“Me?” O.S. trained Thisbe to hand out death, but she shivered at the bite of cuffs around her wrists, like any amateur. “You need me,” the witch warned.

“No, I don’t.”

Her glare leaked murder. “I’m the only human besides Mycroft that Bridger will listen to. You need me to stay here so you can bring them back and I can—”

“No, I don’t,” Papa shot back. “If I need to calm the kid I’ll call a shrink.”

“Too dangerous,” she countered. “Bridger wo—”

“Less dangerous than using you.” Papa gazed at her, closely. Do you know that zeal, reader, which true connoisseurs fix on their favorites: a gourmand on some rare spice, an archaeologist on some ship-shard from the sea’s green depths, Papa on me? This was the opposite, sleeplike, a disappointed boredom, as when the spice turns out to be mere cinnamon, the shard some modern log, the murderer a self-important amateur who cannot even understand the leagues of subtlety which separate her from a Mycroft Canner. “If I want you, Thisbe, I’ll have you dragged up out of your little box. Take Thisbe Saneer away.”

He turned his back, our Papadelias, as his men marched the witch away. She struggled slightly, trying to bring the Commissioner’s eye back to her, one last chance for him to see the folly of underestimating she who held even O.S. in fear. It baffled her, I think, how Papa could ignore her. They are both right. Thisbe is an unimaginative murderess, clever but with petty motive and repetitive, not in Saladin’s league. But she is, I remind you one last time, reader, also a witch, and witches fester, and even if Papa’s men did confiscate the boots—her chemical spellbook—I fear she has more hexes yet, and bitterer, as jail and boredom nurture her black heart. It may not matter; we may not last so long.

Papa laid his open palm flat on the table. “All right, Private Croucher. Let’s go catch ourselves a Bridger, a Mycroft, and a Saladin, and stop a war.”

Croucher leapt on, like a knight mounting his steed. “Yes, sir!”

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH

Deo Erexit Deus

Chagatai was Carlyle’s excuse for treading again the garden path to the little chapel in Avignon. The valet, Carlyle reasoned, seemed to know Jehovah better than any other sane person, and sanity was never more precious than in catastrophe. Over her feed the Anonymous’s Proxy and Kosala continued to lash the airwaves with their rage, and news of the arrest of Ockham Saneer fed paranoia that the millions of cars would crash like meteors. Carlyle confessed to me, when I interviewed her to write this chapter, that she did not actually expect to find Chagatai alone in the kitchens. Rather, as the cross-less spire of the church loomed close, Carlyle felt not just hope but, as she described it, almost a premonition that the Master of the house, however rarely He might be at home in peaceful days, was near.

“Don’t move!” Guards too quick for Carlyle to count burst from the door and seized her before she had a chance to knock. They frisked her, practiced hands folding and squeezing every loose inch of her Cousin’s wrap, so not even a razor could have passed unnoticed.