“The ship turned up at Perytch IV, I went down to this giant raft, met with QiRia – he was in human form by now, put back into his old body, though he was still kind of strange and vague a lot of the time. Oh, and there was another ship avatar there, from a Culture ship called the … Warm, Considering. I think. Pretty sure that was it. Felt like it was his … his mentor or protector or something. It seemed to take this claim of his about being incredibly old seriously too. I just thought, well, I just assumed this was all some sort of elaborate joke – Culture ships do this kind of thing … but I met him and we talked; just an hour at first, then more the next day, and the ship seemed happy to stick around and the old guy didn’t seem to want me to go and he was kind of fascinating, so we talked a lot, over several days. He claimed he’d spent … dozens of lifetimes as various other types of creature over the years, and often with some sort of sound or music-based thing going on, and he really did claim that he’d known Vilabier.” Cossont found herself laughing, just once. Reikl didn’t look amused but didn’t tell her to shut up either. “Back when he’d been human the first time, if …”

“T. C. Vilabier?” Reikl said, glancing at her notes. “The composer who died nine thousand, eight hundred and thirty-four years ago?”

“Yes!” Cossont said, waving her upper arms briefly. Etalde’s jacket slid off her shoulders; she caught it with her lower arms, replaced it. Marshal Boyuter regarded this action with what looked like consternation. “So I thought he was crazy,” Cossont continued, glancing at the two men but concentrating on Reikl. “At first. By the time I left, five, six days later, I believed him. He didn’t seem bothered either way; maintained that what he was telling me was all true but it didn’t matter if I believed him or not.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Mostly stuff about Vilabier himself. How he’d hated—”

“What else?” Reikl said. “Aside from Vilabier. What else might he have been doing at that time? Round about then – within a century or so.”

Cossont pressed her lips together. “Ah,” she said, after a moment. “Well, he did say that he’d been …” She shook her head. “He claimed he’d been involved with the negotiations, the conference that set up the Culture.” She shrugged, shook her head again, as though denying any responsibility for such patent nonsense. “He actually claimed … he’d been on one of the negotiating teams.”

“Which one?”