Julia: «Why not now? Because Papadelias is there with you? You can tell your Papa, next time they set their sights to bring me down, they should remember that, while I do have the means to lubricate juries and make sure evidence is lost, I don’t actually need to flex those muscles anymore. Plastic has been made flesh, a messiah resurrected, and an ancient demigod walks the Earth; Church is currently more indispensable than Law, so I’m impregnable.»

I: «Do you really want me to pass that on?»

Julia: «You would, if I commanded, wouldn’t you? You sweet, whipped thing.»

I: «You can’t claim credit for breaking me, Julia.»

Julia: «I know. They taught me envy, your Madame and your Jehovah.»

I: «Madame perhaps. Ἄναξ Jehovah taught you nothing if you envy Him.»

Julia: «Forty-eight hours, Mycroft. If you haven’t scheduled a session by then…»

I: «Tully Mardi.»

Julia: «What?»

I: «Famine. And you know I’m not Death. Goodbye, Julia.»

At last the privacy of an ice-glass elevator delivered us to the greater privacy of the athletes’ wing. Along the main hall, posters of sport triumphs alternated with the doors of private training suites, bright with team colors. It was not hard to spot the door with eight guards flanking it, all in Humanist boots, with the bull’s-eye’s Olympic rainbow bright upon the inky jackets of the Humanist Black Team—Sniper’s team. Through the frosted window in the door I could see the familiar blobs of Sniper’s preferred exercise equipment, its favorite posters of role models and teammates, and I heard the rhythm of breath and force as someone practiced fencing lunges. Jehovah knocked.

“Who is it?”

“Those you expect, the Law, and Mycroft Canner. If some of these are unwelcome, they may be excluded.”

A pause. “The Law… you mean Martin Guildbreaker?”

“Ektor Carlyle Papadelias, who will, for the peace’s sake and Mine, keep secrets.”

As we heard the door unbolt, the diagonal black sunburst rays of Sniper’s team jacket rippled like snakes behind the textured glass. Once I was inside, even the uniform and fencing mask could not make me mistake our host for Sniper. It was a good impersonation, even down to Sniper’s gait, sprightly but careful like a spider’s, but those were not the curves of Sniper’s sport-perfected calves, and an eye who knew to look for it could spot the stiffness of the binding which concealed breasts.

“May I introd—” I began as I closed the door behind us, but interruption killed courtesy dead.

“Where’s Sniper?” Papa pressed.

“Missing.” Lesley Juniper Sniper Saneer removed her fencing helmet to reveal makeup and a short black wig which simulated her beloved bas’sib to the millimeter. Her body was tense within the form-fit fencing whites, but she still somehow seemed lifeless to me, Lesley’s customary vibrancy muted by the straight black wig which stifled the curls which should have clouded around her, like the windswept surface of a tree. “We thought your side had captured them, until your announcement made it obvious you thought they were still with us.” Lesley swept the detritus of cups and socks and citrus peels off the room’s chairs, and the sofa on whose clean blueness her doodles already twined like weeds. “Sit?”