"Does your--" The servitor stumbled over the mistake and blushed prettily. No one ever did anything in the pavilions but prettily or with grace and style, and even her apology was elegantly simple. "I'm sorry, sir... Do you wish me to bathe you?"

Her name was Winter Blossom On Broken Rock and the Emperor had named her himself. He called her "Broken" or "Winter Blossom" for short, names to which she answered with downcast eyes and a demure, almost coy smile. She was the fourteenth handmaiden to attend him since he killed the intruder and the first he found bearable enough to have in his presence.

Some days, Zaq still felt too raw to face anyone, but those days were fewer than they had been and were getting fewer year by year. It was the hope of finding a way out of his predicament that had made life less wearisome. At first he'd only wanted to step down from the throne. Now Zaq knew that his only hope was to abolish himself altogether.

"Sir...?"

He'd forgotten to answer her question.

Five years ago, she'd have stood there, dressed in her silk changfu and looking expectant until he noticed her or remembered for himself, but Zaq had put a stop to that. All queries were to be asked when they arose and the girl was not to wait for him to notice her.

He was still to be regarded as invisible beyond this room, that was unchanged, but in here... It had taken Zaq and the Library months and one of the worst battles Zaq could remember to work out this compromise. No one was to wait on his every word and no one was to guard him. He would walk the Forbidden City as he wished and except on those days when 148 billion souls absolutely had to watch him take a bath or a new concubine or offer respect to those emperors who had gone before, he would remain Zaq.

The boy who'd made the mistake of waking up one morning and mentioning to his mother that he'd been visited in the night by a butterfly.

Such rules were simple both to make and to enforce. All Zaq had to do was reach an agreement with the Librarian and all those in the Forbidden City knew instantly what was expected of them. Some days Zaq really believed he was the only emperor ever to notice that all of those who served him, the eunuchs and concubines, serving girls and palace guards, were interchangeable manifestations of the Library itself.

Oh, he knew they were flesh all right, Zaq could vouch for that. Flesh and blood, bone and sinew. Still merely animated, though.

"Come here."

Winter Blossom On Broken Rock looked pleasingly puzzled. She was already as close to him as modesty and politeness allowed.

"There," Zaq told the girl, pointing to a spot at his feet and she did as he said.

Eyes as dark as clouds on a winter night and hair that fell in a splash across her shoulders, black onto crimson, the silver butterflies and golden blossom of her silk robe glittering in the morning light. He passed her a dozen times a day in the outer gardens, at the table, standing mute in a corridor with eyes cast down as he staggered by under the weight of dreams and loneliness.

"What's your name?"

"Broken, sir."

Zaq waited.

"Sir?"

"Your full name."

"Winter Blossom On Broken Rock, sir."

"And before that?"

Once again the girl looked puzzled. So puzzled, as she sucked her cheek and chewed prettily at her bottom lip, that Zaq almost forgot to watch her eyes for signs of the darkness.

It was there, though.

Zaq was sure of that.

"You have my bath," he said.

She nodded and began to strip, moving to a line of melody heard only in her head. When Zaq's own expression stayed blank, her fingers suddenly faltered at the fastening under her right arm as if the tune had failed.

"Aren't you joining me, sir?"

"Why would I do that?"

Because it would be fun? Because nothing else makes sense? He could almost hear the answers in his own head as the Library whispered them to the girl.

"Hurry up," he said.

All pretence of fun was gone. She removed her silk gown swiftly but clumsily, yanking an undershift over her head and almost getting trapped as her pale arms caught in its short silk sleeves. She looked, as she always looked, elegant and vulnerable.

"Now wash."

Climbing into the marble tub, she sank into the steaming water and let it close over her shoulders until only her head was exposed.

"Free your hair."

She looked at him, eyes huge. In all the time since he'd noticed her Zaq had never asked this. Everything else had been offered or taken. He'd tried to find out if Winter Blossom On Broken Rock had a life when not with him, asking her endless questions and memorising her answers to see if they remained consistent, which they did over months and even years.

In the early days of his being Chuang Tzu, Zaq had crouched in a night-soil trench, trying to discover if the trench was really used. And sure enough, no sooner had he hidden himself than half a dozen servitors came in, laughing and chatting as they pissed noisily from the long bench above.

The Library was very clever.

A week later, bored with watching the trench, he wondered aloud whether servants ever fucked and less than a day later turned a corner in a vegetable garden to find a serving girl rutting noisily with a boy from the kitchens. So intent were they on providing him with proof that neither even looked round when he stopped to watch.

"Let me," Zaq said, unwinding the ornate knot that kept her oiled tresses in place. And the girl sat in silence while he did so.

The most important job in the known galaxy was his. Tuan-Yu. Orthodox and Heaven Blessed. Dreamer of Worlds. His very existence kept alive the 2023 fragments of the unformed shell and 148 billion people who had watched him untie the hair of a serving girl.

This was the figure to which Zaq always came back. It was a hard number to imagine, and he'd tried.

There were a hundred billion stars in the spiral. In other words, for every star in the galaxy there lived at least one person who owed her or his continued existence to Zaq. At fifteen he'd demanded that the Librarian show him a hundred billion stars and kept up his demands until his request was finally met.

So many lights coalesced inside his head that it was like looking at a single star, until Zaq looked more closely and distances emerged, large beyond imagining. It was like falling into infinity, except that the moment Zaq decided this the Librarian widened its remit to include other galaxies, each one circling a black hole that ripped light into darkness.

When Zaq awoke it was three days later and his skull echoed with thoughts of foam and simultaneous states of being and absence. A week later, while walking between the smallest of the private pavilions and the gate leading to the outer garden, he decided that something really had to change.

He'd been working on making the change ever since.