There was a hint of ash in the air on this gray day, the smell of something gone and dead. A smell that took him back to a fireplace, the big one in the house where he had grown up, in the living room that should have been his mother's kingdom, the place where she could invite her friends and shine as the queen of the house.

  The great square room was empty, the only semblance of life the roar of the mighty fire that consumed whole logs at all hours and in all seasons behind the grate of the elaborate fireplace. His mother was sitting in her special chair. The metal skeleton of a chair, stripped of all comfort, all ornament, a bare frame. No pillows or blankets for her. She sat, silent and mostly still, in the center of a circle of floor surrounded by sandbags and water-filled baskets. For anyone else, the heat in there would have been unbearable, and yet she shivered.

  Sometimes, when he was small and trusting, Luoth would crouch on the ground behind the sacks and stare at her. He would play, crawl on all fours, flatten himself down as if to hide from an enemy, deluding himself that he had come to rescue the captive princess. He would have done anything to reach her, to save her from the tortures of her cruel jailer.

  But the jailer was inside her. It was the uncontrolled passion that burned without warning, destructive, fiery, desperate.

  A respectful greeting came from the trilling voices of the cashiers in unison. Luoth blinked over his irritated, dry eyes. So much harsh light in this place, so much noise.

  The mayor entered the bank just in time for their appointment.

  If anything, it was Luoth who was not ready. He spent hours checking and rechecking the tedious paperwork his subordinates had already completed, wasting their time as well. He needed to trust them a little more. Off he went, he decided, packing up the papers he had crumpled with his sweaty fingers and placing them in the folder.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a clerk approaching, but before that one could intercept him, Luoth gestured for his amphibious assistant. He could handle it. With the Batracid, everyone quickly became concise, hurried, much less boring and petulant: those bulging eyes, incapable of blinking, were most effective at dampening controversy.

  The banker smoothed his jacket and checked that his tie was straight.

  Attan Ze Kosh always came with two secretaries, and he usually left them in the lobby waiting for him. Today he had brought three.

  Luoth thought he had him pretty well figured out. He just pretended to be absent-minded. Even with his nonchalant air, his gaze lost who knew where, Attan Ze could keep track of the most complex matters. He was never caught off guard. If he gave the impression that he was thinking about something else, it was because he was bored by overly practical matters, not because he did not appreciate their importance.

  He was approaching with a slight smile, the ochre robe swirling with each step, the perfect golden skin, the eyes shaded by long rosy lashes, the sensory stalks radiating around the neck swaying in the air as if weightless. The absence of a nose did not detract from the pleasant proportions of the oval face. The hairless head was wrapped in a bright red turban, surrounded by a diamond-shaped band of blue glitter.

  He was truly handsome, all the more attractive because he was completely unaware of the grace that emanated from him like a perfume. That was why Luoth sometimes hated him. Not always, of course, he was not so stupid in his jealousy; the time for male rivalry had long since passed. Only when Seluma was around, he would gladly give the mayor a good whack on the head to lock him in a trunk and send him to the farthest reaches of the Rift.

  But today was not the day, and the banker greeted Attan Ze with a broad gesture and an invitation to follow him to his private office. The mayor’s footsteps made a tickling sound on the polished marble.

  “Welcome, Your Excellency,” he warbled in a fluty voice, offering him the high-backed chair. “How may I serve you?”

  Attan Ze's secretary had not revealed the purpose of the meeting. There was a small voice in Luoth's head, nagging him with malicious suspicions that the visit still had something to do with the unfortunate trolley incident, now that the chatter had finally died down, even at the bar.

  “I am here, my good friend Luoth, to go over the last of the tedious paperwork for the carnival,” the mayor replied with a beaming smile, and the banker sighed with relief.

  Well, business.

  For three days this nonsense had bothered him enough to make him slow and distracted even in his work, but now it would not happen again. It was over, closed.

  Now, sitting at his desk, he did not even have to suffer from the fact that the handsome mayor was almost twice as tall as he was. His slender figure could only slightly overpower him when sitting, and the huge chair brought his proportions back to something more manageable.

  Everything was fine. Except for the smell of ash that seemed to linger even in this room with its tightly closed windows, and the exaggerated elasticity of his seat that suddenly made him seasick.

  “Of course, the reimbursements and funding for the artists, the workers, the food, the security... the deliberations are all done, already? It is a pleasure to work with your administration, Your Excellency.”

  Attan Ze could call him by his first name, but he would never allow himself to.

  “Not everyone has been so reliable in the past,” he continued, displaying his most gentlemanly manner.

  What was wrong with the chair? It was his usual one; he spent his days in it. He had even refused to change it when they had renovated the furniture—it was too comfortable! And now it was getting too hot for him... for those parts there. His skin burned as if under a hot sun.

  “Right now, my secretaries are handing over the documents and invoices to your capable staff for a thorough review. No, we really don't want anyone to be tragically cut off, like those four flute players at the fiftieth anniversary party, remember?”

  “Indeed!” Luoth sighed.

  What if he had caught fire?

  Only the steel pins and wheels would have been left...

  “Their show was the best, applauded by all. High art that can be enjoyed by everyone...”

  Mother's skin looked like rose-colored tissue paper; you had the impression it would come off if you blew on it. It grew thinner and thinner, but less and less of her fingers remained, useless stumps; her nose and ears wore away like candle wax, and her eyes... but her hair endured, long and thick as it had once been, a scarf of brown waves on her lean back.

  Luoth fought back a pang of nausea, forced his lips into a smile, ignored the sweat he felt dampening his face, sought salvation in the lighthearted tone of a joke to remind him of the fifty-year setback.

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  “Paid with meal tickets, what an injustice! Let's hope they at least chose a good restaurant.”

  Attan Ze bowed his head, squinting his eyelids with regret. He spoke in an affected whisper.

  “The best I could do with the little power I had back then. I was only an advisor. A small thing, I'm afraid they considered it a mockery. But they risked leaving empty-handed for the trivial forgetfulness of a stamp!”

  Only then did Luoth realize that the mayor was blaming him and his iron bureaucratic intransigence for the unfortunate fate of the four musicians, and his newfound smile cracked.

  Damn him.

  The resentment he felt in an instant was as incongruous and unwarranted as the melancholy and flashes of memory that had plagued him since the morning.

  “Are many foreign visitors expected this year?” he resumed, hiding his annoyance. “I know that several caravans have already arrived.”

  Attan Ze nodded solemnly. The delicate mouth half-opened in the most ecstatic of smiles.

  At that sight, something in Luoth melted, bringing him to the brink of tears. How he wished that he could consider this man —this creature— his friend and ally, that he could trust him and put everything in his hands.

  Like a child sleeping in the back seat of a car, while the adults decide, plan, lead and accomplish.

  But what is happening to me?

  “Oh, yes. Zerafia's emissaries will also be there.”

  Huh?

  “Zerafia?”

  No, wait a minute...

  “That's right. An event not to be missed. Those present will be able to brag to their children and grandchildren that they attended this meeting.”

  “But—but the Zerafians...”

  He searched the room with his eyes for some kind of hint. Then a calm came over him from the inside. Was this all some elaborate prank by the little brown-mouthed extravagant? It twitched at this very moment, as if his owner was holding back a laugh.

  “The Zerafians cannot leave their city, they are attached to it,” Luoth complained, well aware that he sounded as whiny as a child. The nausea increased and his earring hurt again.

  I must have caught the flu.

  Or it was old age. Nasty thing, alas.

  Fortunately, none of his subordinates were there to witness this humiliation. But Attan Ze did not laugh in his face, as he had expected. Instead, he continued to confirm the absurd news.

  “They have apparently found a way. We received official confirmation of their arrival just this morning.”

  “Oh.”

  Luoth allowed himself to relax. He opened the box of sweets on his desk and offered some to his guest with a new smile. But he still trembled inside. Attan Ze's next sentence almost made him swallow the yellow candy that had just landed on his tongue.

  “Don't you think that if the world was going to end, they would know about it before we did?”

  “The world, ending?” he stammered.

  “But yes, the story of the Rift closing. Zerafia is on the inside, they should see the movement coming some time in advance. And if they suspected something like that, they wouldn't be thinking about our carnival and embassies all over the world.”

  The sugared almond gave him no pleasure. His taste buds must have been disconnected.

  “Are you saying that there is still some doubt about the veracity of the alarm announced by the trolley? But Seluma told me—”

  He tried in vain to take back the last words with a cough. He was accusing a friend of spreading secret news he had received in confidence.

  “She told you that there was a transmitter in the cart that sent information to the Zerafians, etcetera, etcetera, and that is proof that nothing is going on, because otherwise those guys would have already fled and blah blah blah,” the mayor interrupted him, leaning lazily against the high back. “But the truth is that the alien circuit did not work, and for all we know it may never have worked. The Zerafian espionage may have just been an attempt gone wrong. We don't really know any more than we did before.”

  Luoth felt his stomach shrink to the size of a marble. Not even the candy would fit in there.

  “What shall we do?” he asked after wandering in a mental wasteland for a few moments.

  Attan Ze tilted his head and winked at him.

  “If it were only for me, I would do nothing,” he confessed. “You know what the Palvi monks say: Faspath is life and death. It created us, it feeds us, it can even devour us. But I can't afford to fall back on that kind of thinking.”

  “With all due respect, that doesn't sound healthy to me.”

  Attan Ze nodded.

  “I am not alone. I have an immense responsibility. I have to predict; I have to prepare. Everyone expects me to provide for their future.”

  He laid his beautifully manicured hands limply on the desk, fingers spread wide. His pointed nails looked like crystals, shining like jewels in the reflection of the desk lamp.

  “I do not intend to fail. What can those who place their lives in my hands hope for if not my sense of duty?”

  Luoth stared at him, stunned. That solemn phrase, sounding like an oath, was not like him; he would not have expected it from the mayor he knew. And as Attan Ze Kosh's violet gaze held him, the golden face, radiant with timeless beauty, and his unusual words caused painful echoes within him.

  Duty.

  His father placed a heavy hand on his shoulder as Luoth crouched behind the sandbags.

  “You don't have to be here all the time. She knows you love her.”

  Luoth stared so much at the big man above him, the one who was always there, wasting the wealth he had accumulated through a lifetime of hard work so he could stay with his wife while the workshop he had outsourced to strangers went down the drain.

  “Mother has not abandoned us; she still loves us. She just can't tell us anymore. She's lost far away— do you remember the lawyer's dog, the one we never knew what it looked like?”

  Luoth remembered the lawyer's dog. He had to pass the stately mansion on his way to school, and every time the beast inside would hear his footsteps, it would burst into a bark so loud and deep that the gate would shake. Yet it could not be seen. It must be on the chain somewhere in the recesses of the garden of the house. Not even by poking its face out between the bars of the railing could he tell where it was.

  “Mother's locked behind a gate, Luoth. She can't reach us.”

  “And why can't we open that gate?” he objected, clenching his fists.

  “It is a lock to which only she has the key. We can only touch her with our love, encourage her, and hope that sooner or later she will find her own way.”

  His father was trying to keep Luoth from spending his childhood in that room, filled only with pain, instead of going out, making plans, building a future. He was there because he had sworn allegiance and support to this woman and would never back down. With protective gloves he would clean her face and comb her hair. Every day he would dress her in pretty clothes that would be ruined. He would waste his existence and poison his soul for someone he could not help, an empty shell animated only by raw, uncontrolled emotion.

  I would like to open this lock.

  “I wish I were as sure of myself as you are, Your Excellency,” he said weakly, his lips trembling. “I wish I too could know what to do in every situation. To be a point of reference, a rock!”

  He wondered if his face betrayed the stormy mood, if he was giving the mayor reason to doubt his professionalism.

  Attan Ze Kosh studied him without blinking for a long, uncomfortable minute. A twitch lifted the corners of his mouth.

  “You would like to be a rock?” he repeated, amused. “One must be very careful with the exact words one uses to make a wish, my dear friend. Sometimes the gods are distracted and half-listen.”

  His charming smile now seemed darker, his eyes fixed on Luoth with the searching gaze of a predator.

  Luoth's chest filled with icy liquid, cutting off his breath.