M'yu hurried along, forced to keep double-time by Aevryn's long legs and body blocking the way behind. Aevryn waved the hover open with his linkcard, and M'yu ducked in.

Aevryn closed the hover and darkened the glass. "This had better never happen again. Do you hear me?"

M'yu stared blankly at the black walls, tired of saying 'yes, sir.'

"You threw a sword," Aevryn's voice rose, "across the gymnasium? What in the world were you thinking?"

"Does it matter?" M'yu snapped back. "I just want to go home."

"Fantastic, because that's absolutely not where you're going. You interrupted me at work, so now you're going to come sit in my office and do absolutely nothing for the next three hours. How does that sound?"

M'yu dragged a hand down his face. "Great, if nothing includes sleeping."

Aevryn snatched M'yu's wrist. "This is not a game," he growled. "When are you going to wake up and realize that actions have consequences?"

M'yu threw his free hand to the side. "You think I don't know that?" he shouted. "You think I wake up every day and go, 'Oh, man, I wonder how I can waltz through life today in my gilded clothes and cushy hover and roll up and do whatever I want because no one cares if I screw up, I'm rotting rich!"

Aevryn went still, his face an icy sculpture. M'yu yanked his hand out of the man's grasp and looked away.

Across the hover, Aevryn shook his head, muttering. "What am I going to do with you?"

M'yu's gaze snapped to him. "What do you mean, 'do with me'?"

"M'yu, you don't listen to a word I say. You distrust every single move I make. And then you cause nothing but trouble on top of trouble. All you had to do today was toe the line—I told you this morning, 'don't get into trouble'. And when I'm on my first halfway decent lead in months, to my surprise, what do I hear? My apprentice has been expelled for the day. Yesterday, you mentioned flunking; I hadn't realized you were serious." Aevryn flopped back into the leather seat. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

M'yu had a million things to say for himself, and they all lodged in his throat.

Aevryn shook his head. "I don't understand you, boy. I tell you that I'm on your side, that I need your help, and what—you self destruct? How is that going to help your people? How is any of this helping your people?"

M'yu drew his legs up into the seat, pressing his pounding head into his knees.

"I'm trying to have a conversation with you."

M'yu's breaths came fast and shaky. He felt wrung out, like he was a piece of cloth someone had left to dry too long over the fire. It didn't matter what he did; it didn't matter what Aevryn did. He had Ruslan's card now. He'd figure some way out to save everything. Some way.

"I still need you, M'yu. But I can't use you if I can't trust you."

M'yu should have argued—need him for what, use him for what? That threat was always there under all their conversations; Aevryn had some bid he was going to buy using M'yu's life. M'yu just didn't know what it was, and now, right now, might be the best time to ask. Instead, his forehead just rested against his knees, and he closed his eyes, taking comfort in the rocking of the hover.

Aevryn sighed. "Alright then." He tapped out something on the console, and the hover changed direction.

M'yu's stomach sank. This was it. The end of the free meals, the warm bed, the pretend life. The end of the perfect chance. The end of... He listened to the steady clicking from the console and the creak of the leather as Aevryn leaned back. He swallowed. The end of someone looking out for him. Even if it was fake. "Can I at least get my beanie back?"

"What?"

M'yu bit his lip, peeking over his knees. "Before you drop me off in the Gloam. Can I get my beanie back? My... my mom made it for me." He turned his head so he didn't have to try to decipher Aevryn's face, resting his cheek against his knees. He could make it in the Gloam again. He had for years. But he didn't want to do it without his hat. That and a night of sleep, and he'd be right as rain. He'd find Karsya, and he'd find a new plan, and he'd claw his way back to the Capital no matter what it took. Someday. Somehow. Just give him his hat, and everything would be okay.

"I'm not taking you back to the Gloam, M'yu."

His eyes closed, head pounding. "Then where are you taking me?"

The hover slid to a stop. "Close your eyes."

"They are closed."

Aevryn snorted. "Then keep them closed."

M'yu tensed, eyes darting up to Aevryn. Aevryn sighed. "I'm not going to hurt you. Have you not surmised at least that much by now?" 

M'yu shook his head in three slow, tiny shakes. 

Aevryn rubbed his hand down his face. "Just for once, can't you trust me?"

M'yu searched Aevryn, the droop of the man's shoulders and the cut of his gaze. Slowly, M'yu said, "You don't lie."

"I don't lie," he agreed.

M'yu bit his tongue. "Then promise me it's not a trick."

Aevryn sat down beside M'yu, brow drawn. "It's not a trick." His eyes roamed over M'yu's face, and M'yu looked down at his lap. "What happened today?"

"It doesn't matter." M'yu closed his eyes and straightened. "Weren't you going to show me something?"

Aevryn hummed. The hover doors swooshed. Taking M'yu's wrist, Aevryn led him out into the cold air, up a concrete path, into a warm building. They made turns, and M'yu considered peeking but his eyelids were heavy, and for once, not looking where he was going was a strange comfort.

Another door opened and closed, and they stopped. "You can open your eyes now," Aevryn said.

M'yu sighed, lids lifting slowly, then gasped. Books stretched ceiling to floor, only leaving space for slices of windows that cut light through the room. Two consoles sat back-to-back on a desk, and on podiums around the room, holodisplays glittered and moved with yellow light. M'yu wandered over to one of them, fingers brushing an insubstantial picture of the city: the Gloam, down in the crags of the mountain, and the Capital, up on the peak. The image rotated slowly, an illusory sun arcing through its sky.

"Is this real-time?" he breathed.

Aevryn walked past him to a second display, one of glittering stars and rotating spheres. "No. They're more like diagrams in a book." He pressed a button at the top of the podium, and a chip popped out of it, the holodisplay disappearing. "About a fourth of this library is stored on these cards, some of them with sound." He handed it to M'yu so he could examine it, then took it and clicked it back into place. The stars lit back to life.

M'yu slipped over and peered at the display. It was more detailed than he'd thought at first glance. Large rocks speckled the expanse, hurtling through space with tails of fire. Two orbs of fire ruled either end of the display. Between the two trekked a rocky, half-frozen sphere, with a few more tiny rocks floating around it.

"What is this?" he breathed.

"That," Aevryn said, zooming in on the frozen sphere, "is our planet."

M'yu's nose scrunched as he squinted closer. "A... theoretical diagram?"

"An actual diagram."

M'yu's head popped up, and Aevryn just nodded at him.

"No way," My'u scoffed. "There's... there's no proof for that. How would you even figure something out like that? Jump up in the sky and take a look?"

"At one point in our history? Precisely." M'yu drew back, and Aevryn returned the diagram to its original size. "These chips are records from our earliest time on this planet. Some of them are original to this House; others, my family has been rescuing from the Prav'sudja across the generations."

"And you call me a thief."

"Call it what you like, but they would have been destroyed otherwise." Aevryn indicated the two balls of fire. "These are our suns."

M'yu rolled his eyes. "Now I know you're making stuff up."

"What? Because you've only ever seen one?"

"Well." M'yu stuffed his hand in his pocket. "Yeah."

"We make a figure eight around these two stars. If you're in the exact right spot as the planet makes it to the point where the eight converges, then I suppose you could see both of the suns. Other than that, one always appears as a bright star, and the other, your 'one and only' sun."

"Right," M'yu drawled, but found himself peering closer anyway. "And you're the only one who knows this because...?"

"Because I'm the only one ridiculous enough to claim the Tsar really existed, to believe that we weren't always on this planet, and to believe that one day, we won't have to be anymore." M'yu squinted at him, a new headache forming behind his temple. Aevryn's lips pressed together, voice turning sour. "The rest ignore the facts that they don't like, and where possible, destroy them."

"You sound like a nut job."

"Which is why I'm showing you." Aevryn locked eyes with him. "I have evidence, I have proof, and I have a plan. But I can't do it on my own, M'yu. And if I want you to trust me..." He sighed, tapping his finger on the podium. "Well, perhaps I need to show you a bit of trust as well."

He moved over to one of the bookcases and beckoned to M'yu. A slew of chips were slotted neatly into dividers on the shelf. "Here is my proof. If you want to think me a madman, you may. If you want to live in my house and have nothing more to do with the matter or if you want me to return you to the Gloam, I—" Aevryn clasped his hands together so tightly his fingers went white. "I will let you do as you please. But. If you want to help me fix things, to free your people and to return life to the way it's supposed to be..." Aevryn gestured to the shelf. "These will play in any of the podiums, or in 2D on the smaller console. I will return, and we can discuss things at dinner."

With a stiff nod, Aevryn turned and left the library.

M'yu ran his hand over the chips. He glanced over his shoulder at the console, then at the rows and rows of books. Every other spine on the shelf seemed to be programming related. This place that the 'Minister of Linkcards' had unlocked and left him in must surely have all the answers he was looking for.

And yet somehow, he found himself snagging a tray of chips, dragging a chair to one of the podiums, and plugging something in.

A face lit up in yellow lights, zoomed in on one eye. "Ah!" a man said. "Success!" He leaned back, his blond hair spiked up in random places. A bit of grease marked his cheek, and stubble coated his chin, but he grinned widely. He nodded as if he was gearing himself up. "If we can get this to work, we might just get everything else back online too."

"Tell them about the crash!" a little girl's voice called from somewhere out of frame. "You said we'd need it 'for posterity.'"

He reached out to scoop her into his lap, and she shrieked playfully. "You just want to hear the story again."

"You said we'd need it!" she protested.

He kissed her on the temple. "Thank you for your help. Go on now, outside the Prav'sudja. See if the farmers need any help."

"But—"

"No buts, Daras. I can't tell the bedtime story this time. I have to tell it—" The man's smile was tight, and his throat bobbed. "A different way. Go on now."

Daras stuck her tongue out at the camera. "Lucky."

She scampered off, and he shook his head, a warmer smile at his lips now. "My sister's child," he explained. "She was one of the first born here, after the Last Descent." He bit his lip. "We were lucky the planet was hospitable to life or else she wouldn't have made it. None of us would've."

The man cleared his throat, leaned in and fiddled with the camera, then straightened. "But she's right. The tale must be recorded. If we have any hope of rising from this planet, it will only be because people know that we were not always here."

Chills ran across M'yu's skin. He scooted closer.

"My name is Tsar Peitros. I am the latest descendant from a long, long line of Prav'sudja rulers. Our ship sailed among the stars for so long, even my father's father was not sure what our purpose was. We sailed so long, our ship began to shake itself apart. Whatever our purpose had been, our purpose was clear then—we had to find a world to call home.

"Our engineers crafted sensors, sent out small unarmed ships, scanned the galaxy. We began building maps, testing planet conditions, in search of somewhere, anywhere hospitable. We were about to give up when our machines picked up the impossible." A wistful smile crossed his face, and he breathed the word with a sigh: "Paradise."

He rattled off the details as if he'd memorized them by heart. "Roughly 40,000 kilometers in circumference, seventy percent water, a world so vibrant with life that its oceans were the deepest blue and its land the richest green. The composition of the atmosphere on the planet was a near perfect match for the atmosphere we maintained in the Prav'sudja. We couldn't have engineered a better world."

He swallowed, looking away. M'yu's heart wrenched. He'd seen that look on men before—it was the look of a groom when his bride was caged and sold before their wedding day, the brokenness of a mother unable to cook dinner because thieves ransacked every last crumb from her house.

Peitros turned back to the camera. "We crashed before—" A ding sounded, and his face went white. "No. No, no, no." He fiddled with the camera, muttering under his breath. "Don't die on me again. Come on now..."

The holodisplay dimmed and faded, then sprung back to life with that zoomed-in eye staring M'yu down. "Ah! Success!"

M'yu popped the chip out, brain spinning wildly. He'd figured videos like that existed—security footage had to go somewhere after all—but he'd never seen one. And what was it he had just seen?

Scrubbing his face with his hand, he dropped the chip into its tray and popped the next one in. "Our solar panels are on the fritz," Peitros explained. He wore a different shirt this time—it looked like the collar had been singed—and his hair stuck up worse than before. M'yu was having a hard time imagining a crown on this mad mechanic. "So I guess we should get on with it while the energy is stable."

And he picked up the story, detailing their crash through the asteroid belt—the ship had been too large to dodge through like the scouting ships had done. What bits of science he hinted at sounded more like magic and mysticism to M'yu than anything, but the man seemed quite sure of himself. He described them testing the atmospheric conditions beyond the ship once they'd landed, tending to their wounded, burying their dead—his wife among them. They were making a home out of the rocky mountain the Prav'sudja had crashed on. "Temporary," he emphasized. "But a strong, stable temporary. Who knows how long it will take to make it back to the sky?"

He said he looked forward to exploring the ground beneath the peaks—the Gloam, M'yu realized—because it seemed like the soil might be looser and richer there. He worried about the effect the two suns would have on their new planet's seasons; his early charts indicated long, erratic winters and short, rainy growing seasons. He dreamed of fixing up the Prav'sudja, not just as temporary lodging for all the refugees, but as a ship once more, ready to take them to the Paradise they had meant to land on. They had one ship already, a smaller scout, that Peitros had almost finished. It was a good sign, the man thought.

M'yu popped that chip out and slid forward, picking one in the middle. Now Peitros's face was clean of soot and grease, his hair combed back to fit a stony crown, but when he talked with his hands, the calluses were still visible, and grit collected around his nails. It looked like someone had snagged a day-worker from the Gloam and stuffed him into a king's costume. He was elaborating on the new court system he had set up, stuffed to the brim with the best of the best. The Tsar's court would win their positions from merit rather than from lineage, with the Tsar and his line ruling so long as they obeyed the laws of the land.

Peitros grinned like M'yu always did after a clever bit of code as he described the artificial intelligence he'd built to help him choose the winners. "Then they can't accuse me of bias," he enthused. "Science, balanced with heart. That's what we need. That's what will get us back to the stars."

M'yu skipped to the last chip. The man was older now, quite a few years older than Aevryn. Smile lines crinkled near his eyes, but tears shimmered there as well. He stepped back from an embrace with a woman with golden hair and bright eyes. "It will be an honor, my Daras," he said, voice thick and smile wobbling, "to meet your great-grandchildren someday."

Daras's lower lip trembled. "I don't understand why you won't just stay, Uncle."

He brushed her hair back from her face, finger tracing over a smaller version of his stone crown. "Because we were not meant to live here forever, my darling."

A tear rolled down her cheek, and she gripped his hand, holding it close to her face. "I'll be strong for you," she swore. "I'll rule well until you return."

"I would expect nothing from my good and smart right hand." He smiled so fondly at her that M'yu's throat tightened. Peitros stepped back, taking a deep breath. He raised his right hand high, and a crowd beyond the frame cheered. Looking back to Daras, he said quietly, "You have the recordings and the AI to guide you."

"You built us up well," Daras said. "Don't worry. We will still be your well-oiled machine upon your return." Her voice cracked, but she nodded at him. "Go, Uncle. Find our Paradise."

A knock came at the door. M'yu startled and popped the holodisplay chip out. "Come in!"

Evriss poked his head into the library. "Prince z'Daras asked me to bring this to you, sir." He crossed the room, a brown wrapped package in his hand. "It's all been washed and dried."

M'yu took the package, gingerly at first, and then unwound the paper from it with increasing urgency. All his clothes were there—his coat with the expertly hidden pockets; his mismatched wool socks; his beanie. His fingers ran over the fabric, eyes misting. "Did... did he say why?"

"He said that it belonged to you, and that it always had. He said he should have let it find its way to you sooner." Evriss offered M'yu a gentle smile. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

M'yu shook his head, the pad of his thumb still tracing the lines in his hat. Evriss nodded and turned to go, but when the old man had made it almost to the door, M'yu called his name. He turned, waiting.

M'yu swallowed. "This is his planet, isn't it? He's supposed to be the Tsar."

Evriss's lip twitched. "If we still had a tsar, sir. If we still had one." Evriss slipped out of the door, and it closed behind him.

M'yu pulled the beanie on his head, but it almost felt too tight now. He wondered how many years it had been too small and he hadn't noticed. Aevryn wanted to take down the Tsaright. Aevryn said he wanted the best for the people, and Aevryn didn't lie.

M'yu looked around at the shelves of books, at the console that Aevryn had hinted M'yu could log into. He had Ruslan's card; he bet almost everything else he'd been searching for was here too.

But the clothes sat warm and clean on M'yu's lap, and he rested in Aevryn's chair in Aevryn's library and closed his eyes, trying to fit together in his mind all the things that Peitros had said. He fell asleep thinking and dreamed of revolutions, of flying through the stars, of building a better world. Science, balanced with heart.