I FELL TO MY knees before the bench, still crying silently. “Gibson?” I stretched out my ungloved hand and took his own hand in mine. “Is it really you?”

The old scholiast looked down at me. With his free hand, he set the familiar brass-headed cane aside. His fingers were warm and dry as old roots in my hand, but there was some strength yet in them. He squeezed my hand and shook it back and forth, smile widening. “Who else would it be?”

A hollow laugh escaped me, knocking loose more tears. I drew my coat sleeve across my face, dried my eyes. “You’d not believe me if I told you,” I said. “I thought you were dead. It’s been . . .” I had to stop and think about it. “Four hundred fifty standard years.” I had spent most of that time frozen, slipping into the future with each passing journey. “How long have you been here?”

“Only about four years,” Gibson said. He raised a hand to quiet my objections as they came spilling forth. “Your father had me sent freight. I think he meant for me to outlive you—part of my punishment.” His smile hadn’t faltered. “But here you are, a Knight Victorian, is it?” He took back his hands and clapped me on both shoulders, the better to survey me at arm’s length. “I could hardly believe it when I heard the news.” And here he raised my right hand to his face, the better to see the Emperor’s Sovereign Ring with his fading eyes. “I thought you were going to Teukros,” he said, “and here I find you wearing the Emperor’s own ring.” His eyes swept over my black uniform and longish mane, over the gauntleted left hand and the sword and shield-belt. “Still wearing these long coats, I see.”

I laughed, new tears blossoming. “I thought you were dead,” I managed to say. “I mourned you.”

“I thought the same of you, dear boy,” my old tutor—the man who had truly been my father—said. Tears still falling, I released his hand and, regaining my feet, stooped to embrace him.

“There is so much to tell you,” I said, voice fragile in my ears and close to breaking. “So much.”

Gibson’s old arms embraced me only slowly, as if it took him a moment to recover from the surprise of my embrace. “And you will tell me all about it. Sit, sit.” He patted the stone bench beside him. “Carina tells me you bring an army with you.” Gibson watched me through a mask like a scholiast’s expressionless repose, but his eyes—gray eyes, not green—were sparkling through the thin mist that darkened their sight. He looked old, older than I remembered. He must have been six hundred years old, at least. With a start, I realized my own father would be as old now—assuming he never once left Delos after I did. Crispin would be north of four hundred, on the far side of middle-aged. Seeing Gibson somehow heightened my sense of alienation. I was a man adrift in time, and though the six-score-and-some-odd years I carried in that moment weighed heavily on me as five centuries might on others, I had been like a man cast adrift into a river while all he knew remained ashore and slipped away.

I felt the ivory ring beneath my glove as I shifted to take the seat beside my oldest friend and companion. Not all I knew. Adrift in time I might be, but I did not drift alone.

“You would think,” Gibson said, “that the Imperial Library would be among the first places news travels in our universe, but it is not so. Information arrives here only after it has circulated throughout the suns. We are more reservoir than fountain, in truth. But I have heard some strange tales. Carina says something about Vorgossos? And what is this Halfmortal business? What a name!”

Mention of Sister Carina made me look round, half-expecting to find the young novice near at hand, but she had vanished, withdrawn, no doubt, to some other duty. It seemed absurd to talk to Gibson of Vorgossos, of Brethren and the Quiet. Of my death and of the Howling Dark beyond. Gibson was of a time before. My memories of him belonged to that other Hadrian, the one who had died on the Demiurge. Young though I was, I was older than any plebeian might dream, and we are not meant to live forever. Those memories of my youth on Delos felt as remote to me then as the stories of someone else’s childhood. It was as if Tor Gibson and Lord Alistair Marlowe—Crispin and Kyra, my mother and all the rest—existed in a world apart from the nightmares of Vorgossos, of Arae, and Iubalu. Or perhaps those nightmares were real, and it was my childhood that was the dream.

“There is so much,” I said, and clenched my fists until the right one ached. “So much.” A sob shook me, as though I were a boy of nineteen again and not a Knight Victorian. Not the Halfmortal. And no nineteen-year-old could bear what I have seen and done and not weep.

But Gibson was a scholiast—as I have never been—and scholiasts have no time for weeping. “Kwatz!” he said, rebuking me, and thumped me on the knee. “Grief is deep water. Come now. Stop this. Remember your breathing exercises.”

I was a child again, or would always be a child to Gibson. Taking in a deep breath, I held it, counting back from ten. Slowly I released it, exhaling with it the tension that brought my tears. “It isn’t grief,” I said. I brushed my gauntlet across my face, leather slick against my eyes. “It’s only . . . there’s so much. So much to tell. So many times I needed your help.”

“I’m here now.”

I told him as I had told no one before, not even Valka. I told him about Haspida, about my mother, and my fight with Crispin. I told him about Demetri, and how I’d come to Emesh. For the first time in my life, I told someone about Cat. About the Gray Rot, about the streets of Borosevo. I told him about the Colosso, about Switch and Pallino, about Siran and Ghen, and the rest. I told him about Makisomn and the Mataros. About Gilliam. I told him about meeting Valka, and that I loved her. How we fled to Calagah, how there I had my first vision from the Quiet. I told him of the Jaddian visit and the Cielcin attack, and wished I could show him the sword Olorin had given me, but I had checked it in the barbican of the day gate when we’d entered Nov Belgaer.

My story took us to Pharos, took us through Emil Bordelon and Marius Whent, through my time with Jinan and the Red Company—and how I had betrayed them. We journeyed to Vorgossos, and when I spoke of Kharn Sagara, Gibson’s eyes—forgetting their scholiast training—went wide as dinner plates.

“Kharn Sagara?” he echoed. “The King with Ten Thousand Eyes?”

Had I not just had this precise conversation with Prince Alexander?

“I gave you that book,” Gibson said. “Of all the books in the universe . . . what are the odds?”

“Shorter odds than that I should find you here, alive,” I said.

“Not so!” Gibson said. “Colchis is the final destination for much of our Order.” Tor Varro had said something of that when we arrived on the watery moon. I supposed that explained such coincidence, though perhaps there were deeper powers at work. Deeper powers had moved me from Teukros to Emesh, after all, as I then told Gibson—and told him the Quiet so often wore his face. He asked no questions, nor made any interruption of any kind, not even when I recounted my duel with Prince Aranata and my death aboard the Demiurge. I must have talked for hours—it was impossible to tell so far underground. I spoke of my knighting in the Georgian Chapel, of my missions in service to the Empire, of the Battles of Cellas, Thagura, and Oxiana. I spoke of the demons of Arae, of the pirates at Nagapur. I told him the truth of my battle with Ulurani at Aptucca, and of my mission to Gododdin and Nemavand. I spoke of Hermonassa and Syriani Dorayaica, the Scourge of Earth, and though he remained silent, I saw his face fall. At last I came to Forum, to Bourbon, Breathnach, and the Empress. Gibson did not need to know. I showed my scars, let him feel the bones beneath.

Studying the deep white slashes in my left arm with his fingers and fading eyes, Gibson said, “These are poor payment for so much suffering.” He took his hands away. “I am sorry, Hadrian.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s because of me Father exiled you and . . .” I touched my own nose, tried not to look at the deep notch Sir Felix had put in Gibson’s with his knife. “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”

The old man’s scholiast composure broke entirely, and he gave me a sad smile, clamping one dry hand over my scarred wrist. “Being here isn’t a punishment. But what happened to you . . .” He broke off contact with my arm, and for the first time in my life I think I saw my old tutor truly lost for words. “I’m only sorry you didn’t make it to Teukros.”

“You sacrificed yourself for nothing,” I said, staring down at my hands. The three rings—rhodium, ivory, and gold—the nearly invisible scars from my youth on Delos fading on the right, the fresh, shining white ones deep on the left.

“Not nothing,” the scholiast said. “You’re not a cathar, are you?”

He had a point, but I said, “I don’t know what I am.”

Gibson laughed—actually laughed. The scholiasts nearby all started at the sound. A scholiast should not laugh. I confess I shared their astonishment. In all the years I’d known him, I do not think I’d ever heard the old man laugh. “You haven’t changed at all!”

“What do you mean?” I asked, who had changed quite entirely.

“You’re still dramatic as ever.” Gibson brushed one eye with a finger—had there been tears there? “Forgive me, I should not laugh, but scholiast or no . . . All these things you say have happened . . . and here you are.” He broke off, still chuckling. “So you are in exile here, too. Hiding from the Empress and—which Bourbon did you say it was?”

“Augustin,” I said. “He was Minister of War.” I hoped he was dead, though word of the assassins Crim had found for me had yet to reach my ears.

“Poor repayment indeed,” Gibson said. The silence spread between us, master and student at momentary peace on the bench. I watched a thin rivulet run along the veined wall of the stone opposite, disturbing a smaller pool. “Augustin . . .” he chewed the name. “You said he was Minister of War?”

I’d stopped short in my story of recounting the orders I’d given Crim. It felt wrong to confess that to anyone alive. A life of violence was one thing. But murder—an assassination—that was something else entirely, though neither my hand nor Crim’s had wielded the knife. But if I could not confess to Gibson in the privacy of a scholiasts’ cloister, whom could I confess to?

“I killed him,” I said. “Or . . . I hope I did.” I explained the orders I’d given Crim. The bomb he’d arranged be placed in the Lord Minister’s shuttle. Gibson did not react, did not comment. “He tried to kill me,” I said. “Tried to kill my people. I couldn’t let him try again.”

Still the scholiast said nothing, passing no sentence, handing down neither judgment nor absolution. I did not feel better having spoken the truth aloud. I felt exposed, raw, as if I expected some small gasp from behind a stalagmite and to see Sister Carina rushing away to tell someone.

But we were alone.

I crossed my arms, covering the scarred one with the other. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Perhaps not,” Gibson said, an odd brittleness in his tone. Was it horror? Disgust? Worse . . . was it pity? Turning, I found the old man staring at his lap and at the hands twisting in it, each massaging the other as though they pained him. Was it my imagination? Or had the tears returned to those misty eyes and seamed cheeks? “I am sorry, my boy. I wanted to give you a better life. This life.” He gestured round at the Archivists’ Grotto.

Shutting my eyes, the distant dripping of water might have been the drip of water in the limestone pools of our necropolis. When I opened my eyes again, I almost expected the black funeral statues of the ancient Lords Marlowe to be standing about me in their ring, black against natural white, but there was only the statue of Imore, unfeeling as ever above the mirrored pool.

“It’s true?” Gibson asked, after a long while. “All of it?”

“I know it is incredible,” I said, looking down at my own hands where I clenched them between my knees, feeling the scarred palm flex oddly. “But I swear it is the truth.”

Gibson’s voice—familiar to me as my own even after all these years—replied, “It is more than incredible. You ask me to believe the impossible.”

“You don’t believe me?” Almost I thought the bench and the stone on which it sat might crumble beneath me, that I should be swallowed by the world. Gibson had to believe me. He was Gibson. “I have footage. I can have you evoked from athenaeum . . . bring you to my ship.” I turned to look my old tutor in the face. Where had I gone wrong? This could not be happening! I needed him, needed him to understand, needed him to make sense of the strange net I’d fallen into, to make sense of my life.

“Footage could be fabricated,” Gibson said, and looked me square in the face. His eyes were shining. “Hadrian, I do not doubt your tale, but I do not understand it.”

“I don’t understand it either. Sagara said there are forces in the universe older and stranger than humankind. Brethren said these Quiet exist in the future. That’s why I’m here: to make sense of it all. To see if the Mericanii knew something we’ve forgotten.” I was almost crying again, but I crushed the nineteen-year-old part of me in my adamant fist and held my tears at bay. “I need your help.”

The old man was smiling—though I knew he should not be. “This is beyond me, Hadrian,” he said simply before adding, “Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you are not the same boy I knew on Delos.”

“I’m not,” I said, and remembered, “Valka! Valka is here! You have to meet her. And the others, Pallino and the prince are here. The rest are in orbit, but they’ll be coming down to the Sevrast Islands. The governor-general’s granted my people shore leave. You’ll have to meet them all!”

And at once Gibson’s skepticism did not matter. Here was my first and oldest friend in all the universe: the man who made me what I am, for better or worse. My teacher, my tutor, my father in all but name. Skeptical he may have been, but our reunion seemed to me another sign of those secret powers that moved the universe and me through it.

“Tomorrow, I think,” he said at last. “It is past midnight.”

He was right. The Grotto was empty.