Matthew 5:29-30

November 488 I.C., Odin

Even though Reuenthal was sure that his name was on a secret list somewhere of men who should be given no information, news reached him quickly. His desk job in the Ministry of War still provided him with a host of underlings, all of whom ate in the basement cafeteria and wandered the building on their business, and some of whom could even be trusted to deliver news to Reuenthal when they heard it.

One of Reuenthal’s closest subordinates was a stocky man with reddish-brown hair named Bergengrun, who had been given to Reuenthal as a way of getting rid of a problem. He was younger than Reuenthal by a few years, and was a captain. One might say he was a captain “already”, because he was young, but that seemed as far as he would get. He had risen to the rank through the usual skill and luck, but it was the combination of a common name and a too-quick temper when drunk that had halted his forward career progress in its tracks. It hadn’t been enough to have him removed from the fleet, but it had been enough to make him enemies, including among his former superiors. Very few nobles in the Imperial fleet appreciated subordinates who spoke whatever disagreements were on their minds. Reuenthal found it useful, for the most part.

Bergengrun was friends with another captain in the building. That captain was among the first to receive the report that a fleet was limping into the space around Odin, and that Odin’s own, relatively paltry, defense fleet would be sortieing to meet it. When Bergengrun got his hands on a copy of this information, it ended up on Reuenthal’s desk.

Several things became immediately clear.

First— it was Littenheim’s fleet that was en route to Odin. Their satellites throughout the system picked up the image of his flagship on their cameras. His fleet looked battered, and was missing a significant part of its number.

Second— Littenheim’s fleet was coming to Odin in a flight of desperation. If it had not been a harried rush to escape a larger threat, if Littenheim had won whatever engagement had scarred his fleet so badly, he would have stopped before approaching the planet and made an announcement that he had defeated Braunschweig and demand that Lichtenlade turn over the Imperial government to him. There was no announcement, so it seemed that Littenheim was planning to use the only remaining resource he had— ground troops, and the foothold he had in the Military Police— to entrench himself on Odin.

Third— Littenheim would be successful in getting to Odin. The defense fleet that had been left on the planet was paltry, hardly more than a token fleet of three thousand ships. Because of Odin’s protected nature within the Empire, it had never been a high priority to keep a large standing military force on the planet. In fact, it had been considered dangerous to do so— having a full stationed fleet on Odin, a planet where people could get ideas, increased the danger of a military coup by an order of magnitude. Muckenburger had raised the fleet presence in the system marginally before the civil war, but he had hoped to avoid a major conflict between the remains of the Imperial government and either of the dueling families, so had not done as much as he could have. Even though Littenheim’s fleet was battered, it was still more than a match for Odin’s ships and the relatively junior commander in charge of them, a vice admiral whose name Reuenthal had only ever heard in passing.

Fourth— once Littenheim arrived on Odin, the planet would be under his control, at least physically. The Military Police had, even before the civil war, functioned as a combination of secret police and the most significant military presence on the planet. Outside of Neue Sanssouci, they were the Kaiser’s personal force on Odin. Since Kaiser Friedrich, to whom they had nominally reported, was dead, Littenheim controlled the military police, and this left Lichtenlade with little military strength— he only controlled the few small ground units of the Fleet on Odin, the Neue Sanssouci guards, and whatever city police units would obey him when they came under fire. It wasn’t much, and it certainly wasn’t enough to stop Littenheim’s army from occupying the capital.

Of course, that didn’t mean that Lichtenlade was going to surrender. Lichtenlade’s plan was to turn things over to the victor, and even an occupation of Neue Sanssouci was not a sign of victory. Littenheim retreating to Odin gave Braunschweig as much time and space as he needed to gather resources, and a large enough army, to eventually crush his rival.

By the end of the day, it seemed like the whole building had heard the news. Every man in the building was either rushing around like he was being drawn forward by invisible high-tension strings— twanging around corners and vibrating with the energy held in the cords— or had withdrawn into himself. When Reuenthal walked out, he passed men huddled in corners speaking in hushed voices, and a man leaning against walls with one arm thrown over his head while their other pressed his phone to his ear and whispered something to his wife. Everyone talking about secrets that everyone knew.

Reuenthal walked out in the strangely peaceful late November evening, pulling his coat tight around his shoulders to stave off the chill. Looking behind himself as he left the building, he wondered how many times he would return there. Not many, he was sure. Already, there were people packing up every sensitive document in the building, moving them into secure storage far outside the capital city, deep underground, in places Littenheim wouldn’t be able to access even if he took control of the whole planet. Those wouldn’t be unsealed until Muckenburger, or whoever succeeded Muckenburger, gave his blessing to the new order.

Rather than going home, Reuenthal drove the opposite direction, through the city. Even now, things seemed normal— a few pedestrians running their errands through the grim and snowy air, at shops that remained resolutely open. For Reuenthal, the last edges of normalcy had fallen away, and everyone now was walking around clinging to an illusion. It couldn’t last much longer, and knowing that was almost a relief. It made things clearer.

He drove towards the part of the city where expensive townhouses lined tree-shaded streets. Some of these were the city homes of the nobility who kept country mansions elsewhere, and some were the only homes of the lesser nobility, or the wealthiest echelons of commoners, or Phezzani merchants who had a presence on Odin. The exteriors were, unlike the countryside manor houses, not ostentatious. The location announced the wealth of the owner far better than any facade could.

Reuenthal parked on the street outside one of these houses, braced himself for an unpleasant task, and walked up the tall set of steps to ring the bell. If Elfriede had not been living in his house, he would have insisted that they meet there instead, but she left him with little choice.

An old butler answered the door, inclined his head to Reuenthal, and let him in.

“He is expecting you, sir,” the butler said. “If you’ll come this way?”

Reuenthal followed him through the house. It was dark inside— the overhead lights were dim, and the wooden paneling on the walls swallowed what little light there was. What of the house Reuenthal could see was old, tasteful, and well kept. A few paintings and photographs lined the walls, but none of them were people whom Reuenthal recognized.

The butler knocked on, then opened, the door to the office, deep into the house. Reuenthal stepped inside, and the butler swiftly left.

“Come here, Dog,” Oberstein said from his seat at the desk.

The command was not for Reuenthal— it was for the wobbling old Dalmatian that was standing in front of him, blocking his path forward. Reuenthal wasn’t sure if the dog’s stance was out of curiosity or threat, but it didn’t matter to Reuenthal either way. He didn’t like dogs much, and he waited until the animal registered Oberstein’s command and walked with arthritic legs over to lay its head in his lap.

It was only then that Reuenthal had a chance to look around the office, and realized that the lights were even dimmer here than they were in the hallway. Only a single floor lamp was on, near the door, and probably for the sake of the dog. Oberstein had his eyes closed— or he closed his eyelids over the sunken holes that usually held his eyes. The mechanical replacements were soaking in a cup of water at his elbow. Oberstein had a tablet in front of him, although the screen was completely black. He tapped on it twice, apparently issuing some kind of invisible command, then moved it aside.

“You were expecting me?” Reuenthal asked.

“I knew you would come. Please, take a seat, Rear Admiral.” He made no motion to stand or salute, despite their difference in ranks. “I’m sure that the lieutenant will be here presently.”

“Did you invite him?” Reuenthal asked, taking a seat in the chair in front of Oberstein’s desk.

“He’ll come. He has his own ways of hearing the news. He may still be delivering it to everyone who needs to know.”

“Oh?”

“I believe the commodore left him with explicit instructions to watch over a certain list of people. Since time is not of the essence right now, I can’t fault him for obeying. But you and I can talk before he arrives.”

“You don’t want to wait for him?”

“No,” Oberstein said.

“Very well.” Reuenthal leaned back in his seat and looked around the room some more. There was a large family photograph hanging behind Oberstein’s desk— an older man in uniform (a vice admiral), a slender woman next to him, and a young boy standing in front, the woman’s hands grasping his shoulders. A dog, a black lab, leaned its head against the child’s hips. The child was clearly Oberstein as a youth, though the boy had wide-open brown eyes, not the blue ones in the jar that Reuenthal couldn’t help but glance at with revulsion. The family photograph was easier to look at than Oberstein or anything else, so it was to that which he addressed his comments. “Littenheim will be here in a few days.”

“There won’t be much resistance. Lichtenlade will find somewhere to hide.”

“But will he be able to? If he or his child-kaiser dies, the rest of the government will surrender to Littenheim, which will make the whole fleet go after Braunschweig. That’s the only way that he can win, with his fleet in the condition it is.”

“Lichtenlade will be well hidden,” Oberstein said.

“You’re very confident. The MPs know where all of the government safehouses are.”

“But not the Lichtenlade family’s personal secrets,” Oberstein said. “I expect that he has been careful for many years preparing for this.”

“Secrets are a hard thing to keep around here.”

“Are you asking if we should throw our support behind Lichtenlade?”

“No,” Reuenthal said, though he had been wondering if Oberstein would suggest it. “I just wonder how long he can hold out, and how long Leigh’s plan is going to take.”

“I believe he would have left for Iserlohn immediately after his battle with Littenheim,” Oberstein said. “It won’t take more than a few weeks for him to arrive.”

“Did he tell you that’s where he’s going?”

“It’s the only place for him to go. Even attacking Littenheim’s lands or allies wouldn’t draw him off of Odin, so there’s nothing he can do without ground troops to fight in the capital. The ones that aren’t keeping Braunschweig’s own lands in order are trapped in the corridor. Attacking Iserlohn is a threefold solution— reuniting with his forces, perhaps convincing Lichtenlade to back Braunschweig after that demonstration of power, and being able to make the threat of an alliance with the rebels to claim the throne.”

Reuenthal was about to respond when the doorbell rang. The Dalmatian immediately lifted its hoary head from Oberstein’s lap and limped over to the door of the office, waiting to investigate the visitor.

“The lieutenant,” Oberstein said, though that was obvious. It would take a long minute for the butler to retrieve the intruder and escort him to the office.

“Of course,” Reuenthal said, then waited in silence, staring up at the picture of Oberstein’s family. The silence pressed on him far too much, and so he asked, “Is that a photo of your family behind you?”

“Yes. Myself, my father Alfred, and my mother Emmeline.”

Out of a morbid curiosity, he commented, “You changed the color of your prosthetic.”

“No,” Oberstein said. “I still had my eyes then.”

“Leigh told me you were born blind.”

“I was, but not without eyes. Since the risk of complications was great for the brain implant, my mother insisted that the procedure not be performed until I was older.”

“How thoughtful of her.”

“A clever blind child was easier to tolerate than a sighted idiot,” Oberstein said.

“But you chose blue eyes.”

“She chose them. There was no reason to pick a less desirable color, and there has been no reason for me to change since.”

Reuenthal was grateful for the sound of footsteps in the hallway, the butler and Lieutenant Kircheis. The dog let out a soft woof as the door swung open. Kircheis saluted at the entrance, though he held out his other hand for the dog to sniff, not bothered by it at all.

“Rear Admiral Reuenthal— I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Kircheis said.

“We have things to talk about, don’t we?” Reuenthal asked.

“Take a seat, Lieutenant,” Oberstein said. Kircheis did, taking the seat next to Reuenthal. His eyes, too, lingered on the eyeballs in a cup at Oberstein’s elbow, though the dog followed him to his seat, and Kircheis scratched its head absently.

“You’ve heard the news, I assume,” Reuenthal said.

“Yes, sir.”

“From whom? You don’t work in the Ministry of War, and Leigh can’t contact the planet.”

“Rear Admiral Bronner told me.”

“It’s unclear who he’s working for,” Reuenthal commented.

“I don’t think he’s working for anyone. But he tells me what’s going on, and he doesn’t have any reason to lie about things I can confirm myself.”

“Be careful that when you confirm things you aren’t also giving him information about what you know,” Reuenthal said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Leigh leave you with any instructions for this eventuality?” Oberstein asked.

“Some,” Kircheis said. “He wrote a lot about what he thought would happen to the civilian government, but he understood that there isn’t much that he can do on Odin without agents on the ground. Even the resources he has— I don’t think anybody on the planet can access money from the Braunschweigs or Count Vering.”

“Even if we could access money, it isn’t worth much, or it won’t be.”

“Yes, Commodore Leigh knows that. But he couldn’t keep a standing force on the planet.”

“So he wrote that we should sit on our hands,” Reuenthal said.

“No, sir,” Kircheis said, but didn’t elaborate on what Yang had written.

“There are very few things that we can do,” Oberstein said. “At best, with our limited number of allies, if it came to be that we needed to join forces with Lichtenlade, we might be able to shelter him. Or perform small guerrilla actions against Littenheim’s forces.”

“None of that is necessary now,” Reuenthal pointed out. “Though we should prepare for it.”

“I agree,” Oberstein said. He tipped his blind face towards Kircheis. “I understand that the commodore has already had some resources laid away?”

Kircheis nodded, then said, “Yes, sir,” for Oberstein’s sake. “There’s caches in some of the Braunschweig family’s safehouses. I know where they are.”

“Let’s hope we don’t need to use them,” Reuenthal said.

“I agree.” Oberstein turned his face back towards Reuenthal. “The only other thing we can do for the commodore now is coordinate. We on Odin can still speak with most other places in the galaxy, at least for now. Is there anything that Leigh needs to capture Iserlohn that we could send him?”

There was a moment of silence. Reuenthal turned to Kircheis. “His plan is a pincer attack on Iserlohn? Bait out the fleet on one side, and rush the fortress from the other?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And he has enough ships in the corridor already?”

“Yes, sir. He believes it’s enough.”

“And who is the commander of the forces on that side of the corridor?”

There was a moment of silence, and Kircheis said, “Uh— it’s one of Duke Braunschweig’s— I can find his name—”

“A nobody,” Reuenthal said. “Is this someone that Leigh trusts for a reason?”

Again, for a moment, Kircheis was silent. “I don’t believe so, sir.”

“But Leigh is confident in this plan?”

“He wanted a different commander there, sir,” Kircheis admitted. “But Duke Braunschweig wouldn’t send one before the Kaiser died.”

“So Leigh is going to try a two pronged assault without the second prong assisting. Is that what he intends?”

“He— well. I think he intended to bait the rebel forces in the corridor into providing a distraction— he had some system of feigned distress calls left on Cahokia for that—”

“He needs a commander there who can execute this,” Reuenthal said. “The rebels can’t be relied on.” Already, a plan was ticking forward in his mind, though it began with a slight sting of jealousy.

“And who do you suggest?” Oberstein asked.

“Rear Admiral Mittermeyer,” Reuenthal said. “He has ships under his command, and Leigh would vouch for his skill. We could send him a message, and he could provide the other half of Leigh’s pincer.”

“How would he get there?” Kircheis asked.

“There are two corridors through space, aren’t there?”

“That is a difficult and long journey,” Oberstein said.

“Mittermeyer is capable.”

“But waiting for him to arrive will cause Littenheim to fully entrench himself on Odin.”

“Let him,” Reuenthal said. “It’s Muckenburger in Iserlohn who really wields the power to surrender the Imperial forces to Braunschweig, no matter what ruling power Lichtenlade claims to hold. Once he’s hidden away in whatever hole he has prepared, he won’t be able to issue commands any longer, or won’t be able to enforce them, anyway.”

“And how will we communicate to the commodore that we’re putting this idea in motion for him?” Oberstein asked.

“Count Mariendorf has ways of contacting Duke Braunschweig,” Kircheis said. “He’s trying to gather support for Braunschweig with the frontier nobles. We can send a message through him.”

“And the rear admiral himself?” Oberstein asked. “How will he be told?”

Reuenthal’s lip curled in distaste. “His wife,” he said. “She can send him a letter any time she chooses. That’s not out of the ordinary.”

“I’ll give her a message to send,” Kircheis volunteered. “Commodore Leigh told me to make sure she’s out of the city, so I’ll be seeing her anyway.”

Reuenthal made no comment on that.

It was pitch dark outside when Reuenthal left Oberstein’s house, and snowing, though the flakes that hit the windshield of his car melted and disappeared immediately. When he arrived at his house, he was unpleasantly surprised to find another car parked in the driveway: a nondescript black vehicle which bore an official fleet plate. Reuenthal drove past his house, hoping he was unnoticed, parked his car on the street some distance away, then crept up around the back.

The light was on in the kitchen, but Reuenthal entered through the basement staircase, lifting the metal bunker-like door from the ground as quietly as he could, then leaving it open on the snow. He descended the steps quickly, then entered the wine cellar. He didn’t bother turning on the light— he knew the place by instinct. Before he reached the front stairs up to the kitchen, he took off his shoes and pulled his sidearm from its holster, flicking off the safety.

Silently, he crept up the stairs and listened at the top.

A man’s voice, someone he didn’t recognize. “Fraulein Kohlrausch, I can assure you that your grand-uncle and the rest of your family are only concerned for your safety.”

Elfriede. “And that’s why they sent an armed man here to drag me back. To keep me in whatever prison they’ve devised.”

“It seems as though you’re the one threatening me with a weapon, Fraulein.”

“And you don’t have a gun under your coat?” A moment of silence. “Don’t move! Don’t move at all!”

“Here,” the man said,. A thump of something heavy hitting the table, and then Elfriede’s light footsteps as she walked forward. “I hope you’ll give that back to me when I leave.”

“I thought you had been ordered to drag me out of here. You’d get it back then.”

“I wouldn’t do that to a friend of a friend,” the man said. “That is why I volunteered to come, rather than someone else.”

“And whose friend are you?”

“Countess von Leigh’s.”

Elfriede made a dismissive sound. “She’s not my friend. And she didn’t tell me you were coming. I don’t really believe you.”

“If you won’t come back with me, I’ll tell your grand-uncle that I couldn’t find you. But I’m afraid that I’ll be signing your death sentence by doing so. You are aware that Rear Admiral Reuenthal is known to be an agent of Duke Braunschweig’s? This place won’t be safe, when his enemies arrive.”

Elfriede’s voice rose in pitch. “You’re very stupid if you think that my grand-uncle has a better chance of surviving than I do.”

“He’s going to be well protected.”

“I know where he’s going,” Elfriede said. “I’m not as confident as he is. And I’m not the kind of animal to walk into a cage.”

“And what is this house?” the man asked. “I’m told you don’t ever go out.”

Reuenthal was tempted to emerge from the staircase into the kitchen, but he waited. He wanted to hear what she would say.

“I’m the kind of animal that will chew her leg off to get out of a trap,” she said.

“So you think you could leave here, if you needed to, or wanted to?”

She laughed. “You misunderstand me.”

“I apologize.”

“This is me using my teeth,” she said.

The man seemed at a loss for words for a moment. “You could be a poet, Fraulein.”

There was the sound of something hitting the table again, though thrown from a few feet away this time. “You should leave now. He’ll be home soon, and you don’t want to be here when he is.”

“I would like to meet the Rear Admiral. I have a message for him.”

“No, you don’t.”

“May I have the energy pack?”

“No.”

Footsteps. “Your grand-uncle does care about you, and so does the rest of your family,” the man said. “If you change your mind, you know where you can go.”

“I won’t,” she said. “And don’t come looking for me again.”

“Other people won’t be quite so willing to let you slip out of their hands,” he said.

“I don’t like threats, Captain. You should leave.”

“Goodnight, Fraulein.” He walked to the front door. Reuenthal heard it creak open. “I hope you’re correct.”

“About what?”

“The cages,” he said. The front door shut, and Elfriede’s footsteps crossed the kitchen floor once again. A chair creaked as she sat down at the table, and then there was silence.

Reuenthal waited for some time before creeping back down the stairs, climbing out of the basement, and retrieving his car. He parked it in the driveway and entered the house through the kitchen door, as was his usual route. He found Elfriede sitting at the table in her diaphanous white nightgown, the one that had once belonged to his mother, which she had found somewhere in the house. One of the large kitchen knives was on the table in front of her, and she seemed to be staring down at her reflection in the blade.

“Planning to stab me?” Reuenthal asked. The words snapped her out of whatever trance she was in, and she grabbed the knife.

“Castrate you,” she said. There wasn’t enough venom in it, so he answered in kind as he took off his coat.

“You’re about twenty years too late to make me sing like a castrati, and I have no interest in children anyway.”

She laughed, but there was a wild edge to the sound.

Reuenthal went to stand over by the sink, looking out the window at the darkness. “Leigh beat Littenheim in space.”

“Really?” She knew this already. She was planning to lie to him. He wondered what the best time to reveal that he knew about her visitor would be.

“Littenheim’s retreating to Odin. He’ll be here in a few days.”

“Are you afraid?” she taunted. This, too, came out wrong.

He walked up behind her, and slid his hands down her arms until he reached her hands, still holding the knife upright in front of herself, the butt of the handle resting on the table. His chest pressed against her back, and he could feel her breathing.

“Littenheim is walking himself into a trap. He’s not going to get out alive,” Reuenthal said.

She tensed beneath him. “He doesn’t think that way.”

“Nobody ever does.”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh?” His hands tightened on her wrists. “Are you a counterexample?”

“No. But you are.”

“In what way?”

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “In this house?”

“With you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what I’m doing, if you have something to say about it.”

“You don’t think there’s a world outside the trap, so you pretend you’re strong to stay alive inside it.” She laughed again. “I’m not as stupid as you are, Oskar.”

“And are you going to say you’re stronger than me, too?” He crushed her wrists with his hands, but she didn’t loosen her grip on the knife. He wasn’t sure that he wanted her to.

“It’s a weakness that runs in your family,” she said. “Your mother—”

“What about her?”

“Nevermind.”

“No, tell me.”

With surprising strength, Elfriede lifted her arms off the table, swinging the tip of the knife abruptly towards Reuenthal’s face. The sight of the blade coming towards his eye horrified him, and he let go of her and stumbled back. She let her hands fall back down to the table, and dropped the knife with a clatter.

“You said she almost killed you,” Elfriede said.

Reuenthal tried to compose himself, walked around in front of Elfriede, and picked up the knife. She didn’t try to stop him, though she watched him. Testing himself, Reuenthal brought the blade to the corner of his brown eye. “She almost cut it out,” he said. “She wasn’t trying to kill me.”

“She would have been free if she had.”

Reuenthal pressed the knife to the skin at the corner of his eye, still over the bone. The blade was dull— it would take real effort to cut, unless his hand slipped, but his hand was very steady. “Getting rid of the evidence wouldn’t free her from her sin.”

Elfriede’s face twisted in disgust, and she stood. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

As she started to walk away, Reuenthal grabbed her. She didn’t struggle, but she did tense, genuinely afraid this time. Reuenthal held the knife to her chin, the point pressing into her skin.

“Were you not going to tell me about your visitor?” Reuenthal asked.

She breathed heavily in his arms for a moment before she said anything. “Did he wait on the street for you?”

Although Reuenthal held the knife steady, talking made it prick her skin. A drop of blood slipped down the edge of the blade.

“No,” Reuenthal said. “I saw there was someone in the house, so I came in through the basement.”

“You wanted to catch me in the act.”

The idea that Elfriede might be cheating on him hadn’t crossed his mind, and was almost laughable. “Yes,” he said.

With his other hand, he pulled up her nightgown, slipped his hand underneath it, and trailed his hand across the smooth expanse of her stomach until he reached her breast, which he squeezed roughly.

“How much of the conversation did you hear?” she asked.

“Enough.”

“Then you know I wasn’t planning to leave you.” She struggled against him, but it wasn’t with real force, and Reuenthal kept the knife to her chin until she pushed his arm down.

He dropped the knife back to the kitchen table. “Whatever captain that was is right.”

She made a noise of disagreement and pushed against him, trying again to get out of his arms. “I don’t care,” she said. “You’re not going to send me back to my family.”

“No,” he said. “But you shouldn’t stay in the city. We’re both enemies of Littenheim.”

She snarled. “I’m not going to be locked up in some hole.”

“Fine,” he said, and he let her go. She stumbled forward a few steps, and turned back towards him, but he was already walking away. She didn’t follow him all the way to his office, where he spent the remainder of the evening, poring over the information that Kircheis and Bergengrun had provided. Although he looked at it carefully, he couldn’t keep other thoughts from drifting through his head.

When he got ready for bed, he leaned on the counter in the bathroom, nude, staring into his own reflection. He pulled down the lower lid of his eye with one finger, looking at the veiny underside of his eyeball, the red flesh, imagining it replaced with an empty hollow— or a blue replacement. The thought sickened him.

The door to the bathroom was ajar, and Elfriede walked past, then stopped as she saw him performing this strange little ritual. She entered the bathroom and sat on the counter next to where he leaned. Delicately, she replaced her finger with his on his face. He kept looking straight ahead, into his reflection. She kept the lid of his eye pulled down.

“You told that captain that you’d bite off your leg to get out of a trap,” Reuenthal said.

“Yes.”

“Your station for your freedom?”

“Or something like it,” she said.

“And you say I’m keeping myself in a trap.”

“Yes.”

“What would I have to give up to get out of it?”

“Nothing as easy as cutting out your eye,” she said. She shifted her hand so that she was covering his eye with her palm. He closed his eyes.

“What, then?”

She didn’t answer the question. Her other hand found his hair and stroked it, oddly tender. “Where would you say that I should hide, when Littenheim arrives?”

“The country house where Leigh’s wife is,” Reuenthal said. “Leigh thinks it’s safe enough there.”

“And will you come?”

“No,” he said.