I SURRENDERED MY SWORD and shield-belt at the gates of the Peronine Palace and allowed myself to be led by white-and-red armored Martians down uncounted halls to a tramway that ran out over a bottomless gold cloudscape to a lonely white tower detached from the palace proper. As we rode I looked out and down upon the unrolled city and the great bulwark of sails that—with the weather satellites—sheltered it all from the coriolis winds. Far off, a massive warship—a hundred miles long—loomed above the topless towers and aqueducts like the dragon in Mother’s opera, black as a piece of the night and gleaming in the sun.

Soon enough we came to a stop, and mirrored Excubitors escorted me up a stair of flowing marble and along white-pillared halls to a door of pale stone so pure I touched my pendant through the front of my shirt and formal jacket, mistaking it for the same substance.

But it was only a door, and rolled into a pocket in the wall at a silent command.

When I hesitated, one of the Excubitors gestured for me to go inside. I could see my face reflected in his mirrored helmet, image distorted past all hope of recognition by the curve of cheekbone and slant of sculpted nose.

He did not speak. They never spoke, only subvocalized to one another, words relayed by suit comm.

Obedient, I bowed to the masked man and went within.

The Imperial study ran along the center of the tower, rising for several levels to a frescoed dome painted to match not the rose-gold of Forum, but the blue skies of Earth. Level upon level of ring-walk balconies overlooked the middle space, supported by white pillars and black iron arches done in floral arcs and curls. Ancient books stood on display under glass, their brown and yellow leaves climate-controlled and carefully lighted, and where the walls were not given over to the shelves or to the narrow windows that pierced the spiraling outer colonnade, dark bronze statues stood, each holding a sword that pointed inward toward the Table.

In the shadow of one of these I stopped, hesitating an instant, surprised to see the pentangle shield and the name carved in Classical English lettering: SIR GAWAIN. Turning my head, I stopped and looked to the statue nearest me on the other side. SIR LANCELOT. I guessed then I could name the others. Percival, Bedivere, Gareth, and Kay. Gaheris and Galahad. Tristan and Palamedes.

The Knights of the Round Table.

Figures from the Cid Arthurian mystery cult were among the last things I expected to see in the heart of the Peronine Palace, at the seat of Imperial rule, in the possession of the living Son of Earth, direct descendant of the God Emperor.

“Come forward, Marlowe,” came the voice Imperial.

I advanced until I stood just on the edge of the center of the chamber and bowed but did not kneel. Our audience was a private one and my rank accorded me the small dignity of keeping my feet.

“Radiant Majesty,” I said, raising my eyes without straightening. “You called for me?”

His Imperial Radiance William XXIII, Firstborn Son of Earth and all the rest, looked up from his contemplation of the papers before him and offered me a stiff nod of acknowledgment. He wore a suit of arterial scarlet, unrelieved by any color save the white armband that showcased the Imperial sun and the gloss black of his boots. The outfit ought to have muddied the color of his hair, but it only added to the overwhelming impression of redness our Emperor exuded, casting his color like light on the white chamber around him.

He was not alone; logothetes in gray robes with matching caps clustered around him, some of them clutching tablets, others with terminal pickups in their hands or pinned to their clothes. More than one green-garbed scholiast stood among them, all silently watching. I’d gotten the impression they’d fallen silent the moment the door had opened, for they stood with that awkward tension unique to the newly interrupted and shuffled back against the walls.

All eyes on us both, the Emperor said, “Yes, thank you. Do have a seat, Lord Marlowe. We were just discussing the disposition of the Centaurine border.” He made a discreet gesture with one gloved and beringed hand, and at once the logothetes and scholiasts began to filter out of the room. “There’ve been more attacks along the inner edge of the arm. Five planets razed and emptied.”

I seated myself in the nearest chair facing the Emperor, wincing slightly as the legs groaned on marble tile. I hadn’t heard, hadn’t had a meeting with LIO and the War Council in weeks, hadn’t had so much as a word of the situation in the outer provinces. “Is it Dorayaica?”

I ought properly to ask no questions of His Radiance, but the Emperor did not seem to mind. “We think not. They happened in rapid succession and within a few dozen light-years of one another. Dorayaica’s movements have been more precise. Punctuated. No.” Not looking at me, the Emperor shuffled a few of the pages on the table before him. He did not sit. “There have been rumors of a new chieftain among the Extrasolarians. Muddled references to a Monarch on the datanet and from a number of our informants. Apparently several of the old stations we’ve kept eyes on have disappeared. Whether this Monarch is a man or something else entirely is entirely unclear, but the name Calen Harendotes appears as well, several times. Are you familiar?”

“Calen Harendotes?” I repeated. “No, Your Radiance. It sounds like a palatine name.”

“It does. Doubtless some renegade from a house no one’s ever heard of,” the Emperor said. “A pity. We had hoped your time on Vorgossos might have shed some light on the matter.”

“Monarch could be the name of one of their Sojourners,” I said, referring to the class of massive ships owned by the most powerful Extrasolarian agencies. “Regardless, you think this Monarch—Harendotes or no—is behind these new attacks in Centaurus?”

“It is too soon to say. We fear we may have a new name to add to our growing list of enemies. If the Extrasolarians are taking the field, particularly if they are aligned with the Cielcin, we may have to fight on two fronts.”

I swallowed, nodded. Full-scale war with the Extrasolarians would be a nightmare. The barbarians were distributed throughout all of human settled space, dwelling in star systems without habitable planets or on ships and stations in the dark between the stars. An attack might come from anywhere, and though the Legions and local defense fleets were more than a match for any ragtag armada, a systemic attack against the Empire at points could be crippling, even lethal. And if this Monarch, this Harendotes was gathering the Extras to himself . . . that could be just what he was planning. In the case of the Extras, as with the Cielcin, their primary weakness was their disunity. The Cielcin were tribal, the Extras anarchists or the devotees of petty warlords like the Normans. United, either might prove a serious threat. Together . . . they could burn the stars.

“What do you make of it, Marlowe?”

I did not answer the Emperor at once, but rubbed my eyes, feeling at once the terrible weight of years. Breath shuddering, I said, “Well, they make a likely couple, don’t they?”

“I’m sorry?” The Emperor’s royal we slipped. I felt the temperature in the room drop, and was glad the logothetes and scholiasts had all been dismissed.

“The Monarch and the Prophet,” I answered him, holding out my hands as though they were the pans of a scale. “Syriani Dorayaica and this Harendotes. Times of strife breed pretenders and false kings, and it seems to me that both our greatest enemies are rebuilding themselves in our image. In yours.” I made a weak gesture, intending to point at His Radiance but realizing that to do so would be the gravest insult. “May I ask a question?”

The Emperor opened velvet-gloved hands.

“The statues,” I said, nodding toward the likeness of Sir Tristan over the Emperor’s shoulder, “and this table . . .”

“What?” William XXIII’s brows contracted, expecting some insolence perhaps or annoyed by the tangential slash of the question.

“They’re Cid Arthurian icons, aren’t they?”

“What?” the Emperor said again. “How dare you! First you insult our son, and now this?”

I had stepped out upon a frozen lake, and the ice beneath me was rotten. So he had heard about the incident with Valka in the Cloud Gardens. There was nothing for it. I stood smoothly and bowed low as I could. “Apologies, Honorable Caesar. It’s only . . . you know the story? Arthur and his knights?”

Though I did not look up, I could hear the Emperor bare his teeth. “We are a direct descendant of Arthur, boy. Of course we know the story.”

The Aventine House has always claimed this patrimony: from the God Emperor William to Victoria, from Victoria to Arthur and The Matter of Britain, but I thought and think it unlikely. Accounts from the Golden Age are muddy, artifacts scattered, but I do not think the blood of Arthur flowed in Victoria’s veins. But I sensed my time and His Radiance’s patience were fast nearing their limits, and standing up straight again I said, “It only strikes me that what’s happening here is the same. Dorayaica and his Iedyr Yemani, his generals . . . this Harendotes, too. Gathering their knights. And I wondered.”

The Emperor relaxed visibly, rested one hand against the surface of the round table. “These were our legends long before the Cid Arthurians took them.”

“Forgive me, Radiant Majesty,” I said, “I did not know.” I know better now, have learned to distinguish the Arthur of antiquity from the Arthur-Buddha of the mystagogues. The Emperor made a gesture like waving away a fly. Into the space between us, I rapped my knuckles against the tabletop and said, “I only meant to remark upon the parallel.

“You think it significant?” His Radiance lifted both eyebrows, watching me from across his round table. “An omen?”

“I am not sure I believe in omens, Caesar.” I bowed my head, placed the false-boned fingers of my left hand against the surface of the table. The wood—though petrified—was so ancient it was worn away, the ridges standing like the brindled hair of some beast, and I guessed it had been taken from Earth herself long before the planet was consumed in nuclear fire. Did I dare tell him? “But I have seen their armies marching across the stars, and the Pale King leading them. This Prophet of theirs.”

The King of Avalon and Guardian of the Solar System mirrored me, placing one hand on the table opposite me. “You asked that soldier from Hermonassa if Dorayaica wore a crown.”

“Yes, Radiance.” I looked away sharply, as though the Emperor cast too bright a light on my face.

“Had you seen it before? Dorayaica, I mean.”

“Yes, Radiance,” I answered. “You have read my reports from Vorgossos?”

The Emperor orbited the table, swinging back into my line of sight, a bloody spot against the stark white of stone and ebon bookcases. “A synopsis.”

“Then Your Radiance knows that on Vorgossos I was . . .” I was about to say touched, but checked myself. “I encountered what I believe was a surviving Mericanii artificial intelligence. One of their supercomputers.”

“I do,” he said. No we.

Without alluding to the Quiet—I had made no reference to them in my report—I continued, “I do not have visions, Radiance, but I was shown one. A calculation, I suppose it was.” The Brethren had, in fact, shared many predictions of its own, composite prophecies compiled as an approximated probability of reality, though my vision had been something far more total. “It had run simulations of the galaxy’s future. Of our future. And it predicted this. Predicted Dorayaica would emerge in response to our war effort. An answer from the Pale.” I was walking a fine line, attempting to describe my vision without describing its proper source, a source which I feared no man—particularly the Sollan Emperor—would believe.

“You think this daimon is credible?”

Remembering something both Brethren and Sagara’s golem had said to me, I said, “Daimons cannot lie, Radiance. If they could, they would be of no use to their masters.”

The Emperor accepted this—believing or no—with a bare nod and narrowing of his eyes. Glancing up to the frescoed sky nine stories above, he asked, “And did this daimon say what would come of us?”

Light. The memory of the oracle Jari shouted in my mind. Light! Light! Light!

“No, Radiant Majesty,” I lied, but lied only because I did not fully understand what any of it meant.

William Avent turned away, hands clasped behind his back. He strode across the checkerboard tiles until he stood beneath the statue of Sir Percival. One hand on the knight’s sculpted sabaton, he said, “They say you are a sorcerer, Lord Marlowe.” He asked no question, and I had nothing to say. “I do not believe in sorcery. There is no sorcery. There is only knowledge, however strange or hidden it may be. But you recognized something in that soldier’s report, that I must grant you.” He sighed deeply, and for an instant I beheld that beneath the Imperial silk and samite, beneath the scarlet, the argent, and the gold, there was only an aging palatine, his shoulders slumped with the weight of centuries and star systems. No one man was meant to rule so vast an Empire, and that old William bore that weight so nobly and with no complaint was a credit to him. Stern as His Radiance was and solemn, I confess a deep admiration for the man, who in all the years I knew him was never cruel or cowardly. His mother, the late Empress, had chosen well from among her children. Always he seemed to me the picture of the philosopher-king, like old Winston the Good, like Raphael, like Marcus Aurelius: tired, world-weary, and wise.

That weariness escaped him all in a great rush. His shoulders hunched, he said, “But none of this is why I called you here. Will you not sit again, please?” He turned, offered a seat with a gesture. I sat, and waited. The Emperor stood opposite me, looking down the bridge of his aquiline nose. “Do you know what the most interesting thing about this tower is, Sir Hadrian?”

“No, Radiance.”

“It is the only place in the Peronine Palace—perhaps the only place on all of Forum—that is not monitored. It is one of the only places where I can be truly alone. That is why my Excubitors take their posts at the door so seriously.” He smiled thinly, a smile that betrayed the great age beneath that young-seeming face like sunlight through old vellum. “I tell you this so you understand: we are not having this conversation. Not officially.”

I sat a little straighter, hands gripping the arms of my chair.

The Emperor continued. “There are those on my council and in my ministries who believe that you are a problem. These individuals believe that your popularity with the people—most especially your popularity with the Legions—should be treated as a direct threat to me. That in addition to Dorayaica and this Extrasolarian Monarch, you ought to be considered another pretender—to borrow your word—another false king.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but His Radiance raised one gloved and glittering finger. “But I do not agree with them.” His eyes narrowed again, and a smile halfway between laughter and rage stole over his face. “No one plotting against me would be so foolish as to call my son a brat where I was certain to hear about it.”

“My lord—Your Radiance, I . . .” Color surely flooded my face, and I made to rise.

“Sit down, Sir Hadrian. Whatever your difficulties with my children may be, I can assure you that mine are greater. So I will forget this insult. Besides! The fact remains that you are too valuable an asset to waste.” He rested his hands on the back of the chair before him, gemstones large as quail’s eggs shining on his fingers. In a voice so low it was almost a stage whisper, His Imperial Radiance said, “You were meant to fail, you know?”

My eyebrows rose on their own. It was true, then. Just as Lorian and I had suspected.

“The thought had crossed my mind, Radiant Majesty.”

The Emperor beamed. “Good. Very good. It was an easy choice to make. ‘Give him an impossible task,’ they said. ‘If he succeeds, well and good. If he fails, then we neutralized a potential threat.’” He clenched his fists, hands groaning on the antique chair. “We gave you an impossible task, and you succeeded.” The Emperor turned his back and strode halfway to the ring of statues that separated the meeting space from the library section that ringed the chamber. Wheeling, he continued, “I am a practical man. One does not rule my Empire by being impractical. And I believe that your popularity and your tenacity are assets, Lord Marlowe. I do not believe in sorcery. I have told you this. But you have given me results, and so I wish to make you an offer—a request—one which my counselors have argued most strenuously against.”

A bead of cold and lonely sweat traced its path down my neck. The last time the Emperor had made a request of me, I spent half a century sailing across the galaxy with Alexander under my wing. Men had died—and I had nearly died. I had a suspicion that what the Emperor had in mind this time was a bit more . . . permanent.

He confirmed those suspicions with his next words. “You have met my daughter, Selene?”

There it was. The hand extended. The trap closed. An old trap. A familiar one. One I’d felt close on Emesh long ago, with Balian and Anaïs Mataro. But I nodded and smiled and feigned ignorance, and let the Emperor continue. “She is a good girl. Dutiful, faithful, kind . . . as kind as any princess of the Imperium can be, that is. I am fond of her. Fond as any father of so many children can be. I understand she is quite fond of you.”

“Is she?” I asked, genuinely surprised. I had met the princess on but two occasions, and on the first we had barely had the opportunity to speak. Though I’d sensed the shadow of this plan in our last meeting, I had not expected something so soon. Not two months had passed since my triumph . . .

“Do you like her?” What in Earth’s name could I possibly say to that? My mind raced to Valka, and my heart sank. But the Emperor did not wait for my answer, as any answer I might give was irrelevant. The Emperor had made his plans. “It is my wish that the two of you should be married, that you should join my house.”

I am not certain if I spoke at all. I did not know then—do not know now—if the Emperor’s plan was wisdom or folly. On the one hand, in marrying me to his daughter, he adopted me as a son. It would cool some of the tension others might have perceived between us, but on the other hand, it might inflame the fury of those lords who thought my rise too far and fast already. My mind went to Lorcan Breathnach and Augustin Bourbon, to the great princes of the Houses Bourbon, Mahidol, and Hohenzollern—and Earth only knew who else. The old Lions of the Imperium would roar that one so low as I had risen to the rank of Prince-Consort. How they would sputter and scream that I, a black-barred outcaste restored by a mere pen stroke and tainted by contact with outsiders, by plebeians and homunculi, by inti and Irchtani and a Tavrosi witch, might be permitted himself to taint the Blood Imperial.

The words I’d spoken to Lorcan Breathnach echoed in my skull. I do not have visions. And yet I had seen her, had I not? Had seen Princess Selene seated at my feet in a gown of living flowers. Had felt her move beneath me and her warm breath on my skin. I’d worn a silver circlet upon my brow, and a white gem—the very piece of shell that hung about my neck on its chain, I realized—had shone in its center like a star, like a third eye.

The Emperor Hadrian.

How it might happen I could not say. How every one of His Radiance’s children might be put aside and the Aventine Dynasty ended I did not dare contemplate or dream. I did not want that future. I did not want her. But what choice did I have? Before me was Caesar himself. How could I refuse his gift? To do so would be to declare myself his enemy. With my mind’s eye I perceived the galaxy as an extension of the black-and-white checkerboard floor beneath our feet, the Red King before me. Was I to be the Black?

Like Rome of ancientmost memory, were we to fall to civil war and play chess for the crown while along our borders fires blazed? Barbarians and monsters.

Here there be dragons.

There was Dorayaica, and there this Monarch, Harendotes. I clenched my fists, felt the right ache and the left remain numb, and remembered Kharn Sagara on his throne.

Pale King. Wild King. King-in-Yellow.

And I had garbed myself in white—even if it was not my color.

Dimly I was aware of the fact that I had been silent a long time. It was not the time for silence. Sitting there, trapped, I opened my mouth and said, “I would be honored, Radiant Majesty.”