“What do you mean?” Duncan asked.

“Will they see it as the demolition, the destruction, of a god, or will they be strangely unmoved?”

Duncan laughed. “I’m strangely unmoved.”

In part, we had come to the pier to relax. We were both still a little rattled from a close call the day before, when we had arrived at what was supposedly the scene of a bomb attack only to find the bombs exploding as we got there. My hair was dirty and streaked with black from the explosion. My face had suffered half a dozen abrasions. Duncan had had a thumbnail-sized chunk of his ear blown off. Already, it had begun to regenerate, which I found fascinating and creepy at the same time. (Do you want a glimpse of something even more fascinating? The real problem was: it wasn’t my ear. That had been blown off a long time before.)

“I think it’s sad,” I said. “They’re carting off all of our valuables, like common thieves.”

Until then, F&L had contented themselves with bombing us silly day and night. The steady northward stream of goods, art, and statuary had only started in the past week. It should have been a clear sign that the war was about to change again. After all, F&L, with their fungal mines, bombs, and bullets, seemed to have a direct line to a certain disenfranchised underground group.

“Actually, Janice,” Duncan said, as he dipped his ugly toes in the Moth, “I hesitate to try to convince you otherwise, but I think the sight of Voss Bender’s head floating vaingloriously down the Moth is very funny. So much effort by old F&L, and for what? What can they possibly think they will do with these ‘remains’ when they reach Morrow? Rework the marble into columns for some public building? Reassemble the statue? And if so, where in Truff’s name would they put it? We hardly knew where to put it ourselves.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t be sad, too.”

Did I already say that there came to be the most terrible of Festival nights? It burned down the Borges Bookstore. It stopped the war between F&L and H&S. It stopped the love between Duncan and Mary, too. Snapped it. Was no more. Never again. (It brought an end to many things, this is true. But the Festival had nothing to do with ending my relationship with Mary. I caused that all by myself.) There had never been a Festival like it, except, perhaps, during the time of the Burning Sun. There may never be another like it again. (Why would there need to be? Every week since the Shift began, some part of the city is as raw as during Festival time.)