“There’s only this,” said Phoebe, holding up a picture of a grubby page with the palimpsest highlighted behind it. “It’s not from the Venerable Keith’s Evadum, nor, as we suspected, an early treatise called Dry rot & other cankers of the joiste by Howard de Winforton. In fact, we can’t find out what it is.”

“But what does it look like?” I asked.

She thought for a moment. “It bears something of a similarity to the style and spelling idiosyncrasies of the Venerable Bede but strays far from his usual subject matter. Bede generally wrote boring ecclesiastical histories and translated biblical tracts, but this looks more like . . . comedy.”

“I didn’t know the Venerable Bede did comedy.”

“He didn’t. What’s stranger is that this comedy does not seem eighth-century in taste or style. Not so much wenching, farting and jokes with dead animals, but more gentle and lyrical—more in keeping with the storytelling tradition known collectively as ‘Homer.’”

“What are you saying?”

“We’re not sure. We’ve called Bowden in to have a look, as he’s more into Homeric verse than we are, so we should know more then. He might recognize it, or at least give us an indication of what might be going on.”

I told them to call me the instant they had something, then took a cab home, deep in thought about the week’s events and the possibilities that might face me on the following day. Friday had still to kill Gavin, but for no good reason that we could see, and his chance of avoiding going to prison was looking pretty faint. Tuesday still had to find the answer to Uc, something that would allow the smiting to make harmless impact on the Anti-smite Defense Shield. If she and Gavin couldn’t find the Unentanglement Constant in time, then twenty or so hardened felons were to get fried. Unless I could get a righteous man in place, in time—and then Joffy would get fried. I didn’t much care for any of my options.

***

As soon as I got home, I went and changed my patch for another one of the smiley-faced illegal varieties that Geraldine had scored for me. It was working better than a Dizuperadol, but I reduced the dose to a third of a patch rather than a half, as I was still a bit giggly at inappropriate moments.

“How are things?” asked Landen from the doorway of the bathroom.

“Pretty crappy,” I told him, outlining what I had to do tomorrow.

“You’d really fry Joffy?” he asked.

“I’m not frying anyone,” I said, looking upward, “and I’m hoping it won’t come to that. Gavin looks like he knows what’s he’s talking about.”