The Father of Men and Gods faced the shadow cast by Apollo’s stolen armor. “I have long known what Madame is, monster. Do not presume to understand my thoughts.”

Madame perked. “Then you don’t mind if I keep him? I know you can’t stop me if Papa can’t, but I won’t keep him if it distresses you, Cornel. I want you to be comfortable around me.”

MASON faced her squarely. “I thank you for your honesty in answering my questions, Madame.”

She frowned. “What will you do now, Cornel? You’re the trickiest. Unlike the others, you can change any day the name sealed in the Successor’s Vault in Alexandria, and neither public opinion, nor law, nor I, can stop you.”

MASON: “The law forbids speculation about the Imperator Destinatus.”

Madame: “He needs omnipotence, Caesar. Yours is the largest Leviathan; you can take the biggest blindfold off him.”

MASON: “The law forbids speculation about the Imperator Destinatus.”

Madame: “He is your Son. He really is, more than anybody else’s, your Son.”

MASON: “You say that to a lot of men.”

Madame: “I lie to a lot of men, but not to you.”

MASON: “What about Spain?”

Madame: “Nurture matters more than nature. Jehovah could be Kraye’s son but They’d still be yours.”

MASON: “And their mother? When Jehovah was born you promised Spain you’d marry them if the public ever learned who the child’s father was. Will you break that promise?”

Madame’s gaze fell away from Caesar’s. “I can’t deny that His Majesty has asked again that I marry him. And I’ve consented. With Crown Prince Leonor dead, Jehovah must be legitimated or the Spanish strat will fall apart, possibly Europe as well.”

MASON turned away. “We both know Spain’s views on monogamy. Things can’t continue as they have been between us if you are Spain’s Queen, it would eat them away inside, not to mention what the public would say.”

She took the Emperor’s hand. “I didn’t want it like this, Cornel, you know I didn’t.”

He pulled away again. “You’ve told the truth this far, don’t spoil it. If you didn’t want this, you would have arranged things differently.”

Madame’s hurt might have been genuine. “I told you I didn’t plan this, I just planned the creatures who could achieve it. You think everything went in line with my ideal? I loved Brussels. I was very proud of my Merion Kraye, I didn’t want him dead. I’ve lost my Ganymede to the law, poor Danaë is half dead from the shock, and Bryar and Ancelet will never forgive me. I loved them, Cornel. And I love you.”

I omit the next few exchanges, reader. MASON deserves some privacy, and what matter is it to history, the sentimental terms and gestures with which old lovers say goodbye?

“Jehovah!”

They wheeled him back to us now, lying on a gurney, not because of weakness, but in deference to the hospital habit of circumscribing patients in the geometric borders of a bed.