Patrikia gestured and two Hypateion students carried up a wide, shallow wooden case. Kleopatra recognized the wood: pigeon's-eye maple from Nea Karkhedon across the broad Atlantic. She wondered how their revolution was coming along; little news leaked out from the blockaded coastal territories.

The priestess ordered the case to be set down on a wide round table of beaten brass chased with silver. "Perhaps your Imperial Hypsēlotēs knows my story. . . ?"

Kleopatra nodded and smiled. "That you dropped from the sky, chased by a furious star, and that you were not born on this Gaia."

"And that I brought with me. . . ?" Patrikia prompted, for all the world like one of Kleopatra's tutors. The queen didn't mind; she enjoyed tutoring and learning. Indeed, she had spent most of her life in classrooms, learning the qualities and extent of her realm, and the languages, as well.

"You brought marvelous instruments, for which there are no exact equivalents in our world. Yes, yes, these stories are well known."

"Then I now tell you things known only to myself," Patrikia said. She glanced around the court and then returned her extraordinary gaze to the young queen. Kleopatra understood and nodded.

"This will be a private audience. We will adjourn and meet in my chambers."

The court was quickly cleared, and Kleopatra unceremoniously dropped her heavy robes and gathered a light cloak of byssos around her shoulders. With only two guards and the sophē's sons accompanying them, they strolled to the queen's chambers. Trays of quail and crystal goblets of wines from Cos awaited them, and the sophē ate with the queen, a very rare privilege.

When they were done, the sons ate, and Kleopatra and Patrikia made themselves comfortable on pillows in a corner. Chamberlains drew curtains around them for privacy.

Then and only then did Patrikia open the lid of the wooden case. There, in thick Tyrian purple felt—the felt from Pridden and the dye from Ioudeia—rested a silver-and-glass, palm-sized flat object, a second slightly smaller object and something saddle-shaped with protruding handles.

These objects were almost as famous as the Cache of General Ptolemaios Sōtēr, especially among scholars and philosophers. Few had ever seen them, not even her mother and fathers.

Kleopatra regarded them with unabashed curiosity. "Tell me, please," she said.

"With this," and Patrikia pointed to the smaller flat object, "I can measure the qualities of space and time. Years ago, when I took refuge in the Hypateion, after the death of my husband, the tekhnai there made me new batteries, and these devices function again."

"I must commend them," Kleopatra said. Patrikia smiled and waved her hand as if at trivial matters.

"The philosophy and tekhnos of your world is not so advanced as mine in some respects, though very nearly. But you have wonderful mathematicians, wonderful astronomers. My work has progressed."

"Yes?"