“Teach him the manuscript, Messenger,” Tevach said. “I try to, but I understand little.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Hours. Till almost morning. I will tell you.”

Aharon nodded. He felt the burden of fear and anxiety slip from his shoulders, as if he were someplace safe, though nothing could be further from the truth. He saw clearly the risks these poor creatures were willing to take, and for what? For the truth. For love’s sake—they still had faith in the idea of God’s love. His heart was moved.

He didn’t understand what was happening, why he was really here, or if anything he could do or say would make any difference. But as he began to speak, searching inside his own beginner’s understanding for the right words, he knew that none of that mattered. He could only let compassion flow through him and let the consequences fall where they may.

They talked longer than they should have. The heretic was slow but thought deeply. His questions were often basic and sometimes hostile, but he had the true heart of a student. If only Aharon had had such a one among the boys at his yeshiva!

Tevach paced by the door and was literally whining by the time he got Aharon to leave the cell. The guards posted outside did not bother them, but Aharon could feel their eyes pinned to his back as he and Tevach crouched toward the stairs.

Before they had gone up one flight a Fiore was suddenly in front of them, looking at Aharon and bowing up and down from the waist. He spoke rapidly, gestured, and Aharon didn’t need to understand the words to know he was being summoned. He froze; Tevach, too. Unfortunately, the wily schemer under his arm had been swallowed up again by the mouse. Aharon had no idea what to do.

“We must go downstairs,” Tevach whispered.

“What? Why?”

“We must!”

Down they went. As they moved into the bowels of this vile place, Aharon got the feeling he was descending into a grave and would never climb out again. Every step he took away from the night—if it was even still night outside—away from the relative safety of the carriage was tightening a noose around his neck.

At the bottom of the stairs was a single short hall with a thick door and two guards. And also… Argeh. Tevach trembled, his eyes on the ground, useless. Aharon could smell his own stinking sweat. His heart—well, the only good thing that could be said about pain in his chest was that it was going to kill him before Argeh did. Small mercies. He had feared the worst and the worst had come to pass. He had left his room, he had to admit it, with every understanding of the danger. There was no one to blame but himself. The sages say, “He who takes the bread must pay the baker.”

The high priest barked something at him, gave him weird sideways glances. Something was happening, but Aharon had no idea what. So he tried silence. Argeh barked again. Aharon gave an imperious gesture with his hand. Argeh gave him a look like he had completely lost his mind but stomped up the stairs, growling to himself.

The other Fiore bowed his head nearly to the floor and backed away also. The two guards followed. Then it was only Aharon and Tevach and that door.

The House of Cleansing was just beginning to stir when My Lord arrived at dawn. A carriage pulled away from the front steps as his carriage pulled up. My Lord frowned at it. Carriages were few and far between on Fiori—they were too expensive to maintain. Then he realized it must be Gehvis, going to fetch medicines. The message from the physician had been urgent and succinct: He’s dying. Come.

Joints screaming, My Lord made his way into the prison. The pending death of Wallick seemed to have infected the whole place. The guards at the door groveled with even more fear and confusion than usual. Inside, Fiore scattered at his presence. Down the treacherous stony stairs he went, each level colder than the one before. And with every step he cursed Tevach, that ingrate. When My Lord needed him most the Fiore had disappeared, forcing him to rely on Decher. As competent as Decher was as a bodyguard, he made a miserable leaning post, always out of step, hesitant in his support of My Lord’s weight.

Halfway down, My Lord ran into Argeh. The priest stiffened on the stairs with a look of puzzlement. My Lord snapped at him, not pleased to see him anywhere near Wallick’s cell, especially now, “What is it, Argeh? Why are you here?”

Argeh gawked. Then the strangest look came into his face: a wondrous, dreadful, devious look. My Lord did not know what was going on and it frightened him. He pushed past Argeh abruptly. “My presence is required.”

At the bottom of the stairs there were no attendants, no guards, outside Wallick’s door. My Lord sighed his frustration. Upset after upset, as if it were not enough to have to deal with what was waiting for him in that room.

“I’ll go in alone,” he told Decher tersely, and pushed open the door.

Kobinski could smell the presence of death. The cell felt somber and oddly respectful. Wallick’s rasping, uneven breath was like a broken machine turning its last few cycles. He had been left completely alone, but he was still alive. My Lord was greatly relieved. That look from Argeh—My Lord had half expected Wallick to be dead already.

My Lord crippled his way to the table and looked down at the devastated mass of tissue. The last time he was here, he’d caught a glimpse of the ruin that could come upon him if he allowed himself to see this situation in just a slightly different way, if he turned his mirror just a touch to the left or right and got another perspective on the two men, two enemies, facing each other over the years in this room. This time, standing here, the mirror was already tilted, and there was nothing he could do to turn it back. He could remember clearly what he’d felt like before, why he had done it, how it had been about justice, how he’d felt he was sacrificing himself for his son’s justice. But that rationale now felt as flimsy as—he looked at Wallick—a man’s life.

My Lord closed his eyes, willing forth the avenger. Isaac, he thought, willing forth his boy’s face. But the face had faded a long time ago. All that was left was the hate that had wrapped around that name, and he saw that clearly, too.

“Ko-binski,” Wallick said, his tongue small and hard in his mouth, the syllables distorted.

My Lord opened his eyes. Wallick, only one eye visible at all now, was looking up at him. That lone orb was bright and shiny, almost incandescent. He worked his reddened maw to form words out of some memory that it had once been a mouth.

“…dying,” Wallick managed, “…I know…”

The maw paused to swallow, to gum itself back to someplace capable of speech. I know. Know what? That he wasn’t already dead and that this wasn’t the afterlife? That this had been done to his living flesh? That the god that had judged him was none other than Yosef Kobinski?

“For-give me,” Wallick gasped, “as I for-give… you.”

My Lord bit his tongue, hard, to stop up the outraged tears that came to his eyes.

That single bright eye gazed up at him desperately, as if it could cling to him, force him to relent.

“For-give me…” Wallick tried again, “as I for-give…” This time, his speech was given a moment of clarity, just for an instant, the words coming out sharply defined. “You, Yosef…” Then the eye fixed itself in space and the light inside it faded.

My Lord looked at the face for a long time. Wallick’s had once been a handsome face, an Aryan ideal, perfect but cruel. Now it was neither. The body was already stiffening into something objectified, the raw, bloody aspect of it organic and terrible, terrible and cold, like an animal struck and left at the side of the road, like the shanks of meat in the market square.