“It is Apollo’s will.”

I had not imagined the Anonymous could tremble. I had not imagined I could anymore either. “Apollo’s?”

I recognized the page as Caesar raised it in his black-sleeved hand, the title page of Apollo’s Iliad, ripped out, with hasty lines scribed on the back in bloody red, so like Apollo. “I won’t know for certain who the killer is until I meet them,” Caesar read aloud, “but if it is Mycroft, be merciful. Keep them alive, and safe, and working. You need them. If you have lost me, you need them. There are things… there… there are… things…”

MASON’s throat froze, a tremor in his bronze cheeks threatening to prove that even Caesar can cry. I think he would have, there in front of everyone, in front of me, had not the Lady beside him on the sofa laid soft hands on his shoulders and kissed his temple. She wore a formal mourning gown, as I remember, black lace pooling across the arms which reached around the Emperor, like the wings of a black swan. She seemed strange, less like a person than a shell waiting to enwrap something, a haven whose gentle gestures promised to lift Caesar from his grief, if only he surrendered. That was the first time I laid eyes on Madame.

“There are things I leave undone,” a fresh voice finished where the Emperor failed, “that only Mycroft Canner can complete.”

It was Mushi Mojave who stepped forward from a corner which, in my bonds, I could not turn enough to see. The constellations of Utopians have, to my knowledge, no rank nor hierarchy, but if, like stars, they may be said to have magnitudes of brightness, then surely Mushi Mojave is one of those Crowns of Heaven that pierce even city smog. “Except ants” is Mushi’s motto. Humanity is forever boasting of its ‘unique’ achievements: “Humans are the only creatures who build cities, use agriculture, domesticate animals, have nations and alliances, practice slavery, make war, make peace; these wonders make us stand alone above all other creatures, in glory and in crime.” But then Mushi corrects, “Except ants.” How proud the day when Mushi rushed in to tell the young Apollo and the other Mojave ba’kids that even man’s greatest achievement, Space itself, was no longer a monopoly. The terraformers had found ants, stowaways in one of the nutrient shipments, which had escaped and built a colony in the new Mars soil, spiral tunnels woven like DNA around a leaking oxygen pipe. The first city on Mars was not built by humans, but under them. Science needed an expert, and Mushi Mojave leapt on the chance. First entomologist on Mars, now there’s a title for a hero.

“Apollo knew?” The Anonymous looked to Mushi, then to Caesar. Then to me. “Apollo knew Mycroft was the killer?”

“They foreglimpsed, it seems,” Mushi answered. “We don’t know how early. We ask…” Mushi’s voice quavered, hard words for one of the ba’pas who raised this light of lights from infancy, “… we ask that you honor their request.”