The queen was ill, that much was obvious. Rhita saw her on her long, wide leather bed, draped in the skins of exotic animals from the Southern Continent; gold oil lamps hung around her, and dim electric lamps as well. The queen was very old, thin, white-haired, wearing a black robe. Objects in wooden cases lay scattered around the bed. Rhita stopped by the bed’s right corner; the queen’s eyes followed her.

“You’re not Kleopatra,” Rhita said.

The queen did not speak at all, merely watched her.

“I need to speak to Kleopatra.”

Rhita turned and saw Lugotorix—that was his name—standing by the entrance to the bedroom. “I’m not in the right place,” she said.

“None of us is, mistress,” the Kelt said. “Remember. I am trying to be strong, to remember, but it is difficult. Remember!”

Rhita trembled, but did not feel her fear deeply.

Typhōn came out of the shadows, undistorted, as convincing now as Lugotorix, his face textured with experience, eyes wise, knowing, more human. “You are permitted to remember now,” the escort said.

65

Thistledown City

Tapi Ram Olmy walked down the corridor of the centuries-old apartment complex, searching for the floor designator of the Olmy-Secor Triad Family’s unit, as his father had instructed. He found it easily enough. The door was open, showing an interior decorated with the style and taste of the original occupants. He had often studied that period in his father’s life; the triad family had spent only three years in this unit, after being forced out of Alexandria, the second chamber city, in the last stages of the Exiling. And yet his father had always returned to this place, as if it represented home more than any other living space he had had.

Tapi, still fresh to the much more stable world beyond city memory and the crèche, found such devotion curious, but accepted it; whatever his father did, Tapi was sure, was fit and proper.

Olmy stood near the apartment’s single broad window, in a wide room to the right of the entrance. Tapi entered without speaking, waiting to be noticed.

Olmy turned. Tapi, for all of his youth, was discomfited by his father’s appearance. He seemed to have abandoned juvenation, or neglected his periodic supplements. He was thinner, haggard. His eyes seemed to fix on Tapi without seeing him.

“I’m pleased you could come.”

Tapi had pulled every string he could think of to be here, when every available member of the defense forces was on constant duty. He was not about to explain this to his father, however.

“I’m pleased you asked me.”

Olmy approached him, his eyes coming into focus again, looking him over with a loving gaze that pretended to be objective. “Very fine,” he said, observing those little details and embellishments apparant only to one who has lived in a self-designed body. “You’ve done well indeed.”

“Thank you.”