"I'll address those problems. And the others," Otah said with a
confidence lie didn't feel. Balasar let the issue drop. After a moment's
silence, Otah felt himself moved to ask the question he had intended to
leave be. "What will you do? Go back to Galt?"
"Yes," Balasar said. "I'II go hack, but I don't think it would he wise
for me to stay. I don't know, Most High. I had plans, but none of them
involved being hated and disgraced. So I suppose I'll have to make
others. What do you do when you've finished your life's work and haven't
died?"
"I don't know," Otah said, and Balasar laughed.
"With the things still ahead of you, Lord Emperor, you likely never
will. "That's your fate." Balasar's gaze seemed to soften-melancholy
creeping in at the corners of his eyes. "'There are worse, though."
Otah sipped his tea. The leaves were perfectly brewed, neither weak nor
bitter. Balasar raised his own cup in a wordless salute.
"Shall we do this thing?" Otah asked.
"1 was wondering," Balasar said. "I was afraid you might reconsider.
Burning a library's a terrible thing."
For a moment, Otah saw the cold eyes of Sterile, its feminine smile,
heard its voice. The memory of the physicians' cots filled with row upon
row of women in pain possessed him for the length of a heartbeat and was
gone.
""There are worse," lie said.
Otah rose, and the general rose with him. From the servants' niches and
from beyond the great archway to the south, their respective people
appeared. Hard soldiers from the South, amen of the utkhaiem in flowing
robes from the North. Otah raised his hands in a pose of command, and
let the servants go forward to prepare their way.
The furnaces were near the surface where they could be blocked off from
the rest of the city if the fires ever should escape their cells. The
air near them was thick with the scent of smoke and oppressive with
heat. The noise of the flames was like a waterfall. Otah led Balasar and
his men to the huge grates where the scrolls and codices and books were
stacked. Generations of history. Philosophic essays composed by minds
gone to dust a thousand years before. Maps that predated the First
Empire. The surviving scraps of war records from before the first andat.
Otah looked upon his culture, his history, the record of all that had
cone before and that had made the world what it was. The flames licked
and leapt.
If only it could have been just the poets' books and treatises on the
andat ... but the Gait had insisted, and Otah had understood. Each his
tory was a footprint in the path, each collection of court poems might
contain a hint or reference. With time and attention, someone might put
together again what had been torn apart, and it was a chance the Galt
had refused to accept. Their tenuous peace required sacrifices, and
sacrifice without loss didn't deserve the name.
"Forgive this," Utah said, to no one. He walked forward, coming to the
first pile. The hook was leather-hound and worn from years of loving
care. Utah let it fall open and looked on Heshai's careful handwriting