Carlyle sat up fully now, glaring defiance, the hints of blond in her hair catching the light like old gold. “You know, Bryar Kosala had almost talked me into being okay with what Madame does here, that Madame was just using gendered sex to vent people’s urges and foster inter-Hive collaboration, but the real problem is encouraging others to imitate that. Even if there’s still sexist residue that makes it harder for a woman to get ahead outside, sitting here using sex to pull strings isn’t going to end that inequality, and encouraging normal people like Thisbe to do it too is just going to reduce the number of competent women that are out there trying to make things equal.” She frowned, seeing a stifled snicker twist Dominic’s lips. “Have I said something funny?”

“Thou hast it backwards. Madame isn’t here pulling strings because it’s hard for a woman to make it to the top out there, it’s hard for a woman to make it to the top out there because Madame’s here pulling strings. No one gets to the top now except the ones she chooses, and, however good she is with all genders, she finds the traditionally masculine the easiest to draw in and control. Fifty years ago half the Hives had female leaders, fifty years ago the Seven-Ten lists were always different, and fifty years ago this building was a music conservatory.”

Carlyle wiped her chin and soiled hair with a handkerchief Dominic had left on hand for her. “You’re saying Madame’s artificially re-created sexism so they can manipulate the world with it? That’s absurd. I can’t believe one brothel could have that much influence.”

“Reawakened, not re-created—the old dragon but slept. They did not finish it off, thy ancestors, after their surface victory, they did not chase the worm to see how deep it coiled.” Dominic leaned back, the black over-cape of his habit falling back to let the white folds of the lower layer pool between the roundness of his breasts. “We spent ten thousand years perfecting gender, more: gendered clothing, gendered gestures, gendered language, gendered thought, a hundred thousand tools of seduction, so literally all a maiden had to do was let a glimpse of ankle show beneath her skirts to blind almost anyone with thoughts of sex. Since the worst of both sides in the Church War were also those that separated the sexes most, fear wedded gender to religion’s poison in the survivors’ minds. Suddenly neutered dress and speech were mandatory to proclaim one’s allegiance to the ‘good guys,’ and anyone who used skirts and ties and ‘he’s and ‘she’s—even in nontraditional ways—invited the label ‘zealot.’ So the Great ‘They’ Silence fell, but our ancestors didn’t purge the libraries and history books, didn’t ban the costumes from the stage and screen, and those are enough to teach us gender’s old language, the cues of dress and gait, which even today thou understandeth as clearly as ‘thee’ and ‘thou.’ ”

“Understand and hate,” Carlyle spat back.