“Not after.” He slid the crystal half-chandelier aside to bare technology beneath. “It’s finished, set and sealed, all it needs is Mycroft Canner’s signature accepting the appointment.” His quaking left hand fumbled as he accessed the panel. “Apollo requested it, nine days ago. They came to me, frantic, insisting I start the process to make Mycroft Canner a Familiaris immediately. I thought it was because Apollo thought Aeneas had wanted it, and was trying to carry out a dead friend’s wishes, but that wasn’t it. Apollo suspected Mycroft even then, and wanted to put Mycroft’s fate in my hands.”

“To make sure the Mardis were avenged,” Bryar Kosala suggested at once. “Apollo knew if Mycroft was a Familiaris we wouldn’t have to change any laws to execute them, you could order it yourself. Perhaps Apollo meant—”

MASON turned on her, all thunder. “What would you know about what Apollo meant!” He caught himself, bottling his rage as a sailor seals the cabin door against a storm. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She smiled it away; Mom can smile anything away.

The Emperor tore the page from the printer’s jaws. “We’ll tell the public Mycroft was already a Familiaris, and that I have dealt with them as I saw fit. Everyone will assume that means an execution, and that will be the end, no trial, no questions, done. Can you free Mycroft’s hand enough for them to sign the page?”

Mushi Mojave worked the controls, liquefying the Cannergel enough for my right arm to stretch semifree in its rubberband grip. “I’ve spoken with Apollo’s bash’,” the Utopian recited, sullen. “In this case we will suspend modo mundo.” Had it not occurred to you, reader, that—as a Utopian’s killer—I, much more than Chagatai, deserved to be banished from the kingdoms of fiction? Utopia had its own plans for me. “At least until the book is done.” From the depths of the coat’s static, Mushi’s unwilling hand produced Apollo’s Iliad, treasure of treasures, scatterbrained and far from finished, which I had cursed not finding on Apollo’s corpse. It was at that moment, as the book slid through a slot into my waiting hand, that Mushi’s static gave way to ants, and across the world the millions of Utopian coats showed again their nowheres. In every corner of the teeming globe people relaxed, believing I was dead. You were not wrong.

Cornel MASON slid the Familiaris contract in after the book, and a crayon with it, squished from a long stint in his pocket, Laurel Mardi’s perhaps, which the little prince had used to scribble fancies as he played beneath the Emperor’s desk. “You will become my Familiaris, and a Servicer,” MASON pronounced. “You will work without rest to cover every service your victims would have done for us, and when no task is given to you, you will think what Apollo or the others would have done with those spare minutes and still work. If I ever judge that you are slacking in your duties I shall deal with you as I choose, and my Capital Power knows no limits. On these terms and these terms alone you live. Sign it.”