“Then came the plague. The Red Death. Some folks said something had been opened in the castle, some jar of demonstuff that should have been left shut forever. Others said the plague came out of the crack—what they called the Devil’s Arse. Either way, it was the end of life in Fedic, life on the edge of Discordia. Many left on foot or in waggons. Baby Michael and his parents stayed, hoping for a train. Each day I waited for them to sicken—for the red spots to show on the baby’s dear cheeks and fat little arms—but they never did; none of the three sickened. Perhaps they were in a magic circle. I think they must have been. And a train came. It was Patricia. The mono. Do ya ken—”

“Yes,” Susannah said. She knew all she wanted to about Blaine’s companion mono. Once upon a time her route must have taken her over here as well as to Lud.

“Aye. They got on. I watched from the station platform, weeping my unseen tears and wailing my unseen cries. They got on with their sweet wee one … only by then he was three or four years old, walking and talking. And they went. I tried to follow them, and Susannah, I could not. I was a prisoner here. Knowing my purpose was what made me so.”

Susannah wondered about that, but decided not to comment.

“Years and decades and centuries went by. In Fedic there were by then only the robots and the unburied bodies left over from the Red Death, turning to skeletons, then to dust.

“Then men came again, but I didn’t dare go near them because they were his men.” She paused. “Its men.”

“The Crimson King’s.”

“Aye, they with the endlessly bleeding holes on their foreheads. They went there.” She pointed to the Fedic Dogan—the Arc 16 Experimental Station. “And soon their accursed machines were running again, just as if they still believed that machines could hold up the world. Not, ye ken, that holding it up is what they want to do! No, no, not they! They brought in beds—”

“Beds!” Susannah said, startled. Beyond them, the ghostly woman in the street rose once more on the balls of her feet and made yet one more graceful pirouette.

“Aye, for the children, although this was still long years before the Wolves began to bring em here, and long before you were part of your dinh’s story. Yet that time did draw nigh, and Walter came to me.”

“Can you make that woman in the street disappear?” Susannah asked abruptly (and rather crossly). “I know she’s a version of you, I get the idea, but she makes me … I don’t know … nervous. Can you make her go away?”

“Aye, if you like.” Mia pursed her lips and blew. The disturbingly beautiful woman—the spirit without a name—disappeared like smoke.

For several moments Mia was quiet, once more gathering the threads of her story. Then she said, “Walter … saw me. Not like other men. Even the ones I fucked to death only saw what they wanted to see. Or what I wanted them to see.” She smiled in unpleasant reminiscence. “I made some of them die thinking they were fucking their own mothers! You should have seen their faces!” Then the smile faded. “But Walter saw me.”