On the second night, Jarun warmed his hands with a cup of the strongest tea the palace kitchens could devise. He stood opposite a polished brass mirror in his quarters, examining the smoothed wrinkles in his uniform tunic, and caught a glimpse of his eyes ringed in dark circles. A low groan escaped him.

The emperor may look tired, he thought, but he is the emperor. Servants, especially imperial pages, must be bright, eager, cheerful... Everything Jarun was not at this late hour.

He drained the last of his tea and set the bone-white cup next to a towering stack of documents that he should have attended to yesterday morning. Instead, he had tried and failed to sleep but only managed to doze off at midday, his mind too full of stories to do otherwise. Those who waited on him in the palace would not need to agree or even understand the delay; he was on the emperor's business.

But for how much longer?

As for himself, there was no further resentment against the emperor which could grow in Jarun's heart that had not already taken root long before.

When the knock came at his door again, he was ready. The corridor and stairs danced once more in candlelight as he ascended to the emperor's quarters, where the same pair of guards met him with stony silence that was only broken by the screeching of the door on iron hinges.

Jarun found the emperor swaddled in darkness, the light of the dying fire barely reaching into the curtains around his bed. The emperor greeted him first with wet coughing, then a bony hand that beckoned him from the shadows. He approached with practiced caution.

"Come, come," the emperor croaked, then further words were lost again to fits.

"My lord?" Jarun said, standing at attention near the side of the bed. The emperor's hand crept once more into the light and snatched a cup of wine from a small table. He gulped down its contents and returned it, breathing heavily. One finger pointed to the elaborate chair where Jarun had sat the night before, catching the failing firelight on long yellowed nails. Jarun seated himself.

"A pleasure to see you again, my boy." As if there was a choice, Jarun thought, but kept it from showing on his face.

"Yes, my lord," Jarun responded instead. "What do you require?"

The emperor laughed, more like a gasp of air from a face half in shadows, half illuminated as a skull.

"Why," he said, "the rest of the story! Much more remains. How can I sleep with so many voices crying out for remembrance? So many voices..."

Jarun straightened slightly in his chair.

"I serve only one," Jarun replied, echoing an oath he had taken in the emperor's presence what seemed like a lifetime ago; well before he knew what that service would mean.

The emperor waited until the last of his coughing subsided.

"Then listen well."