“Vero many Mycroftis operes make sudden sense si sit veritas.” (But many of Mycroft’s actions make sudden sense if it is true.—9A)

The Emperor sighed. “Mycroft is missing. They slipped their tracker, even Papadelias has no clues. Do you know where—”

“Romanova.”

“They contacted you?”

“No.”

“Then how?”

Jehovah’s gaze strayed to the filtered sky beyond the stained-glass windows, dimmed by the onset of subtle overcast. “Downpour est in Romanova. Posset Mycroftem (Mycroft can) visit Apollo’s grave unseen.”

CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH

The Rape of Apollo

Has it occurred to you, reader, that these are the words of a dead man? All books will be someday, for authors die, and if by chance you read this while I live, then the second time you take up my history, the third, when your grandchildren read it, I shall surely have paid the ferryman what we all owe. I think all human beings, even I who have no right to ask more of the world, wish to see the future. I don’t mean the whole future; after a millennium history must progress beyond one’s ability to understand. What we want is to see the trajectories of those things we care about: our legacy, our Hive, our children. If we cannot watch the ship on its whole voyage, we can at least feel satisfaction seeing the white sails shrink toward the horizon. The Stoics said no man can be called happy until the end of time, for, if all his successes were undone after his death, he would be wretched in retrospect. I think, though, they were too demanding. No one can hope to follow the Utopians to the infinity they aim at, but if I dared ask anything more of Providence, it would be that I might live to know one thing. Will this cold Plan let them take that first step to the stars? Or will it make them, like the dandelion seed, catch in the nearby grasses, forced to take root beside their parents, though they aimed so high? If I lived long enough to see the seeds fly, reader, count me a happy man.

“Mycroft.”

Caesar found me as Ἄναξ Jehovah prophesied, hiding in the downpour before Apollo’s tomb. Even Romanova empties before walls of rain, the remnant citizens too hurried to peer past porches and umbrellas, let alone to spot a Servicer’s dull uniform as I knelt on the cobbles. Wind tossed the rain in waves, slapping the walls, the flanking awnings, and Apollo’s statue, whose stone coat seemed to soar with the gusting wind. There is a spot before the grave where nothing grows, no trace of those brave sprouts which elsewhere eke out their strangling existence in the pavement cracks. I cannot help but think that my tears made it barren, salt shed over decades of visits stolen whenever dark or downpour offered me concealment. If it was not my tears alone, it was half mine, half MASON’s.

“You broke your parole.” I could hardly see the Emperor behind me, a black pillar haloed by the runoff of the umbrella held by an imperial guard.