loved more than anything, whom she raised alone, saving up money for him to attend the academy, her last hope for a decent life in her old age – suddenly threw away everything he had spent years working for? I can’t even imagine telling her that. I’d rather jump off this bridge. She’s better off with no son at all than a ridiculous, worthless son like me.”
“What about my friends? What will they say? ‘Little Uni messed up again.’ Sorgius will be sarcastic, and Vordius will slap my shoulder and look at me with those big, sad eyes of his, like he’s looking at a child that can’t learn its lessons. No, I’d rather jump off this bridge than see that! Fate gave me such wonderful opportunities, and I stupidly let them go. If I’m such a fool that I can’t even manage to make a life for myself, then I’d better end it now. I just need to be brave. And calm. Great Sun, my heart is racing! Breathe in deep, and leap over the railing…”
“Hello, Uni!” the voice that came from the carriage that had just pulled alongside on the bridge was soft, but it seemed to hold the would-be jumper with chains of iron. A well-groomed hand pulled aside the silk curtain with an elegant gesture, and Manelius Ronko gazed at Uni with his usual ironic half-smile. “Were you planning to cool off in the river?”
For a brief instant, the young man felt like he had just eaten a raw octopus and its tentacles were stuck in his throat and stomach. Somewhere deep down, he realized that the Heavenly Deity didn’t want him dead. No, the Deity was so enraged with Uni that it had prepared endless agony for him, each torment worse than the one before it, lasting until the end of the age when the Heavenly Deity would again, as it had many times before, turn every living thing to smoldering ash and build a new world and new people – cleaner, better, more promising – from that ash.
“From the look of you, it would be impolite to ask about the fate of my report,” Ronko said, shaking his head slowly. He waved toward his carriage. “Get in. Watch your head. In the name of the Shining Deity, there’s no reason to be so upset. You need a cup of wine. I have a nice little collection back at my house.”
Feeling absolutely wooden and alien, Uni squeezed his body into the carriage. “Enel Ronko,” he finally found his voice. “I am extremely glad to see you. Your document is ready, but I am not able to hand it to you at present. You can probably retrieve it from Margio, the archive director. I don’t work there anymore, so I’m afraid I can’t do anything to help you. I should have told you as soon as I found out. I did try, but I don’t know where you live. I was given an address, but there was nobody there. I am ashamed to say it, but I didn’t know what to do. There is no excuse for my cowardly behavior.”
Ronko tapped a finger against his chin as he listened. His eyes, which were the color of wet leaves, stared off into space, as if their owner was off in a world of his own.
Then he snapped his fingers. “Take us home.” The carriage started. Ronko turned to Uni and smiled brightly. “You’re right about one thing. I like to be the one who finds people. I don’t like it when they try to find me without my permission. It’s too bad about your report. We won’t ever see it again; I can guarantee you that.”
“What?” Uni jumped. The octopus in his gut was moving again. Even the crown of his head went cold. “How could he refuse to give it to you? I can’t imagine…”
Ronko laughed. “Of course not. He won’t send me to the demons. He isn’t brave enough. But here’s the thing: Margio works for Licisium Dorgoe. He’s probably on his way to the man’s villa as we speak to show your report to his protector. It’s a rare prize.” He gave a wry smile. “Even a rat like Margio can come in useful once in a hundred years!”
“This is all my fault, Enel Ronko. If only I hadn’t been so stupid!”
“What ever do you mean? In any event, it doesn’t matter now. I contacted you directly because I know you and I naively assumed that you could get the job done without your superiors finding out. No matter what happened, it’s not your fault. It was poor calculation on my part. But as I said, it doesn’t matter now.”
Fergius Margio’s carriage performed feats of acrobatics as it glided down the Avenue of the Benevolent Sun, weaving in and out between the slow palanquins carrying idle aristocrats. The driver’s skill did nothing to improve the mental state of the passenger, who clutched a leather manuscript case to his chest as if he feared he would drop it during the obstacle course. Margio only recovered his composure somewhat when his carriage left the narrow city streets behind and its wheels rolled along the neatly laid, colorful tiles of the wealthy neighborhood of Trikazinso. Finally, the carriage turned onto a narrow lane leading to a white villa hidden in the shade of large sycamore trees.
Since its establishment almost three hundred years earlier, the Trikazinso neighborhood had been a city within a city where people of a certain class lived their own life. After the founding of the empire, the great Emperor Norius had considered forcing the nobles of the lands he conquered to move to the new capital. No one knows what shrewd plans he had in store, but the task turned out to be more complicated than he had expected. Most of the nobles concerned had little desire to leave their homes, where they enjoyed an exalted position within their clans and communities. The once-independent nobles also had extremely stringent requirements concerning their own comfort, especially when compared to the lifestyle in Herandia, which had been a small and relatively unimportant country until recently. As a result, it was not until the reign of Nazalio, the great urban planner, that the Trikazinso neighborhood opened its doors to receive new residents. By that time, the former monarchs of Herandia’s acquisitions had sunk to the level of provincial aristocrats and were eager to move to the capital so they could be closer to the Emperor and his court. In these new circumstances, the resettlement went well. In later years, it was commemorated with the annual Festival of Flying Lights, when dozens of silk balloons emblazoned with the coats of arms of the leading families, rose into the sky on streams of hot air, hailing the arrival of a new class of leaders in the city.
The neighborhood had grown over the past three hundred years as civil servants, priests of the Cult of the Sun, military commanders, and wealthy merchants and craftsmen moved in. But Trikazinso remained a lush island, hidden from prying eyes by thick, green parks with decorative ponds, gardens, a canal, and grottos for silent contemplation. It was an unwritten rule that there were no walls or fences between the villas, and any resident of the neighborhood could walk anywhere within its confines. The idea was that this would create bonds between people from different parts of the empire (and even between political opponents). Interestingly, this freedom was not extended to the other 700,000 residents of Enteveria: a special division of the Solar Sentinels protected the select few from all curiosity on the part of outsiders.
A taciturn guard led Margio along a colonnade lined with statues representing the twelve sins and twelve virtues, facing each other in two lines. At the end of the colonnade, the director of the imperial archive found himself in a large, pentagonal garden with a small tea house standing on a knoll at its very center. The tea house had five sides like the garden around it, and a pentagonal gable roof topped with a forest nymph skillfully carved of ivory. With a speed that belied his five decades, Margio hustled across the grass and into the tea house.
“Well, well, well, what on earth has happened in that dusty rathole of yours that brings you here to see me?” growled a deep voice. The two men sitting in the tea house were not pleased to have their private conversation interrupted by such an unexpected and fidgety visitor. One of them – a thin, nervous-looking man – moved uneasily in his seat, which was a black silk cushion embroidered with red flowers. The other, more heavyset man was sleek and well-groomed, with an arrogant face, but something about him suggested that he might have been employed as a stevedore at one of Enteveria’s ports until quite recently. It was his voice Margio had heard upon entering.
Margio
