The Thousand Emperors

‘I think you’re on the right path,’ she admitted, ‘but I don’t necessarily know more than you do. But I want to know what’s going on, because whatever it is, the Eighty-Five are keeping it hidden from the rest of us – from the rest of the Council, I mean. But like I said, you have an advantage since you can still go places I can’t.’

‘You and the rest of the Council are more powerful than anyone else in history, but you keep telling me you need me.’ Luc shook his head and laughed, overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of the situation. ‘Just how many friends do you have left here on Vanaheim, Zelia?’

She opened her mouth to frame a retort, then instead stepped towards a nearby table, leaning against it and folding her arms over her chest as if hugging herself.

‘Not as many as there used to be,’ she said quietly. ‘Look – what you have to understand is that the one thing still uniting the Council is that we are all survivors. Most of us were alive when Earth died, and we lived through the fighting before and after the Schism. After that, things were in such an appalling mess that we had no choice but to try and hold everything together, and Cheng was key to making that work. We’ve all shared so much with each other over the centuries that you couldn’t possibly understand the loyalty most of us still feel towards the very idea of the Council.’

She gripped the edge of the table, her expression bleak. ‘But now everything’s about to change with Reunification – and I mean everything. It’s possible the Council itself might not survive the transition, let alone Cheng. And as much as I hate to admit it, it’s possible our time is past.’

‘How could reconnecting with the Coalition cause so much change? They’re just people, same as us.’

‘Are they? Can you really say that about Ambassador Sachs?’

‘I admit the costume he wears is ridiculous, but I’m sure there’s an ordinary human being under there.’ But even as he spoke, Luc felt the lack of conviction in his words.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said before, Gabion? The Coalition are vastly more technologically advanced than we are. We could end up swamped by them, and there are those like Borges who’d be prepared to commit violence in order to try and turn back the tide of history.’

Something occurred to Luc as she spoke.

‘I have an idea,’ he said, gesturing towards the spinning globe. ‘According to what I can see here, the Ambassador’s flier was in a circumpolar orbit when he was last seen, right?’

She nodded. ‘He’d have reached Liebenau in another hour or so if he hadn’t vanished.’

Luc looked again at the globe. The Ambassador’s flier would have passed over icy wastes stretching for thousands of kilometres. Stepping closer, he saw a chain of white-clad mountains amidst an otherwise featureless void of snow.

There was a brief twinge of pain behind his eyes. Something about those mountains . . .

‘What about here?’ he asked, fingers brushing through the air where the globe was projected.

‘No, there’s nothing there, except . . .’

She paused, and turned to look at him, her mouth half-open.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There is something out there.’ She made her hands into fists and pressed them against the sides of her head. ‘Stupid,’ she muttered to herself, ‘stupid.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘There,’ she said, stabbing one finger toward the chain of mountains, just a thousand kilometres shy of Vanaheim’s north pole. ‘That’s where Cheng’s kept Javier Maxwell locked up all these centuries.’

Luc felt a sudden tightening in his chest. Javier Maxwell. The greatest renegade of them all, after Antonov – and the author of the very book Luc had found on Vasili’s body. A book that, according to no less an authority than Vincent Hetaera, shouldn’t even exist.

‘Is it possible . . . ?’ he asked.

‘That this is where the Ambassador disappeared to? I can’t think of any other possibility,’ she said.

‘Perhaps if I data-ghosted there—’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘If Sachs can fool my surveillance networks that easily, he can certainly trick a data- ghost into seeing whatever he wants. This is going to require eyeballs on the ground.’

‘What about your armies of micro-mechants? Can’t you use them?’

She shook her head. ‘Cheng gave the Sandoz sole responsibility for handling security for Maxwell’s prison. That means I’m not allowed to have my own surveillance anywhere near it.’

‘So unless you plan on going out there yourself,’ said Luc, ‘you’re going to need me to go out there.’

She nodded. ‘Unless there’s something else out there I don’t know about, Maxwell’s prison is the only place Ambassador Sachs could have gone.’

‘And if we do find him there?’

‘Then we have the evidence we need to prove he’s been carrying out clandestine meetings, without putting you in any danger. And if we can confront him with that evidence, maybe we’ll be able to find out where he really was the night of Sevgeny’s murder.’