“THIS CAN’T BE ALL there is . . .” Valka said for the hundred thousandth time. We’d been back at Nov Belgaer for months, and though I had been slow to return to the dusty archive, Valka had taken to it with her usual fervor, sifting through records and filing cabinets with mechanical abandon. “So much of this . . . ’tis meaningless now. Colony surveys, shipping manifests, tax records . . . do we need genetics records for every human embryo shipped to the Atlanta colony in . . .” she squinted at the shipping manifest, “. . . 2964 CE? What was that? A thousand years before the Advent?”

“Give or take,” I said, though I thought it was nearer eight hundred. Things moved slower in those days, before mankind broke the speed of light on lonely Avalon as iron darkness closed in all around.

“Why classify this? Why bury it in a sealed vault beneath a library on the edge of nowhere? This is not worth classifying!” She brandished the ancient document like an accusation, crystal paper flexing. “Everyone knows the Mericanii were the first to use embryo banks for colonies. The Consortium still does! ’Tis not a secret!” She broke off, pinching her nose with one cotton-gloved hand. “I do not understand you anaryoch. Do you simply see Mericanii and seal it away? I thought these people were supposed to be scientists! Science means to know, not to close your fucking eyes! These are records! Nothing is going to get out!”

We were alone, which was well. I did not fancy sitting through another long debate between Valka and Tor Imlarros, nor one of Valka and Gibson’s Socratic back-and-forths. I was tired, and I shared Valka’s frustration with the turning of events. We had been on Colchis for nearly six years.

“This can’t be all there is . . .” Valka said again. “Was Gabriel stupid? Did he not know what he had? Why would anyone build something this far underground to hide tax receipts from an empire that no longer exists?” She glared at me. “Are you people so damned paranoid?”

I held her gaze a moment, shrugged. “You know what they were, Valka. You saw Brethren.”

“Brethren . . .” She made the word a curse before cursing some more in an argot of Nordei and her native Panthai. “We could use it right now. At least it seemed to answer your questions. Instead we’ve got miles of shipping manifests to dig through.”

“It’s not like we’ve learned nothing,” I said, trying to be encouraging. I wasn’t wrong. We’d learned much of the Golden Age that I had never heard before. Felsenburgh had taken power promising to end the Mericanii war with the powers of Eurasia and the East. He’d united his fragmented country until its dominion stretched from pole to Earth’s pole and across the face of her moon. He’d freed Europe from subjugation—though her kings in exile on the moons of Jupiter did not return, but fled beyond the circles of the Sun for worlds like Avalon. They called him Liberator, though he was the first lord of the Mericanii not to abdicate his throne in their White Palace when his time was done. He held power until his death when—breaking with four hundred years of tradition—he named his successor to the throne.

His daughter, the computer god Columbia.

Her name meant peace, and peace came with her. And her fifty-two daughters went out across the stars to build new cities on new hills, white and shining beneath their pyramids. And so the daughters of the machines broke bread with the exiled kings of man and for a time there was peace, and throughout the dominion of the machines mankind was saved from war, from hunger and disease—from everything but death. It had been Columbia who first pioneered the genetic advancements that formed the basis of the life extension therapies still employed today. For into their iron hands was given the maintenance and ordering of all things: from the production of food to the construction of cities. Mankind at last had achieved perfect order, and all it cost those ancients was their dignity and their souls. They who had created the machines lived as little more than pets, than sheep penned and shepherded by those beings which once man had shepherded himself.

They had even taken over our reproduction, overseeing the development of children in tanks like the tank I myself had been born from. Holy Mother Earth—had they created that technology? It was no wonder the Chantry sought to hide so much.

In the end, the machines took everything, and each man and woman retreated into virtual dreams and lived like Homer’s lotus eaters, never tasting true life, with all its joys and sorrows. Mankind had all they wanted and infinite leisure to enjoy it in. Never mind that none of it was real.

Not one of the records we found suggested why the machines turned against their makers.

But turn they had, and in time the dreamers were rounded up by the same machines that had for decades served as nursemaids. The old went first into the white pyramids the daughters of Columbia raised high on Earth and on every Mericanii colony world across the early stars. The young followed. One by one, two by two, score by score they were carried into the halls of their machine masters.

None came out again.

But Valka was not reassured, and so we called an end to that day’s work and retired for the night, and when the sun sprang out at last from behind the limn of Atlas and shone upon Colchis, we started again. And again. We had come too far and waited too long to squander our time in the Imperial Library. Having been granted access, we felt we might never have access again.

Months passed, and years.

On the Tamerlane above, night captain Halford presided over a sleeping vessel, as all who had tarried on the slopes and shores of Thessa were laid back to icy sleep to await the end of our labors in Gabriel’s Archive. In time, only Valka and I remained with our guards—Pallino and Siran among them—and Prince Alexander. Even Tor Varro returned to fugue, his time among his fellow scholiasts come to an end.

“The prince is taking to his lessons as well as can be expected,” Tor Gibson told me. “He’s proud, but he’s not stupid. I can see why the Emperor wanted him along.”

“To throw him away, you mean?” I asked, speaking from the armchair in one corner of the old scholiast’s subterranean apartments.

Gibson watched me levelly, gray eyes somehow sharp through their mist. “Possibly,” he said after a long moment, “but possibly there is more to your prince than meets the eye.” We had left Alexander seated on the stone beneath Imore’s statue, contemplating the pool. Gibson had given him the breathing exercises to practice, and it was hoped that doing so might start the boy down the road to something like stoic self-regulation.

“What do you mean?”

“Has it not occurred to you that the Emperor might have grander plans for his young son?”

My mouth opened of its own before I could control it, and I clamped it shut. Hesitant, I said, “You don’t mean . . . you think Alexander is meant for the throne?”

“I think we should consider the possibility that the thought has crossed the Imperial mind,” my oldest friend replied. “The elder princes may be too old to inherit.”

An objection formed and fired itself off. “Crown Prince Aurelian has co-ruled with his father for centuries. Picking him would be the stable choice.”

“But for how long? Another century? You and I both know how short that can be.”

“But Alexander’s a child. He’s not even forty!”

The scholiast spread his hands. “I only mean to say that it is possible, dear boy. I can’t imagine His Radiance would saddle his prize knight with one of his own children without a good reason. Whether or not that reason is the throne—only His Radiance knows. That isn’t my point.” He shifted on the couch. “My point is that you should act as if it is.”

“That’s why I brought him here,” I said. Catching Gibson making a face at me, I checked myself. “Not because of the throne, but to train him. He needs guidance, but I’m not sure I’m the one to give it.” When no answer came, I looked round. Gibson’s face was impassive. Both hands rested on his cane, and his chin rested on his hands. But for the spark in his eye, there was no clue as to what passed beyond his cloudy eyes. “What?”

Gibson answered, “That is the best one can hope for in a teacher. Temet nosce, Hadrian. Know thyself.”

“Socrates,” I said.

“A common misconception,” Gibson said, “and one I’d hoped I’d disabused you of. Socrates neither said that nor ‘I know I know nothing.’ What he said was, ‘I neither know nor think I know,’ which is somewhat different. A lot of harm is done by teachers who teach what they think they know. Your caution does you credit.” He shifted in his seat and lay his cane across his knees. “The greater part of wisdom is in silence.” It sounded like one of his axioms, but it wasn’t. I’ve read Imore’s Book of the Mind and the Dynamica cover to cover, and many of the lesser books of Stricture.

This was all Gibson.

“I never thanked you,” I said at last. “For teaching me. I’ve often thought of how fortunate Arthur was to have Merlin—or Alexander Aristotle. I’ve been fortunate, too.”

The scholiast did not react at once. “You are not Alexander!” he said, meaning the ancient Macedonian. Thinking of my Alexander, I smiled. “And you don’t have to thank me,” Gibson added. “All you have to do is teach in turn. Make the world a little wiser.”

“Not that the world will ever be wise,” I joked.

The hint of a smile flickered across the old, familiar face. “Oh, if we saved our wisdom until the world was wise, it would not need us.” Tor Gibson unsteadily found his feet. “Shall we go to him, then? We’ve left him long enough, I think.”

---

Prince Alexander sat beneath Imore’s expressionless statue, trying to match the ancient sage’s composure. He sat with legs crossed and feet bare upon the smooth stone, hands on his knees, attention locked on his own reflection in the black water. He looked up through red hair as we approached, and I was reminded suddenly of Switch. The two men looked little alike but for their coloring, and yet I marveled at the coincidence that I should be mentor and a kind of friend to two men so similar and yet so estranged. Alexander did not have Switch’s jug ears or freckles, did not have his childhood fears or adult confidences. Their hair was not even truly the same red. Switch’s was nearer orange and gold than the almost inhuman carmine of the prince’s, and yet something in way the prince moved recommended the comparison.

“Sitting comfortably?” Gibson inquired, brandishing his cane. He wavered and I clutched his arm to steady him.

The prince nodded. “It’s so quiet down here.” Emerald eyes surveyed the smooth vaults and stalactites with their veins of gleaming algae. Ripples played on the surface of the pool, tell-tale of some pale and sightless fish churning in the deeps.

“What of it?” Gibson asked. The prince’s observation had sounded like a complaint.

Alexander swiveled to focus on the two of us. I helped Gibson to his seat on the bench where we’d been reunited. “The palace was never this quiet,” he ventured at last. “It’s uncomfortable.”

“What is?” Gibson asked, and though the prince was perhaps unused to it, I sensed the tone of the questioner creeping into the tutor’s voice.

“Being alone.”

“No one is ever really alone,” Gibson said. “Or do you mean being alone with your thoughts?” The prince bobbed his head, folded his hands in his lap. Gibson’s eyes wandered semi-blind to the cavern roof above the statue’s head. “So much of what we’ve made around us only hides us from ourselves. Terminals and dataspheres. Title and rank. The machines of the Extrasolarians, and so on. People do not appreciate what a skill it is to be alone with one’s own thoughts. To know them.” He glanced at me. “To know thyself. For royalty especially.”

Alexander did not stand as I expected, but remained seated on the hard ground. “Why for royalty?”

“The ruler is model for any individual rightly lived. We have responsibilities to the people below our stations—not below ourselves, you understand, below our stations.”

Gibson acknowledged this with a waved hand. “What is the last of your father’s titles?”

“The last of . . .” Alexander had to think about it a moment. I could not blame him. The Imperial style was a bloated thing, ponderous with the weight of millennia. “Servant of the Servants of Earth.”

“Quite so,” the scholiast said. “It is only that the higher we climb, the more men look to us for guidance. You cannot rule without them, and so you must rule yourself.”

Alexander cut in. “Sir Hadrian has talked about this before.”

“Has he?” Gibson peered at me. “Has he indeed? Very good. He has been listening. But understand. This is why self-control—self-knowledge and so on—are so important.”

The prince leaned forward, stretching a back that I’m sure must ache from so many hours spent on the stone floor. “To make us good?”

“Kwatz!” Gibson exclaimed. “No.” He did not offer an answer, but sat waiting for Alexander to find it on his own. I was not sure where Gibson was driving myself, was glad only that the scrutiny of those guttering eyes was not fixed on me for once in my life. The prince sat there a long while, staring once more at his reflection in the dark, still pool and the glowing algae reflected there like stars.

“Because we are not good.” It took me a moment to realize that it had been I who’d answered. Both my master and student looked at me. “If we were good men, we’d not need all this reflection.”

“Hadrian!”

The cry shattered the still air of the grotto, and a moment later Valka burst from the hall and came skidding to a halt before us. Her face was flushed, but elated.

Hurrying toward her, I almost shouted, “Do you have something?” I didn’t care that the other scholiasts in the grotto were all staring.

Valka rested her hands on her knees a moment, catching her breath. “I think . . . I think I’ve just understood something,” she said, chest heaving.

“Did you run up all those stairs?” Gibson asked from the bench. “You should sit!”

The doctor waved him down. “No time! Have to show you.”