Tekoa looked like he’d been hit with a shock maul. ‘H… high lady?’ He looked both ways, abruptly terrified, but there was no sign that anyone at all was remotely interested in the grey-robed adept being alternately harangued and praised by the angry old Navigator. ‘You would do such a thing?’

‘I’m sure you’ve seen my home, Tekoa,’ Chetta said. ‘I’d wager we could pry some of the external decoration off and give it to you, and it would still be worth more than your wages here. I think we can stretch to another name on the payroll, if that name has proved their usefulness.’ She gestured vaguely with her cane. ‘Lead on, do. I have no wish to stand around for longer than absolutely necessary.’

Tekoa still looked slightly shell-shocked, but he sketched a quick bow to her and then, with a deep breath to compose himself, turned his back on his post and his duties, and set off down a different corridor with renewed purpose. Chetta followed along behind, the dull clack of her cane on the floor marking every other step she took, and tried not to smile too widely to herself.

It was amazing how much good could be achieved with a carefully judged mix of threats and honesty.

Sea of Names

Sea of Names

The Hall of Records was the repository of the Administratum’s knowledge on Vorlese, and it was stupendously large. Much of it was under the Admini­stratum’s main building in Ascension City, buried beneath the planet’s surface, and consisted of mile upon mile of tunnels and archive rooms, all lit with the same lumens that were slightly too dim and spaced slightly too far apart for human eyes to be truly comfortable. Dust lay thick, save where furrows had been tracked through it by the repetitive steps of servitors, or it had been brushed clear by the trailing hem of an adept’s robe, and it hung in the air, tickled the throat and threatened to clog the nose. The archives were heavy with an oppressive hush: not silence, clean and pure, but a grey-tinged anti-noise made up of the faint hum of cogitators, the barely audible whisper of the environmental recycling system, and the occasional faint sputter of a flickering lumen. Sound felt like an insult.

Chetta coughed up the dust now lining her throat into her mouth and spat it out, ignoring the look of shock and disgust from Tekoa. ‘And why,’ she asked with some acidity, ‘did we have to come all the way down here to access this information?’

‘Data security,’ Tekoa replied. ‘Only authorised adepts can enter the Hall of Records.’