The Thousand Emperors

you?’

She regarded him with something like pity. ‘You mean, no crazier than you were before?’

He sighed. ‘What happened to Lethe?’

‘I told him I’d stay with you and let him know once you came to.’

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘For what?’

He shrugged. ‘For scaring you like that.’

She nodded, reaching out to brush her fingers across the new fuzz of hair growing on his scalp. ‘You scared us both pretty badly.’

He squinted at her. ‘But do you believe me?’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘You saw those scans. Do you believe what happened was real?’

‘I don’t know any more. Still . . . I’m glad you came.’

‘Why? You thought I wouldn’t?’

He laughed softly. ‘After that argument we had?’

‘Luc, it wasn’t because my feelings for you had changed. You know that. But you were taking unnecessary risks, walking into a Black Lotus stronghold.’

‘Yeah, but in the company of an entire squadron of—’

‘Stop.’ She pulled her hand back. ‘I saw you, when they brought you back from Grendel. I couldn’t even recognize you.’ A brittle edge crept into her voice. ‘Sandoz warriors can be re-instantiated, but you can’t, Luc. There’s only ever going to be one of you. That’s why I didn’t want you to go.’

But I didn’t have a choice, he remembered saying to her just a few days before, and that was all it had taken for things between them to start unravelling.

‘I’ll be honest with you,’ said Eleanor, breaking what had become an awkward silence, ‘Lethe thinks he might have to discount your evidence concerning what happened on Aeschere. He’s not sure an investigation would accept your story about a transfer gate without solid proof.’

‘Then what am I supposed to tell people?’ he asked. ‘Maybe I can’t prove it, El, but you’ve got to believe me when I tell you that the transfer gate was real. All of it was real.’

She sighed and sank down onto the edge of the bed, spreading her long fingers on the blankets. ‘Let’s say it’s all real, then. Remember what Lethe asked you – why didn’t Antonov just kill you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Luc replied truthfully, then remembered what Antonov had said: Access Archives, then open a record with the following reference – Thorne, 51 Alpha, Code Yellow. ‘I’m calling in my favour.’

It occurred to him that there was a way to prove his story was true. But if he really had imagined it all . . .

‘There must have been some reason,’ she insisted.

‘If I could give you an answer that made any sense, I would.’

If that record really did exist, he’d find it in his own time. He decided not to say anything until he was sure one way or the other.

Eleanor shook her head and stood. ‘I need to go. Lethe says the Temur Council are snapping at Karlmann Sandoz’s heels, wanting to know how things could have gone so badly wrong. As you can imagine, Lethe’s pretty happy about that.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Aeschere was a fucking disaster for the Sandoz. And that’s good for SecInt.’

‘Technically, I was in charge of that expedition,’ Luc reminded her. ‘They could blame me too.’

She shook her head. ‘The comms records they managed to retrieve show that Master Marroqui went out of his way to countermand your orders every step of the way. He kept pushing to go deeper into the complex when you said it might be safer to pull back until you knew what had happened to those mosquitoes.’

‘So I guess we’re in the clear.’

Eleanor regarded him with pity. ‘I don’t understand you. Lethe only put you in nominal charge of that expedition so the Sandoz wouldn’t grab all the glory. He didn’t care about the danger he was putting you in. And yet you jumped at the chance like a puppy that doesn’t know it’s about to be drowned.’

Luc bristled. ‘I knew the risks going in. It was still something I had to do.’

If you aren’t there, Lethe had said, no one’s going to remember all the work you did finding Antonov.

‘And that’s why I said what I said to you before. You don’t even care when you’re being used.’

‘I was using Lethe just as much as he was using me.’