TOR ARRIAN ORDERED THE great gearwork doors shut behind us and would not speak to us of what we’d found. Horizon’s existence could not reach the broader galaxy. Though once, perhaps, the throne and Chantry alike had known the daimon slept on Colchis, they knew no more. The Inquisition would as soon blot the moon from the face of the galaxy as tolerate the existence of a full-blooded Mericanii daimon—cancered and senile as it was. No matter that the Empire had placed it there in the first place. The Chantry had been weak in Gabriel’s day, an embryonic religion not yet come into the full flower of its zeal and potency.

I made the announcement then and there: that we were leaving. We did not technically have Imperial permission to go gallivanting off across the stars, but it was—as they say—better to beg forgiveness. The U.S.S. Horizon slumbers beneath the Library even still, trapped in its Faraday shield beneath Tor Aramini’s atomics. I have never tried to reenter Gabriel’s Archive.

I have gone as far as the gearwork door and pressed my ear to it.

There is no sound but silence. Horizon slumbers still, or perhaps has died. Its power cells could not last forever.

There is little that can.

---

The sun rose above the eastern hills and climbed toward the planet above. The day was lovely as any on Colchis I could recall. The omnipresent mists were clear but for tangled, distant cloud, and the winds stood fair. The white gulls were crying on the air, and far off I spied an albatross on the wing. Below, mariners plied gray waters, their white sails and red shining in the sun.

“This is as far as I go, my boy,” Tor Gibson said, and took his hand from my arm to put his whole weight on the cane once more. We were standing in the arch of the day gate, having just passed the barbican door and recovered our effects. “I can’t leave the athenaeum,” he said. “Arrian is already cross with me. Let us not give him another reason to be so.” He spoke the words lightly, and were it not for his blank expression, I might have taken the words for a joke. As it was, I could only see the scarred nose and think that here was a man enough tormented on my account. “Do you think you will find what you seek?”

My eyes had wandered to the jointed stone of the tunnel above our heads. Valka stood just behind me, further along, with Pallino, Alexander, Siran, and the others gone on through. Focus falling to Gibson’s face, I answered him. “I hope so.”

“I hope so, too.” He tapped his cane on the paving stones. “I don’t pretend to understand any of this well enough to tell you what to do, my boy, but be careful.” And to my surprise, the old man offered a rueful smile. “Don’t lose your head.”

I rubbed my neck with my gloved hand. “I’ll try.”

Gibson had dropped his eyes to the floor.

Taking a step nearer the old man, I said, “I guess it really is farewell now. This time.”

The old man leaned on his staff, the image of a wizard from some forgotten storybook. “Probably.” His eyes were shining. “I don’t suppose I’ll live long enough for you to return here.”

“And I’m not even sure I will return,” I said. “I may not be allowed.”

The scholiast nodded along with me. “Perhaps not.” He was quiet a moment, then sucked in a deep breath. “Hadrian, I cannot pretend to understand everything you’re caught up in. But I will say this: I think you’ve finally found a drama big enough for you.”

I laughed, but I had to screw my eyes shut against the tears that came. “I suppose I did.”

“Nothing they teach us here can help you, I think,” he said, gesturing at the arch of the tunnel above.

I drew my cape tight around me and bowed my head. “The only thing here that could teach me more is sealed beneath the Archives.”

“You saw how it terrified them.”

“It terrifies me,” I said, and shrugged, releasing my cape. “But I have what I came for.”

Gibson tapped his cane against the stone. “What do you think you’ll find?”

What could I say to that? Only the truth. “I have no idea.”

“Wisdom!” Gibson proclaimed, weakly. “You are learning.”

“Socrates.” I grinned.

“Socrates.”

Without warning, the old man embraced me, and I was astonished to feel the strength that yet remained in those withered limbs. “You are every inch the man I hoped you’d be, my boy,” he said. I’d never heard Gibson’s voice choked with feeling before—not even when we’d met again in the grotto underground. “I am proud of you.”

I said nothing—for what was there to say?

Gibson broke away and held me at arm’s length, his cane hooked over one arm. There was too much emotion there, new territory cut across the sharp lines and folds of his face. Tears ran, and his smile quivered, torn nostril flared. “You’ll take care of him, won’t you?”

This question made no sense to me, and it was not until Valka answered it that I realized he was asking her. “Depend on it,” she said, and stood beside me. “I am glad I got to meet you, Doctor Gibson.” She used the full English word, Doctor, not Tor.

Gibson did not bother hiding his emotions. He had grown beyond the Strictures and the apatheia. Beneath that arch, on the edge of his cloister, he was only an old man, not a scholiast at all. “And I you, Doctor Onderra,” he replied, speaking the standard. Then he inhaled sharply, and I saw the gears of his training struggling to assert their program once again. His trembling stilled. “Grief is deep water, they say.” He recovered his grip on his cane. “But not all tears are grief.” He drew back, putting some small distance between us. “I sometimes think we do more harm than good, teaching what we teach. Reason. Reason is such a small part of being human. We scholiasts climb our towers, look at the sky, and forget the world. So often we don’t see the truth because we won’t look low enough. Chasing reason, chasing facts . . . we forget to be human. To be human is the greater thing, dear boy. Now go . . . before I go with you.”

He offered me one last smile.

Valka’s hand was on my arm, trying gently to turn me.

“You were a father to me,” I said.

Gibson bowed his head. “You have a father.”

“I have two,” I said, “but only one bled for me. I wish I could have said goodbye then, and thank you.”

“You have said thank you, Hadrian, and you never had to.”

I rode over him. “All my life I thought I was too late. That I’d never have a chance. Better a late goodbye then, than none at all.” I did turn then, and walked with Valka a few paces before turning back. “I will come back. One day. I will come back. I’ll see you again.”

The old fellow shook his head. “Go on, Hadrian.”

“Goodbye,” I said.

I turned back once more when we’d come out from under the wall. Gibson had turned himself at the inner gate. Above, one brother called to another and the portcullis and pneumatic doors began to hiss and rattle slowly closed. The old scholiast raised a hand . . . and was gone.