MONTHS PASSED BEFORE THE summons came, during which time I oversaw the purging of the Tamerlane’s data banks and their rebuild from backed-up files. Aristedes recovered. He’d suffered serious plasma burns to the face and torso and capped them off with a concussion so severe Okoyo was surprised he was still walking, especially given his fragile state. Crim and Ilex likewise recovered, but none of them—acting, I guessed, on Lorian’s orders—would tell me just how it was they’d managed to escape the Chantry frigate.

I never saw Gereon again, and the Grand Inquisitor had withdrawn, gone back to whatever ecclesial shadow she’d sprung from. Selene sent messages, and I replied politely, saying that I was not at liberty to discuss my near-assassination or the Inquisition that followed, save to say that I was all right and alive, and would doubtless see her soon. She made no mention of Alexander.

Each day I suspected word from the Imperial Council, from the Commandant of the Martian Guard, from the Emperor himself. Each day I was surprised, then disappointed, then frustrated in time. I wanted it to be over, wanted finally and at last to be sentenced to my marriage with Selene or else to be ordered offworld.

The summons came in the form of a Martian escort and a court androgyn with orders to bring me before Prince Hector and the Council.

And so I went, thinking it was over—not knowing the worst was still to come.

---

The lords of the eight ministries sat beneath the Lord High Chancellor’s seat with the Synarch and Lord Powers. Not ghosts this time in holograph, but real and solid presences, lords with weight and force.

“I still cannot believe it,” said Miana Hartnell, the Minister of Welfare, “the Director of Legion Intelligence an assassin. Ghastly. Simply ghastly.” She was a palatine, but as far from the old blood of the great houses as it was possible to be, with a rodent’s pursed face and bird-bright eyes.

The Lord High Chancellor interrupted her, addressing me where I stood within the bend of the mighty table beneath the holograph. “We apologize for the suffering this incident has inflicted on you and your people, Sir Hadrian. And allow me to extend my personal sympathies to you as well. You must be in need of respite after this ordeal.”

“It would be nice to get back to work,” I said.

“Work?” Prince Hector sounded almost affronted. “To the front, you mean?”

“I am a soldier of the Empire,” I said, repeating that phrase which had become for me a kind of mantra in the decades since Vorgossos.

Prince Hector’s hands gripped the arms of his small throne. “The Emperor has been entertaining notions of placing you on this council.”

He said these words as though they were news, and so I shook myself from my contemplation of the holograph floating above my head and found it in me to act surprised. “What?” When I realized how foolish I must have appeared, I added, “Your Excellency, I . . . am not certain what to say. How would I serve?”

“You would take my seat, my boy!” came a surprisingly jovial voice from the right-hand wing. I turned. Traditionally, the seats to the right of the Chancellor’s throne were held by Lions. Lord Bourbon was there, and Lord Peake, the Minister of Justice. The left side held the less traditionalist wing of the Council, Lady Hartnell chief among them, with Lord Cordwainer of the Ministry of Revenue, and—perversely—the Lord Minister of Rites. But in those days, the council was unbalanced, and save for these three each of the twelve counselors was a Lion.

The speaker sat at the far right of the Council table, and turning to my left I found Lord Cassian Powers smiling down at me. The former strategos looked so old he reminded me of Tor Gibson, face seamed and folded. He wore a pair of thick spectacles that magnified his eyes to three times their natural size, and unlike Bastien Durand’s I guessed these glasses were medically necessary. He no longer looked like a soldier, more like a species of overgrown owl peering from his perch.

“Your seat, Lord Powers?” I looked from the old man to the others before circling back to Lord Cassian. I almost laughed. “I could not replace you!”

“You are far more the expert on the Pale then I ever was!” the Avenger of Cressgard exclaimed. “I’m only an old man who knows how to kill them.”

Glancing from Lord Powers to the rest of the Council, I hesitated, saying, “I . . . do not wish to compete with the Lord Minister of War where the way we are to conduct our struggle is concerned. I am your servant, counselors. I have served, and wish to continue serving.” I bowed, trying not to look up at the image above me, the ghost of a small woman with short blond hair and a square jaw strapped to a chair.

Lieutenant Casdon.

The Council had replayed her testimony at the start of our meeting, and the final image remained on the projector at the focus of the high table beneath which I stood.

“Our servant would not argue with this Council,” said Peter Habsburg, the Lord Minister of Works. “I remind you, Sir Hadrian, that as a knight, you are answerable to the Imperial Office. We are the Imperial Office, being ourselves servants to His Radiance.”

I shook my head. “Forgive me, Excellency, but no. I am a Knight Victorian, and answerable only to the Emperor.” Lord Habsburg’s face creased with disappointed anger, and he turned toward the uncharacteristically silent Lord Bourbon. Before he could address his colleague and fellow Lion, I said, “But if it is His Radiance’s wish that I sit on this Council, I will obey. But as his counselor, I would advise that I am of greater use away from Forum.”

“Why are you so eager to flee?” asked Augustin Bourbon, picking up the baton from Lord Habsburg.

The Minister of War’s dark eyes met mine, and I studied him for a long moment. The thick, dark hair going to gray, the heavy sideburns, the pale suit with the fleur-de-lis pinned to his lapel, and the golden braids that draped over his azure half-toga from either shoulder. I felt certain he’d been involved in Breathnach’s attack, but I knew I could never prove it. It may have been Breathnach’s hand that directed the knife in my chambers, but it was Bourbon’s that had directed Breathnach, surely. And Sir Friedrich’s note had implied the Chantry was in on the attempt to frame me. I glanced sidelong at Vergilian’s empty chair. The Synarch was away, citing other duties.

“Frankly, my Lord Minister of War,” I answered after the beat of a heart, “I am not particularly enamored of the capital at the moment. I was falsely accused and nearly framed for a demoniac, an experience I would prefer not to have to repeat.”

“You believe your life is still in danger?” Prince Hector asked.

“Excellency, I believe it will be until I die,” I replied, and thought, How’s that for prophecy?

The sergeant-at-arms banged his fasces against the striking plate. “Order!” he cried. “There will be no disrespect in the chamber!”

I bowed my apologies. “Forgive me, honorable lords and ladies, but I am under a great deal of strain.” Straightening, I recalled my rhetoric lessons and—placing my left hand behind my back—extended my right as though I held a book before my eyes. “But in addition to the threat to my own life, my crew, my officers, and armsmen have themselves only narrowly escaped judgment. I take this threat to their lives very seriously.”

“Your officers . . .” began Lord Allander Peake. The Minister of Justice sifted papers on the table before him. “In the absence of His Holy Wisdom the Synarch, I have been asked to bring forward a request on the part of the Holy Terran Chantry. They wish for the officers who breached their security during this affair to submit themselves for interrogation.”

“Not in a million years,” I said, interrupting the minister. “Commander Aristedes and the others are under my protection.”

Lord Peake raised a ringed hand for calm. “My understanding is they only wish to ascertain the manner by which your men breached their security.”

“Then I will submit a report if the Emperor so orders,” I said. “You and I both know the methods by which the Inquisition ascertains its information, and I will not submit my people to such examination without explicit command.”

Perhaps speaking from piety, Lady Hartnell said, “You cannot simply refuse a request made by the Earth’s Chantry.”

Turning smoothly on my heel to face the weasel-faced old woman, I said, “I am not refusing. But I remind this Council that the good Commander and my lieutenants were acting on my express orders. If the Chantry wishes to question them, they must go through me, seeing as all responsibility for their actions is mine as their commanding officer. I am saying that if the Holy Chantry wishes to reopen an inquisition against me after all that’s happened, the Emperor will hear about it. Were he here, I would remind the Synarch that the clergy allowed themselves to be used by Sir Lorcan Breathnach in an illegal investigation that nearly took the life of a Knight Victorian—namely, myself—and risked the lives of the more than ninety thousand people who serve in my Red Company.” I let this sink in a moment before adding. “This continued antagonism would lend credence to the rumors that the Inquisition was complicit in Sir Lorcan’s scheme, rumors which I am certain the Synarch, Synod, and Choir would like to see dispelled as quickly as possible. However it was Commander Aristedes and his companions managed to breach the Chantry’s quarantine—and I don’t know how they did it—might I suggest the Chantry in particular should be grateful they succeeded, as it has spared them grievous embarrassment and the wroth of His Radiance, who—I imagine—would not have been thrilled to learn that one of his knights and his daughter’s betrothed was killed by mistake.”

Stony silence greeted this speech, silence and an unquiet tension moving beneath the surface of the air. It was almost a shame the Synarch was not present. It was almost a declaration of war, pitting the authority of the throne—in whose shadow I stood and acted—against that of the altar. Once upon a time, the Chantry had been crafted by the Imperial state, but it had grown beyond those humble beginnings, as all weeds must. Grown until it was like a worm in the Empire’s bowels, grown until the question of who was host and who the parasite could not be easily answered. Of old the Emperors crowned themselves—as the God Emperor had done in the ashes of Rome—and crowned the Chantry’s Synarchs, who knelt before the throne. But the Chantry had grown strong, and perhaps there would come a day, and soon, when the Emperors knelt and permitted the high priest to set old William’s crown upon their brows.

Could the Emperor protect me? Protect Lorian and the others?

Or would the Chantry’s will prevail?

I was willing to bet on His Radiance.

“So,” Prince Hector said, breaking the silence in his hands, “my brother has informed you of his intentions.”

Remembering my place and burying my anger beneath propriety and false modesty, I bowed my head. “Yes, Excellency.”

“And did His Radiance inform you that it was the opinion of this Council that such a marriage was inadvisable?”

For a moment, I almost, almost wanted Selene, if only to defy these dusty ministers and their . . . what? Their jealousy? Almost I understood the Hadrian of my visions who sat with Selene at his feet before a crowd of kneeling lords.

Almost.

“He did, Excellency.”

“Ah.” Prince Hector had the grace to look down.

Slashing through this awkward moment, the Minister of Justice put in, “I will . . . give your reply to Wisdom Vergilian, Lord Marlowe, along with your, ah . . . advisement.”

I bowed more deeply than I had before. “Thank you, Lord Minister. I hope to move past this ugliness as swiftly as may be.”

---

Pallino met me outside with a complement of ten Red Company guards. None of them had been permitted weapons inside the Sun King’s Hall, but the men were armored and shielded, and would serve as some defense in the event of an attack. Since the knife-missile, Corvo and Crim had both insisted on increased security about my person whenever I left the Tamerlane—they’d even posted a guard to my door while I slept. Corvo had insisted the decade of troopers in their red-fringed tunics and black plate would serve as a show of strength and discourage any attackers, but I could not shake the feeling they only made me look afraid.

I told myself I was being absurd. The Emperor, after all, was the most powerful man in all the galaxy, and he had more guards than anyone, between the common legionnaires, the Martian Guard, and the Excubitors who surrounded his person at all times, to say nothing of the fleet of Martian warships, Legion warships, and Chantry vessels that forever orbited the gas giant and the sprawling capital city. No one called the Emperor a coward, or thought him one. No one would dare. I told myself that I was different. I was a knight, and knights should stand on their own feet, protected by their own hands and skill at arms.

My escort hadn’t gotten far when a voice sounded behind me. “Lord Marlowe! A moment!”

Turning, I beheld the ancient Lord Cassian Powers hurrying toward me, a brass walking stick seemingly forgotten in his hand. He moved with surprising speed for one so old. I extended an arm in salute before bowing—the man was a soldier and a lord—and said, “At your service, my lord.”

The Avenger waved this formality aside with his stick. Cassian Powers stood a head taller than me, and beneath the heavy gray cloak he wore the simple belted tunic jacket and trousers of a military officer, devoid now of insignia and rank, but his high boots were pure and polished as though the man had just come from the parade ground.

“I’d hoped to have a word with you, if I may.”

I looked round the open-air colonnade that wrapped around the exterior of the government building to the west wing and the approach to the main hall. To my astonishment, the Lord Adviser had no escort, no attaches or adjutants. No guard.

“Of course, lordship,” I said. “Here?”

Lord Cassian Powers laid a hand on my shoulder and smiled, eyes magnified by his glasses until they filled the crystal lenses. “Here is fine! No secrets, not between us and the old electric eyes, mm?”

I had met with Lord Powers on only a few occasions. The Avenger of Cressgard was an aloof figure: hero of another time, a relic kept on display and trotted out at ceremonies and at times when the Council needed his advice. He was perhaps the greatest Cielcin hunter in history, and one of the galaxy’s foremost experts on the xenobites and their culture, and so when he asked for a word, I allowed myself to be led through the pillars and down onto an overlook that peered out over the monorail line that ran from below the great hall across empty sky to the isle where floated the halls of justice, huge pillars gleaming in the sun.

Far below, I could make out the green and gray and white-walled terraces of the Royal Forests. I could not see the Arch of Titus, not from this height, though I spotted bare patches in the trees, and guessed that one such clearing must hold the Roman monument taken from the gray hills of Earth.

“It is rather a lot, isn’t it?” the old soldier asked. “All this?”

“The City?” I asked, not sure I followed. “It’s far more than I ever imagined.”

Powers leaned against the rail, looking out over the floating isles and the bridges and tramways that connected them, at the pale curtains of the sail wall billowing in the winds. “The City, yes. But I mean the people in it. The Empire. Sometimes I look at it all and say to myself, ‘Self, these idiots are not worth saving! Better to let the whole thing fall out of the sky!’” I said nothing, and when I kept saying nothing, Cassian Powers turned to peer at me with those magnified eyes. “I surprise you? My apologies. If it is fear that holds your tongue, I assure you: what you said before the Council was correct. They won’t risk further charges against you or your people. And in any case they will not harm old Lord Powers, the Avenger!” He made a fist, mocking. “We may speak freely.”

“What is this about, sir?” I asked. The sir was a bit curt, but quite correct. The man was a knight and wore a sword on his belt still, and we were both soldiers.

“Straight to business, mm? Very good.” He turned away again. “They’re going to give you my seat.”

What was I supposed to say? I could not read the fellow. It did not help that Powers was turned almost fully away from me in his admiration of the Eternal City. At last I settled on something safe, and said, “I’m . . . sorry.”

Powers waved this down. “I’m grateful, truth be told. Five hundred years is a long time to be at war, and I was not young when it began. Truth is, I’ve been trying to retire for years, they just won’t let me.” He looked round, laughing softly. “I’d quit twice before this, you know? After Cressgard and again . . . oh, about two hundred years ago. Returned home to Ashbless and all . . . but they kept calling me back. I feel a bit like old Camillus—you’re a classics man, aren’t you?”

I told him I was. Camillus had been a hero to ancient Rome, a statesman recalled from his country estate to save his country and serve as dictator no less than five times. Camillus might have been king.

“Amazing these stories have endured so long, isn’t it?” Powers wondered aloud. “Camillus. Rome. Caesar, and the rest. Makes you wonder what we’ve forgotten. What’s buried in some library somewhere or in some reliquary of the great houses.”

Shrugging, I replied, “Not so amazing, really. The founders went to great pains to ground our Empire in tradition. The stories are part of who we are, for better or worse.”

“Better or worse . . .” Lord Cassian was nodding along, scratching his cheek with knobby fingers. “You don’t like it here, do you, Sir Hadrian?” The old soldier stared at me intently, and with his glasses the effect was startling. “I don’t like it either.” His stare transformed, and he seemed to be peering through me. “Are you . . . all right, Sir Hadrian?”

Something in his demeanor—or his voice, perhaps—reminded me so sharply of Tor Gibson that I almost expected to find the scholiast looking back at me when I blinked and turned away a moment. I had not expected to find kindness in the City at all, much less in the person of the Avenger himself. But Lord Cassian did not look like an Avenger, he looked like an owl.

“I know how it can be,” he said. “Let’s get something straight: this Halfmortal business . . .” He made a move as if to throw it all away. “Nonsense. All the stories people tell about you—and me—don’t help in the dead of night. I know what it’s like. The nightmares.”

“I don’t have nightmares,” I said, too quickly.

“Spoken like a man who has nightmares,” Powers rebutted, and said again, “I know what it’s like. But it does get easier. You’ll hate the Council—Earth knows I do. You’ll still look horror in the face, but you won’t have to smell it.”

Pushing away from the rail, I stood straight beside the older man. “I prefer the horror to a knife in the back. I’ve as many enemies here as out there . . .” I trailed off, muttering, “Leopards, lions, and wolves.”

He had been speaking of alien powers, but Lord Cassian took the lions for a reference to the Imperial Lions, and said, “Well, speaking for us old Lions, we conservatives aren’t so bad. It’s only that most of us don’t conserve anything. Too busy fussing about reputation and appearances. Take the former Intelligence Director. So eager to protect our Empire he nearly killed its greatest defender. And for what? Because you did his job for him? Perhaps he thought you wanted his job.”

“I don’t!” I snorted with derisive laughter. “And I don’t know about greatest defender, either.”

“You killed Aranata Otiolo. You killed Venatimn Ulurani. You killed this chimera, discovered an alliance between the Pale and the Extras . . .” He removed his spectacles and smiled, eyes suddenly shrunken to normal size. “You’ve conserved more than our brave Lions ever have. They’re embarrassed. You are what they should be, and they know it.” He prodded me in the chest. “But don’t believe your own legends, boy. That’s all they are. Legends. All this talk of Halfmortals, devils, and avengers . . . it’s madness.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. I hadn’t really killed Ulurani, not the way the broadcasts said, but Lord Powers had not seen me die on Sagara’s vessel. He had not seen the Howling Dark, had not spoken with the Brethren. Whatever nightmares haunted old Cassian Powers, they were not like my dreams.

My dreams were real.

“Where’s Marlowe?” a familiar voice sounded on the colonnade above. I heard Pallino’s low voice answer, but couldn’t make out the words, then the same voice shouted, “Out of my way, pissant!”

I spun round, hand on my shield’s catch, hovering near my sword.

Lord Augustin Bourbon clambered down the marble steps to the overlook where Powers and I stood, flanked by four guards in Bourbon livery. “Cassian!” he said, “Surprised to see you.”

The Avenger placed a hand on my arm, indicating that I should back off from my weapons. Only reluctantly did I back down as Lord Cassian said, “Only offering my replacement a few words of advice, Augustin.”

“I see,” Bourbon said, and shifted his posture, aligning himself in a way that effectively blocked Lord Powers from the conversation. “I hope you’re happy, Marlowe.”

“Excuse me?”

“Flouting the Chantry. Destroying the life of an esteemed public servant . . .” He was practically seething. Surely the blood was boiling in his veins. “Your men could not have escaped the Inquisition without daimonic influence. You’re guilty. I know it.”

Eyes shut, I took the space of a breath to collect myself. It would not do to strike the Lord Minister of War. He was my superior, scion of a far older and nobler house and an Imperial Counselor besides. I could not challenge him. I could not respond to his accusation, for to defend myself at all was to appear defensive. But I could attack. “Your esteemed public servant is a traitor, my lord. Spared the fate of a common murderer only by his own incompetence.”

“Sir Lorcan Breathnach has served the realm for more than two hundred years.”

Served you, you mean, I thought, eyes sweeping over the expansive palatine, his ivory suit and azure toga, the equestrian boots decidedly absurd on a man too fat to ride a horse. “And had he wished to be remembered as such, he would not have tried to kill me,” I said, certain now that Bourbon had been in on it. Confronting me like this was sloppy. Sloppy and arrogant beyond belief. Unless his outrage was truly genuine. Unless he and Breathnach had been close friends. But I was not certain Lord Augustin was the type of man who had friends. He struck me as the sort of man who categorized his fellow human beings as only assets or threats, and played one group against the other until the first sort had destroyed the second. Unable to help myself, I pushed. “One has to wonder at the fellow’s motivations, though. I can’t imagine why he’d want to kill me . . .” I never broke eye contact with Bourbon. Let him explain that.

Bourbon’s jaw worked like a bellows, like pistons turning over the chugging mechanisms of his mind. It seemed the Lord Minister had not thought so far ahead. “He . . . he knows what you are.”

“What I am?” I echoed, taking a step forward. “What am I, lordship?” I spared a glance for Lord Powers, who had replaced his spectacles on his crooked nose and watched our altercation unsmilingly.

“I don’t know how you did it,” he said. “What spells you used to frame Sir Lorcan.”

“Frame Sir Lorcan?” It was too much, a wild, incoherent accusation. “My lord, we have Lieutenant Casdon’s confession!”

“Your lieutenant’s confession!”

My lieutenant, I thought. As if I’d arranged for Casdon to lie, convinced her to hang for my sake—and she would hang. “Lord Minister, let me ask you a question.” My boot heels clicked on the paving stones as I moved to stand well within striking distance of the great walrus of a man. There was always a chance the man might strike me in a fit of pique, and if that happened all bets were off. I could challenge him, and Valka was not awake to stop me. Not that she would. “Do you think His Radiance is stupid?”

“What?” Bourbon blithered. “How dare you, sir!”

“How dare you!” I countered, keeping my voice level and tightly controlled. “You come here accusing me of ruining the reputation of a man who did try to kill me. You accuse me of consortation after the Inquisition has cleared me—you heard my recording in Council. Would His Radiance our Emperor retain my services if there were the slightest shred of evidence suggesting that I am what you say I am?”

That shut him up. Lord Powers may not have feared the palace’s eyes, but Lord Powers was an innocent man. Lord Bourbon was anything but. His jowls quivered, and a series of outraged sounds escaped him, but did not form themselves into words. A spider Augustin Bourbon might have been, but he’d misplaced one of his many legs and tangled in his own web.

I smiled up at him. I was gloating. I should not gloat. I was the one about to retreat to the safety of my ship in orbit as a precaution against further assassination attempts.

I was in no position to gloat.