A steady regard turned him toward the living room. Both cats sat on the sofa and stared disdainfully at him. Dogs always insisted on playing pack politics with his kind. Cats were smarter.

“I need to know what she’s told him.”

Zazu snorted.

“If you expect me to believe that you’ve never made a morally ambiguous choice, think again. Cats are all about morally ambiguous.”

Whitby yawned.

He’d half expected the letter to be handwritten in flowing black script on thick linen paper, instead it was Times New Roman, 12pt, on 20lb white bond. There was no salutation or signature.

I saw him win. As he advanced on the city, I cast the crystals and I saw he would win. I cast again, and again, and every time the Shadowlord was victorious. I tried to convince Kiril and Sarn to leave with me, but they refused. They refused to understand that there was nothing they could do—that they could not win. Fight for us, the people of the city screamed. Die for us. They walked out to their deaths and I opened the gate.

Even after seven years, my sight is not so clear in this world, but every time I look, I see him win. What point in trying when loss is foreseen—although I no more expect to convince you of this than I could convince Kiril and Sarn.

I can only hope that on some new world this will change.

Now you know what I know.

For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.

“It’s not worth much,” Henry snarled, folding the letter back along its original lines. Then he stood for a long moment with his hand above the phone.

Tony, it’s Henry. Don’t go into work tomorrow.

Don’t be among the first to die.

Wait until sunset when I am there to fight beside you.

Their tie was strong enough that even at a distance he could make it a command, not a request.

But he’d neither asked nor commanded it in the car as they drove away from the studio, both of them well aware of what the morning could bring.

As much as Henry wanted to, he would not take Tony’s choice from him. He stepped away from the phone, hand dropping to his side. “The choices we make, make us,” he told the cats.

Zazu snorted. Whitby yawned.

Arra’s letter to Tony back in its envelope, back on the table, Henry slipped out into the night.

Sixteen

Sixteen

THE CARPENTERS had been called in at 6:00, Peter and Sorge together having decided that the location they’d intended to use for the streets-of-London-circa-1870 flashback was unsuitable owing to half a dozen junkies who flat out refused to move. A set, therefore, had to be built. By the time Tony arrived at 7:30, the scream of saws and the pounding of hammers could be heard all the way out to the craft services truck.