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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

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  Ythna came to the Beldame’s household when she was barely old enough to walk. They took her from the nursery block in the middle of the night, with nothing but the simple koton robe she was wearing, and carried the tiny girl to a black shiny vehicle, a Monopod. Sitting in the back, wearing a neat gray uniform and matching black gloves and shoes, was an Officiator, who asked the young Ythna some questions. The next thing she knew, she was riding a white cage on a wire over the mountains, up to the gilded fortress where she would serve the Beldame for the rest of her days, if she was lucky.

  Ythna forgot the Officiator’s face, or whatever else he said to her, but she would always remember what he said as she stepped, barefoot, out of the cage as the sun rose over the golden house. He knelt before her and spoke gently: “You are but one of a thousand retainers to the Beldame. But each of you is a finger, or a toe. Your movements are her movements. Do not make her a disgrace.”

  Ythna lived in a tiny yellow dormitory room with nine other small children, all of them sharing white-and-red uniforms and eating from the same dispensary. Ythna learned to read and write basic Gaven texts, and worked in the cavernous kitchen and boiler room of the golden fortress, which was called Parathall. At night, the other children teased Ythna and pinched her in places where the bruises wouldn’t show on her golden-brown skin, under her retainer uniform. Two girls, the pale, blonde Maryn and the olive-toned Yuli, appointed themselves the rulers of Children’s Wing, and if Ythna didn’t please Maryn and Yuli she found herself sealed inside a small wooden linen box, suffocating, sometimes overnight.

  Every moment people weren’t looking, Ythna wept into her loose sleeve. Until one day when she brought some hot barley wine to the Beldame herself, doing the five-point turn as she’d been taught, ending up on one knee with the tray raised before the wrought iron chair.

  Ythna was eight or nine years old, and she made sure not to look at the Beldame’s white round face, as she knelt. But in Ythna’s eagerness to avoid looking on her mistress, she found herself gazing, instead, at the papers the Beldame was studying. Ythna started reading them, until the Beldame noticed.

  “You can read that?” the Beldame said.

  Ythna nodded, terrified.

  “And tell me, what do you think of it?” the Beldame asked.

  Ythna stammered at first, but at last she shared a few thoughts about the document, which dealt with the rebellious offworld colonists, and the problems with maintaining order in the fringes of the Empire here on Earth. The Beldame asked more questions, and Ythna answered as best she could. After that, the Beldame sent her away—but then Ythna found herself chosen to bring food and drink to the Beldame often. And sometimes, the Beldame would invite her to sit for a moment at her feet, and talk to her.

  Years passed. One day, word came that the Beldame was going to be elevated to the Emperor’s Thousand, so she would be in the same direct relationship to the Emperor that the Beldame’s thousand retainers were to her. There would be a massive ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Emperor, at which the Beldame would be given a steel thimble, symbolizing the fact that she was becoming one of the Emperor’s own fingers. Ythna couldn’t even imagine that she could be one-thousandth of the woman who was one-thousandth of the Emperor. She watched the sunrise between the mountain peaks below the Beldame’s arched picture windows and laughed at the floor brush in her hand.

  “A lot is going to change for all of us,” said Maryn, who had grown into a striking young woman who still bossed around the other retainers. “Strange foods, new places. All the more reason to keep our behavior perfect. The Beldame is counting on us.”

  Ythna said nothing. She was still smaller than Maryn, barely noticeable except for her ribbons of long black hair, down to her waist, and the way she ran through the stone passages of the fortress, her bare feet as silent as snow melting, when nobody else was around.

  The day came nearer, and they all traveled for a week by steam truck and Monopod to the Tomb of the Unknown Emperor. At last, they saw it in the distance, looming over the plains: a great structure, shaped like an old letter M, with two great pillars supporting the black canopy. The Unknown Emperor had lain in state for over a hundred years there, behind a faceless statue that raised one hand to the people who’d served him without knowing his name.

  They all lined up in rows, the thousand of them, at the base of the Tomb, while the Beldame climbed to the very top. Some of the retainers were playing small bells, and sweet smoke was coming up out of brass pipes all around them. The Officiators were leading Ythna and the others in ceremonial chants. Ythna could see the tiny figure of the Beldame, emerging on top of the structure, as the Emperor himself bestowed the thimble on her. A voice, one of the Chief Officiators, spoke of the hundreds of years of tradition they honored today.

  Ythna thought that she could not be any more deliriously proud than she was at this moment, watching her friend and mistress elevated. Her only wish was that she could see the Beldame Thakrra up close at this moment, to behold the look on Thakrra’s face.

  A second later, Ythna had her desire. The Beldame lay on the ground directly in front of her, lying on her back, her small body broken by the fall from the top of the structure. Her gentle, lined face was still recognizable, inside her brocaded robe and twelve-peaked silken hat, but she had no expression at all, and blood was leaking out all over the ground, until it lapped against Ythna’s bare feet. She could not help but panic that maybe her selfish wish had caused this to happen.

  Next to Ythna, Maryn saw the Beldame’s corpse and began wailing in a loud, theatrical fashion. The other retainers heard Maryn and followed her lead, making a sound like a family of cats. Ythna, meanwhile, could barely choke out a single tear, and it hurt like a splinter coming out.

  Frantic to avoid seeing the Beldame like this, Ythna looked up—just as a strange woman stepped out of the nearest pillar in the Tomb. The woman had long curly red hair under a pillbox hat shaped like one of the lacquered discs where the Beldame had kept her spare monocles. She had a sharp nose and chin, and quick gray eyes. And she wore a long black coat, with embroidered sleeves and shoulders, and shiny brass buttons with cords looping around them. She looked like a commanding general from an old-fashioned foreign army.

  The red-haired woman stepped forward, looked around, and took in the scene. Then she said a curse word in a language that Ythna had never heard, and slipped away around the side of the Tomb, before anybody else noticed her.

  * * *

  Hours went by. Ythna felt as though her ribcage were as barbed and twisted as the ends of the Beldame’s beloved wrought iron chair. She knelt on the ground, in the Beldame’s dried blood, weeping, though the Beldame’s body was long gone. Nearby, Yuli and Maryn were making a huge show of singing the Bottomless Grief Spiral chant along with the Officiators. But Maryn kept whispering to Yuli that maybe they should make a break for it—retainers whose mistress died could not count on being given new positions elsewhere, and the alternative was Obsolescenc
e.

  “We can’t escape,” Yuli whispered back. “Not with everybody watching. And where would we go? There is no place to hide in the entire Empire, from sea to pole to sea.”

  Ythna couldn’t stop wondering about the red-haired woman, who wore no uniform Ythna recognized, and who had all but spat on the ground on seeing the gathered retainers and Officiators. She finally crept over to the pillar she’d seen the woman step out of, and started feeling around for a hinge or join, some evidence of a passageway. The Tomb had many hidden ways in and out—that was how the Emperor’s body had been deposited there without anyone seeing his face—but if there was a doorway here, then Ythna could not find it. She tried to shake the granite edge of the pillar with her fingertips, as if she could bring down the mighty Tomb by herself.

  “What do you think you are doing?”

  Ythna turned to see one of the Obfuscators watching her. Trex. He’d arrived with the others, to take charge of the scene, and keep the retainers in order. He was a tall, solidly built man with a sallow face and black hair and eyes. And he was holding a fully charged valence gun, aimed at her. She could smell the burnt-shoe odor from a few feet away, and if he fired she would be a pile of dust in seconds. He had the black chestpiece and square helmet that indicated he was one of the Emperor’s personal Obfuscators, empowered to create order in just about any way he deemed necessary.

  Ythna backed against the pillar, stuttering and trying to think of what to say. “There was a woman, a stranger. Not one of our party. She came out of this pillar right after the Beldame was killed.” She described the woman and her clothing as best she could, and the Obfuscator Trex seemed to be listening carefully. At last, he nodded and indicated for her to rejoin the others.

  “Tell nobody else what you saw,” added Trex. Then he stalked away, his back and legs as stiff as one of the supply robots carrying fuel and food up the mountainside to the Golden Fortress.

  The retainers all started to freeze as the sun got lower on the horizon, since they were wearing light koton ceremonial gowns designed for comfort in the noon sun. The patch of dried blood had gone crisp, but the smell of newly slaughtered cattle still hung in the air. Nobody had yet decided what to do with these surplus retainers. Yuli and Maryn still debated running away.

  Someone gave the retainers hot barley wine, to warm them up, which just reminded Ythna of the Beldame Thakrra all over again, and she found herself crying harder than ever as she drank from the communal jug. Some time later, she needed to relieve herself, and couldn’t bear to soil the same ground where the Beldame had bled to death. She begged an Obfuscator until he gave her permission to go around the Tomb to the front entrance, where some simple latrines had been set up. Ythna thanked him profusely.

  The latrines were lined up like sentry boxes, perpendicular to the front pillar of the Tomb. Beyond them, there was the edge of a dense forest of oaks, birches, and pines, stretching all the way to the distant white mountains. A chill wind seemed to come from the woods as Ythna slipped inside one of the latrines, hiking up her shift. When she came out again, the red-haired woman was there.

  The woman gestured for Ythna to be silent. “I’ve been observing you,” she whispered, with an accent that Ythna couldn’t place. “You’re cleverer than the rest. And you’re actually grief-stricken for the poor dead Beldame. All your friends are just pretending. I want to help you.”

  “You killed her,” Ythna said. “You killed the Beldame. I saw you step out of the tomb right after she fell.”

  “No, I swear I had nothing to do with her death,” the woman said sadly. “Except that it created a door for me to step through. That’s how I travel. My name is Jemima Brookwater, and I’m from the future.”

  Ythna studied the strange red-haired woman for a moment. Her black boots were shiny but scuffed, her puffy pants had a grass stain on one knee, and her fine velvet coat had a rip in the side, which had been hastily sewn and patched. Whatever this woman was—crackwit, breakbond, or something else—she was not an assassin. But maybe Ythna should tell Trex in any case.

  “It was good to meet you, Jemima,” Ythna said. “I should go and rejoin the others. Be safe.” She turned to go back around the tomb toward the other retainers, whom she could hear chanting the grief spiral with dry, exhausted throats.

  “Let me help you,” Jemima said again.

  Ythna turned back. “Why would you want to help me?”

  “I told you, I travel by using the openings created when someone important dies unexpectedly. And I feel bad about that. So I made a vow: every time I travel, I try to help one person, one deserving person.”

  “And how would you help me?” Something about this woman’s way of speaking reminded Ythna of the Beldame, except that Jemima was more animated and lacked the Beldame’s dignity.

  “I don’t know. You tell me. It’s not really helping if I decide for myself what sort of help you need, is it?”

  Ythna didn’t say anything for a moment, so Jemima added:, “Tell me. Your mistress, Thakrra, is dead. What do you want to do now?”

  Nobody had ever asked Ythna what she wanted, in her entire life. But more startling than that was to hear Jemima say Thakrra was dead, by name, because it hit her all over again: the feeling of hopelessness. Like she had swallowed something enormous, that she could never digest even if she lived forever. She heard the droning chant from the plains on the other side of the tomb, and all of a sudden the voices sounded genuinely miserable instead of forced and dried out.

  “There is nothing you can do for me,” Ythna said, and turned to leave in the shadow of the great criss-crossing limbs of the Tomb.

  The woman chased after her, speaking quickly. “That’s just not true,” she said. “I really don’t want to tell you what you should do, but I can help with anything you choose. For example, I can get you out of here. That forest is full of landmines, but I know a secret underground passage, which archaeologists discovered hundreds of years from now. And I could forge whatever documents you might need. Your Empire outlawed proper computers. They keep obsessive records on paper, but with a few major flaws. You can be anyone.”

  Ythna turned back one last time, tears all over her face. “I cannot be anyone,” she said. “I can only be what I am: one small piece of the Beldame. Who do you belong to? Are you completely alone? You seem like someone who just comes and goes, like a ghost. And you want me to become a ghost as well. I can’t. Leave me alone.”

  “Listen.” Jemima grabbed Ythna’s arm. They were almost back within view of the massed group of retainers, Obfuscators, and Officiators. “This is not going to go well for you. I’ve read the history books, I know what happened to a retainer whose master or mistress died suddenly, without making arrangements first. If you’re lucky, you get reeducated and sent to a new household, where you’ll be the lowest status and they’ll treat you like dirt. If you’re unlucky…”

  Ythna tried to explain, with eyes full of tears and a voice suddenly hoarse from crying and chanting, that she didn’t care what happened to her. “I can’t just dishonor the Beldame by running away. That would be worse than enduring any abuse. If you know so much, then you have to understand that.”

  At last, Jemima let go of Ythna’s arm, and she turned to go back to the others before she was missed.

  “At least I tried,” Jemima said. “I do admire your conviction.”

  “There she is,” a voice said from behind them. “I told you. I told you she was conspiring. All along, conspiring. And scheming.” Maryn stood at the edge of the tomb, pointing at Ythna and Jemima. Beside her, Obfuscator Trex advanced, raising the brass rod of his valence gun. Maryn was a foot shorter than Trex and wore simple robes like Ythna’s next to Trex’s bulky chrome-and-leather uniform. But Maryn’s excitement and triumph made her seem twice as big as the strong, fussy man.

  Jemima grabbed Ythna and pushed her behind herself, so that Jemima could take the brunt of Trex’s first shot and Ythna would have an extra few seconds to liv
e.

  “The penalty for conspiring to assassinate a Beldame is death,” Trex said, chewing each syllable like a nugget of fat. “I am mightily empowered to carry out the sentence at once.”

  “I don’t want any reward,” Maryn said. Everybody ignored her.

  “Wait,” Jemima said. “You are being duped here. I know you’re an intelligent man, I’ve read about you. Trex, right? I know all about your illustrious career. And I have a perfectly sensible explanation for everything you’ve witnessed.” Jemima was reaching into a tiny holster hidden in the braided piping on the side of her velvet coat, reaching for a object the size of her thumb. A gun.

  “Please,” Ythna said to Trex. “We didn’t conspire. I only just met this woman.”

  But Trex aimed his valence gun, sparks coming from the connecting tubes, and said, “You are both found guilty, and your sentence is—”

  Ythna closed her eyes, waiting for a sizzling noise and the acrid stench of Jemima being torn molecule from molecule. Instead, she heard Maryn scream and thrash the air. When Ythna opened her eyes, Trex’s headless body was falling to the ground, and Trex’s head was rolling to a stop at Maryn’s feet, an expression of supreme disgruntlement forever sealed on Trex’s face.

  A man wearing a black uniform, as simple as Trex’s was ornate, was running away, sheathing a bloody sword of a curved design that Ythna had never seen before. An opaque helmet, shaped like a teardrop, obscured the man’s features.

  Jemima gave another one of her foreign cursewords and ran after the man. Ythna took one look at the headless Obfuscator and the wailing Maryn—whose screams were likely to bring everybody running—and followed Jemima.

  The man with the sword reached the outermost pillar of the M-shaped tomb, and ran through the wall without breaking stride. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. Jemima and Ythna reached the wall a moment later, and Jemima ran straight for the spot where the man had vanished. And then she, too, was gone. Ythna’s momentum carried her forward before she could even think about the insanity of what she was doing. She hit the massive-blocked granite wall at the same point as the other two, and felt a sensation like a million tiny hands tugging at her. And then her senses were stolen away, one by one. But not before she had a glimpse of a million bright threads of different colors, crisscrossing around her in the midst of infinite darkness.