THE MUSIC OF SILVER trumpets filled the air about the landing field. To either side stood our countless soldiery, armored red and white, their horsehair crests and feathered plumes rippling in the wind. They might all have been statues, so still they stood beneath their white banners and their staffs tipped with the wrought icon of the Imperial sun.

Might have been statues, were it not that I felt the pressure of their eyes on me and on the rest of the train that followed the old Magnarch up the aisle toward the gilded frigate that like a dragon crouched upon the plain before us.

The Emperor’s Radiant Dawn.

Karol Venantian led us, bracketed by two lictors armored in the bronze and white of his house, their cloaks fringed in violet to mark them as servants of the Magnarch. Valka walked beside me in a formal gown of dark lace that covered her plain right arm to the wrist but bared the tattooed left. Behind us came the high lords of the Magnarch’s court, his chancellor and scholiast advisors, among them Commandant Anders Lynch and the director of the Sananne Shipyards. Behind us all marched two double lines of guardsmen armored and shielded, alternating columns of Imperial legionnaires in white and red and Venantian house soldiers in the white and bronze.

Dressed as we both were in black, Valka and I could not have looked more out of place. The only other figures in black were the Chantry clergymen, distinguished by their tall white Egyptian crowns and matching stoles. These watched from stands in the rear like a line of vultures perched upon a rail, craning their stiff necks to see.

The Emperor had come.

Coolant jets sprayed the hull of the Imperial frigate, and great tongues of steam rose toward the eggshell sky, and amidst those trailing fingers marched forth the Knights Excubitor like mirrored scarabs, white crests tall and silk capes floating in the warm breeze. They moved in perfect synchrony, and I watched our approach reflected in their breastplates as they formed ranks amid the steam beneath the golden shadows of the landed vessel.

Valka’s nails dug into my arm. “ ’Tis necessary, all this?” she asked, muttering in her native Panthai, a language none of the others understood.

I patted her hand in lieu of a reply. Valka was Tavrosi, and neither our lifetime together nor the torments her own people had put her through exorcising Urbaine’s daimon from her head had changed that. All our Imperial ceremony, the pomp and pageantry and martial awe, were nearly so alien to her as the Cielcin themselves.

As if in answer to her question, the trumpets sounded again, and distantly the Legion band took up the Imperial anthem.

And there he was.

No float palette or similar machine bore the Imperial person upon his throne. Instead, His Imperial Radiance, the Sollan Emperor William XXIII of the Aventine House, rode atop a palanquin supported by two dozen androgyn homunculi in Imperial livery, all in white wigs and white uniforms. The Emperor himself wore a suit of armor in Roman fashion, muscled breastplate embossed with the Imperial sunburst set amid a design of folded wings and lesser stars. Every inch of his armor was exquisitely sculpted and patterned of the purest, snow-white ceramic—and his hands were red. The Emperor wore no gauntlets, only the scarlet velvet gloves of state, each finger—save one—bedecked with a ring of yellow gold.

A cloak of scarlet samite hung on his shoulders, red as his flaming hair, and the circlet set upon his brow was fashioned of living gold. Behind him trailed the usual cluster of attendants and advisors: scholiasts in green and logothetes in the dull gray of civil service trailed the throne, like flotsam pulled by the passage of a great wave. I was pleased not to see the face of Prince Alexander among them. I had been told my former squire was among those who had traveled with his father from Forum, but discretion or care on the part of the Emperor or his staff had seen fit to leave the prince aside for this very public audience.

The music swelled as he approached, fell silent as the Magnarch knelt, dropping to both knees before his lord. As though a wave passed through our train, we knelt, though I had to half drag Valka down after me. The homunculi brought the mobile throne to a halt and lowered it to the earth. Three times the Magnarch pressed his face to the rich carpet that had been unrolled to greet the Son of Earth. “Earth bless and keep you, Radiant Majesty!” he exclaimed, not at all the same creature who had threatened me on the landing pad outside the shipyards a little over a month before. “Welcome! Welcome to Nessus. We pray your voyage from Forum was an easy one.”

The Emperor raised a hand, two fingers extended in salute and benediction. “Well met, Magnarch. We must say, the courtesy of your world is greater now than in our memory.” Here Caesar swept his emerald gaze across the gathered forces, the band and clergy. “I trust construction of the new fleet is proceeding on schedule?”

Karol Venantian straightened as much as he could without standing. “We lost time dealing with the Eikana affair, Radiant Majesty, but we expect to recoup those losses over the next five years.” The Magnarch kept talking, and as he did, I scanned the retinue behind the Imperial throne, looking for familiar faces among the drab ministers and green-robed scholiasts. I spied square-faced Sir Gray Rinehart, the man who’d replaced the disgraced Lorcan Breathnach as head of Legion Intelligence, as well as mustachioed Lord Haren Bulsara, Director of the Colonial Office. I noted the Emperor’s Confessor, a dour Archprior called Leonora, stalking the Emperor like a shadow sewn to the hem of his robe. Beside her, carrying that very hem in two gloved hands, was a man I had often seen but never spoken to—if man were the proper word. The butler was one of the Imperial androgyns, a eunuch homunculus bred to serve as the Emperor’s bodyservant and batman. Its face was utterly hairless, as all of the androgyns were, but it wore no wig, and its white uniform distinguished itself from those of the others by the bloody sash it wore cross-wise like a baldric before it wrapped about its slim waist.

“Lord Marlowe.” The Imperial voice cut across my examination of the retinue, and I bowed my head. “It is our understanding that we are once more in your debt. It seems that even in exile your usefulness knows few limits.”

It took every ounce of Gibson’s stoic instruction to smooth the smug smile from my face at the thought of what must be going through the Magnarch’s mind in that moment. I did not bend to kiss the earth—it was not expected of me—but neither did I raise my eyes as I said, “Thank you, Honorable Caesar.”

From the way the shadows moved, I guessed the Emperor had stood, and indeed a moment after a pair of white boots entered my vision, and a red gloved hand that glittered with rings. I took the offered hand and kissed it, conscious—and self-conscious—of the statement the Emperor had just made. He had bypassed his own Magnarch and had risen to greet me first of all the nobiles in the company.

“We regret we were unable to render assistance in the matter of your trial. It pleases us to find you well.”

Lifting my eyes, I released the Emperor’s hand—it would not have done to touch his royal person a moment longer than the forms required. I found myself unsure as to how to respond to this statement of His Radiance’s. It had been his own order that delivered me into the Magnarch’s tender care. When the Chantry’s assassins failed to kill me and so end my years-long trial, it had been William Avent’s own seal and signature beneath the order that mothballed the Tamerlane and locked me into an advisory role here on Nessus. For your own protection, the Emperor had said.

To keep me out of trouble seemed more like it.

In the end, I settled for a neutral, “Thank you, Radiance.”

That seemed to satisfy the Emperor, whose attention turned away like the beam of a searchlight. “And this must be your paramour. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

I blinked. I had met with His Radiance the Emperor more than a hundred times over the centuries, and on almost all of those occasions, I’d been alone. It seemed impossible that Valka and the Emperor would not have crossed paths, and yet. . . . The red velvet glove descended once again for Valka to kiss. She did not. I felt her eyes burn the side of my head an instant, but held my tongue. At last, seeing no alternative, Valka kissed the Imperial rings.

“Honorable Caesar,” I said, already imagining what Valka would have to say about this exchange when we returned to the villa at Maddalo House, “this is Doctor Valka Onderra.” I did not add the Vhad Edda toponym. Valka and I had journeyed to her home after the Battle of Berenike, seeking a cure for her affliction. We found one, but Valka’s clan had forced her into reeducation, hoping to cure her of the outlander pollutants that her long sojourn amongst us barbarians had put in her mind. In the end, the demarchists had opted to reconfigure her entirely, to wipe her mind with the aid of the machines that impregnated her brain and build a new woman on her ruins.

She’d barely escaped with her mind.

Still, something in the name must have jogged the Emperor’s memory, for he said, “The Tavrosi! Of course!” Taking a step back, the Emperor surveyed the whole of the Magnarch’s party. “Rise,” he said. We stood, Valka once again taking my arm.

Just then one of the androgyns—the thin butler who had held and tidied the Emperor’s cloak—approached and whispered a word in its master’s ear. Caesar gripped the homunculus by the shoulder and nodded. “Thank you, Nicephorus,” he said, and looked round for the kneeling Magnarch. “On your feet, Magnarch Venantian. You must show us your great city and this fleet you are building for us! Please!”

“Your Radiance,” the Magnarch said, rising with the help of one of his lictors. “I’ve the tram prepared to bring us to the palace, if you will allow me.”

“Of course, dear Magnarch. It is your world, after all. Lead on!”

The Emperor and the Magnarch drew aside then as the Emperor’s escort went ahead, paving the way back down the central aisle toward the train meant to carry us to the Magnarch’s palace for the welcome feast.

His Radiance had traveled far, would travel farther still. Throughout the wars, the Emperor had seldom stirred from his halls in the Eternal City. He had made brief expeditions to various Legion fortresses, to some of the provincial capitals, and once or twice so far as Nessus—but the last such trip had been before Vorgossos, before my knighthood. Centuries had passed since last the Firstborn Son of Earth had come to the outer provinces, and never like this.

Nessus was but the first stop on a tour of some thirty worlds: Vanaheim, Aulos, Carteia, Perfugium . . . some of them strategic assets, some of them sacked by the Pale. After the fall of Marinus and the loss of control in the Veil, the reinforcement of Imperial territories in Centaurus had taken on a critical importance. Marinus had been a mighty blow, cutting off the newly minted Norman conquests.

Dozens of worlds lost.

“We mean to set the frontier to order,” His Radiance said.

“We’ve prepared reports on the state of the frontier,” said Karol Venantian.

The Emperor was nodding, but there was a stony weight to his tone. “Very good. But it is our understanding that you are undermanned, Karol.”

Though his back was to me, I heard the Magnarch’s frown. “Not undermanned, Radiance, but our fleets have suffered greatly. We have the men ready in Legion stores—Gododdin, Perfugium, and so forth—but without the vessels to field them they are of little use. We are building as fast as we can.” As he spoke, the pale monolith of the shipyard docks rose its mile into the sky beyond the landing field, remote as the distant mountains in the way it impressed itself on the mind. “The Cielcin have grown cunning in their war against us. They’ve destroyed two of my shipyards across the sector in the last eighty years. They might have destroyed fuel production had I not acted quickly in the matter of Eikana.”

“Khun,” Valka swore in my ear. Still in her native tongue, she added, “What did he do, exactly?”

“Leave it,” I said gently.

“Marlowe!”

The sound of my name turned my head around.

The rest of the Emperor’s party was disembarking from the frigate behind the sovereign. The usual panel of logothetes and scholiasts and Chantry clergy had taken their places in the Emperor’s train, leaving the military advisors to bring up the rear in the red or white berets and formal dress blacks of naval officers. I thought I recognized a face or two from the Eternal City—two of the strategoi had sat on the Intelligence council with Augustin Bourbon and Lorcan Breathnach. The legates were almost unknown to me, Centaurine commanders come on the Emperor’s invitation.

But Tribune Bassander Lin I’d have known anywhere.

The Mandari patrician officer leaned heavily on an ashwood cane and grimaced as he limped nearer. The man had broken nearly every bone in his body battling the vayadan-general Bahudde on Berenike, and not even the best Imperial medicine could put him back together as he was. That he was back together at all was a testament to medical science. That he was still in service was a testament to Bassander Lin.

“Lin.” I offered the man a short salute. “I’m surprised to see you here. I understood the 347th was out past Sete.”

The tribune returned my salute. “The 347th was reconfigured after Berenike. Hauptmann’s replacement had Leonid Bartosz reassigned and gave the legion to some legate from the Perseus I’d never heard of. I’ve been moved to the 409th.”

“And promoted, I see,” I indicated the double star and oak clusters that marked his new rank. I did not offer any congratulations. Lin and I were not friends, had never been friends. I’d known the prickly officer since he was lieutenant, had served with him on the quest for Vorgossos. It was thanks to him and the late Titus Hauptmann that peace talks with the Cielcin clan Otiolo had broken down—though not the reason they’d failed. I’d not been able to admit it at the time, that peace with the Cielcin was impossible. Lin was a constant reminder that I’d been wrong.

Lin touched his rank insignia with his free hand. “Yes. Small blessings.” His eyes found Valka a moment later, and he said, “Doctor . . . I was glad to hear you’d been healed of your affliction.” He bobbed his head in greeting.

“And I yours,” she said.

“Shall we walk?” Lin asked, indicating the procession back across the field to the tram platform. I gestured for Bassander to take the lead, and Valka and I fell into step beside him, moving slow to keep pace with Lin’s limping gait. After a moment, the tribune cleared his throat. “How do you find Nessus, Marlowe?” No lord, no sir. Bassander Lin never been able to reconcile his holy terror of whatever I was with his contempt for the boy I’d been. He had seen me die aboard the Demiurge. And seen me return.

“Trying,” I said, staring daggers at the back of Magnarch Venantian’s head.

“I would have thought it suited you,” Lin said. “So near the action, and in a position to do something about it.”

“In a position to tell other men what to do about it, you mean,” I said.

Valka interjected, “And the rest of our companions have been in frozen orbit since we arrived. ’Tis lonely here.”

I nodded my agreement with her. “After what happened on Thermon, the Emperor felt it was wiser that I be put somewhere where I’d not make a spectacle of myself.”

“He ought to have put you on a flight bound out of the galaxy, then!” Lin said, causing Valka to choke back a laugh.

“Don’t give His Radiance any fine ideas,” I said. “I’m sure he has plenty of counselors lined up saying much the same.” When Lin did not reply at once, I asked, more pointedly, “Alexander is with you, is he not?”

“The prince?” Lin’s dark eyes caught mine. “Aye. His Radiance ordered him brought along for seasoning.”

“Seasoning?” Valka echoed the word, and I knew from the pointed quality of her tone that she was thinking the same thing I was thinking.

Alexander was still the heir apparent. Or not-so-apparent. He was one of the afterlings, the one hundred seventh child of the Emperor, a child of his age. The elder children, like the Crown Prince, Aurelian, were old almost as the Emperor himself. Should any of them come to rule, their reigns would be short as they were old. Alexander was young—though how young he was by then, how many years he’d spent in fugue I could not say. And so it seemed he still was the Emperor’s favorite to succeed him.

And he had seen my miracle at Berenike, had seen me weather a direct blast from the Cielcin’s orbital laser without so much as scratch on me. Did he still fear me as his mother did? As did the Lions of the Imperial court?

As did Mother Earth’s Holy Terran Chantry?

Lin seemed to hesitate before asking his next question. He leaned in and whispered beneath the blaring of the trumpets. “Is it true the Chantry tried to poison you?”

I glanced at him and said nothing, which was answer enough, though not the whole answer. The Chantry had sent an assassin to my cell. I’d made him take his own poison. The facts had not survived their journey across the stars. I’d heard it said that Hadrian Marlowe had taken poison, had drunk it on the stand before the praetor and the jurors and had refused to die.

The tribune seemed to get the message.

“You’ll have to come visit us at the villa,” Valka said, speaking to cover the awkward silence for fear we might be heard. She lay a hand on Lin’s shoulder. “Nessus is much nicer the farther you get from the city.” It was not safe to have any conversations of that sort anywhere in the city, too many ears pricking and cameras prying.

“I may take you up on that,” Lin said. “But I expect we’ll be tied up in committee for some time, Marlowe and I. You heard about the Jaddians, I assume?”

“Prince Kaim and his army?” I asked. “Yes, I did.”

Lin leaned in conspiratorially. “The Emperor has not come here simply to check on Venantian’s progress with the fleet. He was slated to do that on the end of his tour of the provinces.”

That piqued my interest, and I leaned in, too. “This stop wasn’t on his itinerary?” That would explain the suddenness with which Venantian had sprung the news on me, and the venomous mood he’d been in the day we’d inspected the shipyards together.

The tribune shook his head. “He diverted the fleet five years out of its way to come here first.”

“Five years?” Valka asked. “Why?”

“It’s only a rumor. I overheard Sir Gray talking to my commander.”

“Who’s your commander?” I asked, not sure if it was relevant.

“Sir Sendhil Massa, Legate.” Lin said, tone increasingly hushed.

I didn’t know him, though there was another member of House Massa on the Intelligence council—I couldn’t remember his name, an acquaintance of Lorian Aristedes. “What did they say?”

“That’s just it,” Lin said. “They said the Emperor was here for you.”