Achilles met my eyes, and showed me the tears in his, for the Great Soldier finds no shame in tears when Fate gives cause. Then he turned away, and placed his hand on MASON’s arm.

“I imagine,” the Delian continued, “that most of you now need to go denounce us. I recommend that you make it very clear that the payment you have accepted from us was in return for the property destroyed, and that it in no way means you condone the kidnappings. Unless you happen to condone the kidnappings.”

“Your motive yes, your methods absolutely not,” Kosala answered, clear and calm.

Spain nodded agreement.

Spain and Kosala looked to Ancelet, expecting agreement from him too, I think, but he was hushed, a Censor’s instincts warring with a president’s inside him, as the casualty predictions, multiplying in his calculator-mind, muddled his duty.

Kosala’s was not muddled. “If you thought disarmament was an issue, you should have started a dialogue.”

“Even had all Hives agreed to cloister all harbingers and adepts in neutral custody, we do not believe all would have acted on that compact in good faith. Several Hives have proved themselves willing to both conceal and use abominable means. But you are right that, by striking alone, we have violated the compact between the Hives. You must go denounce us.”

I read respect in Kosala’s pursed lips. “Yes, you…” Confusion exiled it. “Jed? What are you doing?”

He was stripping. He stripped off the black coat with its pleats and cording, and as He did so it withered somehow, wilted, the black pigment draining from it as it left His body, as if it could not exist without a Maker to sustain it. My eyes could not explain it until the coat blipped static for a moment, then died away into the dull green-gold of inactive Griffincloth. I should have realized. It had always been Griffincloth. All Hives had let Him wear their sigils: Mason, Mitsubishi, Europe, Cousin; all who thought Him one of them had marked Him so. Even Utopia. This Visitor has worn His nowhere all this time, an eighteenth-century cut but Griffincloth, showing a world with nothing in it that can be understood by our senses, so we see only his Peer’s opposite, pure black. That must have been the shimmer, I realized. During His resurrection, that shimmer on the video that some call proof of fakery, others of miracle: it was His coat rebooting after Sniper’s Weeksbooth Counterbombs fried all the electronics on the Rostra. Just Griffincloth, no miracle, no fakery. Just truth.

Utopia: “What are You doing?”

Jehovah: “I return this to you.” He held out His coat.

Utopia: “No need. We’ve broken with your mother, not with You, we still—”

Jehovah: “I shall not accept the terms you gave My mother.”

Utopia: “What?”

Jehovah: “You gave My mother only your conditional surrender.”

Utopia: “I… we…” Digital glances flew.