Deneb Aspic-Coreau laughed. I noticed without a trace of desire that she might be the healthiest, most beautiful woman I had ever seen. “We’re running for our lives as it is, One Who Teaches. Thrice we’ve tried to destroy the oil platform complex at Three Currents, and thrice they have cut us down like Thomas hawks. Now we are just hoping to reach the Equatorial Archipelago and hide among the isle migration, eventually to regroup at the submersible base at Lat Zero.”

“Protect her at all costs,” repeated Aenea. She turned to Theo. “I will miss you, my friend.”

Theo Bernard visibly attempted to keep from weeping, failed, and hugged Aenea fiercely.

“All the time… was good,” Theo said and stood back. “I pray for your success. And I pray that you fail… for your own good.”

Aenea shook her head. “Pray for all of our success.” She held her hand up in farewell and walked back to the lower platform with me.

I could smell the intoxicating salt-and-fish scent of the sea. The sun was so fierce it made me squint, but the air temperature was perfect.

The water on the dolphins’ skin was as clear to me as the sweat on my own forearms. I could imagine staying in this place forever.

“We have to go,” said Aenea. She took my hand.

A torchship did appear on radar just as we climbed out of Maui-Covenant’s gravity well, but we ignored it as Aenea stood alone on the bridge platform, staring at the stars.

I went over to stand next to her.

“Can you hear them?” she whispered.

“The stars?” I said.

“The worlds,” she said. “The people on them. Their secrets and silences. So many heartbeats.”

I shook my head. “When I am not concentrating on something else,” I said, “I am still haunted by voices and images from elsewhere. Other times. My father hunting in the moors with his brothers. Father Glaucus being thrown to his death by Rhadamanth Nemes.”

She looked at me. “You saw that?”

“Yes. It was horrible. He could not see who it was who had attacked him. The fall… the darkness… the cold… the moments of pain before he died. He had refused to accept the cruciform. It was why the Church sent him to Sol Draconi Septem… exile in the ice.”

“Yes,” said Aenea. “I’ve touched those last memories of his many times in the past ten years. But there are other memories of Father Glaucus, Raul. Warm and beautiful memories… filled with light. I hope you find them.”

“I just want the voices to stop,” I said truthfully. “This…” I gestured around at the treeship, the people we knew, Het Masteen at his bridge controls. “This is all too important.” Aenea smiled. “It’s all too important. That’s the damned problem, isn’t it?” She turned her face back to the stars.

“No, Raul, what you have to hear before you take a step is not the resonance of the language of the dead… or even of the living. It is… the essence of things.”

I hesitated, not wanting to make a fool of myself, but went on: “… So A million times ocean must ebb and flow, And he oppressed. Yet he shall not die, These things accomplished. If he utterly…”

Aenea broke in: “… Scans all depths of magic, and expounds The meanings of all motions, shapes, and sounds; If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die…”

She smiled again. “I wonder how Uncle Martin is. Is he cold-sleeping the years away? Railing at his poor android servants? Still working on his unfinished Cantos? In all my dreams, I never manage to see Uncle Martin.”

“He’s dying,” I said. Aenea blinked in shock.

“I dreamed of him… saw him… this morning,” I said. “He’s defrosted himself for the last time, he’s told his faithful servants. The machines are keeping him alive. The Poulsen treatments have finally worn off. He’s…” I stopped.

“Tell me,” said Aenea.

“He’s staying alive until he can see you again,” I said. “But he’s very frail.”

Aenea looked away. “It’s strange,” she said. “My mother fought with Uncle Martin during the entire pilgrimage. At times they could have killed one another. Before she died, he was her closest friend. Now…” She stopped, her voice thick.

“You’ll just have to stay alive, kiddo,” I said, my own voice strange. “Stay alive, stay healthy, and go back to see the old man. You owe him that.”

“Take my hand, Raul.” The ship farcast through light.

Around Tau Ceti Center we were immediately attacked, not only by Pax ships but by rebel torchships fighting for the planetary secession started by the ambitious female Archbishop Achilla Silvaski. The containment field flared like a nova.

“Surely you can’t ’cast through this,” I said to Aenea when she offered the Tromo Trochi of Dhomu and me her hands.

“One does not ’cast through anything,” said my friend, and took our hands, and we were on the surface of the former capital of the late and unlamented Hegemony.

The Tromo Trochi had never been to TC², indeed, had never been off the world of T’ien Shan, but his merchant interests were aroused by the tales of this onetime capitalist capital of the human universe.

“It is a pity that I have nothing to trade,” said the clever trader. “In six months on so fecund a world, I would have built a commercial empire.”

Aenea reached into the shoulder pack she had carried and lifted out a heavy bar of gold. “This should get you started,” she said. “But remember your true duties here.”

Holding the bar, the little man bowed. “I will never forget, One Who Teaches. I have not suffered to learn the language of the dead to no avail.”

“Just stay safe for the next few months,” said Aenea. “And then, I am confident, you will be able to afford transport to any world you choose.”

“I would come to wherever you are, M. Aenea,” said the trader with the only visible show of emotion I had ever seen from him. “And I would pay all of my wealth—past, future, and fantasized—to do so.”

I had to blink at this. It occurred to me for the first time that many of Aenea’s disciples might be—probably were—a little bit in love with her, as well as very much in awe of her. To hear it from this coin-obsessed merchant, though, was a shock. Aenea touched his arm. “Be safe and stay well.”

The Yggdrasill was still under attack when we returned. It was under attack when Aenea ’cast us away from the Tau Ceti System.

The inner city-world of Lusus was much as I remembered it from my brief sojourn there: a series of Hive towers above the vertical canyons of gray metal. George Tsarong and Jigme Norbu bade us farewell there. The stocky, heavily muscled George—weeping as he hugged Aenea—might have passed for an average Lusian in dim light, but the skeletal Jigme would stand out in the Hive-bound crowds. But Lusus was used to off-worlders and our two foremen would do well as long as they had money. But Lusus was one of the few Pax worlds to have returned to universal credit cards and Aenea did not have one of these in her backpack.

A few minutes after we stepped from the empty Dreg’s Hive corridors, however, seven figures in crimson cloaks approached. I stepped between Aenea and these ominous figures, but rather than attack, the seven men went to their knees on the greasy floor, bowed their heads, and chanted:

“The Shrike Cult,” I said stupidly. “I thought they were gone—wiped out during the Fall.”

“We prefer to be referred to as the Church of the Final Atonement,” said the first man, rising from his knees but still bowing in Aenea’s direction. “And no… we were not “wiped out” as you put it… merely driven underground. Welcome, Daughter of Light. Welcome, Bride of the Avatar.”