The Thousand Emperors

been hearing so much about? Or has she grown bored with that now?’

Luc shifted uncomfortably, again seeing a hunched figure immolating itself in his mind’s eye.

‘So you have seen them,’ said Maxwell with an expression of dour amusement. ‘It’s a shame you killed Winchell. He was one of the few men left from the old days still worth a damn.’

‘Even knowing of all the atrocities he was responsible for? The assault on Benares, the Battle of Sunderland —’

‘You’ve been taken in by Cheng’s propaganda. I’m well acquainted with the details of the Benarean assault: Cheng came here on several occasions prior to that campaign, so he could describe to me his plan to discredit Black Lotus. He lied to you. All of them did.’

‘Bullshit.’

Maxwell smiled enigmatically. ‘You’ve already worked out, haven’t you, that Vasili paid me a visit not long before his death?’

Luc stiffened. ‘Why would you assume that?’

‘Why else would you have been so afraid of that book you leafed through downstairs, unless you’d encountered a memory-enabled book before? And I can tell you for a fact that Vasili was the only person in possession of a book taken from here. Now tell me,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘That book I gave to him – do you have it with you?’

Luc licked his lips. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t.’

Maxwell sat back, looking deflated. ‘Then tell me what you learned from it.’

‘That he knew someone was coming to kill him,’ Luc replied. ‘He muttered something about how he’d been wrong, and Antonov had been right. But about what, I don’t know.’

‘It’s such a shame you don’t still have that book,’ said Maxwell. ‘It contained some very valuable information indeed.’

‘What information?’

‘The answer to that question,’ Maxwell replied, ‘lies in part inside another book, in another section of the library.’ He pushed his chair back and stood. ‘I’ll take you there now.’

‘Why not just tell me?’

‘Encoded memories, Mr Gabion, offer more fundamental and easily assimilated truths than speech, which is so very vulnerable to interpretation in a way that direct experience is not. To experience the memories of a man is to know certain unassailable truths about him.’

‘But how exactly does Ambassador Sachs tie into all this?’

‘The Ambassador came here on several occasions in order to privately solicit my advice regarding Reunification,’ Maxwell replied, both mechants trailing in his wake as he stepped towards the exit. ‘But before I tell you anything more,’ he said, pausing by the door, ‘I’d like to ask you something. You couldn’t have known the Ambassador was here unless you had already been watching him closely. Were you?’

‘We were tracking him, yes. We discovered he wasn’t where he’d claimed to be at the time of Vasili’s death.’

Maxwell nodded. ‘So that naturally made him a suspect in Sevgeny’s murder, yes? Well, I suppose there’s no harm in telling you that he was here, with me, when Sevgeny died. In that regard, you can rule the Ambassador out.’

Maxwell exited the room, Luc following behind, the sound of his boots echoing from the marble walls as he tried to absorb everything he had just learned.

‘Just how many books are there in this place?’ asked Luc, as Maxwell led him up a metal stairway in the main hall. The mechants kept pace at a discreet distance.

‘At least half a million, if you mean the physical volumes,’ Maxwell replied with a note of pride. ‘There are many, many times that number in data-storage. A few of the physical volumes are particularly fragile, and have to be kept separate from the rest.’

‘But why the hell do they let you keep them at all?’

‘In what’s meant to be a prison?’ Maxwell queried over his shoulder. ‘As a punishment. I have always been a firm opponent of censorship in any form, unlike dear Joe. Everything I keep here should be available to everyone, and not just those few Councillors foolish enough to think they have superior moral stamina to the common public. So even though Cheng allows me to keep these books, and read them if I choose, I can no more share their contents with anyone outside of his inner circle than I could walk out of here alive. Such things,’ he said, waving to the vast ranks and rows of books, ‘were meant for all of us, along with all the other privileges Cheng has only shared with the Temur Council.’

They arrived at a lounge-area that felt and looked different from anywhere else Luc had seen, and he guessed they were now in Maxwell’s private quarters. He watched as the Tian Di’s second most famous renegade stepped over to a shelf and pulled out yet another book.

‘Tell me,’ asked Maxwell, ‘is Ambassador Sachs the one who installed your lattice?’

‘No. Antonov did, when he captured me on Aeschere.’

Maxwell’s eyebrows shot up. ‘So it wasn’t voluntary?’

Luc described the worm-like mechant Antonov had sent scurrying inside his nostril.

‘I had no idea such a thing was even possible,’ said Maxwell with a shake of the head. ‘But why on Earth would