TEN BY TEN AT first, then one by one my fellow crewmen went under the ice.

I did not join them.

In the end, I did not sleep, not when my six months were gone, nor after Valka entered fugue, nor even when the first year of our voyage had gone by. As I grew older, I would often spend my shorter voyages awake and alone, each day playing out as I have described, passing the long years in solitude aboard the sleeping vessel. I acquainted myself with the so-called night officers, the crewmen awakened to tend the ship while Corvo and the officers I knew best slept. I am ashamed to say that I no longer remember most of their names, though I recall young Roderick Halford, the night captain. The rest are little more than ghosts, such as the young woman with whom I played Druaja late into the evenings, or the old mechanic who greeted me on my walks around the ship’s equator. Most of the junior crewmen feared to speak to me, as though I were some species of ghost myself. There was an older woman—she reminded me of Doctor Chand from the Emeshi Colosso—who tended the hydroponics section and the bees. Always when I went to my private spot I would find her there, singing to the vegetables and the tiny, yellow-jacketed soldiers as they flew here and there in service to their queen.

It was then, too—on that first of my Night Journeys—that I first attempted to set to writing an account of my life up until that point, detailing my escape from Delos, my time on Emesh, our battle with Whent and Bordelon on Pharos. I abandoned the project just short of our arrival at Vorgossos. I was not willing to relive those months again, to walk Kharn’s gloomy halls in memory and meet the many horrors that served at his pleasure. I would not try again for many decades. Often I have wondered what became of those original texts—stories I have not recorded here. Languishing in some Imperial archive, I don’t doubt, or else spirited away by some enthusiast among my own people. Perhaps they will see the light someday. Perhaps they will find their way here to Colchis and languish in the Imperial Library alongside this accounting. Perhaps not. Who can say?

Thus the months passed and the years after. And in time the slumbering vessel began to stir. More faces appeared in the halls, and the sound of voices and of the public address system filled the vaulted halls and echoed among the arches and buttressed supports of the mighty holds. Soldiers ran drills and trained in the gymnasium, and the barracks high above resounded to the march of feet. The Irchtani awoke and were seated with the men in the messes, and in time I came no more to the hydroponics section, which was ever crowded then with techs minding the flora and harvesting the fishes. Corvo awoke first, and Durand, with Koskinen and Pherrine and White and the other bridge officers not far behind. Pallino and Elara came after, and Siran with Petros, Callista, and Dascalu—all the legionary officers. Valka came only near the end, and I waited at her bedside and presented her with the traditional glass of orange juice myself. Every one of the Tamerlane’s more than ninety thousand hands was awake and anxious and spoiling for action.

And days later . . . we’d arrived.