Kleopatra the Twenty-first greeted the young woman warmly in the sitting room of her private quarters. The queen’s hair was shot with gray and her eyes lackluster. The scar across her cheek, a badge of honor well-known throughout the Oikoumenē, appeared red and puffy. She looked exhausted.

The Kelt was not allowed into the private quarters. Rhita felt vaguely sorry for the man, always cooling his heels someplace away from his primary duty—protecting her.

“You were not treated well at the Mouseion,” Kleopatra said, sitting across a transparent rose-veined quartz table from the young woman. “I ask your forgiveness and understanding.”

Rhita nodded, not knowing what to say, thinking it best to let the queen speak. Kleopatra seemed agitated, ill at ease.

“Your request for an audience was expected, and welcome,” she continued. “I’m afraid your grandmother thought I lost faith in her.” The queen smiled faintly. “Perhaps I did. It is easy to lose faith in a world of disappointments. But I never doubted her word. I needed to believe in what she said. Is that easy to understand?”

Rhita realized her silence might be interpreted as shock at being in the presence of royalty. Strangely, she was not nervous. “Yes. I understand.”

“From what I’ve been told, you were not close to your grandmother, not all your life.”

“No, my Queen.”

Kleopatra waved away the formality, fixing her tired eyes on Rhita. “She chose you for something?”

“Yes.”

“What?” The queen’s hand gestured for her to be more forthcoming, as if urging her closer.

“She put me in charge of the Objects,” Rhita said.

“The clavicle?”

“Yes, my Queen.”

“Is it busy disappointing us again?”

“It shows a new gate, your Imperial Hypsēlotēs. This one has stayed in place for three years.”

“Where?”

“In the steppes of Nordic Rhus, west of the Kaspian Sea.”

The queen thought that over for a moment, brows drawn together. Her scar lightened in color. “Not easy to get to. Does anybody else know it’s there?”

“Not that I know of, my Queen.”

“Do you know where it leads?”

Rhita shook her head.

“There’s nothing…more convincing about this particular gate?”

“In what way, my Queen?”

Try as she might, Rhita could not change her method of address. It seemed almost sacrilegious to speak to the woman baldly, without some kind of obeisance.

“I suppose I’m asking for security. If I outfit an expedition, brave the diplomatic difficulties of sending it to Nordic Rhus—should we be caught, I mean, since there’s no question of asking permission—and it’s all for nothing, a hole to nowhere…”

“I can’t guarantee anything, my Queen.”

Kleopatra shook her head sadly, then smiled again. “Neither could your grandmother.” She took a deep breath. “She was, and you are, both very lucky to have me as queen. Someone more intelligent, more pragmatic, would not listen to either of you.”

Rhita nodded solemnly, braced for rejection.