“Yes, Father. Apologies.” I helped Dominic change, his reconstructed fingers not yet quite equal to waistcoat buttons, or to easing his taut stockings over the calf. He wore his Master’s black still, trimmed with black lace which lapped at black gloves and black boots, so the scarlet Mitsubishi crests on his haori jacket stood out like gore.

A garment bag held Carlyle’s costume, virgin from the tailors. Its blackness almost matched her abbot’s. Not even the Chevalier, Dominic’s second in Madame’s halls, may wear so much pure black as this. The coal-black satin had no colored trim nor lining, just embroidery along its seams in royal blue, which woke the blue diamond sparkle in Carlyle’s eyes, dimmer than her uncle Ganymede’s, but still as deadly as the glittering bait of old Versailles. It was a gown. I saw relief in Carlyle’s eyes when she saw that, and I thanked Dominic in my heart for this kindness, which cannot have been an easy one; even the bloodhound pays a price for so opposing dread Madame.

“Thou’dst best shower before dressing, Sister Carlyle, thou’rt filthy.” Dominic made for the door, his stiff hands struggling with the iron latch. “You may both catch up with notre Maître and myself when you’re presentable.”

Getting Carlyle into the shower was easy, but getting her into the gown and corset, whose workings were as alien as Sanskrit to both of us (I am no maidservant) required asking help from the nearest ladies. They were eager, but twittered throughout, over the gown at first, then over the beauties of the Prince-héréditaire herself, when they found their subtler flirtations went unscolded. Carlyle had no spirit to chastise them, just a compliant limpness as her silent inner self remained in someone’s thrall (Dominic’s? Pascal’s? Julia’s? Thisbe’s? Perry-Kraye’s?). I tried to defend her when, the gown complete, the ladies lingered to keep flirting, but they called me ‘bad’ and shut me in the bathroom, chiding my ‘barking,’ and in my office as ‘that weird stray dog the Young Master brought home,’ I could only let their game play out. I thought of calling Sister Heloïse, but she was at Casablanca. The Cousins’ election the previous Tuesday had granted Minister Cookie and several of her Nurturist followers seats on the Cousins’ Transitional Congress, though, to their credit, the Cousins also elected Bryar Kosala and many of her allies, and, strangely, rashly, inevitably, Heloïse. Heloïse had been much in the public eye: her speech to the Senate, her blood-smeared ministration to the victims in Odessa, and her spitfire remonstrations of the guilty in the riots’ wake. The public, and the Cousins in particular, demanded more from this font of goodness, more than a Minor and outsider could provide. Heloïse had chosen the European Union to administer her Adulthood Competency Exam (the best option available in French), and applied to the Cousins the next day. She was no sooner Cousined than elected, and sat with the Transitional Congress at that very moment, presenting her latest studies of the violence.