“I have to say our affairs are in good order, more or less,” he pronounced optimistically.
Uni, who had begun to drop off under the influence of the herbal aroma rising from the water, looked up and focused his eyes with great effort on his companion.
“Our enemies have achieved an insignificant tactical advantage, so they feel relaxed. That’s a mistake.” He shook his head. “No, that is not entirely precise. Do you know what their biggest drawback is? They’ll take an overly practical approach to the information they’ve gained.”
“I’m sorry, what do you mean?”
Ronko snorted. “What I mean is that Licisium Dorgoe was born an illiterate peasant, a plebian, and he has remained one even after rising to such an exalted position. Don’t look at me like I’m a snob. Men who rise to great rank after living on the streets tend to think in narrowly practical categories. That’s not surprising. When you are trying to survive, you don’t have time to acquire extraneous knowledge. You have to live and think in the moment. You start to ignore everything that doesn’t have an obvious value to you at that precise moment in time.”
“Do you mean that a well-rounded education is an extravagance?”
“It most certainly is! You have no idea how wasteful education is. You spend years pouring an ocean’s worth of things you don’t need right now into your head just for the pleasure of it, or perhaps with the hope that some of those things might come in useful eventually. As a result, you forget about the most basic things you need to live. You become cut off from the real world. That’s why our greatest wise men never become leaders who determine the fates.”
“Sounds like me,” Uni reflected sadly. “It’s better to accomplish something before pursuing education. What a pity it took me so long to realize it.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. By the time you reach a position of consequence, your mind loses its flexibility. You acquire mental habits that restrict your thinking, whether you like it or not. You only see the things that affect your daily survival.”
“Survival? I thought we were talking about after I achieve the rank.”
“What did you think? That’s when the fighting really gets started. Were you hoping to reach a certain status and then lie around eating grapes for the rest of your life? That’s a dangerous delusion. Here’s how it works: there are never enough profitable positions in society for all the energetic people who would like to occupy them. Once you are a man of status, you spend all your time holding onto that status, and the higher you rise, the harder it gets. There’s no time for education at that point, much less motivation. All you’ll want to do in your free time is relax and give your brain a rest. There are benefits to having status, of course,” and Ronko waved a hand at their surroundings, “but believe me, they lose their appeal when you spend every second of your waking hours worrying about what will happen to you tomorrow!”
“But what about you? Isn’t your life a direct contradiction of everything you’ve just said? You spend so much time in the archive, and you know so many things, but at the same time you are a highly placed advisor at the Emperor’s court. How do you do both?”
“Me? I suppose I’m an exception. First of all, I was lucky enough to be born into a wealthy, aristocratic family with a long lineage. I didn’t have to fight to get a place in the world like Dorgoe did. Second, my position in our complex spiderweb of power is entirely too unique for anyone to take it from me. I’ll tell you my secret recipe for longevity at court: don’t ever try to fill a position that is already open. There will be plenty of other people angling to get the same thing. Make yourself indispensable and create a need that you alone can meet. No one else will ever be able to remove you, try as he might. And third, don’t be so hard on yourself. Your view of the world has plenty of advantages that you can use to your benefit.”
“You’re a better judge than I am, Enel Ronko. The way I see it, I lost. I was outplayed, and there was nothing I could do about it. I also let you down.” Uni sighed sorrowfully.
“It remains to be seen just who outplayed whom,” Ronko said with a laugh as he climbed out of the pool. He stood with his arms out, letting the drops of water roll off his body. A dark-haired Capotian servant girl approached silently, like a cat. She shot a glance at Uni with beautifully lined, almond-shaped eyes before taking a soft cotton towel and drying her master’s body as if it were a fine porcelain statue. Ronko grinned at her, and she lowered her eyes in feigned bashfulness. Uni turned away in discomfort, but Ronko read his mind and dismissed the girl with a movement of his head.
As the master wrapped a towel around his waist, Uni noticed with envy that, although the man had to be close to fifty, he had the muscles and build of a much younger man. Any professional athlete in the imperial circus would have been proud to have his sharply defined pectorals, rock-hard abdomen, and broad shoulders.
From the solid gold table at his side, Ronko took a beautiful goblet shaped like a pair of cupped hands and filled it with wine from a Mustobrim pitcher of hammered metal. Then he sat down companionably on the bench next to Uni.
“Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Remember that. Given the right circumstances, that heap of useless knowledge can be the very weapon that gives you an advantage over your enemies.”
“I’m starting to understand, but I could wait my entire life for that moment and never see it arrive. How do I know what I’ll need and what I won’t need?”
“Do you know what soldiers say? ‘Always carry your sword with you, even if you only happen to need it once.’”
“That’s just a pretty saying. Even the wisest man in the world can’t be a specialist in everything. And how can you even master subjects that don’t interest you? I doubt that kind of knowledge ever comes in useful.”
“I won’t argue with you. Every person must study that which interests him.”
“Exactly. I’m a specialist in ancient languages, and look where it got me.”
“Don’t say that. Dorgoe won’t even know what to do with your report. And you’re one of only two people in the empire who knows Virilan, aren’t you? There you have it. Remember what I said about making yourself irreplaceable?”
Uni blinked.
“You’ll see what I mean soon enough. I just had an idea. It’s simple, but bold. My servants will bring you a fresh robe, and then I want you to come with me to a certain grand event. They may have stolen the report, but you did not jump off that bridge. That’s what matters.”
Chapter 4. Specialist Work
Other than coming to and from work at the archive, Uni had never visited the sprawling palace grounds. The palace was a state within a state, with its own residents, an army (the Imperial Guards) and everything needed to support life (and a comfortable one, at that) for at least two years if cut off from the rest of the world by some hazard. Uni had always been awed by the palace, and he wondered how and why the ancient Emperors had built such grandiose buildings in which people felt like flies trapped in a bottomless marble canyon.
Uni had a realization. “If the ancient architects were trying to demonstrate the Emperor’s power, they achieved almost the opposite. Our lords look just as small and insignificant as the rest of us in a palace built for giants.”
Ronko and his young companion passed through a series of grand halls, each of which was designed to reflect the architectural style of one of the empire’s many regions. There was welcoming Necredancia, imposing Seregad, elegant and simple Ulin, and nine other regions whose former sovereign glory was all but forgotten, recounted only in certain works of history. Even Herandian chronology counted years starting from the founding of the empire (it was