Achilles shook his head. “Triple’s not enough. Imagine the most you could possibly need; you need ten times that. And field medics. Train a hundred thousand field medics, then have them train more. Your doctors are miraculous, but too accustomed to their miracle machines. You have some people who know old medicine—hikers, survivalists, antiquarians who’ve studied how to stop a man bleeding to death with two sticks and a torn-up sack—but you need more than you have. Make everyone on Earth a field medic and you’ll still want more.”

Kosala sighed. “You’re so sure there will be fighting.”

Mycroft, why is Kosala here? When did she come into MASON’s sanctum? Are MASON and Cousin truly so close that Caesar would let Kosala walk in on this critical meeting?

MASON’s sanctum? This is Casablanca, reader, the Cousins’ capitol, whose tiered tent-roofs rise above us in ever-expanding folds like a dream ship, half sail, half bird, wafting and expanding as the sun and ocean breezes make them breathe. See, here Kosala and Achilles sit side by side in her roof garden, gazing at the ever-shifting colors high above.

No, Mycroft, we are in Alexandria, behind Daedalus’s flame-roofed throne room, where Caesar and Achilles break bread together, and exchange unspoken vows of hospitality and trust. Dost thou forget?

Alexandria? No. Surely you recall the war of sand crests against wave crests along Africa’s northern shore as Achilles and I crossed here from Alexandria, and how, after the strange Pacific waters of Cielo de Pájaros, the Mediterranean’s familiar blue brought tears, not only to my eyes, but to the Great Soldier’s. Or is the error mine? My memories blur sometimes, I warned you. I took Achilles to every leader’s house that day, those two days, the thirty-first of March and first of April, not an easy week to persuade the leaders of the world to carve out time for something that sounded like fantasy: a meeting with Achilles? It was with Kosala that he discussed the hospitals, food too—or was that Caesar? Was that both? The meetings were quite similar in many ways, the questions, tests, curious fingers probing patient Patroclus. I beg your pardon, generous reader, but I doubt even Achilles can remember precisely which power asked him which question. Some questions, though, only one would ask.

“Has it not occurred to you, Achilles, that you may well be here to help make peace, rather than to make war?”

He who shatters battle lines laughed aloud.

Cousin Chair Bryar Kosala did not. “You’re in the perfect position to do it. If you and Mycroft succeed in convincing all the relevant leaders to treat you as an expert, you’ll become the de facto final word on war, and if you use that influence to move us toward peace, you could have an enormous impact, greater than anyone.” Her sigh grew soft. “I know you believe in Fate, and, given what you claim to be, you may have no choice but to believe in Fate, but repeated Fate doesn’t have to be a repetition of mistakes. It can be a chance to change, to learn, to pay for what was done before, to redeem yourself. You don’t have to be an emissary of war. You can be peace.”