The Thousand Emperors

collection.’

‘Well, there you go,’ said Vincent. ‘We all know how much turbulence the Tian Di went through following the Schism. A lot of things were lost forever back then, and not just books.’

‘But I saw this book. It exists.’

‘Yes, but not as far as Archives is concerned, unfortunately.’ Vincent gave him an apologetic smile. ‘Seems to me that your life hasn’t got any less interesting since you got back from Aeschere.’

‘Yeah,’ said Luc. ‘That’d be an understatement.’ He’d almost forgotten about the kavamilch in his hand, and swallowed it down. It tasted sweet and warm.

‘And what about Archives?’ asked Hetaera. ‘I know you turned down a promotion to the Security Division before. Now that Antonov’s gone, do you think you’ll change your mind and move upstairs?’

The corner of Luc’s mouth twitched. ‘We’re on the top floor, Vincent. There is no upstairs.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Luc sighed. ‘To be honest, there’s nothing to stop me retiring right now. Never do another damn thing for the rest of my life.’

Hetaera watched him for a moment. ‘Sitting around and doing nothing isn’t your style.’

‘No.’ Luc played with his empty glass. ‘Staying in Archives feels like the best option. I feel at home here, and now at least I can pick and choose what work I do.’ His eyes flicked towards his superior. ‘Right now, I’ve been asked to consult on something on behalf of a member of the Council.’

‘Ah.’ Hetaera nodded, regarding him shrewdly. ‘That would explain the sudden interest in officially non-existent books, so I’ll ask no more.’ He gestured with his drink. ‘There are a thousand jobs in Archives needing investigating, once you’re done with this. Tying up the loose ends from Antonov alone could take a lifetime.’

Luc nodded. ‘Is Offenbach in the usual place?’

Hetaera laughed. ‘Where else would he be? Good to have you back, Luc.’

Luc smiled. ‘Good to be back, Vincent.’

‘There you go,’ said Jared Offenbach, leaning forward in his chair. ‘Dummy corporations, black market accounts, traceable and currently non-traceable funds, as much as you could want. A lot of it doesn’t even go anywhere: it’s chaff, designed to lead you far away from where the real money is going. Which is Black Lotus, of course.’

Cascades of colour-coded financial information filled the office of Senior Archives Librarian Offenbach, swarming around both men. The office itself was only dimly visible with the windows opaqued, but Luc could just about make out shelves filled with antique reading devices used to recover legacy data from obsolete hardware.

Luc shifted in his own seat, causing nearby strands of information to ripple in the air as they attempted to maintain their integrity. He watched Jared pull yet more data from out of deep virtual stacks. Flags indicated that some of the information flowing around them hadn’t been accessed, in certain cases, for more than a century, perhaps longer. Offenbach gestured expertly with his fingers, untwining dense braids of data into finer and finer branches, rapidly surrounding himself in a glowing tapestry of light. His nearly hairless pate gleamed under the constant assault of visualized data.

For reasons that remained obscure to Luc, Offenbach preferred to maintain an outward physical appearance considerably more advanced than most. Liver spots dotted his hands, while a hawklike nose that always made Luc think of a half-opened flick-knife jutted from the centre of his face.

‘I’m looking for something very specific,’ said Luc, grasping at a set of brightly coloured filaments just within his reach. Tiny clumps of words, names and reference numbers pulsed like jellyfish as his fingers brushed against them. He made a claw of his hand, then flung his fingers wide, causing the clumps to suddenly expand, revealing more details, along with the broad outlines of the financial links that connected the filaments together, almost fractal in their compact density. He performed another deft sleight of hand, and the filaments of data shrank once more.

To one side of the two men floated several dense clusters, rendered in luminous orange and green, representing the financial concerns of more than a dozen Benarean resistance movements. Dark nebulae of restricted or missing data weaved in and out of these brightly glowing clouds, but Luc knew that even this vast quantity of interconnected data represented only one very minor sub-branch of the complete Black Lotus data-set.

‘Something specific?’ Offenbach spluttered. ‘Well, I should hope so.’

Luc leaned back. ‘The focus I want is on a medium-broad spectrum of interconnectivity, representing whatever relationship existed between Winchell Antonov and Sevgeny Vasili.’

Offenbach blinked a couple of times, clearly choosing his next words carefully. ‘I can tell you right now that any such records are likely to be heavily flagged and restricted.’

‘That’s hardly news to me, Jared.’ Luc’s work on the Black Lotus data-set had been a constant struggle with restricted-data flags. If Offenbach hadn’t been able to help him circumnavigate a number of them in the past, he might never have succeeded in tracking Antonov down. Offenbach was, in many ways, Archives’ unsung hero.

Offenbach gave him a look of wry amusement, then reached out, manipulating the data before him with practised ease. The entire set rotated on an invisible axis, bringing clusters representing the relationships between the Temur Council and Sevgeny Vasili into clearer focus. Luc could see that most of the clusters reached back for centuries, all the way to the pre-Schism days. Many of the strands were colour-coded brown and grey, to indicate their special restricted status.