay quiet before I feign ignorance.

“You don't sleep at night. When you're not sleeping during the day, you're either writing in your journal or staring out the window. What are you watching for? The priest – Metus?”

I feel the cool of her hand once more enveloping mine.

I look down at it. From my periphery, I can see that Peitho's eyes still face the night.

“Not Metus. The—“ I stop myself. “I think I'm losing my mind.”

“The what?”

I take a deep breath and sigh. My posture was not as good as Peitho's – and now it's worse.

“The... landscape.”

She turns to me, now. I don't look at her.

“Do you have dreams, Peitho?”

“Are you asking me if I am a seer of visions?”

“No. Do you have dreams?”

“Sight is not among my gifts.”

I pause a moment, only just keeping my eyes ahead. No one is this dense. Why is she evading me? It's a simple question.

“That's not what I— When you sleep, do you dream?”

I can hear her breathing.

“Yes. Occassionally.” I hear the difficulty in the mutedness of her voice. I can all but feel the tension in her, the teeth-grinding effort to keep something unsaid. Then she sighs. “We are not meant to.”

“Believe in them? Interpret them? Talk about them?” I ask stupidly.

“Have them.”

Oh.”

The silence which follows her faroff tone is the kind you don't break. Even the night respected her need for space to figure out what she had just said and what to do about it.

So I do.

“I realize that I have not been very friendly to you – from the moment we first met. I have a lot of.... But of course you know I have a lot of things on my mind.” I sigh. “You couldn't have shown up in my life at a worse time.”

“Regina?”

I almost turn. Hearing Regina's name in Peitho's voice.... My arms are numb.

“Yes. She.... She wanted me to help her divorce her husband.”

I can feel it – the same way I felt it with Caesar— When I fall silent, there is a sort of void between the two of us. Indescribable energy pulls on me to fill it – to continue speaking.

“For you?”

“I don't know. I think so.”

“She must have loved you. Did you love her?”

“...I don't know. I must have. What is love? Right? That's what I have to answer – for myself – if I'm going to answer that. I think— I think that love is... love is being able to accept someone for what they are, to see them for what they could be, and to ignore their flaws when they don't matter – if you can't find a way to endear yourself to them.”

“There is a Psalm, is there not?”

“It's not a Psalm. It's Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians:

“'Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.'”

“There is more – is there not?”

“Yeah. Most people don't—“ I realize I'm stalling for time. Why? Why don't I want to think about the next part of the Epistle?

“'But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.'”

I close my eyes. Tears burn behind them.

What are you doing? You can't cry in front of a girl!

A woman I love is dead. My life is in shambles. I'm being chased by a murderous priest and coerced into helping a woman who might be as mad as he is do gods know what by God knows which gods. If any of this is even real. What am I supposed to do? Just pretend I feel nothing?

Suck it up like a man.

Peitho's voice, when she fills my tormented silence, is hesitant – tentative, even.

“Were you going to help her?”

“I hadn't decided. That's what I— ...Was thinking about the day you came to my door. But by then – it was too late. The decision had been made for me.”

Peitho doesn't say anything. I can feel the effort of her will, the pulling of the strange gravity between us.

“Her husband.”

“Yeah. ...You... know about that?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you—?”

I hear her hair rustle her tree as she nods. I can't look at her. Can't move.

“Yeah.”

I thought, when I asked the question, as I waited for the answer, that I would feel something, if she confirmed. But I don't. All I feel is emptiness – and guilt that I don't feel something more profound.

Of course she did. I knew she did. I suspected she did.

For a moment, I'm not lying in the grass beneath a tree older than the civilization which has spared it, on an idyllic hill under the black of night, staring up at an infinite universe of stars forever out of reach – and I'm standing over Francis. For one horrid moment, all I can see is the lurid holes in his neck, the twin punctures I was so sure were the bite of a viper.

“How? Why?”

“Don't worry about how,” Peitho says. Her voice is distant. Maybe she's in the room with him, killing my... what? My partner? My oldest acquaintance in Genoa? He wasn't either of those things – not really. “But why? The answer is simple: Matere wished it done. You'll ask why of that, though – even though you should not. You should be able to guess correctly. It is simple: You would not help me if you were tangled up in his plans.”

“And Regina?”

I hear my question before I know I've thought to ask it.

“No.”

I look at her. She is still looking up at the night, but slowly she turns her head to face me. The emeralds of her gaze lock my eyes on hers. I feel the energy between us, the pull, the grappling gravities – only now it is I who is losing. Not against the urge to speak, but to fall so deep into her eyes I never climb back out again.

Can I believe her that she didn't kill Regina?

It would make sense if she did.

It would make sense to lie.

But Regina was the straw that broke the camel's back. I ran because—

You ran because you were going to run. Regina was—

Insurance. Ensurance.

Instinct speaks with Lamiya's voice, but I know it isn't implicating her. Nor does it imply Wadjet.

The Yaldabaoth?

I sigh. “I was just trying to say – you know my reasons for being paranoid. I've made neither a genuine nor a fair effort to get to know you. You wanted to know what's happening with me – I'm trying to answer. I— I don't know how to feel about Francis. He was a prick. Beat Regina. Stole her money. He acted like he was the one who made me rich, but he lost more of my money gambling and leaving it for whores than he ever made me. But.... He wanted to make me king. Did you know that?”

Peitho slowly shakes her head.

Our eyes have drifted apart, but we're still facing one another.

“Yeah. He wanted to make me king of Genoa and declare independence from the Kingdom of Italy.”

“What did you say?”

“The same thing I told his wife when she asked me to divorce them!” I exclaim. Then, all but throwing my hand over my mouth, I lower my voice by an order of magnitude. “No.”

“Why?”

“I wouldn't divorce them because I wasn't willing to destroy him. He wasn't my friend, but he had been a friend to me. That's.... He didn't have to do that. I owe him my loyalty, if nothing else.”

“And to you that means not involving yourself in his eating his just desserts?”

“I don't think that's the—“ I meet her eyes, see the beginnings of a smile on her lips, and realize she is joking. “Ah. Um. Yes. That.”

“That is noble. Difficult, though, to do anything for yourself – if you are not willing even to be involved in someone's self-destruction. How can you say you have defeated your enemies if they are not utterly destroyed?”

“Perhaps.” I turn and practically flop against the tree. “There isn't anything in the world valuable enough to me to be worth destroying someone – even tangentially – even by their own doing. Want— Desire— I feel like half of what I say when I talk about myself is quoting the Buddha.” Peitho says nothing.

Does she know the Buddha?

Why don't you ask her?

Isn't that how conversation works – you ask a question, she answers, you steer the talk in a direction—

Yes, yes. All right.

“You're a priestess, right?”

I hear her head turn to me, and look out the side of my eye to regard her. She is the picture of suspicion – if only it were naked.

“Why do you think that?”

“I was once showed a statuette of a woman dressed like you. The... man who told me, my teacher, he said the women those figurines represented were priestesses, some of the most powerful people to ever live – men or women. But also because Metus said so.”

“You believe the things this priest tells you?”

“Not all of them. I do believe that he believes them, irrespective of reality. When you're dealing with a person who believes – or wants you to believe – that he is a member of a cult famous for torturing and eradicating other cults, you take notice of what he says. Or maybe you don't. I do.”

“Because even though he's crazy, he's not necessarily wrong.”

I don't argue Peitho's reasoning. She's right. I lean back, now, sliding down the tree, kicking my legs out in front of me and crossing them back at the ankles.

“Then he has told you that I am a priestess of some mysterious cult. What did he tell you about us?”

I meet her eye. “Why don't you just tell me the truth?”

She looks away, nods. I watch her watching the night.

“The night sky really is beautiful, isn't it?”

She is not good at evading questions she eventually has to answer.

“I'd never seen it, the night sky, before four weeks ago. How is that possible, you no doublt wonder – don't worry about it. It doesn't matter.” She sighs, deep and hard. “The thing I don't understand is— You knew I am trying to get a relic of my people back. Why did you need this Metus to tell you— How did this not scream to you— You know what? Nevermind. You are a stubborn man. I imagine you resist your own eyes with the same tenacity as a donkey – and it's just as much work for you to make up your own mind as getting a donkey to do anything. Even something it wants.”

If what she is saying is meant to do anything other than make me frown and wonder whether I'm as transparent to her as nearly everyone else seems to me, she has failed. I don't know how this makes me feel. Is it a boon or a burden to feel exceptional? The donkey that is my mind wants, initially, to resist this, and I nearly laugh. She's right, and I'm already forming arguments how she's necessarily wrong even as I know she's right. Am I just a contrary person? It's easy to tell yourself you're just searching for the Truth in everything by arguing every side until one naturally wins. But some truths are statements, and once stated, can only either be taken as they are or left to be rediscovered later – often at the worst possible moment.

I feel exposed, fraudulent, under her silent scrutiny – imagining that this is how Adam must have felt when he stood before his god, naked and ashamed, in the Garden.

“I think,” Peitho says slowly, “I understand why you said you feel like the Buddha. Desire, yes? You believe that you have shrugged away its mantle, that in doing so you can escape suffering. Am I wrong?”

“You're not wrong.”

“You and I both know you desire.”

Our eyes meet. Her emeralds seem to look right through me.

“Maybe it's not a question of whether I desire,” I say. ”The Secret of Buddhism is that there is no Secret. Maybe it's a question of degree. I mean—“

“How badly do you desire.” She does not ask this as a question. She states it as a truth.

I feel that... feeling between us. Only now it is not rigid, static. Now it's... loose, almost gelatinous. Soft and curving like—

“What am I willing to sacrifice to get what I want,” I correct her.

My voice is chilling to my own ear. Peitho says nothing for a long time, and I'm not going to interrupt her, not after that. Well, I wasn't.

“Do you miss her?”

Peitho looks over at me, frowning, confused. “Who?”

“Your sister. Are you worried for her?”

“My sister. Right. You surprised me. Do I miss her?” Peitho gets quiet, looking into the night. “Yes. Am I worried?” She swallows hard – some lump of some emotion; I don't know – I'm not watching her. “No. She will meet the Fate the Goddess has in store for her one way or another. I just hope... I just hope she managed to survive this and get what she wanted.”

“Do you want to talk about her?”

I don't look over, and Peitho is silent for a long moment. Silence is all I get from my dreams, too.

“She.... I feel I may have deceived you, Rob.”

Is this where she confesses that the sister isn't real?

She stole the Rod – just watch.

Listen. Don't watch her too closely.

“My Sister is not my sister. We are related – but in the same way that everyone from a town, especially an island town—“

“Lesvos,” I confirm.

“...is related. She is my Sister – in that we are both a part of a Sisterhood.” She takes a deep breath. “It is forbidden for me to tell you more.”

“You don't have to tell me more than you want to, Peitho. I'm out at Pavia either way.”

I meant this to sound comforting, but even to my own ears it feels like a threat: Tell me what I want to hear or I abandon you in the mountains. Eesh.

“We are a people,” she says with a sigh. “A civilization – ancient and forgotten – and secret. It is difficult for me to explain without describing our society from top to bottom.”

I reach into my jacket like I mean to get out my pen and journal. She laughs.

“It is fair, perhaps easiest, to think of us as a cult. Of course, not all of us, all of my family, my people, are cultists. We are not as hierarchically structured as Christianity – there is very little specific structure at all.”

“That sounds Chaotic,” I chime in. She does not respond directly.

“But we have nobility and commoners – and what amounts to priests. My Sisters – we call ourselves the Daughters of Lamiya – this is what we are. But I am not a priestess – no more than we are a cult. Yes, we are mysterious – we are religious, but in the same way that all people have been since the first ritual behaviors of our ancientest ancestors. I am not a priestess. I am not any one thing. I am multiplicity. But I am trained to serve in that function as need be.”

“But not as an oracle?”

“No. Sight is reserved for Matere alone.”

“Is that how she is chosen?”

“No one knows how she is chosen.”

“How can that be possible?”

“Well – I'm sure the Matere knows. But if there's a process.. it's a secret, and no one is talking.”

“Does that mean it's a secret from me?”

She looks over at me. “It doesn't, no. All of this is a secret from you – from anyone who does not already know. I have no reason to lie to you – not anymore. As soon as I started talking about my family, my people, I broke my vows. A broken vow is not desire – it is not judged by to what degree it is broken. A broken stalagtite is broken. The degree of its breaking is the carnage wrought in its wake. Matere is not... lenient. She does not forgive – and she will not forget. I do not know whether she is capable of it.”

“You think she will know about this? How?”

The statuette is hot in my pocket.

Peitho pivots her whole torso to face me. I don't need more than a darted glance to see too much of the don't-be-fucking-stupid written in her features.

She rolls her eyes and slithers down the hill so that she is lying flat on her back with her hands, crossed at the wrists, touching the tree behind her head.

“Magick. That's how.”

I hear this and immediately think she's joking. Then I hear the surrender in her voice – and the absence of sarcasm. She means this. Literally.

“You act like she's listening to us right now.”

“She more than probably is.”

“Why aren't we doing anything to stop her?”

“Do you know how to make a Privacy Bubble – by that or any name?” Peitho's voice is a challenge – hard, already presuming the answer.

“No. But surely you—“

“Sure – but not one strong enough to keep her out.”

“That's insane.”

“Who cares about the insanity of it?” Peitho sounds as relaxed and carefree as though she were lazily floating on a lake. I am half-inclined to explore that Disappearing Into the Forest Option. I may have dismissed it too quickly. “It is what it is. It is what she does – it may be what she is. Don't look at me like that. You are a Dreamer of Dreams, a Seer, the Fulcrum of Fate, no less. Not only are you capable of it, you have tripped across the Weave of Fate. The question is what you've seen – not whether Matere can or might as well – better, and with more control.”

That would mean I actually am dreaming Pepin in real-time.

More importantly that means you've been watched this whole time.

The back of my neck itches with the feeling of formicatious feet – a sensation, I realize, I have been ignoring possibly for weeks now.

“That's impossible.”

“What? That oracles are real? Open your eyes, Robert. Not only is magick real, but you are meant to be capable of it. Not just capable – of great capacity for it. Nothing is impossible.”

Nothing is impossible. The mantra of the Master. Everything is possible. You are limited only by—

“Why do you think that?”

“Because that is what I was told. The way I heard it, you're a regular Merlin.”

“Well... I'm not.”

“Merlin wasn't always the wizard of the stories. There was a time before his greatness. You can't know what you are capable of until you put yourself in a position to try.”

She's reached over to touch my hand, craned her neck to look up at me.

“You're the Fulcrum of Fate. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

I look away from her, twisting my mouth. I know manipulation when I see it.

“And what do you want me to put my mind to?”

“I have to find the Rod, Rob.”

Of course you do.

“Is that what you are, then? Some kind of Guardian?”

“Sort of, yes. But not in that order. My family – my people - … you might say we and everything it is to be us – are guardians, yes. Of the Rod, first – but of our way of life, our history, and our sacred gnosis of the Goddess, the Great Mother.”

“Metus called yours a cursed bloodline. You're a secret civilization. Does that make you some kind of Lost Tribe of Israel?”

She laughs. I smile a little bit. But it's not funny. That is a serious claim, and many have made it – and died for it. That sort of legitimacy, if she could prove it, would instantly make her and her family players on the world stage. I just like the sound of her laughter.

Or would they?

Lesvos? With Muslims or Christians on all sides?

No. You hide. You wait for a less hostile future to become the present.

You hide in a hole. Like a bunny.

Peitho's right about you – you're no fox.

“Again – sort of. But not Israel. Older than Israel. Older than Abraham. Thousands of years older. The Jewish people aren't the first or the only people to survive history's extinctions. Hell – Zoroastrians still exist throughout Anatolia and Persia.”

“Is that why Metus is concerned with you? He seems to have no interest in the Rod.”

“Have you discussed Pepin with him?”

“No. At least, I don't think so.”

“It may be that he wants you to have no interest in it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“What does he say about it? What exactly does he say he wants from you?”

“He says it's nothing – just an ikon from a long time ago. And he tells me to stay away from you – and to give him the Rod.” I almost didn't say this last. But— “So much for that.”

“Indeed.” Peitho agrees. “You have failed to evade falling into my clutches. I hope you can endure the torture of my presence. Did he warn you about my clawed hands and how I grow bat wings at night – and how my vagina has teeth?”

She says this with wicked glee – which makes me half-wonder whether she's not joking.

“He has not, no.”

“If I were trying to keep you from doing something, I would want to dull your interest in it – maybe suggest other things I would prefer you to do. He is probably not concerned with me at all, but does want the Rod.”

“And if you're wrong? How does he even know about you?”

“I don't know – how he knows about me. If I'm wrong... we will cross that bridge when we come to it. No plan survives contact with the enemy – isn't that what they say?”

That's what Helmuth von Moltke would say in the 19^th century – “That or something like it, for sure,” I mutter.

Part 2: A Change in Attitude

I didn't know we were formulating a plan. 

 But then again, just because I'm thinking about what I will do once we arrive in Pavia didn't mean Peitho hasn't been making plans all the time about only-she knows what.

“Are you lying to keep me from learning something?” I ask.

“You're going to learn eventually.” Peitho's voice is total surrender – absolutely defeated. “No more lies.”

“No more lies,” I hear myself muse more than agree. I have to say something – because I can't say what I'm thinking.

Why the change in attitude?

Never imagined her to accept any defeat.

Is it you who has defeated her, though?

Or is it the hunt?

“Does that mean you want an alliance, now?”

Peitho looks at me. I can see that's she's considering my question behind her eyes.

“That would be asking too much. Friends don't lie. Or keep secrets. Let's start there – for now.”

“I see. Friends have secrets. They just don't effort to conceal them.”

Peitho is nodding.

Then she wants to be an Archimedes' box.

You think you can shift her pieces around until you find her true Image?

“Not the best policy,” I say, “but I accept your terms. For now.”

The quiet which follows is nice. Comfortable. Time seems to have stopped, for us to forever have this moment – for me to forever have the smell of her, womanly, but vaguely reptillian in a way I can neither describe nor especially mind, wafting on the gentle summer wind with the odours of the grass and the tree – and the shit. An eternity which might have been no longer than five beats of my heart later, I hear my voice asking:

“What are you, then?”

The words.... I feel something. Something like guilt. Something a little like knowing you've stepped in shit – and that it might be the bait of a claw trap. You know that feeling when someone says something that makes you feel caught in a lie – or, more specifically, forces you into a crossroads where you could easily and naturally lie? That's what I felt – only it wasn't me who felt that way. I was feeling something akin to sympathy panic.

Because I'm imagining it?

Because you've asked an impossible question to answer.

“You're not a priestess. Only sort of a Guardian. Are you a princess? It wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility. The normal—“

“I'm not a princess,” Peitho spits. “Jesus, Rob. The normal what? Purviews of a noblewoman include secret missions to hunt down missing relics of great and terrible power? When was the last time you heard of a princess doing anything besides pushing out babies and politicking to make her asshole husband look like the asshole she knows him to be? Christ. Do you know a lot of princesses—“ I hear her teeth click together. If she were about to say who could so easily kick my ass, the answer is no. But different people are different. Who knows – from the sound of it, it's all ladies at the top of her family – maybe they're the fabled Amazons.

Peitho did have both tits, though.

Can confirm.

“Do you think only priestesses or princesses can be useful women to their people?” Peitho's voice has lost its edge.

Sounds like she really wants an answer.

“That's a loaded question,” I start slowly. I'm avoiding keeping her in my periphery – and not only because I thought about her tits a few seconds ago. “There's no way that I can answer that question without getting myself trapped. Of course not only priestesses or princesses are useful to their people. Women of every sort and status are the most useful people to their societies. And not just because they make new people. Don't even. It's not my fault some women in some parts of the world are treated like cattle. Noblewomen sign up for what they get. If they wanted to be treated more equal to their husbands and male peers, they could be commoners. They could work a farm. I guarantee no one ever thought my wife was lesser than—“

My throat catches at the thought of her. Why? Emotion? Anticipating that Peitho is going to accuse me of imparting her with my power as a man? My privilege to administrate properties and the people on them?

“Anyway – I don't make the rules. I just observe them.”

“You could make the rules. If you wanted.” Peitho's voice is— I want to hear these words as sly. But they aren't. They're... at least, they feel like the Truth – like she believes them.

“And you can't?”

“You don't know me, Rob. Or my family.” Her voice is low, but firm – but not with finality. With fact.

She's crossed her arms over her chest.

“You're right. I'm trying to, if you would let me.”

Slowly, jerkily, her arms unfold and find their ways to the grass at her sides.

“I am Peitho. The Peitho of my Family.”

“You are Persuasion? They trained you to—?”

“No. Yes. It's not a title. It is what I am. As a tiger is named a tiger for its uniqueness as a tiger and not for its stripes, I am Peitho. For my nature as Peitho.”

“I want to, but I don't think I understand.”

I can't explain it – I can't see it – but I feel her smile.

“It is confusing – if you are dense – or an idiot.”

“Thank you. Why don't you just tell me the word?”

“What word?”

“What you're called. Your title”

“You really do not understand. There is no word. I am called Peitho – because that is what I am.”

I feel for a moment – probably because I recall it – the fear and confusion of the Yaldabaoth telling me that he is what he is because that is what he is. I am that I am.

“I am Peitho. I am persuasion. I have been taught to protect my family.”

At this point, it's not that I don't understand - I don't want to understand – because I do. I did the moment she first said her name: she was made for this. Made for me. But why? Because the Master.... What? Wants my help?

And now I'm back in that hole.

How many will you climb out of only to fall into another, deeper?

“Just because my family are isolated, unknown to the world, does not mean that we are uninterested in it. To the contrary. Many – most – of us live in the world as you would understand. The rest of us do not. But we have an extensive library, dating back more than five thousand years – I can assure you, Verona would be jealous. My Sisters, those like me, are trained to defend the family. I was educated—“

“Like a priestess – like a sorceress – to defend your people's faith if it ever came to that.” I'm almost mimicking her voice, now – just speaking what I observe, what I think.

Not that different from you, really.

Or from Metus, for that matter.

All right, maybe not everything I think.

“If you really have survived five thousand years, you would need to know what you're defending yourself against. Did you know, this is how China deal with the Steppe Peoples on their borders? You learn all about your enemies – and in the game of civilizations, anyone not under your flag is the enemy, it's all a matter of degrees. You learn about them, what they like, who they hate, but especially about their religion. If you can keep them fighting one another, you can keep them from fighting you.”

Exactly what an island people would want to do if they were surrounded by enemies on all sides.

Why does it seem more and more like underground is not a metaphor for her people's hiding?

Because of Metus talking about the punishment of the Watchers and Nephilim.

He didn't even really say anything, did he?

'Hers is a cult dedicated to the memory of the union of Woman and Watcher.'

Hm. Feels like that means something.

“Peitho—“ I say into the dark. I have to lift my head off the ground to look at her. I don't know when I slid all the way to the ground. How long have I been staring up at the leaves of the tree?

Is she asleep?

“Yes, Robert?” Peitho asks. Her voice suggests it's been seconds again – not eternities.

And I'm not even stoned.

“Are you familiar with the idea of Fallen Angels? The Watchers and Nephilim?”

“The Giants of the pre-Flood Hebrew Genesis. The account of the Book of Enoch. Yes.”

Even though I'd been prepared that she would, hearing the title from her lips is still a surprise. I blurt: “How do you know that?”

I can't see her, but I can practically hear the creaking of her jaw, restraining lashing me with her tongue for asking a question she has already answered.

“Right. I know. Sorry. You – I was surprised, all right? That book isn't supposed to exist anymore. And now not only do two people know about it, their... cults read it regularly enough that you have it in the front of your minds.”

“Not all of my Sisters have read it. I may be the only besides Matere. Metus spoke to you about the Book, then?”

“I don't want to talk about Metus.” Gods. It's starting to feel like I'm dating two girls at the same time and they know one another but don't hang out.

“You brought him up.”

“I did. I'm just— I'm just trying to figure out how to ask you—“

“He accused us of being Nephilim, right? Antediluvian halfbreeds?”

“Not... exactly.”

That's too specific to be something she just made up.

“What then?”

“That your cult is dedicated to the memory of that... union, I think is the word he used. Might even have called it Unholy.”

“If he is as you claim, he no doubt did.” She waits a few seconds, but neither of us finds this as funny as we thought we might. “You wish to know if he tells the truth?”

“It could help me understand what the Rod is.”

“You do not know already? Your Guide did not show it to you?”

I'm immensely glad in this moment that we are not in the carriage and she cannot see my eyes drift to the side.

“It has been implied to me that it is the Rod of Asclepius, yes.”

“Hm. It is just a plain rod. Wood, with a jade serpent wrapped around it. But it's— I used to think it was just a rod. Just an item, a relic of a distanct past.”

“And now?”

“Now, I do not know. I have only handled it once. And for me, it was just dead wood and stone. But my Sisters... some of them say the older Sisters told them that the stories were true – that when the first Matere lived, she worked miracles with it – healings— You know what miracles are. They said that in some ways it was how we came to be. Without it we would have nothing to be Guardians of, would we? What will we do if it is not recovered? Will they make a false one for display? Will it become an ikon, a symbol and nothing more, as it has for the rest of the world? I cannot allow that. Will not allow that. If Pepin has learned to use it, then I can only imagine the things he is capable of.”

You don't want to, either.

Does that mean we're going to help her?

Seems like it.

Shut up.

“Peitho, what are we actually headed for?” I sound like a small child asking for reassurance that the dark won't bite.

“I would tell you to tell me. You are the sorcerer for hire. You are the one of us whom it is reasonable to assume has Seen precisely what we are headed for. But I hear the fear in your voice. You know something you will not tell me. We are headed for our deaths, Robert. The madman Pepin the Great has in his possession a relic, an artifact, an item of great power. I did not lie to you about that in Genoa. I am sure that you are not willing to believe that it is the Rod of Asclepius. But it is one and the same with those myths, that symbol of healing.

“Metus is right. We are cursed, my family – cursed to care for and hide the Rod from the world for eternity. We have existed for thousands of years as we are. My family, this curse. Thousands of years, our traditions have remained unbroken. And then my sister....” Peitho falls suddenly silent. When she resumes, her voice is sad.

“Do not ask me what it is or how it works, Rob. I do not know. My Family believe that it is the same Rod, only much older; that, indeed, the Greeks were replicating the copy which has been trapped in the world's memory with their stories – they were too young. They never handled the Rod. Long before they existed, we were already in hiding. It was not gifted by Zeus to a man. It was the last will and testament of a dying goddess. She sacrificed herself in a war now long ancient to give us The Rod.”

“What war?” I ask, fascinated now in my own right.

“The ancientest war of them all. The War: Order versus Chaos.”

That wasn't an answer I wanted. In fact, I would have been equally happy to hear any other answer. It's like somehow she knows what I want her not to say. Then she says it.

“But that's a metaphor. An allegory. ...Right?”

“Is it? You know Zoroaster. Angra Mainyu and Ahura Mazda. The War for the Human Spirit is. There does not need to be a why to allegorize. And what is the War an allegory of? In Zoroastrian terms, every choice a human makes adds to the scales of Good or Evil. They describe death as walking a bridge across a bottomless expanse, the width of which is determined by your deeds. The worse you are, the narrower the bridge becomes. For those who make Evil their habit, the bridge can be as thin as a wire. Guaranteeing that the Evil Soul is swallowed forever in that space between this life and the next. Right?

“As above, so below, Robert. That is not an allegory. Life is that bridge. Evil is a choice that makes every choice after it easier – because to become Evil is to fall forever into darkness, to trap oneself in the pleasure of this world. Evil and Good, however— You've read Plato, Plotinus... I'm not telling you anything you do not already know. Order and Chaos are—“

“Yin and Yang,” I say – without meaning to.

She won't know—

“Yes,” is her reply only a moment later.

But how—

Her Matere knows the Master. How much of a leap is it to think Materes in the past were not connected to the East and China, specifically?

The symbol has predated Jesus by six centuries.

Exactly. Stop being so surprised by her and just—

Enjoy her.

Enjoy yourself with her. That would be preferable, I think.

“Yin and Yang are a cycle. Their shapes imply motion. As Order chases the Chaos within it, Chaos chases its Order – and in that way they chase one another for eternity. This is the War, the push and pull, the eternal dance which has given rise to everything that is, was, or will be. The War is the Wheels within Wheels which are the universe, known, knowable, and un-. They are not Ideals, as are Good, Evil, Justice, Injustice, Right, Wrong. They are. The ideals are spheres of their own motions, balanced and mirrored within the Cosmos of Order and Chaos. They are the Two which are One and form the Multitude.”

The way she says this last is like the ending to a prayer. I can imagine her making a sign with her hands – perhaps one not so different from the Christian Cross.

As she's been speaking, I have been using the blackboard of the night sky to trace imaginary geometries in the sky – reminding myself of the Sacred Geometrical process.

You start with a point. The point represents The Beginning, empty and Void. And then there is expansion. Draw a circle with the point as Archi, center. Move the point to the circumference and draw another circle, so that they intersect at their centers. The Vesica Piscis. The Gateway.

The two that are one that make the Multitude.

“It is enough to know that it exists, and that there are Rules. The War – and the Rod.”

She is quiet, and I'm drawing imaginary interlinked circles in the sky.

“You want me to keep talking. There is so much to say. I can't believe— I should, at this point, take my own criticism, should I not? I tell you that you refuse the information that is right in front of your face, and here I am, refusing to believe that you are as... poorly prepared for what I must do – as you are. It is forbidden to prepare you. But there is much which I have done this summer which is forbidden – and for which I will surely die. Who knows – maybe one of these choices I am making which are forbidden to me will be the one to save my life.

“You are at a disadvantage to me in terms of power – no matter what knowledge about me you have acquired, I know more about you. Enough to keep you many steps behind me if I like.” Her voice is flat, matter-of-fact. “I will need to work, in the days ahead, to level our imbalance.”

She is wrong – we aren't as mismatched as she thinks. Not only do I have her Statuette, but I know what's going on with Pepin and the Rod. It could be, in fact, I who has the advantage, now.

“An inconceivably long time ago— And, please, don't start with me about how much time you can conceive of. I'm talking tens of thousands of years, maybe hundreds of thousands ago, maybe even thousands of thousands of years ago – there was a woman. Her name was not Wadjet. Probably not, anyway. But that was how she was remembered. She was an exceedingly powerful sorceress and healer, and a companion of serpents, believe it or not.”

I laugh a little. She's smiling.

“During the time she lived, the gods walked the earth. They were not memorable mortals who were canonized, sanctified, then made gods in memory, as things are done today. They were gods. The Chthonic— The ancientest gods we know today were once human people of incredible divine power. This was not an accident. The War was... different, in those days. Fought differently. The Rules were different, new. The incursions of Order and Chaos were more personal, then. They lifted men and women to heights of possibility which are today not even in the dream-memories of modern people. They achieved deeds which we only half-believe and only then as exaggerated allegory.

“But that time came to pass.”

If I'd wanted to talk to her about anything, it was the priest I'd just met. Instead, I ask:

“How was the War fought back then?”

She sighs. “Stories are all we have. Memories.”

“But stories are more than stories,” I say. “I know you know that. And memories are more than just memories – they're fallible, sure – false ones are easily implanted – and unwanted and unused ones are readily forgotten. Stories always have multiple meanings – infinite meanings to infinite readers – but more intimately, to the teller – to the compiler of myth, the historiographer – the grammarian.”

Why did this make me stop?

Why do I keep thinking about Antoninus Liberalus?

The Metamorphoses. Sybaris and—

“There is a Truth in the story – or there was once,” I talk over Instinct's whispers. “Your people are ancient, yes? Then your story is closer to the Source – the original story in which the True history was dammed, and from which it will spring forth when we find it.”

“We?”

I look down at her. She's looking up at me.

I meant Humans. But Peitho and me? Could we be some kind of— No. ...Could we?

What, like a divine dyad?

“I....”

She giggles, looking back into the night. “It's a long story. If I tell it, I have to start at the beginning. I keep telling myself I can skip around, that I can tell you the relevant information. But you're not going to let me, are you? You want to hear the whole thing.”

I breathe a single chuckle. “Yeah. I do.”

I can see her shaking her head, can see that her cheeks are pushed back in something like a thin-lipped smile – or

The too-knowing grin of a serpent?

Looks like, from this angle.

Shut up, you two. I'm trying to have a moment, here.

“They said you would be curious. That I needed to find and tap your curiosity, like pulling water out of a well. That you would follow me anywhere and do anything I wanted, then. I... I do not want to lead you by your nose. I am not a keg to be tapped at your convenience.”

I understand – is what I opened my mouth to say. But, while she is addressing this to me, she is decidedly not saying it to me. She is saying it and letting me hear it. But it is certainly not for me.

“But here I have you – finally, I have caught your lead rope, your curiosity. And it is with the secret of all secrets. What am I to do, Matere? If I tell him, I am damned. If I do not – I fear I am doomed.”

Is she praying?

Calling out to the Statuette?

Can she know we have it?

“The world is much older than the human being. And Existence, this Material Realm, has existed for many times longer than the distance between the birth of the first Man and the Creation of this World. Those stars out there—“ She lifts her arm to point at the sky. I see it in my periphery. I'm already looking there. “Each one of them is a sun in its own right, with worlds just like ours, just like the worlds we see as stars and name as gods. You know enough of Astrology to know this and know it well, I am sure. You are more than familiar with the Esoteric philosophy – you were educated by one of its—“

She suddenly stops. At first I think she's looking for a word. Then she continues straight on as if she hadn't said that at all.

“This world was not the first to be seeded with life. But it was chosen to be the first where consciousness – by that or any other name – would be... housed.”

“That doesn't sound a lot different from the Gnostic Cosmogony.”

“The Gnostics were... not wrong about everything they believed. They were wrong about one thing, however: The Ideals did not create Man. Man created Them.”

This makes me frown, but I leave it alone.

“All right. So Order and Chaos directly put Mind and Soul and Spirit and all that which makes us conscious into the Human body. Then what? Then they picked different groups or different people among the different groups to instigate conflict?”

“That is not... entirely wrong. If you would stop trying to predict it, I will tell you the story – I promise. Right. Anyway. You are right. Consciousness is whatever that combination of Mind and Soul and Spirit which makes us thinking, reasoning, learning, adaptive beings. Yes. But long before the first fully-formed Man was born, Order and Chaos had waged their War. They are the interplay of influences in our environments which keep us safe and endanger us – they are the waiting predator, the elusive prey – they are the forest and the plains, the mountains and the oceans – the wind and the rain, the hot and the cold.

“Life is complexity. From any angle or any height you look at any anything, the longer you look at it and the more you come to comprehend it and what has made it it, you will see this.” She makes a kind of laughing noise. “Complexity is complex to try to talk about with someone you aren't sure knows what you're talking about.”

I know that feeling well.

“Let's start at the very beginning. You are no doubt familiar with Sacred Geometry? Order and Chaos once existed in a state of peace, you might say. This is symbolized by the single point in the infinite Void. There was not yet even Void – space between Order and Chaos in which they could move to really get some good friction going.”

She looks up at me, and again I have to ask myself: Does everything she say sound sexual, or is it just me?

“There was the Singularity, and there was Pure Chaos – Nothing, not even conceivable nothing. Utter destruction. The Singularity is Perfect Order, however. Everything in exactly one place with only one thing it can possibly be. There can be no state of change from the Singularity. And then there was change. All at once, everything sprang into being. Time, Space, Potential. My family – we believe that Order wasn't satisfied with its own perfection. It wanted to make its perfection perfect for Chaos. Order's incursion into Chaos is when and how the Material Realm was created.”

“If Yin and Yang are at all representative of the Truth, Chaos must have invaded Order at the same time, then. Their incursions would have been simultaneous – mutual.”

Not at all that different from you and Metus walking into my life, for that matter.

Not a thought I loved the idea of dwelling on.

“Hm. This may be. I suspect that Metus has heard a story not so different from the one I am telling you, when he was just a little boy, and that in his version it is Chaos who tried to destroy the Singularity and all that might ever be. He is wrong. The men who told him this are liars – and worse, deceivers. If Chaos is Destruction, how is Order not Slavery?”

“Well, wait. Do they know that Chaos is not Destruction? Chaos is... Chaos is what, then? Chaos is when an Ordered thing breaks down, or a messy room that hasn't been cleaned yet, land which hasn't been cleared of forests and plowed for fields. To the Ordered mind, Chaos is not having enough food to feed his family – or his city or his country or his empire – or guiding human souls away from temptation and the fires of Hell. Are they not right to call Chaos destruction? Chaos is the eyes in the night that will surely be attached to a being with claws or wings or biting fangs.

“To me it seems like a point of perspective – a matter of bias.”

“Yes, Robert. We are at war,” Peitho hisses.

I clearly don't understand, and now I'm just making her agitated. I should be quiet.

“War is propoganda. War is about biasing your side against the other so you can obliterate them. And do you know which side is the best at obliteration – at complete and utter destruction?” She pauses for an answer, but I'm not giving one. “Order. That's who.”

“You sound like a cultist,” I hear myself say. “Like you're a follower of Chaos. Oh, my gods. You do know why Metus is threatened by you. It's because... it's because the Venatores are dedicated to Order.”

It makes sense. I saw the Ninth talking to Yaldabaoth. Who is Yaldabaoth if not a – if not the – god of Order? And Wadjet—

She's Chaos.

Of course!

Part 3: History, The Universe, Magick,

and Everything

Everything – well, not everything, but so much – is beginning to fall into place. I'm starting to feel excited, lying here in the dampening grass, looking out into the night. Things are starting to make sense. Why Metus is following me – if not exactly what he actually wants – what interests Peitho might represent. …Actually, that only in name. If she represents some sort of Chaos deity – or the Entity itself, like some kind of piece It's moving about on a gameboard – then she could literally be and do anything.

Isn't that Chaos's whole modus operandi?

Reason scoffs in my head. That description fits Order just as well – if not better.

I might have fallen asleep listening to these last two thoughts echo in my head like bonged bells, waiting for Instinct to chime in – but Peitho prevented both of those things.

“Who is to say that I am not?”

“Well, you sound like it.”

“Humans were sort of an accident, you might say. A byproduct of the War. In their meddling, Order and Chaos formed the perfect vessel from which to experience their universe directly. Once they realized what they'd made in the earliest Man, they made for him a Mind and a Soul. From the Light of their Union, they made of the One a Multitude. As above, so below.”

“Amen,” I mutter.

“Humans were chosen as their vessels because they believed they could fight and end the War with them. They elevated men and women all around the world They made for them, made them into gods. Those gods led people – often to war with one another. But to the Truth, as well. Toward siding forever one way or the Other.”

“Choosing Order and Chaos,” I say.

“Yes.”

“I've been thinking about that, lately. Rather, I thought that at random after I left the inn.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean— I mean I was wondering whether all of this isn't some ploy to get me to choose Order. I don't even know what it means.”

“Yes. The thing they did, when they made Man Free of them, was to make his Will his own. They could meddle – they could outright command obedience directly, then. They are not allowed this now – there are Rules, now. Eventually they made the Rule – No More Gods on Earth. No more new ones, anyway. Don't ask me why. It wasn't working. The minds of Entities such as Order and Chaos are inconceivable to beings such as us. But even they must take new approaches to problems which prove insoluble.”

“Wait—“

“No.” She laughs. “Rob, we still have nearly a week together. Ask later. Let me tell this.”

I sigh through my nose and try to convince myself I'll remember to ask her what it means to give your Will to one or the other of Them.

“They gave the gods who existed the opportunity to leave this existence and ascend to a higher one. Many of the eldest gods did just that. Wadjet was among them. But she did not just leave. With the last of her corporeal power, she crafted the Rod – an eternal reminder of her and a conduit to her as she exists now.”

“Hm.” This is a lot to hear and just accept. And yet, it aligns well enough with the folklore of nearly every place I'd been. “Have you ever used it?”

“I have not. But the Matere does, yes. I have seen healings.”

“But your family have never used it to—“

“To rule? To destroy other cities in the fasion of Moses's Ark? No. That is not its purpose.”

“In your duties as Peitho, are you— Are you some kind of warrior monk?”

Peitho snorts laughter in a hiss between her lips.

“I am trained to defend my family, yes. And to protect the Rod with violence if I need to.”

I silently imagine her as being a member of an elite military force – a kind of religious Amazon. It's not an unappealing thought. Then I remember that Metus is hardly different when I think to laugh. I don't laugh.

“I told you in Venice that I will protect you if you will work, honestly and earnestly, to assist me.”

I don't respond to this.

“It is going to be used,” I say instead, my voice appropriately solemn. “Pepin may – Pepin probably has already used it.”

“Yes. We are on the way to stopping him from doing it again.”

I was thinking about the girls. I'm glad I didn't mention them. Not that it would be long before Peitho learned there were more – and that I might have known about them, too.

“What does that look like?” I ask, shifting the course of my conversation in line with rather than parallell to hers. “He's meeting an army west of Turin. I've said that. Yes. Is it Burgundy? Provence? West Francia? I don't know. I have reason to anticipate that we might find information suggesting that his army is already on the march or is, in fact, in the mountains now. That's what I know. I know that Italy wants Berengar gone and Pepin thinks he's involved somehow. Actually – I think Pepin might think he's nobility in addition to being insane.”

“All right.”

“So let me ask you, then: Are we going to sneak into an army on the warpath to steal the Rod?”

“We will know soon enough. It is better not to dwell on what we cannot know until we learn it.”

Sometimes she sounds so much like al'Shamshir that I almost wonder if she trained with him too. What was it she'd said earlier? Something about eradicating your enemy entirely. Machiavellian – but of course Machiavelli was only Machiavelli for the 58 years preceding 1527 by writing, in The Prince, the plain truth of tyranical rulership. He was in no way endorsing his ideas, and was, in fact, writing them ironically. Don't count me as an authoritative source or an expert or anything – I only read the first draft before it went to print. That's all. But of course she didn't – she couldn't have known al'Shamshir, couldn't have trained with him.

No, I refuse to believe it. Even in his absence from my life of seven years, and her being younger than me by probably about that amount. I don't believe it is possible – not because she is a woman, either. She's bested me, easily, woman or no. Why, then?

Because she would have rubbed my nose in it like a dog's with its shit if she had. That's why.

Also because not spending energy on known unknowns until they become knowable unknowns is kind of a truism of military thinking. Just further proof she is who she says and what I feared. A fear I now find almost reassuring. At least she's prepared to defend herself – and me, if she can be trusted.

“That was not all of the Rod's history. Only it's Creation.”

I look down at Peitho. She's arched her back so that she's looking at me upside down. Her tongue pokes out of her smile invitingly – and she seems to be biting it a little bit.

Gods damn me, but she looks so good right now. I could just—

“Go ahead,” I say, pretending I'm not ignoring that my pants no longer fit comfortably.

She snickers. She can't know – can she?

“That was the First Age. Think of it as the Age of Ideas, if you like. A long time passed like this. Man and what it meant to be Human changed much. The Second Age of the War was a time of difficulty. With few gods and only the memories of the others, the people struggled to survive. Before was the Garden. This is Expulsion. But, still, human civilization, as it was, lived on. The memories of the gods, of what they had done, the Ideals they had embodied, created, in many cases— The gods lived on in stories, in temples, in sacred places.

“In these places, places of peace and places of war alike, Order and Chaos allowed the gods who had left the world but who were still interested in it to do as They themselves once had – to call on different avatars to embody their Ideals . Some of these were actual children born from actual god-human copulation – the Nephilim, if you like. Usually these were gods who had stayed – but not always. Many are the number who came back. This is the time of Giants. Men and women who took for themselves the Power and Responsibility of deciding for us all what it is to be Human. This is the Age of Gods. The Fall.

“In the Second Age, the world changed. First it froze. Then there was a great catastroophe – The Flood. It destroyed much. At least one once-great civilization. Likely many.”

“Every people I have ever visited have among the earliest stories of their people some sort of flood or similar cataclysm myth,” I confirm. “That is the end, then – of the Age of Gods?”

“Yes.”

“And we are in the Third Age, now?”

“We are in the Fourth Age, actually.”

“I see. What was the Rod doing through the Second and Third Ages?”

“I was just getting to that. The first of us, my family— She was a priestess of Wadjet in her city, Per-Wadjet, in Upper Egypt. You will want to know, so I will tell you. They were a serpent cult. Their temple was both a place to seek healing, but also to find manteio – prophesy.

“As the north and south of the world froze, it drove peoples toward the center who had never had cause to interact with the people already there. This was more peaceful than you imagine, but it was not without bloodshed – a certain amount of eradication. The heroes of these conflicts, those representatives of the first gods – these became the gods and monsters of legend. One person's god is another's demon, am I wrong?”

“Of course not.”

“When the northern gods came, she was not prepared.” Peitho's voice is as far away as ever, now. If not dreamy, reverent. Like a priest recounting the tale of his favorite Saint. “The man who would come to be remembered as Apollo – he burned her temple, enslaved her and her priestesses, and he took them – and the Rod – with him back to that place which would come in the tens of millennia later to be named Greece. To his new home, the temple at Delphi he had recently stolen from the dragon, Python.

“Of course, this was just a raid. You no doubt know of the Egyptian goddess, Wadjet. I'm sure you know her entire history as it is recorded. But of course it wouldn't be recorded that the magick with which She protected Egypt and for which She was originally revered was weakened – Her artifact, Her link to this Realm stolen, Her original temple destroyed and defiled. It wouldn't be recorded that Her earthly representative was forced to pervert Her Power and use it to lay the foundations for a new kind of civilization. How could she?”

“What was her name?” I ask.

“Lamiya.”

My hand finds its way to my mouth. Not covering it, but toying with my lips.

Lamiya. Wadjet. Snakes. Lilith.

My mind has felt, on the subject of how all the information regarding these topics fit and work together, like some sort of geared mechanism which is not properly aligned. For just a moment – a single heartbeat – that mechanism started to work – before it jammed itself again.

“So this is where the Lamia myth came from.”

“Yes. This is where it started.”

“But not where it finished. Or where it ended up.”

“The Second Age ended with the Cataclysm. It is, as the Book of Enoch says – more of less. Order and Chaos made another Rule: No more gods. No longer were they allowed to walk and act in the world as proxy for Order and Chaos. No longer were they allowed to gift ordinary people for their own ends. The gods themselves had become too powerful – and in their way, had come to supplant Order and Chaos as the One Which is Two Which is The Multitude. Order and Chaos had become symbols. By the Third Age, The Age of Heroes, Humans were fully modern humans, you might say. The changes and choices of the last Age had culminated in what we are now, what we have been for the last twenty-thousand years. And by now, even the most educated of them, those Men and Women who knew the most were two degrees of separation from the Source of the Truth. The act of communicating it was now effectively impossible outside of story – allegory, myth, drama.

“The gods were silenced and offered once more to leave – or to be trapped on the earth in their incorporeal Spirit Forms. Many left. Many stayed. Some manifested bodies and lived lives. Many took their emprisonment and banishment from the lives of men more severely than others, flying to the wilderness.”

“This is an excellent cosmogony – a very fitting synthesis of all the possible spooky and strange things. From nature spirits to fairies, they're the people who were here first – only so far removed in time they no longer resemble themselves – or us.”

“This is not just another story, Rob. This is what happened.”

“Sure. I believe you believe that. I'm admiring it.”

“Lamiya was not the first to break the Rules. That must be implicit in the knowledge that They chose to destroy what They had made. But break them, she did. She chose – in a way which was expressly forbidden – for herself and for her priestesses, her Daughters. She used the Rod. She pulled so much of Wadjet's magick into her that she changed herself and her Daughters forever. They freed themselves – they ran—“

“To Lesvos.”

“And they hid themselves in their shame. Buried, beneath the earth, with Azazel and the rest of his kin – for the crime of protecting herself and her family.”

“Amazing. Was Sappho a Daughter?”

Peitho's smile says she's not telling.

“And that's how Lamia came to mean any kind of bumptedeedoo in the night and every kind of unpredictable woman to the Greeks.”

Like how in later centuries in the English-speaking world she was a witch. And I guess now she's a Karen? I'm not sure that works the same way.

“Yes. She thwarted the Patriarch.”

I chuckle-scoff. “You see things like that, don't you? The Other is the Enemy. Men as such are the Enemy to you, aren't they?”

“Not men. Their Civilization.”

That's not something you hear every day – or maybe ever.

“You're going to have to explain that one.”

Peitho sighs. The sound is tired, frustrated. With me? I'm not sure.

“Civilization is built on a lie. They tell you that there is no Goddess because the Jews forgot Her in their Bible – though they have no problem worshiping Shekinah in their hearts – and synagogues. The Goddess is— What she is is murdered, raped, and locked away and forgotten.”

Peitho is emotional. Her posture is rigid once more, ready for a fight.

“I don't think you're necessarily wrong, Peitho. There is an awful lot of violence against women in those old stories. And modern religion is awful determined to keep women uninvolved but... Is that the secret that could overturn the apple cart? It seems pretty obvious to me. Boys will be boys, No Girls Allowed and all that. It's always seemed to me like men are more afraid of women than they are especially... I don't know, antagonistic of them. Men in general.”

“Fine. Sure. But it is the men who have decided the destiny which has become history – those who made the first choices and those who chose how they would be remembered – whom we are talking about. And those men – and women – who are convinced, or worse, inspired by them. I hate that— I hate that women like my sister – like my Sisters – are forced to hide away from the world when they could provide so much.... So much. Imagine if Christendom did not need the centuries it took for Greece to rediscover the knowledge which was lost to them during their Dark Age.

“That statuette – of the priestess you said was dressed how I am— I am not dressed how she is – she, that is the priestesses of her cult, was dressed how I am. We were first. In fact, they were so impressed with us that we adopted their language and lived among them for a time. Those colonies of my family who were able to live apart from the Island and all of their people were lost in the eruption of the volcano that ended their civilization.” I look down at Peitho. She stares up at the night sky, her face like twilight – like a portait of experiencing the loss of what might have been. “All of them. Dozens of families, maybe a thousand people. Just... gone.

“And that was the end of that. We stay on the Island now. That was easy at first because of the hate the Greeks eventually came to feel for all things King Minos and Minoan. Now, it's been so long....” She twists her mouth. “There's no chance we'd ever try it again.”

Now everything makes sense.

At least – Peitho makes sense. Sort of. Of course she's here because she wants to see the outside world she's heard and read so much about. The stars. Had she really never seen them before tonight? Is that why her Sister stole the Rod? Is Peitho sympathetic of her? Does she think her Sister was right?

“Why did your Sister steal the Rod, you think? Was it to start a new colony somewhere else?”

Peitho is silent a long time. I don't look down at her.

“I don't know what she was thinking, Robert. I just know that I have to get it – and if I can find her, her – back before my whole family are dragged into a war for our very survival.”

“Do you think that's what this is all about?” I ask the night sky. “Do you think someone has a twenty-thousand year old grudge and is trying to destroy your family?”

“Do I think that? ...It's not impossible. The gods... the minds of the gods are inconceivable. Even those who used to be Human— Even they are so far removed from what it is to be Human— even the recently... I don't know, Ascended—“ She falls silent. I can almost hear her mind working too fast, the words piling up on her tongue and clogging her throat.

It really is too much to try to talk about.

“But no. I don't think that is what is happening. I think someone – some man – has learned of the Rod and thinks to use its power for his own ends. If I knew what you had Seen—“

She twists on her side to look up at me. I close my eyes.

“Something feels wrong about this whole thing, Peitho.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean with the Rod. It's stolen – then it's stolen from the thief so it can be dragged by a clearly insane person to a battle that has nothing to do with his insanity?”

“I still don't know what you're talking about, Rob.”

“Pepin. I'm talking about Pepin. People have said that he claims to be a descendant of Pepin of Italy.”

“That's impossible. Pepin died sonless.”

“Exactly. So it's insane that Pepin is obsessed with being the king of Venice – with avenging the death of his ancestory.”

“You've heard him say this?”

I'm not answering that directly, now, am I?

“People have told me they've heard him say these things.”

“People you can trust?”

Can I trust Caesar and his pirates?

“Yes.”

“Then what feels wrong about it?”

“Pepin does not seem to me like the kind of person to make plans. Definitely not plans like this. He isn't dressed for it, and I haven't exactly heard him described as the kind of person capable of orchestrating a journey as... complex as this one, let alone a plan as – what – diffuse as this one. He doesn't benefit from attacking Berengar. Why does he want a kingdom and two enemies as soon as he takes the throne? No – it doesn't make sense. Someone else has gotten in his head and convinced him to do this thing – for their reasons.”

Peitho has gotten ghost-quiet as I have been speaking. I'm not even sure I hear her breathing.

“I just don't know who they are or what those could be.”

“You have not asked your Guide?”

I laugh. A single bark of sarcastic, bitter, self-hateful, ironic mirth. I hear it, feel it in my throat, repeat her question in my mind. And now I'm laughing for real. Slow, helpless chuckles – the kind where if I weren't laughing I would be crying – bring tears to my eyes.

“Are you all right, Robert?” Peitho asks some time later.

“I'm fine. And no – I haven't asked my Guide.”

“Why? You could know anything you needed to know. Do you think it is cheating? Some sort of advantage? Why would you handicap yourself this way?”

I would be goggling at her if we were sitting in the carriage. As it is, I'm staring wide-eyed at the sky. Is it just my imagination or is it not as dark as it was a moment ago. Is day breaking?

“Peitho, I— I don't know how to do that.”

“Ah.” She's silent for a long time after this. Long enough that I have to wonder whether our talk might be over for what's left of the night. “I... see. That is problematic. You knew how to use the Plant, though – how to brew the Potion?”

“I did – still do, for that matter.”

“And you did.”

“Of course. You were going to kill me if I didn't.”

“There's no guarantee I won't still kill you for letting me believe you actually knew how to use the Potion.”

“There is that.”

“But you saw something that led you to Venice.”

“Yes.”

“Why will you not let me read your journal, Robert? This would be so much simpler if I knew what you had seen.”

“Because—“ I start defensively, with something mean on my mind, then change my tone. “Not... not all of it was about – or for – you.”

“Secrets. We said—“

“I am not keeping a secret from you.” I'm rubbing my eyes. I don't want to get frustrated. Am I lying to her or to myself? Why do I have to be lying? “I asked you— All of this started because I asked you if you were a priestess, right?”

“...Right.”

“Right. But you're not supposed to have dreams, right? So do you know how to interpret them?”

“Robert— Have you been dreaming Dreams?”

“Yes.”

“Are you asking me to interpret them for you? Have you not—“

“Of course not. These.... These dreams don't leave much room for interpretation.”

“And yet you will not describe them for me.”

“What is there to describe, Peitho?” I bite. “When I close my eyes, I dream that I am Pepin. I'm not looking at him. I'm not with him. I am him. It's been happening since the night I took the Potion. At first I thought— I thought maybe it was the Potion. That it was just some sort of hangover. But it's been nearly every night since.”

Every night except that one in Venice.

What changed, I wonder.

“What do you see?”

Peitho's voice is soft, tender, like the touch of a barber.

“It's maddening. I feel like— I feel like if I let myself I could become him. Like I might not wake up from the dreams. Or if I do wake up, I'll wake up as him.”

“But what do you see?”

“Nothing helpful. He's on a horse. He's running it. Going to run it til it dies, too. We already know that.”

“But you knew it for – what? – two days before you confirmed here in Verona?”

“If dreaming it can be said to be the same as knowing it.”

“You knew it. You'd seen it. Do you have reason to think the dreams aren't veridical?”

“Do I have any reason to think the dreams aren't veridical?” I echo into the night. “Do I have any reason to think they are? They're dreams.”

“Dreams which have been confirmed before your very eyes two days later. You Dreamed the girls in Venice, too, didn't you? That's why you thought Pepin was killing them. It didn't make sense to me. Why would Pepin be killing girls? Did he just want to kill girls? Why waste three days when he could have beaten us to Turin before you even knew he was in Venice. He could have left no trace. Why is he doing this?”

“But it makes sense you now?”

“Does it?”

“You said it didn't make sense to you – kind of implying that it does now.”

Peitho gets quiet. It is not easy not to look at her – it's much easier to talk to someone who knows that you're scrutinizing them than it is to have a simple dialogue.

“It makes sense that you would believe that it is Pepin who is killing the girls – if you had seen him doing it,” she says some time later

“Ah. Yes.”

Peitho suddenly stands up, and I realize that I can see the dawn peeking over the horizon.

“This has been nice, Robert. We will have to do it again, soon. But now— I am off to begin my daily routines.” She takes two, three steps away from me, then stops, looking at me over her shoulder with a girlish, mischievous gleam to her eye. “You can join me – if you would like.”

And then she's walking – practically skipping, almost – toward the stables.

I stay on the hill for a while longer, yet. There is still much on my mind.

We almost talked about the priest – the Ninth. But we didn't. Did I avoid it? Or is this just how convesations go when you're not trying to steer them somewhere – wherever they happen to end up? Or did she get what she wants and now she's happy to prance off into a new day?

I lay there, looking at the sun, trying not to remember the closeness of her body, the smell of her, now poignantly, even painfully absent, the feel of the cool of her flesh against my hand. There has to be a way to describe how I feel that isn't like I have had all the build-up in the world and no release. I can't think of one better.

Eventually I push myself to my feet. Feeling a little wobbly in the knee – having nothing whatever to do with stiffness or fitness and everything to do with nerves – I make my way behind the stables. And can't believe what I find.

Peitho is there, as I figured she would be. And she's stripped herself completely naked. In the early light of the pre-dawn, she is face-down on the ground – doing push-ups.

I make a noise something like the lovechild of a gasp and an exclamation – a premature ejaculation of surprise, if you like. Peitho pushes herself from the ground and looks up at me. She's been counting under her breath.

“You going to join me?”

Her body already glistens with sweat – the hollow of her spine, the muscles of her shoulders and arms, her bu—

I turn around, spine going as straight as though I'd suddenly discovered a stick in my ass. My face is hot – and I know it's as red as a good spanking. I'm surprised there's enough blood for me to blush – what with how much of it is elsewhere.

Maybe that's why I feel light-headed.

“Thank you, Peitho, but—“

“Aw, come on.” She's pulling on my pantleg from behind.

I turn, and find her on her knees, arm outstretched to me. The curve of her waist and hips is enough to blind me. I snap my eyes shut.

Nope. Can't deal with that.

I walk away.

Scratch that. I walk out of her eyesight and run the rest of the way back into the inn.

I tell myself I'm imagining her laughter as I flee, but I can confirm now. She is delighted by my response. Cackling it up - har har.

I don't get any sleep that night. I've only been sitting on my bed, staring at the floor and trying not to admire the three-dimensional model of Peitho's nudity in my mind, for what feels like a few minutes when Tedoro knocks and it's time to start again.