Erik was not omniscient. This was not news to him, though he figured some would be surprised to hear him admit it.

He had not been wrong in thinking that Charles Garnier would accept his offer of help, but his information had been more out of date than he realized. When he arrived in Monte Carlo, hopeful that there would still be work of substance to be done on the Grand Concert Hall of the Casino, he instead found everything complete—even the 'fine tuning' had wound down to a mere few rooms unconnected to the auditorium. It appeared that the Prince was not overly enthusiastic with the final product, but it was equally apparent that he was willing to live with the current result until the Casino could bring in enough profit to make a remodel convenient.

After finding this to be the case, and with nothing better to do, Erik found himself kicking around the coast, utterly at a loss. He had spent several days entertaining the idea of buying a yacht and striking out for parts unknown with only a good quantity of wine for company when he heard further tell of the architect.

Garnier had not gone far. Thinking it polite, Erik sent a telegram ahead of himself, waited an hour or so, and then struck out for Nice. He was greeted at Garnier's small, temporary office—somewhat noticeably devoid of other employees—with a professional handshake and well-mannered smile. The current project was for an observatory, perched atop Mount Gros. "Not much in the way of waterworks," Garnier commented with a shrug, as he showed Erik the plans.

"You know I'm good for more than sewers," Erik replied. He tried to keep his tone civil. What was it that the Daroga had been so insistent upon? There were people who liked you… you could have made a life for yourself. Maybe it was true, and maybe it wasn't, but trying to live up to the idea was exhausting. "Who is doing the dome?"

Garnier's smile flashed under the wiry curtain of mustache. "I wish I had known you were back in practice for that. But the contract has been given to Eiffel. He lacks some of your artistry, but as a structural engineer, I have never met his equal."

Erik tried to be charitable. "He has done well enough, given the newer technology available."

"Well," Garnier shrugged, and started putting the blueprints away, "Some of us had to wait for levers and pulleys to be invented before putting out masterpieces."

Erik nodded, and silently continued to consider a scale model of the observatory to come. He appreciated Garnier's lines cast in a more classical mold, without all of the frills and flourishes that were mandated when one worked for princes and emperors. He tried to comment as much, the words more caustic than he meant them to be, but they were received in good enough humor.

They ended up walking up to the site. There, many laborers continued at their work, ignoring the man in the mask. It was a comfortable, familiar disinterest. There were too many things to attend to on a construction site to give much heed to anything else.

"I think you've been out of the industry for some years," Garnier commented conversationally. "What ventures have you been pursuing?"

What indeed! Erik struggled to contain laughter, and mostly succeeded. "Music."

"Really?" He did not sound remotely surprised. "Anything I might've have heard about?"

Erik thought of the various newspapers over the past year: praise for the new Margarita, that peculiar headline Two hundred kilos on the head of concierge, the whimsical comment We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost. He bit back another chuckle. "Yes, but shall we say—trade secrets?"

Garnier accepted this with a slight inclination of his head. "Well, you certainly have enough trades to have trade secrets in." In the end, Erik knew there was nothing for him on this project. Garnier seemed willing enough to try to find something for him to do, but Erik fancied that they both knew he would be bored.

"I think I may know of something that will interest you," Garnier said at the last. "But I want to be surer of it before getting your hopes up. Will you be on the Riviera long?"

Erik had no fixed plans, and said as much.

"Then why don't you come up next Thursday? There is a good deal of masonry work scheduled; having your eye on it would be welcomed." Garnier's own eyes had turned calculating, and Erik knew of the numbers and blueprints rising before him. "Perhaps I will have word by then."

Erik did come on Thursday, and then again the following Monday. Garnier had no news for him, and so Erik poked around the site. He made a few suggestions, but late in the afternoon found himself doffing his suit jacket and hewing a brick of marble to replace one that had cracked. No one commented. He returned a few days later.

If some oversight of the observatory had been Erik's sole occupation, he would have been bored. But instead he found himself drifting in once or twice a week, sometimes picking up tools and helping fit together the bones of the building, sometimes helping the foreman navigate around an unforeseen complication. He left Monte Carlo and took up a small isolated house nearer Nice. A maid of all work would come only when he was gone.

He made himself a new mask, flesh-toned and stage makeupy. He wore it to pick up groceries and it served a bit better than the false nose and moustache he so often used. He saw a lyre guitar, perhaps sixty years old, in the window of a secondhand shop on one of these outings and brought it back to his temporary home. He restored it and restrung it, and when he wasn't pestering Garnier, he was strumming it thoughtfully. Once in a while, he would take it with his to the construction site after everyone else had left. He would make his way further up Mount Gros, and keep company with the stars shining clear in the crisp late winter air. And he would play.

For twenty years, Don Juan had been his companion. Erik first composed him into existence while returning to Mazandaran, a fleeting motif that played with fire in the forest. He took shape in Constantinople, as Erik narrowly avoided making the same mistakes he had made in Persia. He found a personality on the Gulf of Tonkin, as Erik helped local sailors pirate against the French interlopers, commandeering a water-logged French passport for his trouble. In Italy, Erik had a new set of travel documents forged, listing a birthplace in Switzerland and a name that could slide between Erico Rossi, Éric Roux, or Erik Roth with ease—and so it only made sense that in Italy the Don took on his name as well.

He poured rage and pain into Don Juan, and the music shaped the story into something terrible—something both powerful and dreadful and utterly consuming besides. His mad laughter cannonaded out of the pipe organ in the bowels of the opera, just deep enough underground not to reach its public spaces. The Don never faced his retribution at Erik's hand, always escaping condemnation in the score, but in life, he had to stay in his underworld.

Erik had thought the third act might take on a new direction, as he created the concluding scenes in between coaxing Christine's angelic voice to new heights. And yet… Don Juan was too far gone. Or was it Erik himself? He would try to write of the tender lover, but the music only gave him an indomitable debaucher, laughing through the tears he caused.

The Don was now dead. Unrepentant down to the last measure, but with his pages all a-jumble and shoved into the coffin Erik had built for himself so long ago. He was waiting for his last triumph: for Christine to succumb to the seduction of sticking to her word and bury him, right along with his composer.

And yet—Erik was in Nice. And Christine? Christine was far from France and would suffer to be forsworn. Erik could feel it deep within him, just as he had felt how her love for her boy had moved Christine to sacrifice herself. She turned the scorpion. She kissed Erik's forehead. She cried with him and for him, and—Erik knew—for herself. But she would not come to fulfill that last promise, which must have seemed so little a thing when compared to what else he had asked of her at the time.

It had struck Erik as vitally important to extract that promise from her then. His whole life may have well hinged on that one request, and he thought—there is nothing better than this left in the world. Now, as new music came unbidden onto the strings of the lyre-guitar, he was glad to think Christine would probably not return to bury him. He thought briefly of writing another advertisement for the Époque: OG still dead. No further action required. But, no. What was the phrase? Let sleeping dogs stay asleep. Let no ghosts haunt her nightmares. Unless he was very much mistaken, her little chap-turned-husband would keep her far from Paris regardless of what the newspapers said.

Erik could forgive that—support it, even—though the idea that Christine might also be kept off any stage was a bitter pill to try to swallow.

…but the music was not bitter, not this time. It did not burn, though Erik would have been hard pressed to call it sweet or soothing. His eyes left the stars and settled on his own fingers, deft even in the shadows.

Who are you? He wondered. We have not met before, have we?

The music slipped away, veiling itself in the starlight, as if shy of interrogation.

It was a small life in Nice. Erik's opinions on music were not played out on a stage before thousands. No one feared the reprisals of a malevolent ghost. People still stared at his mask, at times even pointed and or sent out a rough word, but it was nothing that made Erik fear for himself. Somehow, it all matter… less than it had before.

There were no more palaces build—not of stone, or song, or any other medium. Even a few short years ago, that thought would have had galled Erik: how unfair the world was! If the world was a kinder place, how much more Erik could have done in it! He still believed that, but the importance he placed on it had dwindled.

He had set his sights on something grander, more unattainable a kingdom's glory.

Don Juan Triumphant is finished; and now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a woman like everybody else, and we will walk on Sundays.

Perhaps this last and most profound failure had finally curbed his ambition. He had turned his every power to the pursuit of his goal—and he had succeeded. With all of his cunning, he had won his living bride. His living, weeping bride.

All of that effort, and the prize had not been worth the price.

Much like Don Juan Triumphant.

Much like his kingdom by the Caspian Sea.

He could not change the world. He could not change what he was. But he could content himself with smaller dreams, smaller victories. No longer did that seem like something to be ashamed of. He was willing to make himself small, if it meant peace and rest.

Charles Garnier had been scarce in recent days. Some smaller project in Menton has caught his attention briefly, and he had no fear of the Observatory going awry under Erik's aegis. But he returned eventually, and sought Erik out.

"I've had word," he said, sounding very satisfied with himself.

It took Erik a moment to remember what that would be 'word' about. He had put it out of his mind, but now looked curiously at the thick envelope in Garnier's hand. "A project?"

"Yes, and they would be delighted to have you," Garnier said. "There is but one disadvantage—it is the end of the project, and I know you would like to sink your teeth into the start of one. But it is otherwise very much in your line."

Erik remained silent, his head tilted in inquiry. Garnier handed him the letter.

How could something be so wonderful and yet so terrible at the same time? Erik had to think he was cursed—cursed for everything to come as a double-edged sword. There were some very fine things to be read in that letter. The salary, for one. The level of oversight for another. But then there were other details, as daunting as they were appealing.

Opera house.

Rouen.

Garnier was indeed very pleased with himself for making the arrangements. "They are slated to open the stage in late September. But when the last contractor abandoned the project, they fell woefully behind. Not even seven months, and it looks to me like a year's work!" Garnier's voice faded from Erik's ears; as he went on to speak of the particulars of the building, of how his recommendation of Erik had been received with raptures. Indeed, the whole of Garnier's office, the whole of Nice, seemed to recede from his vision—he found himself all at once on the top of some gentle hill, staring up at that spire of the great cathedral jutting up into the sky like the Tower of Babel itself. He thought, I should go home for supper. She always leaves a tray of supper on the sideboard for me. But he relished the feel of the crisp air on the exposed skin of his face, and thought, I will not be missed if I do not return.

Those were his thoughts of Rouen, and they vanished as quickly as they came. There was no crisp air on his face, but the weight of leather. He breathed in as Garnier continued to talk, deep breaths like he might take before launching into song. He counted the pieces of papers in the architect's hands.

Garnier was at last silent, in expectation of a reply.

Words ran through Erik's mind as fast as racing horses. Erik does not want to go to Normandy. Erik does not want to go to the opera. If there is a God, he is cruel to Erik. …but perhaps Erik is cruel to Erik, too. He felt like he was speaking very slowly, though it appeared there was no unnatural lapse in the conversation. "I," he said with great effort, "thank you."

"Then you will undertake it?"

No, no, no—a thousand times no! "Yes."

"Excellent! There are only a few contracts to be signed, at the solicitors' in Paris," Garnier paused here. "I communicated as best I could about… how you like to work."

Why was it that so many things had come up in recent months that made Erik feel like he should double over, laughing until he might cry? Even the Daroga had given in to that, not too long ago. But he had overcome must stronger struggles in the moments previous, and so resisted.

Garnier said he would send a telegram ahead of Erik. They shook hands, and Erik looked up at the observatory a last time. Perhaps he would come back when it was completed. Perhaps he might undertake the collapse of Eiffel's dome at an opportune moment, and then build something better.

Or, perhaps, he would go to Rouen, help finish the Opera House, and manage to find the peace that eluded him there as a child.

It did not take long to tie up his affairs in Nice. He returned the house key it the leasing agent, its rented furniture covered in drop cloths by the maid. He packed his valise, decided at the last to hold on to the lyre-guitar, and reserved his first class train ticket. He left in the morning, and while a few other passengers filtered into his compartment, none stayed for more than a few stops.

He thought of first of calling on the Daroga, but then rejected that. Why should he? If the old man wanted to find him—and why should he at this point?—he could manage. He had followed Erik overseas and across countries. The next region over should not be beyond his abilities, if he so chose to exercise them.

He was resolved, then, not to speak with Nadir, and certainly not with Mojgan. He would spend the night in his flat under the Opera, dance attendance on Garnier's contact as soon as possible, and then disappear into Normandy. And so he may have well done—if he had not picked up the most recent Gazette that had been left by the compartment's previous occupant. He made unhurried progress through the news of the week that allowed him to catch a mere bullet point: Death of the Special Envoy of the King of Persia. The name was a familiar one, and the passing mention that He and his charming wife, la Khatoun, were a fixture of the Parisian social scene this past winter did away with any doubt that it was someone other than Mojgan's husband.

He folded the paper, and turned to staring out the darkening window.

When the train at last disgorged its passengers in Paris, twilight was approaching. Erik hailed a cab, but instead of asking for the Opera, he found himself saying. "Rue de Rivoli. Near the Tuileries."

In good time, he found himself ascending the stairs up to Nadir's apartment, traveling case in one hand and uncased guitar in the other. He knocked on the doorframe lightly with his elbow.

There was shuffle from within the apartment, a cautious sliver opened to reveal Darius's face. When he saw Erik, his eyes widened in surprise and the door along with it.

"Well, do you announce me or do I announce myself?" Erik asked. He had come here almost in a haze, but now found himself fatigued and grumpy from his trip.

"Is that Erik?" Nadir's voice came from the parlor. "Just when I thought things could not get any worse…"

That was announcement enough for Erik, who set his things down in the hallway and went in. It surprised him to see Mojgan there, attired in what struck him as a less formal, loose gown that reminded him of the days in Mazandaran. It surprised him even more to see the Daroga's familiar look of annoyance—turned on Mojgan. Erik was not entirely sure what to do with that.

"I would like to make clear," he ended up saying, as a way of cutting through the strange silence, "that I did not kill this husband, either."

"No one suggested that you did," Mojgan replied. She did not sound amused, but nor did she sound upset. If anything, she sounded and looked tired.

"Not yet." Erik received a flicker of Nadir's green gaze for just a moment before it returned to Mojgan.

"I still have some little time to make arrangements," she said, apparently picking up the thread of a previous conversation.

"Yes," Nadir deadpanned. "Some little time. Joonam, you do not know what you're doing."

A spark came up into her eyes, the likes of which Erik had only seen a handful of times in years past. Her lips were set in a line of determination. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. But all the same…"

Erik glanced between the two of them. "And if I may ask, what are you doing?"

Mojgan favored him with a frank look in the eyes. "I have decided not to go back."

No, Erik was decidedly not omniscient. He would not have guessed that she would say that.