"I imagine it will," Balasar agreed, shifting the satchel against his
hip. "If we sail straight through. We could also stay here until spring
if we liked. Or stop in Bakta."
"Whatever you like, General," Eustin said.
"Then we'll sail straight through. Find what's setting out and when.
I'll be at the harbor master's house."
"Anything the matter, sir?"
"No," l3alasar said.
The harbor master's house was a wide building of red brick settled on
the edge of the water. Banners of the Great "I gee hung from the archway
above its wide bronze doors. Balasar announced himself to the secretary
and was shown to a private room. He accepted the offer of cool wine and
dried figs, asked for and received the tools for writing the report now
required of him, and gave orders that he not be disturbed until his men
arrived. Then, alone, he opened his satchel and drew forth the hooks he
had recovered, laying them side by side on the desk that looked out over
the port. There were four, two hound in thick, peeling leather, another
whose covers had been ripped from it, and one encased in metal that
appeared to be neither steel nor silver, but something of each. Balasar
ran his fingers over the mute volumes, then sat, considering them and
the moral paradox they represented.
For these, he had spent the lives of his men. While the path back to
Galt was nothing like the risk he had faced in the ruins of the fallen
Empire, still it was sea travel. "There were storms and pirates and
plagues. If he wished to be certain that these volumes survived, the
right thing would he to transcribe them here in Parrinshall. If he were
to die on the journey home, the books, at least, would not be drowned.
The knowledge within them would not be lost.
Which was also the argument against making copies. He took the larger of
the leather-hound volumes and opened it. The writing was in the flowing
script of the dead Empire, not the simpler chop the Khaiem used for
business and trade with foreigners like himself. Balasar frowned as he
picked out the symbols his tutor had taught him as a boy.
Mere are two types of impossibility in the andat: those which cannot he
un- delstood, and those whose natures make binding impossible. His
translation was rough, but sufficient for his needs. "These were the
books he'd sought. And so the question remained whether the risk of
their loss was greater than the risk posed by their existence. Balasar
closed the hook and let his head rest in his hands. He knew, of course,
what he would do. He had known before he'd sent Eustin and Coal to find
a boat for them. Before he'd reached Far Gait in the first place.
It was his awareness of his own pride that made him hesitate. History
was full of men who thought themselves to be the one great soul whom
power would not corrupt. He did not wish to be among that number, and
yet here he sat, holding in his hands the secrets that might remake the
shape of the human world. A humble man would have sought counsel from
those wiser than himself, or at least feared to wield the power. He did
not like what it said of him that giving the books to anyone besides
himself seemed as foolish as gambling with their destruction. Ile would