'He needs me. And I've got to help him, because we all need him.'
Church set his jaw.
'I know that's not what you want to hear,' Ruth continued. 'Church, I don't want anyone else but you in my life. But I meant what I said to you in Norway.'
'Is this where you give me the Casablanca talk?'
'We don't amount to anything compared to what's going on around us.'
'I disagree with you so profoundly I can barely put it into words. You and me, what we have, is the entire reason why we do what we do. It's a symbol-'
'Don't start intellectualising just to win your argument.'
'I can't help who I am, Ruth. I think deeply about everything. Including you and me… and Veitch. I know he's trying to win you over, and I'm not going to stand back and let it happen.'
Her eyes flashed and Church felt as if he was looking into a deep well of Blue Fire. 'Okay, let's get one thing straight,' she said. 'I am not a ball that bounces back and forth between you and Ryan. I am not here to be fought over. It is not my role to be 'the girlfriend'. You love your archetypes, but I'm not playing that one.'
'I didn't mean that-'
'Accept that I love you. Deeply. And then give me space to find my own path to where you want me to be.' She didn't wait for a reply, marching through the gates and up the winding, cobbled street towards the Palace of Glorious Light. In every word and every movement, he saw the strength and sensitivity that had first attracted him to her, undiminished.
She was right, he knew that. And he hated his own insecurity, but he was more afraid of losing her than anything else. He wanted to claim that he'd accepted the hero's role for the sake of humanity, and Existence, and all the good, decent reasons that the storybooks liked to claim. But it was for Ruth. Always Ruth. And while he could rise above that for most of the time and do the right thing, if he didn't have Ruth he was afraid of what he would do.
The depth of his feelings was not only the source of his strength, but also his greatest weakness, and in them he could hear the first seductive whispers of the Libertarian. Sickened and afraid, he hurried into the city.
5
The sun was at its height when Mallory slipped into the room in the most secluded part of the castle. In a mood of intense, brooding silence, Veitch, Laura, Shavi, Hunter and Caitlin waited. There were no windows, and the only light came from two small lanterns in opposite corners.
'All here, then,' Mallory said, clearly expecting there to have been some non-arrivals.
'Ruth's a frosty cow, but I don't like it that she's not here. I feel like a back-stabber. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not that,' Laura said.
'It would not be fair to place this burden on Ruth,' Shavi said. 'She cannot be expected to make rational choices.'
'You're just afraid she might stop you before you go insane,' Laura muttered.
'So you're opposed to it?' Caitlin pressed.
'Nobody's opposed to anything yet, because we haven't come to any conclusion.' Mallory took a chair in one corner where he could keep an eye on the door.
'I've got an entire book of cliches just for this occasion.' Hunter remained standing, arms folded. Laura was convinced he had chosen the position so the lamplight would illuminate the best aspect of his features. 'But I'll select one or two choice ones to start us off. War demands that people do unpalatable things because war is all about winning, especially this one where the stakes are higher than anything I ever dreamed of back in my not-so- glory days.'
'What about moral purity?' Shavi argued. 'Our fight is meaningless if we are as bad as the Enemy.'
'You think the moral high ground will look so pretty when your family and friends and… everybody… have been raped and slaughtered, and the bad guys win for all time?' Hunter responded. 'If you don't win, nothing matters.'
'The Morrigan is telling me this is the right thing to do, and not to be sentimental,' Caitlin said, 'but as a doctor, and having sworn the Hippocratic Oath, I can't condone hurting anyone.'
'Which is rich coming from the psycho with the axe,' Laura said. 'But we're on the same side.'
'You know why a lot of military and Security Service people haven't got any time for the protesters back home? Because they're like people who eat sausages, but don't want to know what goes into them,' Hunter said firmly. 'People have the luxury of arguing about the moral high ground because they don't have to make any of the hard choices at the sharp end. They pay people to do that, so they can sleep in their beds and put it all out of their pretty, civilised minds. But let's understand some of the realities of war here. It's nasty and brutish and thrives on the worst of human nature. Nobody loves it, nobody wants it, but we have to do it, or we die, and everything we believe in dies. Once again: are we prepared to say that we sacrificed all of humanity, but we played fair?'
'This isn't some hypothetical Officer Training debating point,' Laura snapped. 'It's personal. That makes it different.'
'No, it doesn't,' Hunter said.
'Okay, you seem to be arguing a very clear point here-' Mallory began.
'This goes against everything we stand for,' Shavi pressed. His voice cracked and he was close to tears of frustration. In someone so placid, the sight was shocking.
'There's no black and white,' Hunter said. 'No good and evil choices, whatever thoughts you might like to comfort yourselves with. It's grey, it's messy. And that's my final cliche of the day.'
'Moral relativism underpinned the Holocaust, and Apartheid,' Shavi said sharply.
Hunter bristled, and Mallory stepped in before he lost his temper, a first that would have been just as shocking as Shavi's desperation. 'Reviewing: events in the coming days are going to turn Church into the Libertarian. If that happens, Existence loses its champion and the Void wins. We all know that time, reality — everything is fluid. It shifts. New presents, subtle alterations to the past, anything to maintain the Void's control. If we can prevent the sequence of events that turns Church into our worst enemy, we stop the Libertarian existing and maybe… maybe… we win.'
'Maybe!' Shavi interjected bitterly.
'And if we can't prevent it happening, we kill Church. The Libertarian doesn't exist. The Void loses its prime agent.' Mallory looked around the faces slowly. 'You know we don't have a choice. We can't let Church become the Libertarian.'
Shavi looked away. Caitlin remained impassive. Laura nodded reluctantly.
'One of us has to be prepared to do it,' Hunter said. 'There's no point waiting until the crucial moment and then finding nobody is prepared to pull the trigger. So it looks like it's me. I've done it before. I can do it again.' A brief glimmer of self-loathing burned in Hunter's mind.
'No.' Veitch had remained so silent until now that the others had forgotten he was there, in the darkest part of the room between the two lamps. 'It's not right you should have to live with it, however much it needs to be done,' he said, stepping into the light. 'You know it has to be me. I've got nothing to lose. I'll kill Church.'
6
Mallory spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for that evening's ritual. An oppressive apprehension mounted with the fading of the light, and by the time night fell the feeling was so potent it appeared to have spread across the entire city. Fewer lights burned in the windows of the houses, and none of the familiar songs rose up from the inns and public squares. Beyond the walls, the war camps were silent. The Burning Man hung over all.
As Mallory looked out across the city from the window of his chamber, his attention was drawn by one
