Читать книгу The Heavenly Lord’s Ambassador. A Kingdom Like No Other. Book 1 - Андрей Кочетков - Страница 5

A large, blue fly dove down and scurried along the luxurious tile mosaic under Uni’s feet. The young archivist was so afraid to stir that even the insect – sensitive to the most minute vibrations in the air – took him for an inanimate object.

“I do see what you are saying, young man, but I would still like to have a clearer explanation of what happened last night.” Archive master Margio looked up at his employee with such a sullen face that Uni’s last hopes of a positive outcome were completely dashed. “Do you have any idea what you have done?”

“I…I am very ashamed, Enel Margio. Honestly, it never entered my mind that things might end up this way. I don’t even know…”

“No, I see that you don’t.” The older man sighed. “Uni, you have had the honor of working in our august institution for four years. For four years, you have served the government and had a unique opportunity to make a modest contribution to our work of accumulating and multiplying the contents of this great storehouse of our Empire’s knowledge. It was Saptius Astoldo, if you recall, who said that the essence of knowledge is wisdom, power and wealth, but it is also a heavy burden. You, Enel Virando, it pains me to realize, were not ready for the burden that we bear as the most educated people in Dashtornis. And to think you made such an excellent start. Assistant to a department master at twenty. And not just any department, but the Foreign Manuscripts department! That is one of the most difficult and respected areas of our work. And you had such a promising future. Just last month I was speaking with Enel Barko, and he quite seriously told me that you could rise to the post of senior assistant master in just a few years. After that, in another ten years, when Enel Gerzio departs for his much-deserved retirement, you could have been a bibliographer. But no, you destroyed all of that. Leveled it to the ground. Would you be kind enough to tell me what on earth brought you to the archive last night?

“That’s what I am trying to explain. I asked Master Barko if I could work at night for a while.”

“You had his permission?”

“Well, I was going to ask him.”

“I see.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve done it, honestly…”

“Are you saying this isn’t the first time you have broken into a closed government office inside the palace grounds while in a state of intoxication? I say nothing of your friends, who behaved like wild barbarians and used their official positions to try and cover up this awful misbehavior.”

“I apologize. I did not realize how it would look…”

“Of course, you could not see. You couldn’t even walk on your own. Your two friends carried you in. One of them displayed his imperial guard officer’s badge and physically threatened the sentries. Your other friend had no pass at all, but he threw handfuls of coins around in the most disgusting manner, which caused incredible inconvenience for the cleaners this morning. Because of this unpardonable behavior, I was forced to close down the building and crawl around on my own hands and knees to seize all of the unlawfully distributed currency. I’m sure you understand that I will be providing a most detailed report to the Emperor’s chancery today. The chancery will identify the guilty parties and send letters to their superiors. As for you, young man, I’m afraid we must part ways with you forever!”

Enel Margio leaned back on the carved back of his wide, wooden Torgendam chair and stared off into space, as if the red and white vase in the corner (which featured a pictorial description of the stages of preparing parchment) interested him much more than the pitiful young man in front of him who had violated the tranquility of his institution.

“I sincerely regret the time that we spent on your training. We have been too naïve in our belief in man’s essential goodness,” he said, his voice full of feigned sorrow.

Uni’s insides contracted into a tiny lump. Just the day before, his job at the archive had seemed eternal and unchanging. He had hated the work, and had begged fate to release him from a swamp where he felt he was going nowhere. Now, however, his rock-solid world was about to fall apart in the most shameful and dramatic manner, burying under its ruins his wonderful dreams of a shining future and a splendid career. Suddenly, he wanted to hide somewhere that life and its tribulations would not be able to find him. At the same time, he wanted to throw back his head and cry out to the Sun: why are you punishing me so harshly?

“Forgive me, Enel Margio. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t plan it this way. It was a coincidence. I had a request from one of the Emperor’s advisors, and it needed to be handled quickly. I had to do it. I just had to come in late, you see! They wanted it back today!” Uni felt a hard lump in his throat. If this interview went on much longer, he would break down and weep, further obliterating his already pathetic reputation.

“What? What are you talking about? What advisor?” Enel Margo suddenly lost his dignified bearing and jumped out of his seat. Arms out and mouth agape, he looked like a large cat that had been playing with a mouse when it was suddenly bitten by a snake.

“Manelius Ronko asked me to prepare a very important document,” Uni whispered, vaguely aware that he, perhaps, should not have shared that information. However, there was no other way out. He was in a corner, hemmed in by his own stupidity.

“Manelius Ronko,” Margio repeated. He stroked his chin and took a few steps away from his desk, Now, he looked like a buzzard or a vulture with its feathers ruffled. The vision was both frightening and disgusting. “What kind of document were you supposed to prepare?” the vulture asked, turning sharply toward its prey.

“A report on Virilan. I did write it. Nothing could stop me,” Uni squeaked. He had one last, thin hope of outplaying fate. “What I mean to say is, I did it all because I had to.”

“I’m the one who decides what you have to do, is that clear?” Margio cut him off. “Do you have any proof?”

Uni walked back to his desk on wooden legs. He barely knew what his body was doing. He felt like his mind was in a dark cloud and his body was moved by the commands of others.”

This is the end, flashed through his head when his text – written during a night of drinking – landed in his superior’s hands.

His presentiment did not deceive him. During the minutes he was gone, Margio had been in no less of a heightened emotional state than Uni. He grabbed the scroll and opened it with a gesture that reminded Uni of how an ancient warrior, surrounded by enemies, would have slit his own throat. His eyes ran over the contents. Then he slowly rolled it up and sat back down in his chair. There was cold laughter in his eyes.

Margio leaned back in his chair. “My boy, were you not aware that all such tasks must be approved by the director of the archive? You weren’t?” He paused for effect. “Of course not. You spend more time reading ancient books than you do studying the rules of the institution where you work. Or, more precisely, where you worked,” Margio’s smile took on a snakelike quality. He leaned forward and raised his voice. “You had absolutely no right at all to take this job on over my head!” He was yelling by the time he finished. “I do not care who he is or what his title is. All reports and all materials leave this archive only by my consent!” Margio tossed the scroll on his desk and sharply elbowed the bronze gong hanging next to it. A secretary appeared. “As of today, he no longer works here,” Margio told the man, pointing at Uni in disgust. “Walk him all the way to the exit. Do not let him back in the building. Ever.” He let his eyes drift back to Uni, who was paralyzed. “Get out of here!”

* * *

Despite its sprawling size, Enteveria was blessed with a uniquely harmonious architecture. After Norius the Founder declared the establishment of the great Herandian Empire, the old capital was torn down and rebuilt according to a precise, geometric plan. The project was grandiose and required decades of hard work by hundreds of thousands of people, but the effort paid off in the end in the eyes of their grateful descendants.

The old city had been a jumble of stone and wooden houses built up around a fortress that stood on an island in the Fela River, where the king’s palace and the homes of the most important nobles stood. The lords of the new empire gave their subjects a giant metropolis divided into neat, rectangular blocks and zones. The zones were defined by purpose: there was a palace zone, as well as cathedral, residential, craft, trading and amusement zones. No longer a fortress, the Emperor’s palace comprised an entire block of grandiose buildings. The variety of construction materials and the oddly pleasing blend of architectural styles served as an encyclopedia in stone of all the provinces of the vast empire.

When the city was rebuilt, the planners added two new aqueducts and a great cloaca to collect the city’s sewage. Enteveria was full of green gardens and parks, and its residents enjoyed listening to the music of dozens of fountains large and small that played haunting melodies by means of clever hydraulic organs. The capital had the unheard-of luxury of setting aside one-third of its total area for parks and other amusements, instead of housing and manufacturing. It was a giant organism that sucked people in with promises of a carefree life or at least the sense that one was part of the most carefree city in Dashtornis.

Enteveria had two river ports, and its deep, fast-flowing rivers linked it to two different seas. Beamy merchant ships could ride the Fela all the way up to the Sea of Dragons and on, to the barbarian Wasteland and Torgendam in the north. The Fela was a majestic river, and the people of the empire made use of its many tributaries to reach most of the empire’s northern and western provinces.

To the south, the Emperor Lecius had ordered the digging of the Shining Sun Canal, which got its name from the bright flecks of light reflected by its choppy waters. The canal’s waves were not generated by bad weather, but by the host of merchant ships carrying cargo from the Southern Seas. The northern river and its tributaries were, for the most part, the empire’s own inland waterways while the southern routes opened up opportunities for foreign trade. It was the south that brought the empire new goods, new people, new knowledge…and new threats. The religious fanatics of Mustobrim were constantly testing the resolve of the Capotian merchants, who were widely acknowledged to be the best in the business. And it was only the Misty Sea, with its shallow, warm waters and thousands of islands, scattered like pearls, that stood between the empire and the bloodthirsty Arincils, who had made a cult of murder, violence and cruelty. Further to the south was Unguru, a mysterious country of sorcerers who spoke with spirits from the netherworld and could enslave the dead.

In the midst of its bright, attractive, but sometimes horribly dangerous surroundings, the capital of Herandia was the focal point of a centuries-long tradition and order, which was the empire’s chief merit in the eyes of its forty million subjects. A city without walls, Enteveria represented “peace and plenty,” which was the motto of the Herandian ruling house.

Even a foreigner would have had a difficult time getting lost in its streets, which ran straight as an arrow, meeting at right angles in the wide city squares. However, Uni Virando managed to go astray after an hour of wandering aimlessly up and down the streets of smooth Vuravian stone. When he looked up, he had no idea where he was. He did not particularly care. What did it matter if he was lost? He had every reason to believe that his life was effectively over.

“What do I have left?” Uni wondered with a strange sense of detachment. “No job, no position, no personal life, no money, nothing. Just this mortal body with a pile of superfluous knowledge stored in its head and a five-year-old’s knowledge of the world. No one would even notice if I jumped off this bridge. Who needs me, anyway? With the Sun as my witness, only my mother. What can I tell her? That her only son – whom she loved more than anything, whom she raised alone, saving up money for him to attend the academy, her last hope for a decent life in her old age – suddenly threw away everything he had spent years working for? I can’t even imagine telling her that. I’d rather jump off this bridge. She’s better off with no son at all than a ridiculous, worthless son like me.”

“What about my friends? What will they say? ‘Little Uni messed up again.’ Sorgius will be sarcastic, and Vordius will slap my shoulder and look at me with those big, sad eyes of his, like he’s looking at a child that can’t learn its lessons. No, I’d rather jump off this bridge than see that! Fate gave me such wonderful opportunities, and I stupidly let them go. If I’m such a fool that I can’t even manage to make a life for myself, then I’d better end it now. I just need to be brave. And calm. Great Sun, my heart is racing! Breathe in deep, and leap over the railing…”

“Hello, Uni!” the voice that came from the carriage that had just pulled alongside on the bridge was soft, but it seemed to hold the would-be jumper with chains of iron. A well-groomed hand pulled aside the silk curtain with an elegant gesture, and Manelius Ronko gazed at Uni with his usual ironic half-smile. “Were you planning to cool off in the river?”

For a brief instant, the young man felt like he had just eaten a raw octopus and its tentacles were stuck in his throat and stomach. Somewhere deep down, he realized that the Heavenly Deity didn’t want him dead. No, the Deity was so enraged with Uni that it had prepared endless agony for him, each torment worse than the one before it, lasting until the end of the age when the Heavenly Deity would again, as it had many times before, turn every living thing to smoldering ash and build a new world and new people – cleaner, better, more promising – from that ash.

“From the look of you, it would be impolite to ask about the fate of my report,” Ronko said, shaking his head slowly. He waved toward his carriage. “Get in. Watch your head. In the name of the Shining Deity, there’s no reason to be so upset. You need a cup of wine. I have a nice little collection back at my house.”

Feeling absolutely wooden and alien, Uni squeezed his body into the carriage. “Enel Ronko,” he finally found his voice. “I am extremely glad to see you. Your document is ready, but I am not able to hand it to you at present. You can probably retrieve it from Margio, the archive director. I don’t work there anymore, so I’m afraid I can’t do anything to help you. I should have told you as soon as I found out. I did try, but I don’t know where you live. I was given an address, but there was nobody there. I am ashamed to say it, but I didn’t know what to do. There is no excuse for my cowardly behavior.”

Ronko tapped a finger against his chin as he listened. His eyes, which were the color of wet leaves, stared off into space, as if their owner was off in a world of his own.

Then he snapped his fingers. “Take us home.” The carriage started. Ronko turned to Uni and smiled brightly. “You’re right about one thing. I like to be the one who finds people. I don’t like it when they try to find me without my permission. It’s too bad about your report. We won’t ever see it again; I can guarantee you that.”

“What?” Uni jumped. The octopus in his gut was moving again. Even the crown of his head went cold. “How could he refuse to give it to you? I can’t imagine…”

Ronko laughed. “Of course not. He won’t send me to the demons. He isn’t brave enough. But here’s the thing: Margio works for Licisium Dorgoe. He’s probably on his way to the man’s villa as we speak to show your report to his protector. It’s a rare prize.” He gave a wry smile. “Even a rat like Margio can come in useful once in a hundred years!”

“This is all my fault, Enel Ronko. If only I hadn’t been so stupid!”

“What ever do you mean? In any event, it doesn’t matter now. I contacted you directly because I know you and I naively assumed that you could get the job done without your superiors finding out. No matter what happened, it’s not your fault. It was poor calculation on my part. But as I said, it doesn’t matter now.”

* * *

Fergius Margio’s carriage performed feats of acrobatics as it glided down the Avenue of the Benevolent Sun, weaving in and out between the slow palanquins carrying idle aristocrats. The driver’s skill did nothing to improve the mental state of the passenger, who clutched a leather manuscript case to his chest as if he feared he would drop it during the obstacle course. Margio only recovered his composure somewhat when his carriage left the narrow city streets behind and its wheels rolled along the neatly laid, colorful tiles of the wealthy neighborhood of Trikazinso. Finally, the carriage turned onto a narrow lane leading to a white villa hidden in the shade of large sycamore trees.

Since its establishment almost three hundred years earlier, the Trikazinso neighborhood had been a city within a city where people of a certain class lived their own life. After the founding of the empire, the great Emperor Norius had considered forcing the nobles of the lands he conquered to move to the new capital. No one knows what shrewd plans he had in store, but the task turned out to be more complicated than he had expected. Most of the nobles concerned had little desire to leave their homes, where they enjoyed an exalted position within their clans and communities. The once-independent nobles also had extremely stringent requirements concerning their own comfort, especially when compared to the lifestyle in Herandia, which had been a small and relatively unimportant country until recently. As a result, it was not until the reign of Nazalio, the great urban planner, that the Trikazinso neighborhood opened its doors to receive new residents. By that time, the former monarchs of Herandia’s acquisitions had sunk to the level of provincial aristocrats and were eager to move to the capital so they could be closer to the Emperor and his court. In these new circumstances, the resettlement went well. In later years, it was commemorated with the annual Festival of Flying Lights, when dozens of silk balloons emblazoned with the coats of arms of the leading families, rose into the sky on streams of hot air, hailing the arrival of a new class of leaders in the city.

The neighborhood had grown over the past three hundred years as civil servants, priests of the Cult of the Sun, military commanders, and wealthy merchants and craftsmen moved in. But Trikazinso remained a lush island, hidden from prying eyes by thick, green parks with decorative ponds, gardens, a canal, and grottos for silent contemplation. It was an unwritten rule that there were no walls or fences between the villas, and any resident of the neighborhood could walk anywhere within its confines. The idea was that this would create bonds between people from different parts of the empire (and even between political opponents). Interestingly, this freedom was not extended to the other 700,000 residents of Enteveria: a special division of the Solar Sentinels protected the select few from all curiosity on the part of outsiders.

A taciturn guard led Margio along a colonnade lined with statues representing the twelve sins and twelve virtues, facing each other in two lines. At the end of the colonnade, the director of the imperial archive found himself in a large, pentagonal garden with a small tea house standing on a knoll at its very center. The tea house had five sides like the garden around it, and a pentagonal gable roof topped with a forest nymph skillfully carved of ivory. With a speed that belied his five decades, Margio hustled across the grass and into the tea house.

“Well, well, well, what on earth has happened in that dusty rathole of yours that brings you here to see me?” growled a deep voice. The two men sitting in the tea house were not pleased to have their private conversation interrupted by such an unexpected and fidgety visitor. One of them – a thin, nervous-looking man – moved uneasily in his seat, which was a black silk cushion embroidered with red flowers. The other, more heavyset man was sleek and well-groomed, with an arrogant face, but something about him suggested that he might have been employed as a stevedore at one of Enteveria’s ports until quite recently. It was his voice Margio had heard upon entering.

Margio bowed as low as his figure allowed, held the pause for as long as he could, and launched into a dramatic retelling of the events of that morning. At the end of the tale (which he augmented liberally with details of his own), he handed the valuable scroll to his protector with a ceremonious flourish. The owner of the tea house fumbled with his short, sausage-like fingers, finally tearing the scroll a bit as he opened it, and his every movement revealed crude strength and an aggressive indifference to sophistication of any kind. His was a strength that stripped the elegance from every object he touched. Looking up from another low bow, Margio could not help but notice that the large man’s lips moved as he read silently, like a half-literate priest of the Sun trying to memorize the text of a hymn to the deity on the day before the holy equinox.

Licisium Dorgoe turned to his companion. “Look at this, Forsey. These fairy tales are right up your valley.” He tossed the scroll the way a man might toss a dog a bone. The other man reached out with both hands and missed. The scroll landed silently on the thick Mustobrim carpet. Forsey cursed and leaned over to pick it up, doing his best to retain his dignity. Dorgoe lifted his chin and stroked his throat with a pompous air.

“Fergius, I am pleased with you. For once, your dusty institution is of some use to me. I will speak with the Emperor about providing the funds for improvements to your building. Go now. We are leaving for the palace soon.”

As Margio turned to leave, Forsey watched him with a scowl. When the archive director was gone, he turned back to Dorgoe and tried to get his attention. “Well? What do you think about this?”

“There’s nothing to think about.” Dorgoe stood up easily, despite his size, and walked over to the window with a cup of Ulinian wine in his hairy hand. “You’re a lucky man!” he took a sip of his wine and slapped Forsey on the shoulder with a patronizing air. “Now you don’t have to do anything.” He laughed. “Just don’t expect me to support you all of a sudden because of this.”

“That’s low of you, Licisium.” Forsey whined. He leaped up from his seat and clenched his fists. “You promised to think about it. You promised to take everything into consideration! And now you want to abandon me? Was that your plan all along? Don’t forget that you stand to benefit from this more than anyone. Why don’t you take this scroll and deliver it to Ronko this very day?”

“Of course not,” his burly companion snorted. “Let the scroll be your plunder. Here. I give it to you. But you can deal with Ronko on your own. Stripped of his main arguments, he won’t be a serious adversary for you.” He pulled a wry face. “And stop whining. You should thank me for recommending that the council be moved up a week. That caused him to lose his nerve, and he made some mistakes. Why do you think he reached out to that boy at the archive? Because he was desperate.”

Forsey’s face turned white. “You know perfectly well what is going to happen if those crazy fools sign a trade pact! Do they really not know what they are doing? I believe they see nothing but their own purses.”

“Not at all. They simply believe they are saving the country and the Emperor. From you and me.” Dorgoe allowed himself a loud cackle. “They’re prepared to do anything, consequences be damned.

“So, you agree with me?”

“We’ll see. My advice to you, Forsey, is to stop being so blunt. The art of politics does not mix well with bluntness. And remember, the one who wins is not always the one who makes the right move, but the one who knows how to benefit from it.”

“I don’t like it when you speak in riddles. We will meet again at the council. And understand, if you can, that I need your open support!”

After Forsey had dashed out of the tea house, Dorgoe stood a while longer at the window, his eyes trained on his confidant’s receding figure as he made his way across the grass. Smiling as if he had just eaten a good meal, he set his half-empty cup on the eight-sided wooden table and, feeling cheerful, made his way over a carved wooden bridge that spanned a meandering creek. On the other bank, he entered a well-appointed mahogany pavilion where attentive servants had prepared his bath. The steam rising from the bath carried a strong aroma of pine.

“To the demons with work, at least for now,” Dorgoe reflected happily. “I’ll have plenty of work to do this evening.”

* * *

Uni sat comfortably up to his chin in the water of a luxurious indoor swimming pool, the bottom of which was covered in a pale green tile mosaic featuring images of mollusks, sea urchins, and other inhabitants of the mysterious deep. The sunlight streaming through an opening in the roof created an illusion that half of the pool was made of pure gold, and it was in that golden gleaming that Manelius Ronko splashed and flopped with the easy grace of a young boy. Uni found himself more and more surprised by this man, who seemed to know how to derive the utmost pleasure from each moment of his life. He was unconcerned by the stolen report and equally indifferent to the everyday troubles recounted by the former archivist. Uni found himself infected by the man’s demon-may-care attitude (or perhaps the wine had done its work), and he felt capable of living fully in the present, as if all of those unpleasant things – the tragic destruction of his hopes, the shameful dismissal from the archive, and the bridge over the Fela, where he had almost ended his own life (as difficult as that was to believe now) – had simply never happened. Ronko, after somersaulting in the water like a windmill, folded his hands behind his head and leaned back with evident pleasure on the knees of a lovely marble nymph who leaned out over the water’s surface to look at her own reflection.

“I have to say our affairs are in good order, more or less,” he pronounced optimistically.

Uni, who had begun to drop off under the influence of the herbal aroma rising from the water, looked up and focused his eyes with great effort on his companion.

“Our enemies have achieved an insignificant tactical advantage, so they feel relaxed. That’s a mistake.” He shook his head. “No, that is not entirely precise. Do you know what their biggest drawback is? They’ll take an overly practical approach to the information they’ve gained.”

“I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

Ronko snorted. “What I mean is that Licisium Dorgoe was born an illiterate peasant, a plebian, and he has remained one even after rising to such an exalted position. Don’t look at me like I’m a snob. Men who rise to great rank after living on the streets tend to think in narrowly practical categories. That’s not surprising. When you are trying to survive, you don’t have time to acquire extraneous knowledge. You have to live and think in the moment. You start to ignore everything that doesn’t have an obvious value to you at that precise moment in time.”

“Do you mean that a well-rounded education is an extravagance?”

“It most certainly is! You have no idea how wasteful education is. You spend years pouring an ocean’s worth of things you don’t need right now into your head just for the pleasure of it, or perhaps with the hope that some of those things might come in useful eventually. As a result, you forget about the most basic things you need to live. You become cut off from the real world. That’s why our greatest wise men never become leaders who determine the fates.”

“Sounds like me,” Uni reflected sadly. “It’s better to accomplish something before pursuing education. What a pity it took me so long to realize it.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. By the time you reach a position of consequence, your mind loses its flexibility. You acquire mental habits that restrict your thinking, whether you like it or not. You only see the things that affect your daily survival.”

“Survival? I thought we were talking about after I achieve the rank.”

“What did you think? That’s when the fighting really gets started. Were you hoping to reach a certain status and then lie around eating grapes for the rest of your life? That’s a dangerous delusion. Here’s how it works: there are never enough profitable positions in society for all the energetic people who would like to occupy them. Once you are a man of status, you spend all your time holding onto that status, and the higher you rise, the harder it gets. There’s no time for education at that point, much less motivation. All you’ll want to do in your free time is relax and give your brain a rest. There are benefits to having status, of course,” and Ronko waved a hand at their surroundings, “but believe me, they lose their appeal when you spend every second of your waking hours worrying about what will happen to you tomorrow!”

“But what about you? Isn’t your life a direct contradiction of everything you’ve just said? You spend so much time in the archive, and you know so many things, but at the same time you are a highly placed advisor at the Emperor’s court. How do you do both?”

“Me? I suppose I’m an exception. First of all, I was lucky enough to be born into a wealthy, aristocratic family with a long lineage. I didn’t have to fight to get a place in the world like Dorgoe did. Second, my position in our complex spiderweb of power is entirely too unique for anyone to take it from me. I’ll tell you my secret recipe for longevity at court: don’t ever try to fill a position that is already open. There will be plenty of other people angling to get the same thing. Make yourself indispensable and create a need that you alone can meet. No one else will ever be able to remove you, try as he might. And third, don’t be so hard on yourself. Your view of the world has plenty of advantages that you can use to your benefit.”

“You’re a better judge than I am, Enel Ronko. The way I see it, I lost. I was outplayed, and there was nothing I could do about it. I also let you down.” Uni sighed sorrowfully.

“It remains to be seen just who outplayed whom,” Ronko said with a laugh as he climbed out of the pool. He stood with his arms out, letting the drops of water roll off his body. A dark-haired Capotian servant girl approached silently, like a cat. She shot a glance at Uni with beautifully lined, almond-shaped eyes before taking a soft cotton towel and drying her master’s body as if it were a fine porcelain statue. Ronko grinned at her, and she lowered her eyes in feigned bashfulness. Uni turned away in discomfort, but Ronko read his mind and dismissed the girl with a movement of his head.

As the master wrapped a towel around his waist, Uni noticed with envy that, although the man had to be close to fifty, he had the muscles and build of a much younger man. Any professional athlete in the imperial circus would have been proud to have his sharply defined pectorals, rock-hard abdomen, and broad shoulders.

From the solid gold table at his side, Ronko took a beautiful goblet shaped like a pair of cupped hands and filled it with wine from a Mustobrim pitcher of hammered metal. Then he sat down companionably on the bench next to Uni.

“Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Remember that. Given the right circumstances, that heap of useless knowledge can be the very weapon that gives you an advantage over your enemies.”

“I’m starting to understand, but I could wait my entire life for that moment and never see it arrive. How do I know what I’ll need and what I won’t need?”

“Do you know what soldiers say? ‘Always carry your sword with you, even if you only happen to need it once.’”

“That’s just a pretty saying. Even the wisest man in the world can’t be a specialist in everything. And how can you even master subjects that don’t interest you? I doubt that kind of knowledge ever comes in useful.”

“I won’t argue with you. Every person must study that which interests him.”

“Exactly. I’m a specialist in ancient languages, and look where it got me.”

“Don’t say that. Dorgoe won’t even know what to do with your report. And you’re one of only two people in the empire who knows Virilan, aren’t you? There you have it. Remember what I said about making yourself irreplaceable?”

Uni blinked.

“You’ll see what I mean soon enough. I just had an idea. It’s simple, but bold. My servants will bring you a fresh robe, and then I want you to come with me to a certain grand event. They may have stolen the report, but you did not jump off that bridge. That’s what matters.”