IT HAD BEEN DEEP in the middle of ship’s night when Lieutenant Greenlaw came to fetch me for a meeting with Smythe. I had not been sleeping—too much filled my head for that, and I had dressed hastily and followed. The confused route through the Demiurge matched the confusion in my heart: warring images on the walls and the horrid pattern of human faces leering out of black metal.

“Do you think it worked?” Smythe asked, once Greenlaw left us alone in her office aboard the Schiavona.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “It certainly had an effect, but just what that effect was I can’t rightly say.” I took the seat offered me opposite Smythe’s desk. “Where’s Crossflane?” The First Officer was conspicuously absent. Why that should unsettle me I cannot say, and yet it did. The old knight was never far from his tribune’s side, a stiffly formal shadow, the textbook image of the old Imperial officer with his neat black uniform and immaculately groomed sideburns.

Smythe moved her cane from its resting place at the arm of her chair and propped it against the wall behind her. “Sleeping, Earth bless him. William’s not so young as he once was.” The use of the old knight’s name—Switch’s name—stung me more than I care to admit, and it was all I could do to suppress a flinch. Smythe looked like she could stand to sleep herself. There were deep circles under her eyes, and the scar-streaked skin had a quality like wax paper over drying meat. I might have pitied her, were it not for her devil’s bargain with Kharn Sagara. “But then, neither am I. Truth be told, I never expected to live so long as this.”

“How long is ‘this’?” I dared to ask.

Groaning, Smythe pushed herself to her feet and stumped over to a sideboard. “I thought you palatines considered it rude to ask after someone else’s age?” I made a half-hearted noise of apology, and she waved me down. “Ah, but I’m not a palatine, and nearly three hundred,” she said. “Me. Three hundred. Can you imagine? My mother was a solar farm technician, and here I am. Brandy? I had it brought from the Obdurate.”

“Please.”

“Have you heard of Churchill? He was King of Britain at the end of the Golden Age,” she said, filling two fat glasses with the stuff. I said that I had, but did not add that it was contested whether or not Churchill had been king or only some manner of logothete. “Winston the Good was named after him, you know? He was fond of brandy, or so William tells it.” She offered me one glass and, taking the other in one hand said, “Your health, Lord Marlowe.”

“And yours.”

“And Earth and Emperor!” she said, and drank.

“Earth and Emperor!” I murmured, a bit half-heartedly, and drank. I confess I never developed much of a taste for the old nostrum myself, but as Kharn had said . . . Si fueris Romae . . .

We sat then in companionate silence, each cradling a glass of brandy. The taste of oranges hung on my tongue, erasing better things, stifling conversation. At last Smythe cleared her throat and—setting aside her snifter with a weighty sigh—said, “I have . . . a proposal.” I let these words stretch without interruption, in expectation of some proper announcement to come. Often I have observed this habit in important persons: in nobiles, in their advisors and logothetes. Even in certain scholiasts I have known. That habit of announcing things which it is better one come out and say. I am guilty of this particular pattern myself. Smythe, I think, was less motivated by stagecraft than she was slowed by the weight of her office. Many are.

Smythe started again, fingering some object on her desk while she spoke. “Varro has suggested that given the . . . the cupidity of our alien friend and his demanding nature, that it might flatter him to post an apostol to this Aeta’s court—if they have courts.”

“An apostol?” I repeated, processing. An emissary. And ambassador. I felt a faint glimmer of where this headed and felt my stomach turn over. “Do you think they would accept?”

She sucked her teeth. “I’m not certain. But I should like to have a plan of action sorted out on our end before I made any offers to the Pale. There remains your ray shield suggestion as well, though I think pairing the two gifts might go a long way.”

“Flattery may be our best option,” I said. It seemed to work well enough for Kharn. “Though we have gained some form of toehold.”

“We have!” Smythe stared down into her drink. “That little stunt of yours with the map earned us some respect—and the rest of it didn’t hurt.”

Seeing just where she was heading, I said, “You mean to appoint me as apostol to the Cielcin, don’t you?” I tried to picture it: me, an ambassador among the Pale. It was the sort of thing I had dreamed of for so long, and yet now it tasted of ashes to me. Of ashes, and that poor woman’s desperate prayer.

Kill me.

“The thought had occurred to us, yes, but there is a danger.” She turned the glass in her hands and eyed me as a bird eyes a worm. “Varro is not certain the Aeta would understand a diplomatic posting. Might interpret it as a gift.”

Unwilling to dance this dance, I said, “You want to post me to the Cielcin. Give me to him. Like you gave away five thousand plebeian serfs.”

“Don’t recriminate me!” She thrust a finger at me. “Don’t you dare. Those plebs sold themselves to the Migration Office, and I’d no notion Sagara meant to sell them to the Pale.”

“What did you expect?” I asked. “That he’d set to farming on that ice ball he calls home?” I had to struggle to keep my voice level. “Those were our people, Smythe.”

The knight-tribune had the good grace to look away. “I imagined he’d put them to some proper labor, yes. Even pirates need someone to work the farms and factories.”

“He has those, or haven’t you seen?”

Understanding and a species of pain flickered behind Smythe’s face like the light of the SOMs she was imagining. “I did make a mistake,” she admitted, “but that was the price of doing business with Vorgossos. Without it . . .” The rest went unsaid. Without it we would not have been brought aboard the Demiurge, without it Bassander would have been sent packing as surely as I had, and with hands just as empty.

“You should not have come here,” I said, setting the glass down with a solid clink. “If you’d but let me do my job, ma’am.” I broke off, aware of what I was saying. I was no proper soldier, and I was lord, besides, but I ought not speak in that way. Not to her.

Smythe’s face darkened, and I saw her lips go white as corpseflesh. But she smoothed the emotion away with a display of control I might have expected from a scholiast and not an officer of the corps. “What you’ve done and what I’ve done are not at issue here and now, Marlowe. What we will do, is. I propose to send an apostol to the Cielcin—on their terms, if need be—to mediate and advocate for us, and to observe. As you have already guessed, I think you would be well suited to the position.”

“You mean that I am expendable,” I said. Anger flared in me, pushed along by a deeper fear I had not yet named. “I didn’t take you for a grocer, Smythe.”

The older woman—who perhaps had worked in a grocery as a peasant child—bridled. “Excuse you?”

“If you gift me to Aranata,” I said, “how long before I’m cut up for his table, or worse? How long before he’s done to me what he’s done to that poor girl of his? Eh?”

Her nostrils flared. “Are you so poor a diplomat?”

I threw her my sharpest smile, one of the sort I had learned from Valka in the earliest days of our acquaintance. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve barely been able to speak to them. You know, on Emesh, I did more with Uvanari in five minutes than the Chantry managed in weeks.” Privately, I resigned myself to stop drinking Smythe’s brandy. Let the dregs stand! “But I don’t understand what they’re like. Their concept of a diplomatic posting might look more like the gift of a new slave than that of a visiting dignitary.” The words cut me as I spoke them, though they were true. Had she offered a younger and more foolish Hadrian such a posting, I would have thrown myself upon the opportunity as women throw flowers and undergarments at gladiators as they emerge onto the killing floor. The old romance stirred in me, and despite myself I imagined a sojourn among the xenobites, learning their ways, speaking their tongues. I could have my answers, both about the Cielcin and about the Quiet gods they worshipped.

If I could survive.

“You wouldn’t be going alone, of course. You’d have a retinue. A staff. Guards. Servants . . .”

“Servants?” I almost laughed. I had been an urchin not twenty of my years before!

Smythe raised one eyebrow. “You are of the body palatine. One of the Peerage, I understand. Of course you would have servants. And a ship. I’d not send you toothless to them.”

It was almost enough. Almost enough to forget the blind terror I’d begun to feel of the Cielcin. Call me a coward all you like, but having met them I felt little desire to live among them.

I studied the brandy where I held it in my lap, studied the hands that held it. They were not the hands of the young man I had been. Those hands had been calloused, aye, but these were leathered and scarred. My left thumb was half scar where my lost family ring had frozen on in fugue, and similar burns stippled the back of that same hand—relic of my battle with Uvanari.

“Can I refuse?” I asked, not knowing if I wanted to.

Only having spoken did I look up, found Raine Smythe’s bland stone of a face staring sour at me: lips pressed, eyes narrow, brows contracted. “After all this?” she said, voice as tight as her face. “After all this . . . you ask that question?” She meant to shame me, and it worked. I could not hold her eyes, or onto my anger with her. Not in that moment. “Isn’t this what you fought for? Isn’t this why you came here? To be like . . . Kasia Soulier, was it?”

I snorted. “I did say that, didn’t I?” Clear as the office I sat in, I saw myself standing before Balian Mataro in his throne room in Castle Borosevo, comparing my mission to that old Foundation War privateer. Remembering other stories I had told, I remarked, “More like Simeon the Red . . .” When Smythe did not smile at this, I said, “Who would you be sending with me?”

“Varro, for one. You would need a scholiast to advise you, one who speaks their language—and Varro is already familiar with our situation and with Prince Aranata.”

“Would I be able to keep the Red Company?” I asked, unsure if Otavia Corvo and the others would consent to such a mission. They were foederati, after all. Mercenaries. Guarding an Imperial apostol during his protracted sojourn among the Cielcin was hardly what they’d signed up for. No one could blame them for refusing.

I caught Smythe’s lips twitch, either with this same thought or simple amusement, for she said, “The Red Company . . .” She took a sip of the brandy. To comfort herself, some might say. To hide a smile, said others. “If you can keep them, sure.”

“And not Bassander Lin,” I said, with perhaps too much force, for the tribune’s face darkened.

Her eyes would not find my face, were lost wandering the brass detailing on the heavy cabinet that stood to one side. She was quiet for so long that for a moment I imagined she had drifted off. “Ma’am?”

Raine Smythe shook herself, massaged one eye with the heel of her free hand. “Bassander . . . no. No, I would not send him with you. Some other captain would be found, one whose hands you’ve not taken a sword to.”

I felt myself flush, and it was my turn to look away. “I do regret that,” I said, “and your soldiers. I never meant for anyone to be hurt. Do you have their names? Their families? I should like to make amends if I can. When there’s time.”

There was some change in the knight-tribune’s face. One of those emotions which is instantly recognizable but impossible to name played in the tired lines beneath her eyes and about her mouth. Was dignity an expression one could make? The respect for dignity? Or was it only approval? “I can have my adjutant get you the list.”

“I would appreciate that,” I said, not knowing what I intended to do exactly. “Not a day’s gone by I don’t think about them, and about Captain Lin.”

“He’s a good soldier. A good officer,” she said quickly. “He always was. But his distaste for you is a wild spot. In all the years he’s served under me, I’ve not seen him so . . . angry.”

“I’m sure I’ve given him good reason to be.”

“That you have.” Smythe set her glass down. “What do you think?”

Against my better judgment, I took another sip of Smythe’s brandy and mulled over her words and her offer. The stuff tasted strongly of oranges, and I grimaced, watching the distorted Hadrian reflected in its sanguine surface. “Do you need an answer now?”

I could almost hear Smythe purse her lips. “You needn’t give me an answer at all, but no. No, you’ve time to make what considerations you need. You would not be leaving directly from here in any case. As apostol to the Cielcin, you would be representing His Radiance. The chappies at Legion Intelligence will want to brief you, you can depend on it. And the Holy Office—possibly even His Radiance will want a word.”

“The Emperor?” I sat up so straight and sharply one might have thought me electrocuted. “An audience with His Radiance? Truly?” A thrill went through me, one of awe and holy terror such as moved men when the Earth was young. An audience with the Emperor! Our Emperor. Our Basileus and Padishah! Our Maharaja and Huangdi! Our Mikado, our Augustus, our Czar and Blessed Son of Heaven. Our Caesar. Him whose blood was the blood of old Victoria, and of William of Avalon, in whom it was said the like of Arthur and Alexander walked again. It was like Smythe had said, like God himself had noticed me. Like a star had turned to face me. “You’re not serious.”

“It’s not unlikely,” Smythe said. “The Emperor left Forum some years ago, I understand. He was at Nessus, last I heard, with Primarch Venantian. It could be he’s returned home, but the Schiavona could have you to Forum and back within a decade if that’s the case.”

“The Emperor . . .” Still I did not relax. If the sovereign of a dozen billion suns deigns to notice you, you do not sit easily. I thought of my father, dark and miserable in his dark and miserable castle, and might have laughed but for the warning in my heart. As I say: when the sovereign of a dozen billion suns deigns to notice you, you do not sit easily.

I looked up, found Smythe watching me intently. “Now you see why you must not refuse.”

Swallowing, I said, “I do.” I could not refuse such a summons, should it come, nor the circumstances that led me to such a summons.

“I mean to put the offer on the table tomorrow,” she said, and raised a hand to override the objection she sensed was coming. “I will not say that I mean to send you, only that we mean to send someone—to better gauge the Pale’s receptiveness to such diplomacy.” Her eyes fell, and she half-turned from me. “And to make sure they won’t mistreat you.” There was no confidence in her voice, nor in my breast. I cradled the half-drunk brandy in my hands, watching Smythe in her studious attempt not to look at me. Stirred by some compulsion, she turned and retrieved her cane, as if she derived some comfort by the touch of it. She slammed the butt of the cane against the floor. “Fucking barbarians!”

Barbarians. Valka so often said the same of us, as if the blood in her veins was not just so human as mine.

“They are what they are,” I said.

“That may be,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean they’re not monsters. That poor girl . . . do you know why they do it?”

I could only shake my head, for at the time I did not understand. Perhaps I still don’t. “You’re going to propose an exchange, yes? Me for one of them?”

“Ah, yes.” She rested her cane against the edge of her desk again before continuing. “You don’t suppose the prince would part with his son?”

“Nobuta?” I shook my head, responding more on instinct than any held position. “I’m not sure it would be a good idea to even ask. Tanaran would be a better choice, although if Tor Varro were here, he’d likely suggest we wait and see if the Aeta decides to offer a gift. I doubt he’d understand an exchange of hostages.”

“Ambassadors.”

“What’s the difference?”

She snorted, and after a moment said, “I’m unclear on what exactly Tanaran is. I don’t want to make a bad trade for you.”

I had to stifle an incredulous laugh. “The question of my value aside, Knight-Tribune, I’m not sure Nobuta Otiolo is our best choice. I think it’s only a child. An ephebe, maybe, but no diplomat. And in any case, I feel certain the Aeta would take it amiss if we were to start asking for its child.” I looked up at the ceiling, trying to gather myself. “Perhaps it would be best if we were to simply make the offer and see what happens. We may be surprised.”

Raine Smythe propped her elbows on the edge of her desk, massaging her eyes with both hands. “Very well. Very well, Lord Marlowe. We will reconvene on the morrow before talks resume.”

Grimacing, knowing it would be rude to do otherwise and no longer desiring to be so, I drained my brandy and placed the empty glass on the edge of the desk before I stood. “As you say, Knight-Tribune.” Were I a soldier, I might have saluted then, turning briskly to stride from the room. But I was not a soldier, and only gathered the tails of my long coat about me as I turned.

I was halfway to the door when Smythe added, “You will take that posting, when it comes to it.”

“As you say, Knight-Tribune.”

If she had been right—if I’d ever taken that posting—much evil might have been avoided.