“She actually looked a little nervous or flustered at that point. ‘You things are dangerous, even all tied up. How did you know my Master’s name?’
“I tell her I will trade her question for question.
“I am really proud that I had the nerve to say that, and calmly, too, since all I wanted to do was beg her for help and cry like a girl. I was so full of fear that my stomach hurt like someone had kicked it.
“So she says, ‘Sure, why not? You’re not going to remember anything tomorrow anyway.’
“So she tells me what she knows about the school. Lord Terminus sent an expedition to recover certain hostages from the Four Houses of Chaos. He was on the brink of a civil war with his own children at that time, but it hadn’t broken out yet, and so, in order to placate them, four or five of his sons sent different agents along as part of the expedition.
“As it turned out, when Lord Terminus dies suddenly, the expedition has no place to go and no one to report to, and the various people from the various factions are suddenly terrified and suspicious of each other.
“But they find they have to work together, because each of the little orphans from Chaos has a different type of magic, a different version of the universe they draw upon for their power.
“Four types of magic, and each type has one other type it trumps, one it is trumped by, and one to which it is equal and opposite.
“The Athanatoi of Cosmos are descended from the Titans of Chaos. The lesser gods and goddesses, their powers also fall into the same four types. Except for the Phaeacians and the Olympians, who command two new powers created by Saturn and Rhea.
“I am a fallen spirit, a son of Phorcys. My power (Lamia tells me) is theurgy, the study and command of immaterial essences. A very potent power indeed and, in her opinion, the noblest and greatest of the four.
“Just by good fortune, Dr. Fell is here to stop me. He is a cyclopean, an atomist. One who commands matter. Whenever his power and the power of my house come into conflict, his will always prevail.
“I asked her who were the other houses and who stopped who, but she says, oh no, it is her turn now. How did I know she worked for Dionysus?
“I told her I read minds, and she says, ‘You lie to me, little boy, and we had an agreement. You are now in debt to me, and my power can touch you now.’
“She takes one of the combs out of her hair and jabs me in the neck with it. The tines are so sharp I almost don’t even feel anything. She puts her head down and starts licking at the blood dripping from my neck.
“There are bloodstains around her mouth at this point, a little trickle running down her neck. She throws back her head and moans, and strokes her own throat with her fingertips.
“She says, ‘For my first charm, I call upon your blood to tell me the truth of how you knew the name of the Vine God, Anacreon, Lord Vintner. I look into your blood, and I see your soul. I taste it, and I know. You did not read my mind, you read a book. Why has Boggin been teaching you about us? What kind of fool is he?’
“I said, ‘I call upon your oath to gag your spell. If my blood answers a second question without your answer to a second one of mine, then your promise to me is broken, and I am released.’
“She took out one of her hair needles and stabbed me in the arm with it. It was a pipette and she sucked at it like a straw. But the taste of my blood must have annoyed her now, for she spat it into my face. It stung my eyes.
“ ‘Ask your question, boy, little boy, clever little boy.’
“I repeated it. ‘Who were the Houses in Chaos? Whose power stopped whom?’
“She said,
“Now she climbed up atop me on the gurney, and began lapping at the wound in my neck like a dog.
“ ‘Oh, now I see,’ she says, ‘Boggin taught you all what you needed to know. He taught the Telchine boy physics and Newtonian mechanics, and taught you poems and myths and lore, taught music to wild prince of Night and Dreams, showed the Prelapsarian girl the strange secrets of strange Einstein, where math proves nothing is just where or what it seems. He has been forging you as a weapon for his own use, then. Right under everyone’s nose, right in the light where they should be the least blind. So the old puff of cold wind just
“She smiled and said, ‘Ask me another question.’
“I said, ‘I have no more.’
“ ‘I do not mind telling you, I am going to kill you and all your friends in any case. I can make it gentle and slow, you feel more warm and heavy, and you fade away to night; or I can start by scooping one eyeball from your face.’
“At that moment, a black vulture, of which, yes, I know, there are none in England, and yes, I know, they do not fly at night, landed on the window behind her.
“I said, ‘We are protected, me and mine. Mavors will avenge us. Look! His bird sits yonder, watching you!’
“ ‘I scoff at him,’ she said. ‘His mother killed my children, one and all. I cried until my eyes dried up like raisins and fell out. My hate keeps me alive. Are you a child? It is given to me to kill children. Under the law, I am allowed.’
“I said, ‘You are not a Bacchant. You do not work for Dionysus. Who do you work for…?’And I bit my tongue, because that was another question.
“She said, ‘I serve one who will rejoice when Chaos sweeps the established Earth away, and pulls the broken arch of Heaven down into the poisoned seas lit up with flame. My death will be small price to pay, if, by my acts, I make all things pass away. My last question is this: Are you a child, or a man? If man, I cannot kill you; but if child, I can.’
“She pressed my neck with her hand and drew a palmful of blood to her lips.
“I said, ‘You did not answer my question perfectly.’
“She spat my blood out again. ‘The answer I tasted was ambiguous. You yourself do not know. But a man can sleep with a woman. A child has not that power, though.’
“She parted her robes, and I saw she was not wearing any underwear.
“ ‘Pleasure me, young pup, young baby boy,’ she said, smiling with her teeth all red, ‘and you survive. But if your manhood remains flaccid, soft, and weak, I will know it is a boy, and not a man, to whom I speak.’
“Well, I am sure Colin would have found it perfectly acceptable to have a drunk, naked, grown-up woman kneeling on top of you, with your own blood dripping down her chin, with the smell of wine and urine and foul chemicals still hanging in the air. He would have performed. God, he would have found it a turn-on.
“But I can’t even imagine anything worse. Being killed is bad enough, being killed in a disgusting way, by a disgusting person, and just being humiliated and embarrassed, and… ugh. I wanted to cry. I wanted my mommy. I sure did not feel like a man in any sense of the word.
“Well, I didn’t cry. She sort of rubbed up and down against my body for a long time, while I lay there, waiting for it to be over, and hoping she would kill me rather than continue.
“I tried to think of something to do or say.
“She climbed off me and, well, she laughed at my dick. She pointed and laughed. I mean, what way is that to treat a child? I would be embarrassed even to talk about it, I would not be talking about it now, even to you, except I think my capacity to be embarrassed is completely burned out of me, and gone forever.
“She said, ‘You are a child, then, aren’t you?’ And she took another hair ornament out of her hair, and it opened into a scalpel.
“It was the last moment, the last second of my life.
“And I had an odd thought.
“How am I going to act, this second? How should I behave…?
“Normally, we do things, we are polite, or we obey laws, because we want to get something out of the situation. We want to win applause and esteem, or escape punishment, or better ourselves, or something. All that went blank in my head. At this point, there was no such thing as better off or worse off. There was no advantage or
