Cairdine Farrier doesn’t believe in hereditary destiny. He doesn’t believe in the Metademe’s eugenics as a solution to the looming catastrophe. But he’ll admit his dear nemesis Hesychast makes one strong point. Flesh does matter. Nothing’s more than flesh, not yet. Kill the man, you kill his ideas.

Unless. Unless.

Unless Farrier finds the answer to the Imperial Question, the riddle of closure. Unless at last one of his protégés comes back perfect.

Then, in the only way that matters, he will be immortal.

*   *   *

BARU played the Great Game with the man who’d butchered her home.

Gods of older fire, was she happy to see him? Wasn’t that sick? He’d condoned the rape of Cousin Lao as a medical necessity: keep that ember in your fist, so it always burns. He’d called the plague on Taranoke as inevitable as the tide: keep that tightness in your chest, so you feel it when you breathe.

But didn’t he want to help her?

Baru was mostly sure she was happy to see him only because he was useful. She liked useful things. But there was the risk that she simply wanted to be around someone who cared what happened to her.

He wandered the map of the world that carpeted her morning-room: a bit less than her height, richer, rounder, with a neat beard and deep-set laughing eyes. He wore a dashing short-tailed sherwani. He looked at people with a beaming cleverness that was too charming, most of the time, to seem like avarice. All in all he was like a very self-satisfied raccoon.

“We’ll play Hesychast rules,” he said, but before Baru could ask, what are Hesychast rules, he huffed and wrung his hands and made a noise of hurt.

“Your Excellence?” she ventured.

“Oh, for shit’s sake, Baru, call me Mister Farrier.” His eyes shone. “I just … oh, king’s balls.”

She almost giggled. Instead she arched one eyebrow, severely. “Your pardon? Whose balls?”

“I just—it’s hard to believe you’re here.” He stamped down on the little black shape of Taranoke. “Twenty-two and foreign born, raised in a hut on a little cove. If I’d gone to Census and Methods and asked them, how will Baru turn out, do you know what they would’ve said?”

“Housewife, I expect?”

“Agricultural planning, actually, with an occasional article in the Progress of Mathematics.” He beamed wetly, choked by pride. “And now you’re one of our Emperor’s own! Look at you!”

The lamps were going out, because there was no one to refill the oil. The housekeepers had fled rather than overhear two cryptarchs speaking poisoned words.