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lives.
    —Charles Vess.

Losing Her Divinity
    G ARTH N IX
    It was a year ago, or slightly more, as I recall. I was coming back from Orthaon, I had been there to discuss the printing works at the original monastery, they had a very old press and, though it worked well enough, it had been designed to be driven by slaves, and since the most recent emancipation a number of the mechanical encouraging elements needed to be removed,quite a difficult task as the original drawings for the machine were long lost and some parts of it were very obscure.
    What? Oh no, I was not present as a mechanician, I was there to write an account of the reworking, I thought it might prove to be of some interest, for one of the city gazettes, or perhaps as a selection in a book that I have begun, observations of curious machines, sorceries,and the like.
    You might yourself make an interesting dozen pages, Master Puppet. I have heard of you, of course. Read about you, too, unless I miss my guess. That is to say, I have read about a certain sorcerous puppet who bears a striking similarity, in the works of Rorgulet and in Prysme’s
Annals
—oh, of course, Sir Hereward, you would rate at least as many pages, I should think. But you desirediscretion, and I respect that. No, no, I
will
be discreet, I do not write about
everything
. Yes, I am aware of the likely consequences,so there is no need for that, good knight … please, allow me to withdraw my throat a little from that … it looks exceedingly sharp. Really? Every morning, without fail, one hundred times each side, and then the strop? I had no idea. I do not treat my razor sowell, though perhaps it gets less shall we say … use … no, no, I am getting on with it. Have patience. You should know that I am not a man who can be spurred by threats.
    As I said I was coming back from Orthaon, traveling on the Scheduled Unstoppable Cartway, in the third carriage, as I do not like the smell of the mokleks. Speaking of razors, what a job it must be to shave a moklek, though Ihave heard it said it is required only once, and the handlers rub in a grease that inhibits the regrowth. Done at the same time as the unkindest cut of all, though nothing needed there to prevent the regrowth, of course. It is interesting that the wild mammoths treat the occasional escaped moklek well, as if it were a cousin who had fallen on unfortunate circumstances. Better than many of us treatour cousins, as I can attest.
    Yes. I was on the cartway, in the third carriage, through choice, not primarily through lack of funds, though it is true both fare and luxury reduce from the front. We had stopped, as is common, despite the name of the conveyance. My compartment was empty, save for myself, and though the afternoon light was dim, I had been correcting some pages that the dunderheadedtypesetter of the
Regulshim Trumpet-Zwound
had messed up, a piece on the recent trouble with the nephew of the Archimandrite of Fulwek and his attempt to … ouch!
    I told you I need no such encouragement, and it would have been a very short digression. You might even have learned something. As I was saying, the light suddenly grew much brighter. Ithought the sun had come out from behind the skulkingclouds that had bedeviled us all day, but in fact it was a lesser and much closer source of illumination, a veritable glow that came from the face of a remarkably beautiful woman who had stepped up to the door of my compartment and was looking in through the window. A very good window; they know how to make a fine glass in Orthaon, no bubbles or obscuration, so I saw her clear.
    “Pray stay there,for a moment!” I called out, because the light was extremely helpful, and the proofs were such a mess and set quite small, and there was this one footnote I couldn’t quite read. But she ignored me, opening the door and entering the compartment. Rather annoyingly, she also dimmed the radiance that emitted not only from her beautiful face, but from her exposed