As the carriage climbed the hill, Ogmios was teaching Lukan how to kneel.
"The left knee goes to the floor. The right knee stays upright. The head bows and does not rise until the emperor permits it. Again."
Lukan tried it on the carriage's narrow, swaying floor. The new clothes rustled with his every movement; dark blue, silver-worked, something the tailor had labored over for three days, and inside it Lukan felt as though he wore another man's skin. If his father had sold one sleeve of this cloth, it would have paid off the whole village's debts.
"And if I have to speak?"
"You will not have to. What is asked, I will translate. What you answer, I will translate. Keep your answers short. Do not lie." Ogmios paused a moment. "The emperor is a man who knows a lie by its smell."
The carriage stopped, the door opened, and Lukan saw for the first time the thing they called a palace.
The tower was large; the palace was not large. The palace was a mountain built by human hands. Steps of white marble flowed upward, wide as a field, golden-armored guards standing statue-still along both sides, and above everything a pediment carried on columns shut out a piece of the sky. Lukan looked at one guard's armor and could not stop himself from reckoning it: that armor was worth more than everything his village produced in ten years.
Inside was worse. They walked along corridors and Lukan hesitated to step on the stone beneath his feet; the stone was a mirror. Tapestries the height of several men hung on the walls, and in them were wars, crowns, and burning cities. Rona was not beside him; she had stayed at the tower, and Lukan carried her absence like something missing from his left hand.
The doors of the throne hall had two wings, and it took four men to open them.
The hall was ten times the village church, and nearly empty. A long red carpet ran between empty benches to a raised throne, and on the throne sat a man. Lukan tried not to look at him as he walked, and failed. The man was old, but not the way the old men of his village were old; not dried out, but hardened. His grey beard was cut short, a dark cloak lay on his shoulders, and beside the throne, in its scabbard, stood a sword without ornament. Lukan saw the sword, and somehow that sword, more than all the gold in the hall, told him who the emperor was.
At the end of the carpet Ogmios knelt, and Lukan, as he had practiced, lowered his left knee to the marble.
The silence lasted long. Head bowed, Lukan listened to his own breathing and felt himself watched; weighed. He knew this feeling. Ogmios had looked at him that way on the first day, and so had the woman of glass. Everyone in this world weighed him, and Lukan still did not know what sat in the other pan of the scale.
"Rise."
They rose. The emperor had come down from the throne; when Lukan lifted his head the man stood three paces away, and his eyes were grey. The grey eyes ran down Lukan from head to foot, stopped at his face, and stayed there a long time.
Then the emperor spoke, and Ogmios translated.
"His Majesty asks your name."
"Lukan."
"He asks what work your father did."
"He was a farmer. We had sheep. We sowed some barley too."
Ogmios translated. Nothing stirred in the emperor's face, but he tilted his head very slightly and asked a new question. Ogmios hesitated for a moment; Lukan noticed the hesitation, because Ogmios did not hesitate.
"His Majesty... wishes to see the mark."
Lukan opened his collar. The emperor came closer; closer than a king should, and looked at the branching mark above his collarbone. His gaze was a jeweler's gaze; searching for the truth of a stone. Then he straightened, looked into Lukan's eyes, and this time asked the question directly to him. The words were foreign, but the tone needed no translation. Ogmios translated anyway, and his voice thinned by one shade in the translating.
"He asks if you are afraid."
Lukan did not stop to think about the answer. If he had thought, he would have found a lie, and one look at that sword had told him a lie would not live long in front of this man.
"Every day," said Lukan. "But my father used to say that fear and cowardice do not sleep in the same barn."
Ogmios translated. And in that moment, for the first time in this world, Lukan saw something change in an emperor's face. It was not a smile. It was a very distant relative of a smile; the deepening of a line at the corner of the eye. The emperor nodded once, slowly, then turned to Ogmios and said something; it was long this time, and Ogmios only listened.
Then the doors opened.
There was no protocol; the doors simply opened and a man came in, his walk the disciplined form of a run. In his hand was a sealed parchment. He knelt in the middle of the hall and held it out, and while the emperor read it the hall was so silent that Lukan heard the crackle of the parchment unrolling.
The emperor read. His face did not change, and Lukan now knew how much labor that took, because he himself had been attempting the same thing for three weeks. The emperor lowered the parchment, looked at Ogmios, and spoke a single sentence. Lukan caught only one word of it, because the word was a name, and names are the same in every language.
Oliar.
After that, everything went quickly. The emperor turned to Lukan, said something short, and walked back to the throne. Ogmios bowed, Lukan bowed, and minutes later they found themselves in the marble corridors again, walking fast this time. The corridors were no longer empty; men were coming out of doors, speaking to each other in low voices, and on every face was the same tightness.
They boarded the carriage and the palace gates closed behind them. Lukan waited a while, then asked.
"What did the emperor say at the end?"
Ogmios was looking out the window. "He said he will summon you again. At a more suitable time."
"What was written on that parchment?"
"Nothing that concerns you."
"Oliar." Lukan said the word, and Ogmios's head turned to him. "I heard the name. What is Oliar?"
Ogmios looked at him for a long moment, and Lukan saw a calculation turning behind the man's eyes; the telling and the not-telling being weighed. Then the calculation closed.
"A town," said Ogmios. "In the west. A town with walls." He turned back to the window. "And as of this morning, it is under siege."
"Who is besieging it?"
The carriage turned off the slope onto the tower road. Ogmios did not answer at once, and when he did, his voice was not his lecturing voice; it was slower, more careful.
"I will tell you soon, Lukan. All of it. I said you would learn this world, and this too is part of the lesson. But not today." He turned to Lukan, and that carefully chosen kindness settled onto his face again. "You did well today. You stood before the emperor and you told the truth. For now, that is enough."
Lukan looked out the window at the white stone buildings sliding past. It was not enough. For the first time since he had come to this world, it was not enough. The tight faces in the palace corridors, the crackling parchment, the emperor's face turning to stone; somewhere something was happening, something large, and everyone was part of it except Lukan. His part was to kneel, answer correctly, and wait.
Hero, they called him. And there was a war they were hiding from the hero.
That night, looking up at the flameless sphere on the ceiling, Lukan made his decision. Tomorrow he would ask Rona. Rona could not lie to him; she had tried once, and her ears had gone red.
He would ask about Oliar. And about the man in the west.