Tygo tipped his chin up. “Well, you were probably doing it wrong, that’s why you never saw anything.”
“How do you know I never saw anything?”
“If you had, you wouldn’t be so desperate for me to look.” He paused. “What are we looking for, again?”
John roughly pushed him away from the chip. “My god, man! We’re looking for confirmation.”
“From … the angels?”
He tossed up his hands. “Look, in my career, I’ve written an entire reinterpretation of our cosmology. I’ve scoured records from a thousand years ago! I’ve spent twenty years and more at this task, I’m in midlife now and only just realizing that everything I’ve believed was likely based on faulty math and my own hubris and some gross condition of the world which had convinced me until now that magic … that it mattered. Bah!” He shook his head. “We’re looking for the Sublime! What did you think we were looking for? Why do you think you’ve kept your head this long? You said you could see things. So see them!”
Tygo nodded and rolled his sleeves up. “Right. I’m sorry. I’ll scry for you.” He hesitated still, then placed a palm on John’s shoulder. “I did have a vision. I promise you. I know your work may be have been misguided. But it hasn’t been in vain.”
“Bah.” John said again. “Did you see the shuttles returning in your vision? Did the angels tell you they were returning?”
“What I saw can’t be communicated in words.”
John rolled his eyes. “How convenient. You know, I regret listening to you at all.”
“Don’t say that.”
“No, I believe I’ve been taken in by some scheme. I’m sure I’ll be punished soon enough for it. And when that happens, I won’t forget you. You will pay for tricking me.”
Tygo shook his head. “You have it all wrong. I’m not tricking you. I need you. You, specifically. To help me understand my vision. I’ve told you, I’m not skilled in astronomics. I have no idea what anything I saw might mean.” He spoke more softly. “What I’m trying to tell you is that this may be the Return. It may really be.”
“Why then did you advise Alyson that it definitely was?”
Tygo spread his hands. “I only said it may be.”
“I don’t think that’s what she heard. It’s not what I heard. You have confessed to me you are a liar.”
“I’m not lying, Lord Astronomer.”
John folded his arms calmly over his chest. “Then prove it. Scry for me.”
Tygo nodded again. “Well. That was part of the bargain, after all.”
“It was the whole point of the bargain!” John snapped.
Tygo gathered his wits and took his place again at the mirror, and, taking a bit of his own sleeve, wiped the rock absently a few times. “Can’t you cut off my shackles?”
“Not even on my mind, my man. It hasn’t crossed my mind.”
Then John waited. Nothing happened. Finally Tygo said, “You may as well take a seat, I can’t promise you’ll see anything yourself. It was just me at the mirror, that first time. And … I think I mentioned that when it occurred, I’d been somewhat at the drink.”
John raised his eyebrows.
“It was a habit I’d gotten into. Regrettable. But … when it happened before I’d had … O, several or three glasses of wine. Do you … have any?”
John stormed through the manor house, into the kitchens, and removed a bottle of citrus liqueur from the storeroom—used for flavoring, he assumed—and without checking the glasses for dust he poured two hasty cupfuls of the stuff and brought it all back balanced upon one of Mizar’s many inlaid trays. The bottle, too. He thrust the assortment at Tygo, who lifted the bottle and inspected it, wrinkling his nose. But he said nothing, raised his glass, and took the entire drink in a single draught, and waited until John had done the same, although John had to take two swallows, as he was unaccustomed to swilling strong liquids.
After that first gulp, his chest and gut seemed to catch like a fire. He teetered on his feet. Tygo held up his glass as if for more, and John supplied it, and then he too took another cupful, and then he felt like sitting down, which he did on the chaise longue at the other end of the room. Tygo closed his eyes like a child concentrating, and then went back to the mirror, cracked his knuckles, gazed at his own reflection in the black opalescent stone, and steadied himself as though for a duel.
Then John waited. They both waited, for what seemed like an Age, in their respective positions—John on the sofa and Tygo across the room, standing unmoving over the mirror. John eventually slid into a slumber, for when he lurched awake the candles were much lower and Tygo was still standing, stock-still, at the mirror, his black pigtail hanging lank on his skull. John realized he was damp and chilled and saw the fireplace, empty. A bubble of irritation burst within him, and he creaked to his feet, intending to fetch Mizar and reprimand him for not making the fire. One evening duty! Was it so much to ask?
The bottle of yellow liqueur winked merrily at him from the side table, and John discovered himself pouring another drink before he managed to leave the room. He sipped it this time instead of gulping. He somewhat enjoyed the warm feeling of the fluid sliding down his innards. Tygo had yet to move, but his cup was empty. John went to refill it, but when he approached the other man, he saw Tygo was not asleep, not
