“But you don’t dismiss the idea completely, do you? You’re wondering what you’d trade if it meant you’d salvage something out of this, whether you can get to keep the tower, the company, the syndicate, the girl… ah. She was right.” Petrovitch smiled and snorted. He noticed for the first time that Hijo wasn’t his usual immaculate self: jacket torn, shirt dirty, trousers ragged. His polished shoes were encrusted with filth. “You thought that when Oshicora-san came to see me, he was giving me his blessing. And you couldn’t take losing her to an unworthy gaijin, so you killed him, but Sonja saw you, and so on and so on. Oshicora-san liked me, but he wanted her to marry some Japanese pureblood. He warned me off. I said I’d stay clear of her. We parted on good terms.”

Hijo had gone pale. Sweat trickled down his forehead. “So why are you here?”

“I’ve come to talk to Oshicora-san. What about you?”

“He is dead,” he hissed. “I killed him myself.”

“And yet, when Sonja told you he was still alive, you had to come and find out for yourself.”

“You put these thoughts in her head. You told her she would find him here. Why did you do that?”

Petrovitch cackled. “You ignorant govnosos. You’ve no idea, have you? Even though she’s tried to explain it to you, over and over again, you wouldn’t believe her. Why should I waste what little time I have left on you?”

Hijo reached down and filled his fist with Petrovitch’s collar, hauling him half off the ground. He pressed the barrel of his gun at Petrovitch’s throat. “He is not a machine!”

“Trust you to get it zhopu-backward. The machine thinks it’s Oshicora, not the other way around. It’s not a resurrection—it’s reincarnation. A bit Shinto, in its way, really.” Petrovitch taunted Hijo, even though he knew the man could pull the trigger at any moment.

Hijo’s face went through several grotesque contortions. “How can this be?”

“I could tell you, but that’s dependent on you not killing me. In fact, it seems rather a lot depends on you not killing me. You can’t stop the New Machine Jihad, because you killed its creator. Sonja won’t, because she sees it as the last link to her father. Only I can do this. Only I can make sure you have something left by tomorrow morning.”

Petrovitch was released, and he fell back down to the ground in a crumpled heap. Hijo walked around him, agitated, uncertain, raising and lowering his pistol as he debated with himself as to whether to finish his prisoner off.

“You,” he finally said. “Get up.”

“That might be a problem,” said Petrovitch.

“Get. Up.” He punctuated the order with jabs of his shoes.