clockworker.”
“I have the gift, on my father’s side. I don’t use it.”
“Why not?”
Those creases got even deeper, and some looked as if they might start to curve a little, too. “Why would I?”
I looked at him. He looked at me. After a long time looking at each other, I realized I had no answer. I couldn’t even imagine that there might exist an answer that would make sense to him.
Sphinxes and riddles. I was heartily sick of both. “What is this place?”
“You stand in the Riddle Gate, my friend. The end of your journey, or its midpoint; the distinction is yours to make.”
The midpoint. The Riddle Gate. If I’d believed in any gods, I would have been calling upon them to curse him. And me. And themselves, too, while they were at it. “What’s next? Where do I go now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Excuse me?”
“This is as far as you’ve ever come.”
For some reason, I found this encouraging. “So what happens?”
“The way back is closed, Tezzeret. If you do not pass the Riddle Gate, here you will live. Here you will die.”
I looked around. No graves. No bones. No loitering Tezzerets. “What do I usually do?”
“Your reaction to failure varies. Often you take your own life. Sometimes you attack me with such fury that I must kill you. On occasion, you have spent days or weeks-sometimes months-in conversation with me… and then you take your own life, or spend it in futile violence. This is how we have become friends.”
“Would you be offended if I say I don’t want to know you that well?”
“Reality is not what we want, Tezzeret. It’s what is.”
I winced. When that truism had come up before, it had usually been me saying it to someone else; to be on the receiving end was unexpectedly bitter.
“It is not my task to lecture you, Tezzeret. I am not here to puzzle you, nor to impede your Search. I am on your side-even if only to avoid the unpleasantness of disposing of your body.”
“What about my possessions? If you want to help me succeed-”
“I will not help you succeed. I cannot help you succeed. I hope that success will find you, and that you will find it. To aid you is beyond my power.”
“Can you give me my etherium back?”
“It is not your etherium.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” I said. “The Grand Hegemon’s etherium, loaned to me.”
“It is not hers to loan. All etherium is my father’s. By his grace, some are allowed to borrow its use.”
“Your father’s…” I repeated numbly. That answered one question-but if Crucius was even older than the Hidden One, finding him alive seemed unlikely. “All right. It’s his. But being allowed to, ah, borrow it for a while longer would be-”
“Etherium cannot enter the Riddle Gate.”
“Really? Again, without meaning to give offense,” I said, gesturing at his baroquely layered encrustations, “one must wonder-”
“I did not enter. My father built it around me, when he constructed the Labyrinth.”
“Built it around you,” I repeated, more numb than before. “And you’ve been here, all these centuries? Millennia?”
“It is the task he has given me.”
That crusted mass of etherium must be all that was keeping him alive. On the other hand, if he were to unexpectedly expire…
As if he could read my mind, he piped, “Etherium cannot leave, either. It is as my father has made it: the stricture of the Riddle Gate.”
“So you’re trapped too.”
“No: I linger until the Seeker passes the Gate. It is my task.”
Two or three out of every ten thousand lives. On average. “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying it sounds like a boring job.”
“Boredom is an affliction from which sphinxes do not suffer.”
“Of course.” I would have thought of this before I opened my stupid mouth, if I hadn’t been too tired to worry about playing smart. “Still, you must spend a lot of time alone.”
“I pass my days in learning. I am a sphinx; a creature of questions. The Riddle Gate is a device of answers.” The ancient sphinx lifted a paw, and we were no longer on the grassy sward but instead upon the Cliffs of Ot, looking down upon a sea crowded with refugee ships fleeing Vectis. “Or Cloudheath? Would you enjoy watching Tiln construct the Rampart of Thunder? Perhaps Bant, if you have a particular favorite among their perpetual wars. Or Jund’s Dragonstorm Aeon: dramatic and spectacular together. All of time and space are before us here. The Riddle Gate can show us every answer except the one you’ll need to pass through it.”
I had no interest in sightseeing, nor in history. All of time and space, though… “Can you show me where I can Crucius?” find Kemuel the Ancient fixed me with a remarkably sharp gimlet stare. “You can find my father anywhere you can find yourself.”
“How about this: show me where I will find Crucius,” I said. “Where, as you say, I can find myself.”
The smile stretched until his cracked leather face became an alarmingly hideous leer. “Of course, my friend. But know that every Seeker sees this-yet the vision will become truth for only one. Which is not likely to be you. Any of you.”
I frowned. “There are other Seekers? Beyond multiples of me?”
“There is only one Seeker. But the Seeker is not always you. Nor is their Search identical to yours.”
I rubbed my eyes. Discovering that I mostly understood what he was talking about was profoundly disturbing. The implications were worse. “We’re not looking for the same thing?”
“I don’t know,” Kemuel said impassively. “What are you looking for?”
I stared at him. I didn’t answer.
Because I didn’t know. Not really.
I hadn’t even thought about it. There was the job Bolas had inflicted on me, and I had Doc to crack the dragon’s whip… didn’t I? He hadn’t said a word.
This was a subject on which he would have an opinion.
It occurred to me that he’d been silent for some while. Since I’d said good-bye to Baltrice, perhaps. I wasn’t sure exactly what this signified, but I found myself gripped by a sudden and astonishingly bleak apprehension. The idea that he might not be there congealed in my throat like frozen snot. “Doc?”
There came no reply.
“Quit kidding around. You’re not exactly the strong silent type,” I said, but I knew the truth already. I could feel it.
The truth felt like a knife. Lodged somewhere between my stomach and my heart, where it stabbed me with every breath.
The Hidden One regarded me impassively. “Talking to the voice in your head?”
Anger ignited within me as if my bones had caught fire. “He’s not a voice!” I snapped. “He’s not some damned delusion, he’s a-”
I choked on the word. This was ridiculous. More than implausible. It was impossible.
Should have been impossible.
But I had to say it. I owed him that much.
“He was a friend,” I said. My eyes felt hot, and my vision blurred; I shook my head and looked away. I didn’t know why I felt what I felt, but I have never been a man to deny the truth. “The only friend I had.”
Reality is not what we want. It’s what is.
“I did not mean that you are mad, Tezzeret. A few of you have spoken of a voice that drives you onward- usually bitterly. Sometimes with open hatred. You are the first to name the voice a friend.”
“It’s not that I like him,” I said. “But… he’s not bad. He wasn’t the rotten bastard he could have been. He
