his own), he handed the valuable scroll to his protector with a ceremonious flourish. The owner of the tea house fumbled with his short, sausage-like fingers, finally tearing the scroll a bit as he opened it, and his every movement revealed crude strength and an aggressive indifference to sophistication of any kind. His was a strength that stripped the elegance from every object he touched. Looking up from another low bow, Margio could not help but notice that the large man’s lips moved as he read silently, like a half-literate priest of the Sun trying to memorize the text of a hymn to the deity on the day before the holy equinox.
Licisium Dorgoe turned to his companion. “Look at this, Forsey. These fairy tales are right up your valley.” He tossed the scroll the way a man might toss a dog a bone. The other man reached out with both hands and missed. The scroll landed silently on the thick Mustobrim carpet. Forsey cursed and leaned over to pick it up, doing his best to retain his dignity. Dorgoe lifted his chin and stroked his throat with a pompous air.
“Fergius, I am pleased with you. For once, your dusty institution is of some use to me. I will speak with the Emperor about providing the funds for improvements to your building. Go now. We are leaving for the palace soon.”
As Margio turned to leave, Forsey watched him with a scowl. When the archive director was gone, he turned back to Dorgoe and tried to get his attention. “Well? What do you think about this?”
“There’s nothing to think about.” Dorgoe stood up easily, despite his size, and walked over to the window with a cup of Ulinian wine in his hairy hand. “You’re a lucky man!” he took a sip of his wine and slapped Forsey on the shoulder with a patronizing air. “Now you don’t have to do anything.” He laughed. “Just don’t expect me to support you all of a sudden because of this.”
“That’s low of you, Licisium.” Forsey whined. He leaped up from his seat and clenched his fists. “You promised to think about it. You promised to take everything into consideration! And now you want to abandon me? Was that your plan all along? Don’t forget that you stand to benefit from this more than anyone. Why don’t you take this scroll and deliver it to Ronko this very day?”
“Of course not,” his burly companion snorted. “Let the scroll be your plunder. Here. I give it to you. But you can deal with Ronko on your own. Stripped of his main arguments, he won’t be a serious adversary for you.” He pulled a wry face. “And stop whining. You should thank me for recommending that the council be moved up a week. That caused him to lose his nerve, and he made some mistakes. Why do you think he reached out to that boy at the archive? Because he was desperate.”
Forsey’s face turned white. “You know perfectly well what is going to happen if those crazy fools sign a trade pact! Do they really not know what they are doing? I believe they see nothing but their own purses.”
“Not at all. They simply believe they are saving the country and the Emperor. From you and me.” Dorgoe allowed himself a loud cackle. “They’re prepared to do anything, consequences be damned.
“So, you agree with me?”
“We’ll see. My advice to you, Forsey, is to stop being so blunt. The art of politics does not mix well with bluntness. And remember, the one who wins is not always the one who makes the right move, but the one who knows how to benefit from it.”
“I don’t like it when you speak in riddles. We will meet again at the council. And understand, if you can, that I need your open support!”
After Forsey had dashed out of the tea house, Dorgoe stood a while longer at the window, his eyes trained on his confidant’s receding figure as he made his way across the grass. Smiling as if he had just eaten a good meal, he set his half-empty cup on the eight-sided wooden table and, feeling cheerful, made his way over a carved wooden bridge that spanned a meandering creek. On the other bank, he entered a well-appointed mahogany pavilion where attentive servants had prepared his bath. The steam rising from the bath carried a strong aroma of pine.
“To the demons with work, at least for now,” Dorgoe reflected happily. “I’ll have plenty of work to do this evening.”
Uni sat comfortably up to his chin in the water of a luxurious indoor swimming pool, the bottom of which was covered in a pale green tile mosaic featuring images of mollusks, sea urchins, and other inhabitants of the mysterious deep. The sunlight streaming through an opening in the roof created an illusion that half of the pool was made of pure gold, and it was in that golden gleaming that Manelius Ronko splashed and flopped with the easy grace of a young boy. Uni found himself more and more surprised by this man, who seemed to know how to derive the utmost pleasure from each moment of his life. He was unconcerned by the stolen report and equally indifferent to the everyday troubles recounted by the former archivist. Uni found himself infected by the man’s demon-may-care attitude (or perhaps the wine had done its work), and he felt capable of living fully in the present, as if all of those unpleasant things – the tragic destruction of his hopes, the shameful dismissal from the archive, and the bridge over the Fela, where he had almost ended his own life (as difficult as that was to believe now) – had simply never happened. Ronko, after somersaulting in the water like a windmill, folded his hands behind his head and leaned back with evident pleasure on the knees of a lovely marble nymph who leaned out over the water’s surface to look at her own reflection.
“I have to say our affairs are in good order, more or less,” he pronounced optimistically.
Uni, who had begun to drop off under the influence of the herbal aroma rising from the water, looked up and focused his eyes with great effort on his companion.
“Our enemies have achieved an insignificant tactical advantage, so they feel relaxed. That’s a mistake.” He shook his head. “No, that is not entirely precise. Do you know what their biggest drawback is? They’ll take an overly practical approach to the information they’ve gained.”
“I’m sorry, what do you mean?”
Ronko snorted. “What I mean is that Licisium Dorgoe was born an illiterate peasant, a plebian, and he has remained one even after rising to such an exalted position. Don’t look at me like I’m a snob. Men who rise to great rank after living on the streets tend to think in narrowly practical categories. That’s not surprising. When you are trying to survive, you don’t have time to acquire extraneous knowledge. You have to live and think in the moment. You start to ignore everything that doesn’t have an obvious value to you at that precise moment in time.”
“Do you mean that a well-rounded education is an extravagance?”
“It most certainly is! You have no idea how wasteful education is. You spend years pouring an ocean’s worth of things you don’t need right now into your head just for the pleasure of it, or perhaps with the hope that some of those things might come in useful eventually. As a result, you forget about the most basic things you need to live. You become cut off from the real world. That’s why our greatest wise men never become leaders who determine the fates.”
“Sounds like me,” Uni reflected sadly. “It’s better to accomplish something before pursuing education. What a pity it took me so long to realize it.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. By the time you reach a position of consequence, your mind loses its flexibility. You acquire mental habits that restrict your thinking, whether you like it or not. You only see the things that affect your daily survival.”
“Survival? I thought we were talking about after I achieve the rank.”
“What did you think? That’s when the fighting really gets started. Were you hoping to reach a certain
