“Who knew about this?” Kosala asked. “It’s some low-level conspiracy, right? It can’t have been the leaders, they…” She winced as she found her eyes already straying to Andō and Ganymede. “You didn’t know, right? Andō?”

Would he have tried to lie, I wonder, had he not raised his eyes to find Jehovah’s staring at him? Men tell me that Jehovah’s eyes look dead, a blackness which focuses on nothing and reflects nothing, lightless as the emptiness of Space. They must, I think, be atheists who say this, for, to me, the black of heaven that we see behind the stars is more alive than anything.

“This system is older than its current leadership,” Andō began, “remember that. We inherited this, one of the powers of our offices. We could no more abandon it than you could throw away that black sleeve, MASON.”

Caesar’s eyes fell to his left hand. “Have you killed Masons?”

“One thousand and twenty-one Masons,” Jehovah supplied, “seven hundred and eighty-two Cousins, two hundred and fifty-six Brillists, twenty-eight Hiveless, and one hundred and seventeen Europeans in the years before Europe joined the conspiracy.”

“I want Andō to answer, Fili.”

Never let it be said that the Mitsubishi Chief Director cannot meet Caesar’s iron gaze. “I have a duty to my Hive as you do, MASON. This is part of it.”

“That’s right,” Perry chimed in. “It’s like the Emperor’s duty to torture their successor, or how the Déguisé inherited all the duties of the Anonymous, even the shady ones.” He avoided Bryar’s hot glance. “We didn’t create this system. You think we want the world to be dependent on murder?”

I spotted tears in Spain’s eyes. “You knew, Prime Minister?”

Perry forced himself to face the King. “Yes, Your Majesty, I’ve known for years, ever since I was appointed to the Special Means Committee. That’s what they… we… do. The committee was created a hundred and twenty years ago by the subministers that made the deal to join this three-way alliance. It’s been so good for Europe, you can’t possibly imagine. The committee existed to let Europe participate in the system without the knowledge of the Prime Minister, to protect you and your predecessors from involvement with the assassinations because… because…”

“Because His Catholic Majesty goes to confession,” Madame supplied.

Kosala could hardly keep herself from ripping the paper in her shaking hands. “You mean because Spain has a conscience, unlike some.”

“Conscience?” Andō repeated, hoarse with scorn as if Kosala had just recommended some useful artifact to its inventor. “My conscience could not be clearer. Thousands, perhaps millions of lives are saved by every war we stop. All your charities have never given so much as a band-aid to so many.”

“War?”

Just as, at sunset, the battlemented fortresses scattered across the Greek coast by the old Venetians stand in black blocks against the sea’s rose gold, so Andō stood stark against the sparkling twins. “War, Bryar,” he confirmed. “Riots. Slaughter. Death. Déguisé can tell you, they watch the numbers more closely than any of us. How many close calls have we had, Déguisé? How many ripples in the Hive balance that would have exploded if something invisible hadn’t tipped us back from the brink?”