“Tell you in a minute.” Farilane took out her astrolabe and positioned it directly over the staff she’d placed days before. She struggled to align the device’s rule with one hand while dangling the delicate instrument with the other. “Be a dear and hold this for me, will you?” She offered the ring at the top of the disk to him.

Kolby took the brass apparatus of movable plates with his left hand. Farilane had known he’d use his left before she had offered the instrument. His choice wasn’t arbitrary; nothing about Kolby ever was. He always reserved his right hand for his sword.

“What is this thing?” he asked, his eyes studying the device, his nose turned up as if the metal reeked.

“You’re holding the entire universe in your hands.” She smiled. “So don’t drop it.”

Kolby narrowed his eyes, first at her and then at the device, his concern turning to skepticism. He held the large ring at the full extent of his arm so that the bottom barely touched the top of the measurement staff, leaving the disk to hang like a lantern.

A lantern. Farilane smiled at the idea. Yes, that’s exactly what it is, a tool to illuminate the world.

“Now hold still,” she commanded.

“How still?” he asked.

Typical Kolby: precise, exacting, and literal. A byproduct of the training, no doubt. All Teshlors were that way to a degree—more than a bit inhuman, until you saw them drunk or angry. That didn’t happen often. She suspected that controlling one’s rage was also part of the training. If it wasn’t, it ought to be. An enraged Kolby topped Farilane’s list of the scariest things she’d ever seen.

“Like you’re about to loose an arrow for a very important shot, one you can’t afford to miss.”

Kolby nodded, took a deep breath, then held it. The astrolabe hung from his fist as if nailed to a tree.

Farilane resumed lining up the rule with the star. As she did, Virgil stirred. The philosopher woke with an unhappy moan. He had been napping on the cold rock for the last two hours.

Wiping his eyes, he got to his feet. Snow-white hair, long beard, and a dark cloak flew about him like living things. As he stretched his arms and neck, a grimace relented to the demands of a wide yawn.

How can he sleep on the eve of such an auspicious discovery, not to mention on such a narrow ledge?

The old philosopher was such a sound sleeper that he could doze on the back of a cow caught in a stampede during a thunderstorm. He’d always been that way and had gotten better at it with age. “Well?” he asked.