BIRDSONG SHATTERED THE STILL, breaking the meditative quiet of the wood. My horse snorted, startled by the sudden cry. The forest spoke with the earthy notes of moss and fungus, whispered with the animal stink of the beast beneath me.

“Are you all right, Sir Hadrian?” a pleasant voice called, clear in the misty air.

Turning in my seat, I saw Selene coming back toward me, her ladies in tow, her flaming hair thickly braided at one shoulder. She had abandoned her customary whites for dun trousers and jacket beneath a riding mantle the color of old rust.

Bowing my head slightly, I said, “I am not so great a rider, Highness.”

“We can see that!” said one of the princess’s companions, a black-skinned beauty with hair nearly so red as Selene’s.

This remark drew unsteady laughter from the others, but Selene only smiled, and I said on, “I can’t think when it was I last rode a horse.” The truth was that I’d not ridden since I was a boy at Devil’s Rest, and that had been almost a hundred years before. Though the days of the cavalier and the warhorse were long behind us, there remained a deep attachment to and fondness for the gentle beasts in the hearts of many among the oldest houses of the Imperium.

But I am not one of them. I prefer creatures who can reason, creatures with whom I can speak. I could not trust the beast beneath me not to buck me and run, not to embarrass me in front of this Imperial princess and her handmaids. I would have preferred my own feet, or a skiff or chariot.

“You’re doing just fine!” She tossed her hair and smiled. “But the path is this way! Come!”

The forest was unspeakably old, planted at the founding of the city atop a terraced platform more than a hundred miles from end to end. The trees had come from Avalon, and before that from Earth herself, and the ash and beechwood growing there counted for its ancestors the woods of sceptered England. Looking up through their branches, I saw the great sail wall and the other platforms of the flying city built upon the clouds. The hanging towers of the Merchant Ministry reached down toward us, and the impossible span of the Martian Way that stretched from the great bowl that supported the Campus Raphael to the flying barracks where the Guard lived with their families cast its shadow on the woods below it.

Forum truly was a world like no other. It truly was a City of the Gods.

I had allowed myself to trail behind Selene and her friends as once I had trailed Anaïs Mataro at her social gatherings. The sense of déjà vu was profound. But for the cool winds of Forum I felt I must be on the deck of a Mataro yacht again. Life, like a dance—like poetry—repeats itself in rhythm and in rhyme.

“Are you coming?” she asked, and gestured with a gloved hand.

She’ll have nothing of you. Valka’s words echoed in my mind. Not even your name.

I spurred the horse to a trot, closing the gap between us.

When we had ridden on a ways, she said, “You’re very quiet, sir.”

“I am often quiet, Highness,” I said, wondering just how I was to keep my horse and hers moving together. I really was far beyond my element. Somewhere above, I heard the faint whine of repulsors, but when I glanced through the leafy green I could not spy the Martian on his platform, maintaining the security of the wood.

“My ladies don’t frighten you, do they?” she asked, inclining her head to the band of gaily colored women riding ahead of us.

This caught me by surprise. “Frighten me?”

“They can be such a pack of harpies.” She smiled up at me through hair like curls of copper wire glowing with heat. “I don’t blame you for trying to lose yourself in these woods.”

I was not sure if I should smile, or if the jape was a trick. Aware I was on a kind of stage, I said, “I am unused to such company, Highness.”

“Selene, please,” she said. “You are my guest, Sir Hadrian. You speak as one expecting dire wolves to leap from the trees. They aren’t allowed on this terrace. The big predators are kept in the hunting zone down a ways.” She waved a vague hand in the direction of the sail wall.

She was joking, I decided, and allowed myself a Marlowe smile. I had seen the woods she meant, the Royal Forest divided by terraces and walls into distinct zones—certain of them glassed in to protect odd climates. The hunting zone was among the lowest and furthest toward the edge of the floating isle, kept separate from this and other zones by high walls of white stone.

“It is only that I am used to soldiers, Highne—Selene. I have little practice speaking to princesses.”

This drew a merry laugh from the princess, who said, “And yet you speak with demons, if the stories are true!” she said. “Cielcin and Irchtani and . . . other things. Were there really machines on Vorgossos? One of the men in LIO told me . . .”

Whoever that man was, he ought to have kept his mouth shut. “The Irchtani are not demons,” I said. “They’re not so different from us, save for appearances.”

“Would you say the same of the Cielcin?” she asked. “Surely they look more like us than the Irchtani.”

“They do,” I agreed. I’d been bothered by that myself as a boy. Gibson had applauded me for noting the physiological resemblances and the kinship it implied: the hope that perhaps peace was possible between our two peoples. “But I wouldn’t say they’re like us.”

The princess accepted this with a nod. “There was a story my nanny played for me when I was a girl about a planet of people whose faces showed feelings no one could understand. They screamed when they were happy, and smiled with disgust. It was to teach us not to trust the people here, of course, but I always imagined it was true. That there was such a planet out there.”

“That’s not far off the mark,” I said. “Whatever their appearances, the Cielcin are not like us beneath.” The monument of bones rose in my mind, the man on the dining board with it, and the disfigured slave that Aranata’s child had dragged on a leash like a dog.

Selene nodded, though I doubt she fully understood. “And your Irchtani are?”

“I owe them my life. I would not be here if Udax—he is one of their centurions—had not intervened in my battles with their general.”

“The one from the triumph?” she asked, and I could feel her peering at me. “The one consumed by machines?”

“That’s the one.”

She shuddered. “What a horrible creature.” I agreed with her, and she pressed on, asking, “What are they like?”

“The Cielcin?” I asked, as much to rally a response as anything. But the answer escaped me before I could check its advance. “Not like I hoped.”

“Not like you hoped?” She sounded puzzled, and turning I saw her watching me with cocked head and bemused smile. “What do you mean?”

Many people believe the children of nobility spoiled and empty-headed, and though that stereotype—as with all stereotypes—is often true, I found it was not true of Selene. Sheltered, perhaps. Naive, certainly. But that empty-headed-seeming princess was not empty-headed at all. Indeed, of all the Imperial children I had met, Philip and Ricard, Faustinus and Irene, even Alexander—I found myself liking Selene. Were it not for the invisible hand of politics and the specter of Valka between us, I could see myself even growing fond of her.

She asked interesting questions, and listened as few people ever did.

“I told you I wanted to be a scholiast,” I said after a moment passed.

“You told me you wanted to be a wizard,” she shot back.

That drew a rueful smile from me. “Just so,” I said. “Even as a boy I studied their language. I couldn’t understand why we’d not made efforts to make peace with the Pale—the war had gone on for hundreds of years, you know? Even when I was young. I thought that surely if we could talk with them—if I could—that I could make a difference. That’s why I joined the fight, traveled to Vorgossos, made contact with one of their princes.” I trailed off, realizing I was beginning to ramble. “I was wrong.”

Ahead of us, Selene’s handmaids were laughing. One had hurried ahead of the rest, called out something about a race, for the path had widened and ran straight now down a double avenue of trees where the wood became less wood than garden.

“Wrong?” she asked, prodding me.

I looked up again before responding—this time spying one of the Martian Guard on his platform, his hands on the bar before him, feet poised on the pedals. Unable to shake the feeling that his eyes and gun turret were both aimed at me, I answered, “I captured a Cielcin officer on Emesh. It seemed so reasonable, even decent.”

“Decent?”

“The way it cared about its men. I thought I’d been proven right in my theory, that the war had dragged on because we wanted it to.”

Selene sounded aghast. “You thought we were the villains?”

“I wasn’t sure I believed in villains at all,” I said shortly, “or I believed we all were villains. The Cielcin and us.” I smiled down at the saddle and the beast before me, and feeling an impulse reached out and patted its velvety neck. Such relativistic thinking is always attractive to the young. Despising their parents—and through their parents all authority—they decide there is no authority but themselves, and therefore all knowledge which was and came before them is evil, and they alone wholly good. I had despised the Empire because I despised my father—who was its chief representative in my young life. Seeing his authority as unjust, I had decided there was no justice save that which I might make myself. I had believed that I alone had the wisdom to set the world to rights, not knowing then that true wisdom lies in knowing that I did not possess that wisdom, and never would.

Clearing my throat, I said, “The Cielcin only recognize power. Their princes are princes because they are the strongest, and when they grow weak they are deposed. There is no room for morality. No room for wisdom or courage. No heroism. The Cielcin I had beaten on Emesh were reasonable because I had beaten them. But the moment they sensed weakness in me, they turned.” Despite the sunlight and the birdsong and the white towers of the ministry hanging from the clouds, I could only see that dark cell in the Borosevo bastille. Only smell the copper of alien blood and the stink of burning flesh. “I thought this officer was making a last desperate stand when it attacked me, but I think . . . I think it thought that if it could kill me it would be in a better bargaining position. A show of dominance—like your dire wolves.”

That made her laugh. For some reason, the music of that laughter chilled me. I should not amuse her. Amusing her felt too much like courtship—which I supposed this whole outing was. I was meant to woo the princess with my war stories, as the old Moor once wooed Desdemona. But I did not wish to be Othello, nor to meet Othello’s end. Nor did I desire this Desdemona.

But Selene was still hanging on my words, and I continued, “The Cielcin don’t reason as we. Our logic is not theirs. The only reason they recognize is a sword.”

“Then we should be grateful to have men like you fighting our battles, Sir Hadrian.”

It was my turn to laugh then. “I should hope there are not too many men like me, Your Highness.”

I had forgotten her order to call her by her name, but she did not rebuke me. “What makes you say that?”

“I mostly live in my head,” I answered her. “Sooner or later I won’t be able to escape from it.” I allowed myself a self-deprecating laugh.

Laughing with me, Princess Selene asked, “Are you always like this, sir?”

“Like what, princess?”

“So . . . serious.”

I laughed again. “I thought you were about to say dramatic.”

“That, too.”

“I’m rather afraid I am,” I said. “Ask anyone who knows me.”

We rode on in casual conversation then a while, following her handmaids along the broad avenue of trees. I glanced surreptitiously at my terminal. It was not quite standard noon, and our excursion was slated for another several hours yet.

“Alexander tells me you’re an admirer of ancient history,” Selene said.

The mention of Alexander’s name set my fists to tightening on the reins. “Hazards of having a Zenoan scholiast for a tutor.”

“Then there is something ahead which might interest you. I’d wanted to surprise you. Most people don’t know it’s here.” She pressed her horse forward, steam rising from its nostrils in the chilly air.

Curious, I followed after her, and unable to help myself, I asked, “How is your brother?”

“Alexander?” She glanced back over her shoulder, and I saw something in her face. Anger? A foggy shape turned over in my stomach, and I wondered if Selene were not my enemy as well, if her smiling face and laughter were—as she herself had said—a species of disgust. Then more than ever, I wanted to flee with Valka, to make for the edges of the known universe and never look back. “He told me what you said of him.”

“Will you tell him I am sorry?” I asked. “I am unused to children. I was unprepared for a squire. Perhaps I do not have the temperament to teach.”

“I will tell him,” Selene said. “He really does admire you, you know?” Her back was to me, and her intricate braid bounced as she rode, hurrying a bit ahead. The foggy suspicion in me transformed to something rotten. Regret, I thought. And shame. “Kiria! Bayara! We’re going to the arch! Come back!”

---

Columns of cloud stood among columns of white stone, mingled with the boles of trees two thousand years old, the landscape warped and rippled with roots and great boulders placed there by the architects of the Royal Forest back in the deeps of time. So few feet had trod those pathways in all that time, for the forest—like so many of the Empire’s oldest and most storied monuments—was open to a special few. As in the garden of Vorgossos, I felt that ahead we might come upon a gate and find an angel standing guard with sword afire, so close was that wood in feeling to the gardens of paradise itself. The trees fell away around us, and we rode into a clearing about a great and shallow hill. There the beaten path transformed, was paved with marble cobbles white and moss-grown.

And there was a gate.

A triumphal arch stood alone upon the hill, a monument to ages past. Fashioned of travertine and marble it was, its columns and capitals cracked and weathered, its relief sculptures eroded and decayed. Great it once had been, and great it yet remained, more than a dozen times the height of a man and so broad that six might walk abreast beneath it. Yet it seemed to me a thing that looked backward, as if to pass beneath its protection was to enter ages passed or passing, not to come.

“It’s from Earth,” Selene said. “One of the old Emperors had it brought here. We’re not supposed to get too close.”

“Is it still radioactive?” I asked.

“A little,” she replied. “Those pillars mark safe distance.”

I saw what she meant. A ring of white pillars surrounded the archway, each topped with the verdigrised statue of a virtue looking outward, but there was no chain, no barrier to prevent approach. Certain forms of stone, I knew, held the fingerprint of atomics better than others.

Taking this as permission to go closer, I urged my horse forward. Stubbornly, the beast moved, and when I was within ten paces of the nearest pillar, I dismounted and held the reins in my hand.

Close as I was, I could make out the inscription above the great arch, done in the ancient block capitals of the English alphabet—though the language was not English at all.

SENATVS

POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS

DIVO TITO DIVI VESPASIANI F

VESPASIANO AUGUSTO

“Is it . . . ?”

“The Arch of Titus?” she said. “Yes.”

After the God Emperor had beaten the Mericanii and flooded the Earth with nuclear fire, he had descended upon the planet and—garbed in a radiation suit—had visited the ancient city of Rome. He had walked the sacred road from the walls of the ancient city to the ruins of the old Forum, and there—alone—had crowned himself Emperor of Mankind.

He had passed beneath this arch on that road, perhaps had touched the stones as he went.

It was a sacred artifact, and I have since learned that the new Emperors—on the eve of their coronation—reenact that solitary journey in the Royal Forest, walking alone through the forest to the gates where the coronal triumph begins. Thus each new Emperor arrives at the Sun King’s Hall just as the sun of Forum rises above the sail wall and the city glows with the light of a new day.

I knew none of this at the time, and said in wonder, “Why is it here?”

She told me only a piece of this. “Haven’t you ever wondered why the Last Stair is called the Last Stair?” Selene did not dismount, but drew up beside me, looking up at the crumbling Roman arch. “A new Emperor begins his walk here alone, just like the God Emperor did. These are the first steps. I thought you’d want to see it. It must be . . . twenty thousand years old? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”

The first steps . . .

I did not reply to Selene at once, but took a step or two nearer until I stood almost in the shadow of the stone marker. I wondered what would happen if I tried to walk forward. The Martian Guard would descend, I guessed, as much to save me from the radiation as to prevent my trespass. Could I make it to the gate before anyone would stop me? Would Selene follow me where only Emperors had trod? Despite the threat of radiation, I felt an insane impulse to touch the ruin.

“How is it preserved?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t really know, some kind of resin, maybe?”

“Thank you,” I said, and smiled up at her, “for showing me this.”

Selene returned my smile.

---

Our tour ended, we took the horses back to the gatehouse, where a uniformed attendant took my beast away. I was privately relieved.

“Hadrian!”

Crim hurried toward me from the shuttle port outside, his Red Company greatcoat flapping crimson from his shoulders like a Swordmaster’s mandyas. Selene was still near me, and so two pair of Martian Guards stepped in to interpose themselves between my rushing officer and me. Seeing this, Crim slowed. I was midway through the act of accepting my shield-belt back from the guardsmen and froze. The Norman-Jaddian officer’s face, usually olive and full-blooded, looked almost bleached.

“What’s the matter, man?”

The lieutenant commander shoved the hands of one Martian away. He made a sharp gesture with two fingers, pointing first to me, then himself and back again, indicating that what needed saying should not be said aloud.

I pressed forward, abandoning Selene, and pushed the Martian aside with the hand that held my effects. I spoke low so as not to be overheard by the Martians and in Jaddian to stymie any listeners. “What happened?”

“Dolofin,” he said, voice low. “Murder, my lord. You weren’t answering your terminal.”

I felt my blood run cold. Murder? Careful now, I practically whispered into the man’s ear, covering my mouth with my free hand to frustrate the cameras. There was no telling who might be watching, and I could not trust Selene or her guards, either.

“One of the cleaning staff,” Crim said, panting from his run but matching my close tones. “Doctor Onderra . . .”

I seized Crim by the lapels with my free hand. “What?” I dragged his ear close and hissed. “What happened?” It wasn’t possible. If something had happened to Valka . . .

“Valka’s fine!” Crim said. “One of the batmen died, though. Distracted it before it could get her.”

I released him, shoving him back, eyes wide and wild. A flash of anger rose in me. His clumsy wording had made me believe—if only for a moment—had made me believe that Valka was dead. I glared at him, waited for him to speak.

“There was a knife-missile,” Crim said, smoothing his jacket beneath the long coat. “In your chambers.”