“HAVE YOU LOOKED IN all the creche lockers?” asked Lorian Aristedes, lounging on one of the crash seats that lined the walls of the Ascalon’s small hold.

I paused midway through the act of searching through the crates that stood clamped to the floor in rows down the middle of that long, narrow chamber. The walls slanted in at either side, narrowing toward a roof supported by raw metal struts like the ribs of an iron whale. With most of the little ship’s systems powered down while it remained safely tucked away in the Tamerlane’s hold, the air was cold, and our breath frosted the air. Little more was being done than to maintain the atmosphere and the ship’s little hydroponics garden.

Unable to mask my irritation, I asked, “Why would my necklace be in someone else’s fugue locker?”

The younger man shrugged.

Valka’s phylactery—the silver half-moon pendant she’d given me before the fighting on Berenike—had not been among the items brought from Maddalo House. The pendant contained a complete copy of Valka’s genetic and epigenetic information etched in quartz alongside a crystallized sample of her own blood. Among her people, such things were given as gifts when a clansman earned enough esteem in the eyes of his or peers to be allowed the right to have a child. They had no families but the clan, and every man and woman parented alone. Marriage was forbidden, for to marry was to privilege one partner above all others, which the clansman called the vilest sort of prejudice. The Tavrosi forbid even the exchange of phylacteries, fearing that the existence of siblings would create something too like the exclusive family unit.

Valka had made two phylacteries. She kept the other—wore it always on a chain about her neck. That one contained all that I was, as mine contained her. Such a trade would have had the both of us imprisoned where Valka came from, packed into the Demarchy’s reeducation centers. It had been her compromise: not a marriage as I’d wanted for us, nor the dissolution of ties Valka’s culture expected.

How much of life consists of such mutual surrenders?

“I don’t suppose it was simply left behind?” Lorian asked, tucking his thin arms tighter across his chest. “Earth and Emperor, it’s cold.”

Standing, I shut the heavy metal lid of the crate I’d been examining and shoved hands into pockets. “Possibly.” Some of mine and Valka’s possessions had yet to be sorted through, and the crates all rose about me. I’d sifted through most of the boxes already, found little but clothing and copies of Valka’s many notes. Two armored crates each contained suits of combat armor that had been crafted for me on Forum. These we had not seen fit to transfer up to our quarters, and doubtless much of it would remain in place through to journey’s end. “It should have been in with my old washbasin. The one I keep my effects in.”

“I haven’t seen the basin, either,” Lorian said, unhelpfully.

“I know!” I snapped, tossing back the tails of my greatcoat to sit upon the crate facing the smaller man. Lorian looked half a child huddled in his cape, his knees drawn up to this chest in the crash seat. Voice sour, I added, “I had noticed it was missing, too, thank you.”

Not uncrossing his arms, Lorian shrugged a second time. “You asked for my help. I’m helping.”

I grunted. “I’ll telegraph Nessus from Goddodin; I’ll sleep easier on the trip to Padmurak once I know where it is.” That meant enduring years of quiet anxiety about the phylactery, but it was not possible to send or receive quantum telegraphs while the Tamerlane remained at warp. “I’m sorry.”

Lorian waved this aside. “I hope it turns up, but like as not there’s a crate or two still sitting on Nessus somewhere, collecting dust.”

“I just have to hope the Magnarch doesn’t sell the villa while I’m away.”

“He’d not do that, surely,” Lorian scoffed.

There was nothing to say to that. Lorian was probably right, and if the basin and Valka’s phylactery were sitting beneath the mirror in our bedroom beneath the carved beams of the roof, it would be all right. Anju and her people had probably already overseen the mothballing of the old place: dropcloths like funeral shrouds draped over furniture and statuary, systems powered down, only the gardener still haunting the emptied grounds, tending the hedges and the fish.

When we’d been quiet for the better part of a minute, Lorian—not a man known for his ability to keep from talking—said, “Are we really going to Padmurak?”

I blinked at him once, twice, not sure how to interpret this question. “As opposed to?” I had the sudden suspicion that this was why Lorian had volunteered to accompany me as I searched through the boxes.

“I thought perhaps we might be going off-book.”

“Going renegade?” I arched one eyebrow. “What gave you that impression?”

The little man chewed the lining of one cheek a moment. “Well, this is obviously another punishment mission. I don’t know all that happened while I was taking the ice nap with the rest of the crew, but I thought there was a chance you had something in mind. Like after Colchis.”

“You mean the Annica mission?” I said, at last letting the eyebrow relax. “No, Lorian, we’re going to Padmurak.”

The good commander seemed to deflate a little at the news. Lorian let his legs down, feet dangling just above the floor. “I only thought there might be something. Perhaps you and the doctor unraveled some mystery about your Quiet friends and the Cielcin.”

“Lorian, I spent about the last seventy years under house arrest because the Emperor couldn’t trust the Chantry or his own wife not to try and kill me again. I spent the decade before that in custody, in case you’ve forgotten. There’s no play here. No plan. We have a mission and a duty. I mean to perform that duty and remind the Emperor of the debt he owes me and my company.” Here I gestured at Lorian. “The Chantry believes I threaten their religious power. They think I think I’m some kind of prophet. False prophet, I suppose. And they saw what happened on Berenike. There’s no hiding it anymore.”

Alarmed, Lorian sat forward. “Do they know about your . . . ?” He drew a finger across his neck, miming decapitation.

I’d almost forgotten Lorian had seen Pallino’s recording of my death aboard the Demiurge and my apparent resurrection. “If they did, I’d be carved up on a slab on Vesperad or . . . somewhere. As things stand, I think they believe I fabricated Syriani’s orbital strike.”

“They can’t be that stupid.”

“On the contrary,” I said. “They think their doubt makes them clever.” It was my turn to cross my arms then, fingers agitating one of the clasps on my glove through the thick wool of my sleeve. “The Emperor knows better.”

“Does he?” I swore if Lorian leaned any further forward he’d tumble right out of his chair.

“When one is enmeshed in a web of intrigue, my friend, the best course is often to tell the truth to the highest authority who will hear you and cling to his protection.”

Lorian combed one lank strand of almost white hair back behind one pointed ear and said, “Cut through the swamp, eh? I guess that explains what we’ve been doing for the last century.”

Something in the tactical officer’s tone sent a spasm of irritation flickering across my face. “The Chantry nearly killed me, Lorian. The Empress and her Lions nearly killed me. This isn’t a punishment mission—or it isn’t only a punishment mission. There is no Chantry in the Commonwealth. We are going somewhere we can do some good. We have managed to slip the political net a while longer.”

“All the more reason to turn renegade,” Lorian said, circling back round. “When this is done, I mean. You’ve three legions worth of men in this company. You have the ship, and there’s not a one of the officers who’d gainsay you. If we go back to Nessus, they’ll put us on ice again and put you back in that villa. Emperor will probably make you Magnarch or something . . .”

The words tumbled out. “Bassander Lin said Director Rinehart thought the Emperor meant to name me auctor.”

“Auctor!” Lorian did fall out of his chair then, bounced up on his feet like a downed boxer eager for another round. I rose sympathetically, worried the intus had hurt himself in his fall. The idiosyncrasies of his condition had Lorian’s joints often slip out of place or caused him to lose function temporarily in whole branches of his peripheral nervous system. “Auctor? Black planet! Are you serious?”

“Are you all right?” I asked.

Lorian glared scathingly up at me. “I’m fine, Marlowe. Don’t fuss!” He leaned back against the edge of the seat he’d so suddenly vacated. “Auctor? That would do it . . .” He massaged one hand with the other, colorless pale eyes fixed suddenly far away. “This is a test, then.”

“Got it in one,” I said. “Assuming Lin’s rumor is accurate.” The realization had been Valka’s, had come to her about two months into our trip, and I’d not been able to shake the certainty of it ever since. Important as our envoy to the Commonwealth was, it was insufficient to explain the urgency of the Emperor’s presence on Nessus. He had wanted to see me, to get a measure of me after so many decades apart.

On the edge of his seat, Lorian had crossed his arms again, using the gesture to draw his cape even more tightly about himself. “Damn. And Lin heard it from Rinehart himself?”

“So he says.”

Lorian’s skeletal features sagged. “He’s Director of Legion Intelligence. Surely he’d know.” The intus rubbed his jaw. “By damn.”

I turned away from the other man and walked a few paces beneath the ribbed ceiling. At length I turned back. “When the Emperor diverted to Nessus early, Lin thought it was to make the appointment.”

“But you got Padmurak instead?”

“We got Padmurak instead.”

“It could be a play for time on the Emperor’s part,” Lorian mused, still stroking his chin. “Sending us all the way to the Commonwealth buys the Emperor nearly another century of real time—time he’s spending in the freeze on this tour of his.”

I stopped in my pacing. “He’s taking his tour to extend his life,” I said, realization flashing over me. “He’s not young. He’s been Emperor more than a thousand years. There’s no telling how old he is biologically—someone must know, keeping track of all his fugue time . . . but he must be . . . six . . . seven hundred?” We palatines did not age like ordinary men. Our artificially lengthened telomeres held back the slow decay of age, pushed it off until the very end, when—as in the lab rats of uttermost antiquity—cancers and other mutations accumulated more and more rapidly in the absence of ordinary decay. Rare was the palatine nobile who lived to see white hair and failing eyesight such as old Gibson, and so despite the Emperor’s outward vitality, I felt sure I must be right.

I am old, cousin, the Emperor once said to me. I would see this war end before my reign does.

“That’s probably right,” Lorian agreed. “This could all be preparation for the transition. Has he named a successor? I’ve been out of it for a little while.”

“No,” I said. “I’m sure the plans have been made, but . . . no.” The Emperor had more than a hundred children. The eldest, Aurelian, was nearly so old as he—his birth ordered on the day of William’s coronation more than a thousand years ago. The very youngest—I’d lost count—couldn’t be more than ten years old. The Aventine House had a habit of producing new reserve heirs to a schedule, of spreading them out across the Imperium to protect against dynastic collapse.

Lorian chewed his tongue. “If he names our friend Alexander—which I still think he will—this auctor business would make sense. He’d essentially be setting you up as co-Emperor.”

The hollow that had formed in my stomach when Lin first shared his rumor grew deeper and more sour. I had never forgotten the look in Alexander’s eyes when I’d returned from the field of fire on Berenike. Unburnt. Like his father, Prince Alexander of the House Avent knew the stories they told of me were true, and he feared me for it. I had made an enemy of the young prince, treated his admiration with contempt.

“Co-Emperor . . .” I repeated, hands clenching and unclenching at my side. “Going renegade doesn’t sound so bad now.”

“What doesn’t sound so bad?” came a new voice.

Both Lorian and I turned our heads in time to see Elara ducking though the hatchway from the access umbilical leading out of the Ascalon and back onto the Tamerlane itself, Pallino in tow. She smiled, and by way of explanation said, “Valka said you were down here. Looking for something?”

“It’s starting to look like a box or two of my things were left on Nessus,” I said, relaxing against a tower of crates bracketed together along the central aisle of the hold.

Pallino frowned. “Did you check the fugue lockers?” Catching sight of Lorian, he tapped his forehead in approximation of salute. “Little man.”

“Triclops,” Lorian said, returning the salute.

I didn’t ask.

“Whole crates wouldn’t fit in the fugue lockers,” I said. “I was just saying: I’ll telegraph Nessus once we reach Gododdin, just to be sure.” Inwardly, I’d resigned myself to be separated from the phylactery until we could return to Nessus, though it pained me.

Elara seated herself beside me and placed a reassuring hand on my arm. “It’ll turn up.”

I could feel her smiling at me, and looked down at my hands in my lap. I felt a sudden warmth bud in my chest, and all Lorian’s dire predictions about the course of empire and my place in it seemed at once very far away. Smiles are catching, and glancing at Elara, hers sparked mine. “I am glad to have you all back,” I said. “I missed you.”

“We missed you too,” Elara said, squeezing my arm. Empty words, but kind ones. She and the others had slept the long years since Thermon. They had missed much, but not been aware of it.

Pallino barked a laugh. “I didn’t!”

Elara threw him a glance. “Shut up, you.”

The old chiliarch saluted, more properly this time. “Yes, ma’am.”

Clearing my head, I looked from Elara to Pallino, the last of the myrmidons who had come with me out of the lands of Emesh. “Did you need me for something?”

“Like we said,” Elara replied. “Valka said you were searching for something. We thought you might like some help.”

The warm feeling spread a little more. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt to check out those fugue lockers anyway . . .”