DESPITE OUR TALK OF leaving, neither Valka nor I was in any hurry to depart. We had grown comfortable with Imrah’s family, and the villagers gave no sign of wanting us gone. The years went by, and the children in the village grew older and began to accompany the men out to sea. More and more I went with them, and tried to content myself with the little actions of ordinary life. Day by day the torments of Dharan-Tun slipped further away, and the stars shone a little brighter.

But still I waited. What I waited for I could not say, though it lurked in the corners of my mind like a spider. Thoughts of the war burning across the stars haunted my dreams, but not a wisp of smoke from all that burning darkened the Colchean sky. Though the stars called and my own words hounded me at night—Avenge us! Avenge us!—I was content. I was not healed, I told myself—not whole—though I knew the only healing I might find for my body lay in an Imperial hospital.

It was only an excuse.

My sign came in the ninth year of our sojourn amongst the Sevrastene. I returned to Thessa with Ginoh and Alvar and with fresh supplies to find Valka waiting on the strand. From the way her chest heaved, I knew she had run out to meet us the moment our sails had appeared on the horizon. From the dread whiteness of her face, I knew.

I had been waiting for Gibson to die.

“What is it?” I asked, leaping from the deck, feeling the answer like an ax head deep in my chest.

Wordless, Valka wrapped her arms around me and drew me close. “You have to see him.”

He lay in the same bed I’d put him in after we extracted him from fugue, the one with a view of the bay. The room stank in that stale way all deathbeds do, and the very light that fell through the window seemed muted and colorless. He did not move as I entered, but lay as one dead.

“What happened?” I asked through stinging eyes.

“Fell,” Valka said, and rubbed her left arm self-consciously. I pushed past her, heedless of Ginoh, who had followed me from the dock.

I lay a hand on Gibson’s forehead, found it dry and cool. He did not respond. I checked his breathing, found it steady. “Where did you find him?”

“Just out front,” Valka answered, seating herself at the foot of the bed.

“We should get him up to the medica,” I said, looking round. “Ginoh! Do you have something we can use to carry him?”

The young fisherman’s eyes rolled up into his head as he thought. “Could use one of the nets, make a hammock.”

Valka caught my wrist. “What are you thinking?”

“We can freeze him,” I said, shaking her off. “We can freeze him and transfer him to the Ascalon. Take him to Aea. Get help.”

Not letting go of my wrist, Valka said, “We don’t know what’s wrong with him. The trauma of the freeze might do more harm than good.”

I sank to my knees at Gibson’s bedside, pressed my forehead against the edge of the mattress. Still Valka did not let me go. After a moment’s silence, I said, “I can’t do nothing, Valka.” In a voice smaller still, I added, “I can’t lose him.” And yet I knew at the same time that I had been waiting to lose him. Gibson—and Gibson alone—had kept me in that place, in those islands. I was like one waking from a dream, a dream in which Valka and I had been man and wife, caring for our aging father in his final years.

“It might be stroke,” Valka said.

“We have to move him,” I said. “There are med-scanners in the hospital pod.”

Valka ran her thumb back and forth along my hand. Without looking, I could feel the pity in those golden eyes. “Maybe there’s a field scanner. I can go look.”

“There’s one on the Ascalon,” I said, and turning to Ginoh I asked, “There’s a doctor in the village, isn’t there?”

The fisherman shook his head. “Always send to Egris for the doc,” Ginoh said. Egris was one of the larger settlements in the southern wilds, away east on the mainland. “We can wave for him though, have him fly out. There’s an uplink at the caravansary in town.”

“Will you go?” I asked, directing my words to Valka.

“Me?” Valka blinked, surprised that I would ask her to leave me.

“You can get the scanner from the ship,” I said.

Valka looked down, eyes not really fixed on anything as she mulled this over. “Hadrian,” she said at last, “if we go for the doctor, they’ll know we’re here.”

We both knew she was right. Using the village uplink to communicate with Egris would certainly alert the governor-general’s office in Aea. Whatever doctor there was in the city was sure to be on the Imperial dole, and a palatine lord and his Tavrosi companion were sure to raise eyebrows.

It didn’t matter.

I squeezed her hand. “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s time.”

In the end, Valka left with Ginoh in pursuit of the scanner. I watched the little fishing boat go, back across the water to Racha, and seated myself on a wooden chair beside the bed of the man who made me what I am. There was no strength in Gibson’s fingers, and the warmth of his hand was sparse as the cinders of a dying fire.

“I never said I was sorry,” I said, speaking to no one, really, for I was sure Gibson could not hear. “I never wanted you to suffer on my account. It’s strange, when I left home, I never planned on coming back. I never wanted to see Father again, or Crispin. Or any of the others. I knew I wasn’t going to be like one of the heroes in the old stories: there and home again. My story was going to be different.” I looked up at the white plastic of the roof above us both, not really seeing it. I saw instead the looming heavens, black and pregnant with the threat of all that was out there in the watchful Dark. “I thought I could be different, thought I could make peace.” As I spoke, I massaged the stumps of my fingers, remembering Syriani’s fangs. In the silence of the chamber, I heard once more the screaming of men and the cold laughter of the feasting Pale beneath the greenish shadows of Akterumu. “I was wrong.”

There was no peace. Not with the Cielcin, nor with their dark gods.

“And I was wrong about going home,” I said, and heard my own voice break.

Still Gibson did not move, unless it was to breathe softly beneath white linen. Beyond the window, the waves and the gulls made no sound.

“That’s twice now I thought I’d never see you again,” I said. “But you were always there. Even now. After everything.” Again I looked round the spartan apartment, white-on-white. Little touches had made a home of the place in the last several years. Curtains hung on the windows, decorated with the red right-angle patterns of the natives. The very chair on which I sat had been carved on Racha, as had the table set in one corner. The rug beneath it was woven of the same dun stuff as the curtains, showing similar geometric designs. “I don’t even know how you did it.”

Colchis was not the farthest place from Delos in the universe. I had come from places farther still, and yet we were so far and so long removed from that day at the whipping post before the steps of the great keep at Devil’s Rest that to meet at all—much less twice—was itself a form of miracle.

“I guess I did come home, in a way,” I said, still sure he could not hear me. “Thank you, Gibson. If you can hear me. Thank you.”

Valka was gone a long time, and the sky without grew dark. From time to time Gibson shivered on the bed. Once or twice his lips moved, but no sound came out. It took about an hour and a half to cross the water to Racha. That meant about four hours for her to collect the scanner, make the call, and return. Longer, if she had to explain herself to Imrah, longer still if she had to explain what was happening to the authorities.

It was absurd to me that, in a universe where messages might cross light-years in an instant via quantum telegraph, communication should be so slow. But there was nothing on Thessa to connect to Colchis’s anemic datasphere. Valka might have used her implants, but to do so would have been to invite Chantry scrutiny, and the last thing we needed was to have an inquisitor prying into the nature of Valka’s Tavrosi implants. Better to use the official channels.

“I’m sorry.” Gibson’s voice roused me, small and thin as it was. “I’m so sorry . . .”

I shook myself. Night had fallen, and Valka had not returned. There were no lights, no signs of boat or starship on the horizon, only the dim umber glow of Atlas suffusing the night air. Gibson had shifted in his sleep, rolled onto his side so that he faced me, his white hair disheveled.

“Gibson?” I sat forward, laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, words muddy and slurred. I realized with horror that he was weeping. I had never seen him weep before. He was a scholiast, and scholiasts do not weep. “Livy, I was wrong.”

Still gripping the old man’s shoulder, I said, “Who is Livy?”

Gibson moved his head strangely, eyes trying to find my face. “Hadrian?”

I moved my hand to grip his own. “Yes, Gibson, it’s me.” The thin fingers did not close. Valka’s diagnosis of stroke seemed more and more likely by the minute. Where was she? What had taken so long? “Valka’s gone for the doctor. We’re going to get help.”

The old man tried to shake his head. His jaw trembled. “Too late,” he said. “Too late.”

“It’s not,” I said, forced my eyes shut. “Don’t say that.”

Neither of us moved then. I cannot say what held Gibson’s tongue, but I could find no words for the gray howling in my soul. No words, except no and please. I had my answer the next instant. The gray eyes were closed.

Twice more he awoke in the night, and still Valka did not return. Without my terminal, I had no way of contacting her, nothing to do but wait. It was possible that Ginoh had not wanted to sail by night, that they would wait for the doctor to arrive from Egris by flier and return. Or so I told myself. There was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do. Gibson was palatine, and the oldest man—save Kharn Sagara alone—that I had ever known. And for palatines, when the end came, it came swiftly.

I tried to make him comfortable, adjusted his cushions, propped him up to afford a vision of the waves, of the world and the glory of it. Atlas’s orange glow cast fiery highlights on the wine-dark sea, and what stars were visible shone untouchable in the heavens.

On earth, an old man shivered and groaned. “Livy . . .” Gibson said again, cresting like a whale from the ocean of sleep, “tell Livy I was wrong.”

“Who is Livy?” I asked. I had asked him before, a dozen times in the long years we’d shared on the island together.

A brother scholiast, Gibson had always said, and only said. An old friend.

“Damn him!” Gibson hissed, more venom in the man than I had ever heard. I started, hurried back to his bedside from where I’d been sitting with my head on the table. “Where is he?”

Resuming my seat, I took Gibson’s hand again. “Who?”

Gibson did not seem to hear me. “He should be here!” His words were still blurred and imprecise things, and his eyes flickered across my face, half-seeing. One pupil was larger than the other, and I had a horrible memory of Valka’s face after Urbaine’s worm had chewed through her neural circuitry. I had to shut my eyes. “He put me here!”

Gone was every vestige of the scholiast’s calm. The stroke—if stroke it was—had cracked Gibson’s centuries of composure. The apatheia had never been farther away. His other hand gripped mine with a fierceness I little expected. “Alois!” he said. “Where is my son?”

“Your son?” I stood, tearing myself from Gibson’s grasp in the process. The wooden chair toppled to the floor, and I stumbled back. “Is Livy . . . your son?”

Never once in all the years I’d known him had Gibson referenced family. He was palatine, and so he must have married, must have had his offspring approved by the High College. Why then had he become a scholiast, renounced family and titles?

Who had he been, before?

The gray eyes sharpened, found my face. “Alois!” he said, not recognizing me. He looked around, blinking. “What is this place?”

“Colchis, Gibson,” I said, blinking back tears. It was one thing to face the old man’s death—quite another to face his forgetting me. “Gibson, it’s Hadrian.”

The one-time scholiast raised a spotted hand and swatted my words away. “I don’t like it. Where are we?”

Not righting my seat, I knelt by the old man’s bedside, took his paralytic hand in both my own. “We’re in the islands. At Thessa. On Colchis. Do you remember?” I squeezed his hand, willing him to recall. “It’s me. It’s Hadrian.”

“Hadrian?” Again the fog on his vision seemed to clear, and he looked around at the apartment as if he were seeing it for the first time. Still blinking, his head lolled back against the cushions. “This . . .” he began, a frown creasing his face, “this is not Belusha?”

“Belusha?” I blinked myself. I could hardly get the word out, so great was my shock. “Belusha?” Belusha was the greatest of the Emperor’s prison planets, a place for banished lords and Imperial embarrassments. Sir Lorcan Breathnach, the erstwhile Director of Legion Intelligence who had plotted with the Empress and the Old Lions to assassinate me on Forum, had been sent there, or so I was told. I assumed he must be dead. “Who are you?”

Gibson shut his eyes, leaned his head back against the cushions. “Thessa,” he said. “Ill name. Thessalus, son of Jason. Murdered.” He shook his head, did not open his eyes. Something of what he said sparked another thought in him, and he said, “My son should be here.”

“I am here, damn it!”

“Livy . . .” Gibson murmured, voice little more then than a whisper. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Forgive . . .” He sucked in a long, rattling breath. “I betrayed you. Betrayed . . . our house. Wanted to rule. Wanted . . .” He fell silent then, and lay a long time still as death. I did not leave his side, did not release his hand. More silent still, a voice began to whisper what I already knew. Gibson would not live until Valka returned. Death stood in the doorway, dressed in the same black veil my grandmother’s corpse had worn when Crispin and I saw her lying in the porphyry chamber, a shapeless darkness come at the end of life. She carried no scythe, but stood with open hands.

Gibson did not go all at once, but awoke one final time, and seeing me seated beside him, said, “Alistair.” He thought I was my father, and he smiled. “Dear boy. Where have you been?”

“I am not my father,” I said, clutching the beloved hand. “Gibson, it’s Hadrian.”

“Hadrian!” The misty eyes cleared. “Hadrian.”

“Yes,” I said, latching onto that last, tenuous connection.

“Do you remember the Forms of Obedience?” he asked. I told him that I did. My hands still clutched his paralytic one, and Gibson placed his other hand atop them as in benediction. “Remember which is highest.”

“Obedience out of devotion,” I said, reflexively, as though I were a boy in lecture.

A smile creased that too-creased face. “Love, yes. Do not forget it. Do not make the mistake I made.”

“What mistake?” I asked.

“Power is nothing. Power . . .” But his voice had gone thin as old smoke. His lips moved without sound. Stopped.

“Gibson?” My own voice sounded just as thin.

I squeezed his hand, willed his fingers to close on mine. But his eyes closed instead, and I knew that Gibson was gone.

How long I sat still by the dead man’s bedside I could not say. The sun had risen again, and a new shadow stood in the door. Not Death. Only Valka with Ginoh and an older woman I did not know. The doctor from Egris. Too late.

Wordless, Valka hurried to my side and wrapped me in her arms. I was not weeping any longer, though I had been for hours. She held me a long time, and Ginoh and the doctor withdrew.

When at last I could manage words again, I said, “I should bury him.”

Whatever Valka said, I cannot remember. I can remember only the look on her face, the hurt and pity in her eyes—and the fear. I did not recognize it for what it was at the time. What should she have feared? Not me. I realized later that she feared for me. We had come fleeing death and horror, and found death here, too. And yet—as I carried Gibson back up the mountain path toward the plateau and the cairns which housed the Keepers—I found no horror in Gibson’s death. There was sorrow, yes, but joy as well, for he had died an ordinary death. The world, my world, had not ended on Eue, at Akterumu.

“Nothing is finished,” I said over the body.

I laid him to rest—not with the Keepers along the path to the medica dome—but upon the heights overlooking the bay. Valka stood some distance off, Ginoh and Imrah behind. Thus it was I stood with Gibson one last time, as we had stood together upon the sea wall of Devil’s Rest, overlooking the ocean. How far we had come to arrive in the same place.

I was a long time finding the stones for Gibson’s cairn. I had taken so many to build the funeral markers for the others that more than once I was forced to trek down to the level of the water to find stones large enough and flat enough to pile on Gibson’s bones. Though my hands bled and my ruined shoulder ached, I would not let the others approach, would not let them place stones of their own upon the mound. “He was my father,” I said. “I should be the one to bury him.”

The sun was going down again by the time I finished my work, and a low, squat pile of stones stood over Gibson’s body. It was not so graceful as the others, nor so tall, but it was mine, and in the years to come Imrah and her children would in turn straighten the stones that I had laid, on Gibson’s mound and on all the others. On them would fall the honor and the charge of tending the paths and tombs of Thessa, of keeping the Isle of the Dead.

He is there still. Travel from Aea across the sea to where the Sevrast Islands rise from gray waters. Climb the stony paths of Thessa and walk the cliffs overlooking the sea, and you will find him there. There his body will remain until the stars go out, or that gray isle crumbles into the ocean. Find him, if you wish, and know that all I have said is true.

Valka came up beside me, and stood silent a long while, arms crossed against the chill wind. We both stared at the cairn that I had built, neither moving.

“How did he know?” I asked, the one question of all the questions that burned the brightest. “How did he know that we were coming back?”

Valka did not answer.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “He was always there. Even when I thought he was dead all those years, I hoped. I would ask myself what he would do, what he would think. But now he’s gone. Now I know he’s gone.” I shook my head, wiped my face with grimy hands. “How did he know? How did he know I’d need him? Need . . . this.”

I did not have to look to know that Valka smiled. “He didn’t,” she said. “He told me. He only hoped.”

I smiled. “It’s beautiful here,” I said, and put an arm around her shoulders, drew her close. “But we can’t stay, can we?”

“No,” she said. “They’re sure to come for us now. They know we’re here.”

“Then we should go,” I said.

“To Aea?” Valka asked.

I chewed my lip. “To the Library. There are some questions I want answered.”

“We should go, then,” Valka said. “If we hand ourselves over to your people, they may spare the villagers the inquiry.”

She was probably right. I did not like the thought of the Inquisition or Legion Intelligence sweeping into Racha to question poor Imrah and her family about our long presence. They had been generous hosts, and in any case I did not want Siran’s family to suffer for my sake. Still, I drew Valka in a little more tightly. “Just a moment longer,” I said, smiling at the grave.

Now hear this. The old words seemed to drift back to me on the wind, carried by the ocean airs from world to world. Here’s a lesson no tor or primate of the college will ever teach you, if it even can be taught. The world’s soft the way the ocean is. Ask any sailor what I mean. But even when it is at its most violent, Hadrian . . . focus on the beauty of it.

“I will,” I murmured to the old man’s shade, and did not heed Valka’s confusion at my side. “I promise.” And reaching down I drew a weight I had carried every day on Colchis from a pocket of my coat. The ruined sword hilt weighed heavy in my hands, its cracked reservoir empty, its fittings tarnished and broken. How much heavier than a feather was its weight? How many souls hung in its balance?

Turning, I hurled the ruined weapon out into the sea.

I did not see where it landed, nor did I hear a splash.

There are endings, Reader, and this is one. A part of me will forever lie within that broken ring of green stone, amid the blood and sacrifice before the ruin of that dreaming god of night. But a part, too, rests now and always on a sunlit cliff above the waters of Colchis, under a sunlit sky. There is pain always, and ugliness, but the light and beauty of the world shine always above and beyond the powers of darkness to destroy.

I was alive, had come like Orpheus out of Hades—but unlike Orpheus, I had not come out alone. But I had come out wounded, scarred. More wounds and worse awaited me, wounds that would leave no mark. If what I have suffered—if what I have done—disturbs you, Reader, I do not blame you. If you would read no further, I understand. You have the luxury of foresight. You know where this ends.

I shall go on alone.