<it’s true. i ran sims where those points weren’t deleted. it’s exquisite what sidney and eureka have been doing. if all those discords had been left in place, it would have fallen into chaos, all of it, a dozen times at least. they saved the world.>

“Made the world, more like,” Papa corrected. “They made this world. Two thousand, two hundred and four deaths buy one golden age.”

“Sede te, domine! Tua culpa non est! Domine!” (Calm yourself, sir! It’s not your fault! Sir!—9A)

It was not to the room that Martin cried, but to Jehovah. Had you forgotten that the Porphyrogene can watch at any moment through His Martin’s tracker? This investigation was assigned to Jehovah Mason, and Martin’s silence—here’s the cruelty of it—Martin’s silence made the kind Prince check in on him. He was Witness at this dark unmasking, and His Mind’s great Eye saw at once past petty politics to the greater horror, that our Creator, the Mind That Wills This Universe, creating Man (perhaps in His own image?) made Man this. I should have been with Him. I count it a mercy that I was not awake to hear Jehovah’s words of pain, but I should have been. That is my duty in the house, to sit with Him in troubled hours and listen to the inner questions of a God. It was Dominic who kept them from fetching me, Dominic who bade the other servants leave me be, so he could claim this moment for himself. Can you see him, reader? The bloodhound limping as quickly as injury allows toward the Young Master’s bedroom, his lips twitching at the sound of his God’s cries as if tasting some rare liqueur? Already in Dominic’s hot imagination he tastes Jehovah’s tears, sees his God pressing Himself into his arms, shuddering like a pet bird. This is the consummation he has drooled for, that day of weakness he has wanted ever since Madame first held the Infant in her arms and cooed, “Look, little Dominic, here is thy Master.” He might have had it too, his victory day, seen tears—true tears at last!—leak down his Master’s blank and distant cheeks, had Mercy in the form of Heloïse not beat him to Him. Her cell stood close by Jehovah’s study, and her legs, though tiny, were uninjured, so she flew to Him prompt as a mother. Dominic, arriving second, heard her voice along the corridor. She did not comfort Jehovah—in her world it is not woman’s part to console man—rather she had Him tell her of His grief, and, hearing of the deaths of innocents, she wept, she sobbed, she shivered fragile in her habit’s rough embrace, so her God had no choice but to comfort her, and make Himself again the strong One. Dominic has always hated happy Heloïse, but until that day there had been others he hated more. Still, with Bridger almost in his pocket, he could wait.

“That’s Epicurus Mason on the line, isn’t it?” Papa asked, the Greek choosing the Greek name from Jehovah’s many. “They’re watching? They heard?”