The prince was getting it, I could tell by the way he was steadily nodding his head. “So she doesn’t have any ideas about the information.”
Reader, have I already said that there is a difference between knowing a fact and owning it? “It takes Valka as long as you or I to think about what she knows.”
“Surely not as long,” he said. “She doesn’t have to waste time learning and relearning information.”
“True,” I said. “But she also doesn’t feel the same pressure to learn. Much of the data Valka has taken in in her day just sits in there, waiting to be useful. She hasn’t thought about it, hasn’t accessed it, and because those parts of her mind are machine, the thoughts only sit there until she needs them. She told me once things don’t float in her mind the way they do in yours or mine.”
Alexander turned sharply then, curiosity plain on his impossibly sculpted face. “Does she dream?”
She didn’t, but I did not feel that it was my place to say. Whatever the nature of Valka’s implants, they’d fundamentally altered her brain’s chemistry and mechanics. Not only did she not dream, she did not struggle to sleep. She could switch off her waking mind as easily as you or I might turn a light switch.
“Why do you ask?”
“I only wondered,” the prince said. “I can’t imagine what it must be like, being like that.”
“Neither can I,” I said. The prince was silent a long moment. He’d turned back to fully face the room, eyes intently studying his own shoes. I could tell he wanted to ask something, and so said, “Out with it. What’s on your mind?”
Alexander twitched as if I’d shocked him. “I don’t understand why we’re here.”
I hadn’t told him. I’d explained everything to Pallino, to Siran and Elara, to Crim, Otavia, and Ilex—everyone who’d been with me on the Demiurge. I’d even explained it to Lorian, who believed though he had not seen. “Were you not told?” I asked, toying with one silver clasp on my glove’s long gauntlet. “I’ve long had evidence—rumor, really—of earlier battles with the Cielcin in our history. On Vorgossos, Kharn Sagara told me the Mericanii . . . encountered xenobites.”
“Kharn Sagara?” Alexander repeated, eyes gone wide. “Not the Kharn Sagara.” I only looked at him. “You didn’t tell me.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“How is he alive?”
“He clones himself,” I said, still lying there, “and takes the new bodies.”
The prince made the warding gesture again. “But he must be . . . ten thousand years old!”
“More than fifteen thousand,” I said soberly. “Almost old enough to remember the Mericanii, and old enough to remember things from that time we have long forgotten.”
“Like the Mericanii fighting the Cielcin?”
“Possibly the Cielcin,” I said, so what I said became something less than a lie.
“But then . . .”
A knock sounded at the door, cutting off the prince’s question. “Enter!” I called.
The novice at the door bowed. “I apologize for the interruption, my lords,” she said, still bowing.
I sat up on the bed, swinging round to face the young lady. She wore the simple green pullover of a new-made scholiast, tied at the waist with a white cord, no sash or bronze badges to be seen. “Stand,” I said. She did. Hope springing in my chest, I said, “Did Arrian send for me?” Had the formal approval cleared the telegraph from Forum already? It seemed unlikely. It had only been three days since we had arrived.
“The primate?” She wrung her hands—definitely a novice then, and would be until she learned to control such nervous expressions. “No, my lord. I work for the curators. One of the archivists sent me for you.”
“One of the archivists?” I found my feet. “Why?”
“I don’t know, lord,” the girl said, bowing her head again. I guessed she was patrician by birth; no palatine so young would be deferential to me. “He said, ‘Carina, fetch Lord Marlowe for me.’ I am sworn to obedience, lord. I did not question him. I am sorry, lord.” She bowed again, and I sensed a glimmer of fear in the movement. Fear of me?
Smiling sweetly as I could, I offered the girl my most courtly bow. “It’s all right, Sister Carina,” I said. “Let me get my boots on.”
* * *
I left Alexander in the suite and followed Carina back out into the sea air. She did not speak much, but hurried on ahead of me, replying to my questions and my attempts at conversation with timid staccato replies. After a minute or two, I gave up. No sense wringing blood from a stone.
Sister Carina led me back toward the Library tower, but not the way I’d entered it with Valka on our first day. Rather, we entered through the scriptorium annex, past the winding halls and Room 113, past the coffee dispensary and back through the main archives, where to my surprise we turned down and followed the stair past the ground level into a cavernous silo of a space ringed round by ironwork balconies. Here the book stacks continued, descending it seemed for half as many levels as they climbed above. We passed dozens of brothers and sisters of the Order as we went, rattling down old metal stairs. I half-expected to catch Valka in among them—she was in there somewhere, lost among the stacks—but she did not appear.
At length Carina brought me to a hall where scrolls—actual scrolls—stood in niches like honeycomb to either side. These were blueprints, schematics, and other diagrams kept in vacuum behind filter glass to preserve them. Maps and paintings were stored in similar glass slides, protected for all eternity. It was a collection to rival and drown even the Undying’s Garden of Everything.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Finally stringing together a coherent answer, the girl said, “The archivists’ quarters are down here. I wanted to spare him the climb.”
The arch ahead was not like the classical arches above, but circular, the door round as a pressure hatch—indeed I think it was such a hatch, or had been. Bioluminescent lamps hung on the walls, and pillars of some strange, pink stone stood in ranks beyond.
“Coral?” I asked.
“It traps moisture,” Carina said, stepping aside to allow three of her brothers to pass. “Protects the books.”
“Protects the books from what?”
I had my answer a moment later. Ahead the hall gave way to living rock, its face precisely carved by careful hands over many long centuries. Stalactites hung from the ceilings, flowed into graven pillars that supported natural vaults. Metal doors showed in the rock around, opening on deeper grottoes. A statue of Imore sat upon a pillar of stone in the center above a still, black pool. No blade of grass was there, nor flower, nor even moss. The Archivists’ Grotto. It ought to be one of the Ninety-Nine Wonders of the Galaxy all on its own, a work of art and beauty. Like the dark delvings of the Cielcin it should have been, or the gloomy haunts of our necropolis beneath Devil’s Rest, but it was like neither of those things. Great veins of gleaming algae clung to the vaults above, shedding their white light on the groves and aisles of stone, teased by decades and centuries of cultivation into fractal patterns as Buddhist monks arrange rocks in a garden.
Here I have made my home these past three years and labored at this account. Here I have lived and labored alongside the brothers and sisters of the Order, though I am not one of them. Here I have hidden from an ungrateful universe, and lived not as Hadrian Marlowe, but as a guest of Arrian’s successor three times removed. They never asked my name—though the primate knows me. They call me the Poet, and that is enough. A private joke that you, Reader, will no doubt understand.
But of all the beauty of that Grotto, of the arched cavern roof and the pillars flowing from it, of the still pool like a black mirror beneath Imore’s unsmiling face, of the hanging stalactites like the fangs of some forgotten dragon, I shall say no more—for my attention was given to none of them. My eyes went instead to the bench beside t
hat pool, and my vision blurred with tears.
Vast is the galaxy, and vaster still the cosmos. But vaster—greater—even than that is the cosmos, the great enemy of chaos, the order that stands above it all. Four hundred billion suns in our galaxy, trillions of worlds—half a billion of them settled by Man.
So small.
Small enough for chance.
For miracles unlooked-for.
As I drew nearer I stopped, tears flowing freely by then. Upon the bench—waiting for me, it seemed—sat an elderly man, his body stooped with care, his viridian robes hanging loose on him as old rags upon a scarecrow. As I approached he looked up, smiling in a most un-scholiast way beneath his wild mane of thick white hair, gray eyes sparkling. His craggy face caught the light of the algae growth above, deep shadows carving there, throwing the mutilated nostril into sharp relief.
“Hello, Hadrian!” said Tor Gibson.
CHAPTER 55
REUNION
I FELL TO MY knees before the bench, still crying silently. “Gibson?” I stretched out my ungloved hand and took his own hand in mine. “Is it really you?”
The old scholiast looked down at me. With his free hand, he set the familiar brass-headed cane aside. His fingers were warm and dry as old roots in my hand, but there was some strength yet in them. He squeezed my hand and shook it back and forth, smile widening. “Who else would it be?”
A hollow laugh escaped me, knocking loose more tears. I drew my coat sleeve across my face, dried my eyes. “You’d not believe me if I told you,” I said. “I thought you were dead. It’s been . . .” I had to stop and think about it. “Four hundred fifty standard years.” I had spent most of that time frozen, slipping into the future with each passing journey. “How long have you been here?”
“Only about four years,” Gibson said. He raised a hand to quiet my objections as they came spilling forth. “Your father had me sent freight. I think he meant for me to outlive you—part of my punishment.” His smile hadn’t faltered. “But here you are, a Knight Victorian, is it?” He took back his hands and clapped me on both shoulders, the better to survey me at arm’s length. “I could hardly believe it when I heard the news.” And here he raised my right hand to his face, the better to see the Emperor’s Sovereign Ring with his fading eyes. “I thought you were going to Teukros,” he said, “and here I find you wearing the Emperor’s own ring.” His eyes swept over my black uniform and longish mane, over the gauntleted left hand and the sword and shield-belt. “Still wearing these long coats, I see.”
I laughed, new tears blossoming. “I thought you were dead,” I managed to say. “I mourned you.”
“I thought the same of you, dear boy,” my old tutor—the man who had truly been my father—said. Tears still falling, I released his hand and, regaining my feet, stooped to embrace him.
“There is so much to tell you,” I said, voice fragile in my ears and close to breaking. “So much.”
Gibson’s old arms embraced me only slowly, as if it took him a moment to recover from the surprise of my embrace. “And you will tell me all about it. Sit, sit.” He patted the stone bench beside him. “Carina tells me you bring an army with you.” Gibson watched me through a mask like a scholiast’s expressionless repose, but his eyes—gray eyes, not green—were sparkling through the thin mist that darkened their sight. He looked old, older than I remembered. He must have been six hundred years old, at least. With a start, I realized my own father would be as old now—assuming he never once left Delos after I did. Crispin would be north of four hundred, on the far side of middle-aged. Seeing Gibson somehow heightened my sense of alienation. I was a man adrift in time, and though the six-score-and-some-odd years I carried in that moment weighed heavily on me as five centuries might on others, I had been like a man cast adrift into a river while all he knew remained ashore and slipped away.
I felt the ivory ring beneath my glove as I shifted to take the seat beside my oldest friend and companion. Not all I knew. Adrift in time I might be, but I did not drift alone.
“You would think,” Gibson said, “that the Imperial Library would be among the first places news travels in our universe, but it is not so. Information arrives here only after it has circulated throughout the suns. We are more reservoir than fountain, in truth. But I have heard some strange tales. Carina says something about Vorgossos? And what is this Halfmortal business? What a name!”
Mention of Sister Carina made me look round, half-expecting to find the young novice near at hand, but she had vanished, withdrawn, no doubt, to some other duty. It seemed absurd to talk to Gibson of Vorgossos, of Brethren and the Quiet. Of my death and of the Howling Dark beyond. Gibson was of a time before. My memories of him belonged to that other Hadrian, the one who had died on the Demiurge. Young though I was, I was older than any plebeian might dream, and we are not meant to live forever. Those memories of my youth on Delos felt as remote to me then as the stories of someone else’s childhood. It was as if Tor Gibson and Lord Alistair Marlowe—Crispin and Kyra, my mother and all the rest—existed in a world apart from the nightmares of Vorgossos, of Arae, and Iubalu. Or perhaps those nightmares were real, and it was my childhood that was the dream.
“There is so much,” I said, and clenched my fists until the right one ached. “So much.” A sob shook me, as though I were a boy of nineteen again and not a Knight Victorian. Not the Halfmortal. And no nineteen-year-old could bear what I have seen and done and not weep.
But Gibson was a scholiast—as I have never been—and scholiasts have no time for weeping. “Kwatz!” he said, rebuking me, and thumped me on the knee. “Grief is deep water. Come now. Stop this. Remember your breathing exercises.”
I was a child again, or would always be a child to Gibson. Taking in a deep breath, I held it, counting back from ten. Slowly I released it, exhaling with it the tension that brought my tears. “It isn’t grief,” I said. I brushed my gauntlet across my face, leather slick against my eyes. “It’s only . . . there’s so much. So much to tell. So many times I needed your help.”
“I’m here now.”
I told him as I had told no one before, not even Valka. I told him about Haspida, about my mother, and my fight with Crispin. I told him about Demetri, and how I’d come to Emesh. For the first time in my life, I told someone about Cat. About the Gray Rot, about the streets of Borosevo. I told him about the Colosso, about Switch and Pallino, about Siran and Ghen, and the rest. I told him about Makisomn and the Mataros. About Gilliam. I told him about meeting Valka, and that I loved her. How we fled to Calagah, how there I had my first vision from the Quiet. I told him of the Jaddian visit and the Cielcin attack, and wished I could show him the sword Olorin had given me, but I had checked it in the barbican of the day gate when we’d entered Nov Belgaer.
My story took us to Pharos, took us through Emil Bordelon and Marius Whent, through my time with Jinan and the Red Company—and how I had betrayed them. We journeyed to Vorgossos, and when I spoke of Kharn Sagara, Gibson’s eyes—forgetting their scholiast training—went wide as dinner plates.
“Kharn Sagara?” he echoed. “The King with Ten Thousand Eyes?”
Had I not just had this precise conversation with Prince Alexander?
“I gave you that book,” Gibson said. “Of all the books in the universe . . . what are the odds?”
“Shorter odds than that I should find you here, alive,” I said.
“Not so!” Gibson said. “Colchis is the final destination for much of our Order.” Tor Varro had said something of that when we arrived on the watery moon. I supposed that explained such coincidence, though perhaps there were deeper powers at work. Deeper powers had moved me from Teukros to Emesh, after all, as I then told Gibson—and told him the Quiet so often wore his face. He asked no questions, nor made any interruption of any kind, not even when I recounted my duel with Prince Aranata and my death aboard the Demiurge. I must have talked for hou
rs—it was impossible to tell so far underground. I spoke of my knighting in the Georgian Chapel, of my missions in service to the Empire, of the Battles of Cellas, Thagura, and Oxiana. I spoke of the demons of Arae, of the pirates at Nagapur. I told him the truth of my battle with Ulurani at Aptucca, and of my mission to Gododdin and Nemavand. I spoke of Hermonassa and Syriani Dorayaica, the Scourge of Earth, and though he remained silent, I saw his face fall. At last I came to Forum, to Bourbon, Breathnach, and the Empress. Gibson did not need to know. I showed my scars, let him feel the bones beneath.
Studying the deep white slashes in my left arm with his fingers and fading eyes, Gibson said, “These are poor payment for so much suffering.” He took his hands away. “I am sorry, Hadrian.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s because of me Father exiled you and . . .” I touched my own nose, tried not to look at the deep notch Sir Felix had put in Gibson’s with his knife. “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”
The old man’s scholiast composure broke entirely, and he gave me a sad smile, clamping one dry hand over my scarred wrist. “Being here isn’t a punishment. But what happened to you . . .” He broke off contact with my arm, and for the first time in my life I think I saw my old tutor truly lost for words. “I’m only sorry you didn’t make it to Teukros.”
“You sacrificed yourself for nothing,” I said, staring down at my hands. The three rings—rhodium, ivory, and gold—the nearly invisible scars from my youth on Delos fading on the right, the fresh, shining white ones deep on the left.
“Not nothing,” the scholiast said. “You’re not a cathar, are you?”
He had a point, but I said, “I don’t know what I am.”
Gibson laughed—actually laughed. The scholiasts nearby all started at the sound. A scholiast should not laugh. I confess I shared their astonishment. In all the years I’d known him, I do not think I’d ever heard the old man laugh. “You haven’t changed at all!”
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