A Dark Witness

The Elegiac Empress reigns for a year following the death of the Littoral Prince, during which time four new princes are quickened. At the end of the year, the four sail to the Empress’s grotto, and the survivor of her song becomes the new Prince.

Arkhe lay on his bed as he read the story, one arm thrown behind his head as a pillow, the other holding the leather-bound volume over his head, thumb wedged between the pages.

In the margin beside the story, a different hand had scribbled: And I thought MY singing was bad!

Arkhe grinned, then felt ashamed for grinning, then felt hypocritical for being ashamed. Defacing one of the records was as close as you could get to heresy in here, but Arkhe would be the last to point any fingers. There was a black crevice in the wall of Arkhe’s cell now, wider than his thumb, where he’d worked the volume free: “WORLD 174331v29e61s: Myths and Legends.”

He’d been rather pleased with the find—far more interesting than the usual records he and the other Observants churned out day after day. Volumes and volumes of useless, indiscriminate, undifferentiated facts that didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything, had no use as anything but building material for Observant cells.

Books, books everywhere, everything in here was made of books, but you weren’t allowed to read them. The walls of his tiny, square cell were made of books, wedged and packed tighter than bricks or blocks of stone, their leather-bound spines glittering like fish scales in the swimming light. The frame of his bed was made of books, the walls were books, the ceiling, the floor, the door, the frame of the window. Time-worn titles blurred and swam together across the walls, their words made meaningless by their number.

Someone banged on his door.

“Arkhe!” a muffled voice came from the other side.

Shit, the book. Had to put it back before anyone saw. He grabbed it, found the narrow niche he’d taken it from, and tried to shove it back in. Wouldn’t go. He pushed harder, leaning into it, putting all his weight into it, but no use, the book moved only a finger-breadth and obstinately refused to budge further.

“Arkhe? I can hear you thumping about in there. Open the damn door.”

“Shit,” Arkhe muttered, hung his blanket over the protruding end of the book, staggered to the door, fumbled with the lock and wrenched it open. “Yes?”

A young woman stood in the corridor outside, dressed in the plain, brown, unisex robe of an Observant, her expression a mixture of exasperation and worry. Arkhe sagged slightly in relief. “Clio!” he exclaimed. “What the—what time is it?”

“Past second bell, whatever, not important,” she shrugged dismissively. “Took you long enough. What were you doing in there? Sounded like a boiler having a heart attack.”

Arkhe felt himself grow hot. “Yes, I, well—” but Clio had a hand against his chest and was pushing past him, not listening. He quickly retreated to the bed, leaning one arm against the wall as casually as possible to hide the book still jutting from the wall. “What can I do for my next-door neighbor?”

Clio opened her mouth, closed it, taking in his strange posture. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Aside from being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, you mean? Sound as a bell. Possibly the second. So?”

“I’ve lost it.”

“No argument there.”

“I’m not joking Arkhe,” Clio slapped her thigh sharply. “It’s gone, completely gone.”

“What is?”

“The world, Arkhe. It’s vanished.”

“Aha, I see.” Arkhe nodded sagely. “Well, okay, not really. What do you mean, ‘vanished’?”

“Vanished as in ‘not there.’ Poof. Without a trace. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Hey, hey, happens to the best of us. Just think: Where did you see it last?”

Clio rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and with exaggerated care, slowly explained: “The-Wit-ness-is-blank. Com-plete-ly. Won’t show me anything at all. Everywhere I try to see, all I get is total, utter, impenetrable black. It’s like looking inside your head.”

“Um. Night time?”

“Over the entire world at the same time? Even indoors? Black so complete not even starlight or moonlight illuminates anything?”

The Witnesses were their windows into the hundred thousand Observed Worlds, tools that let the Observant see anywhere or anything they wished to see—they pierced walls and doors as though they were made of air, saw through fogs and cloud and mist, sank into the depths of the ground or the highest reaches of the skies with just a thought. The Observant had merely to sit before the witness, a blank record open before them, pen in hand, focus on what they wished to see—and instantly the desired scene would appear.

The Custodians collected the complete records for storage in the Archive, for Analysts to pore over and categorize, compile and speculate about and for the Disputators to argue over and tear apart. The Villagers bartered with the Archive to borrow these records, analyses and arguments.

In this way, the Witnesses were the foundation upon which the entire Archive was built. Without a Witness, the Observant could not record what happened in each world. Without records, there would be nothing for Analysts to study. Without analyses, nothing for Disputators to dispute. The Custodians would have custody of nothing. They would have nothing to trade to the Villagers in exchange for the food and materials that made their lives possible. The entire system would topple, like a stack of books piled too high.

“Oh. Huh.” This, it seemed to Arkhe, was probably about the best response he could make in the face of such an unprecedented, unimaginable problem. So he said “Huh” again, feeling rather pleased with it. For a little variation, he added a “That’s very…” before rounding it off with a final, conclusive, “Huh.”

“The Custodians are going to kill me,” Clio sank down on the bed next to him, hands clasped in her lap. “They’ll sell me as a servant to the Villagers. What am I going to do?”

“And you came to me for help?” Arkhe clung to that thought like a man drowning, a thin thread of positive amid the flood of disaster.

“A decision I’m already beginning to regret, don’t worry.”

And just like that, the hopeful thread snapped. Arkhe tried to hide his disappointment. His thoughts circled around the central problem like flotsam about a whirlpool. “Just nothing from the get-go, huh?”

“It was even less helpful than you, if you can imagine.”

“Ouch. Well, okay, let’s consider what could’ve happened.” Arkhe scratched his head, trying to stir his thoughts into some kind of useful shape. “What about previous Observations? Any new lights in the sky, getting steadily larger and brighter? Earthquakes and strange vapors in the vicinity of super-massive volcanoes? Long-promised messiahs making sudden reappearances? Global wars involving mega-death weaponry?”

These were no idle questions. The Custodians had assigned Arkhe and Clio to the Eschatology Chapter, and worlds nearing their end were their specialty.

Clio considered a moment, tapping her lower lip with two fingers before shaking her head again. “No-o-o. Well. I mean, there’s a symbiont gestalt race of arachnid chthonic-exemplars called the Accelerants trying to hunt every other intelligent species to extinction, but they hadn’t gotten very far.”

Arkhe blinked rapidly. Having exhausted his stockpile of huh’s, he cast around for something else intelligent to say. “No kidding!”

Clio’s shoulders slumped. “That’s it? Great, thanks for everything Arkhe. Glad we had this chat.” She stood. “Shit. Suppose I had better get this over with and tell the Registrar.”

“Wait,” Arkhe reached out and took hold of the sleeve of her robe, then hastily let go after a flash of irritation on Clio’s face. “Wait, okay, let’s think this through. We’re assuming it’s something wrong with the world, but what if it isn’t? What if the Witness is the problem? Become, I don’t know, untuned, misaligned, unfocused or something?”

“I guess. Never heard of anything like that happening, though.”

“It’s not as though the Custodians ever tell us anything about how they work. For all we know, this happens all the time, and they mend them without telling us. They probably assume it’s all above our heads.”

“Could be,” Clio acknowledged. “Doesn’t sound so crazy. Or maybe I’m just impressed you managed to say something halfway intelligent.”

“Hey, no problem, anytime.”

“Might be worth taking another look at the Witness. Guess we’ll have to just go and see.”

“Sure, have fun.” Arkhe started to wave, then stopped, his ears racing to inform his brain of what she had just said. “We?”

“Come on.” It was Clio’s turn to pull on Arkhe’s sleeve, hauling him to his feet like a fisherman reeling in a catch. “Two pairs of eyes are better than one. Unlikely as it seems, there’s a chance you’ll catch something I miss.”

“Your lack of faith in my abilities is profoundly reassuring,” he muttered, but did not resist. He was, he reminded himself, the one who’d just been complaining about boredom. As he rose, the bed cover slipped from the wall, exposing the outthrust edge of the volume of myths and legends.

“Let’s—what’s that?” Clio’s eyes narrowed.

“Ah. Yeah. It, uh, fell out.”

“Sure it did.” Surprisingly, Clio didn’t seem shocked or offended. Amused, yes, her mouth twitching in a half-seen smile, gone so fast he wasn’t sure he’d imagined it, soon replaced by something else. Calculation.

“Can we go already?” Flustered, Arkhe pointedly marched out of the room and into the hallway.

They walked in silence at first. The hallway was text. The bricks and mortar of the walls, floor and ceiling were tightly-wedged libraries of books, books and yet more books.

“What was that book, Arkhe?” Clio asked him out of the side of her mouth as they walked.

“Nothing. Stories. Just, fantasies, I guess.”

“Fantasies? That explains the strange noises.”

Any protestation would only make himself look more guilty, Arkhe realized. “Yes, yes, there I was, thinking I had to do something to relieve the tedium, not realizing you’d found a way to create a little fun by undermining the foundation of our entire existence.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Hah. It was an Analyst’s collection of myths and legends from one of the Observed Worlds, actually.”

They reached the long, zig-zagging stairs leading up to the Observatories and began to climb. There were fewer people here, in the middle of a sitting between second and third bell, the Observants either already ensconced before their Witness or off-duty, back down in the Chapter. Clio fell silent again, the only sound the slap of feet on the books edging each step. Arkhe looked sidelong at her—her face was thoughtful again, distant.

“Did they have happy endings, these legends?” she asked as they neared the top.

“I don’t know, I only just started. Though the first story was about an Empress who murders three quarters of her children, so I’m not hopeful.”

“Next to the Accelerants, that’s positively domestic—ah, here we are.”

Clio stopped before an outline in the wall. Like the cells, each Observatory was labeled in chalk on slate, this time bearing the number of the world that was its study. Clio looked up and down the hallway, saw no one else, and pressed her palm against the door. It swung inward, smoothly, soundlessly. They slipped inside.

Observatories were built to a common plan, much like the cells. They were hemispherical, their great rounded domes arching twenty feet high. In front of the door was a large writing desk (made of books) and a seat (more books) that rose smoothly from the floor. Both desk and chair faced the center of the dome and the towering bulk of the Witness. In shape, it was like a giant orrery, with a huge brass globe in the center and three multifaceted crystals of varying sizes suspended about the globe’s circumference from curved and swooping armatures rising from the floor. Each crystal burned with an inner light, bleaching the room of color, making everything monochrome. A large volume lay upon the desk, open to a blank page.

Arkhe and Clio took one step towards the desk, then came to an abrupt halt.

Before the desk stood the Registrar.

Like all Custodians, the Registrar was tall and emaciated, dressed in a grey robe and cowl much like the ones worn by Observants. It had an almost featureless sketch for a face, like something drawn from memory or a secondhand description, two narrow black lines for eyes, a vague bump of a nose, a lipless slash of skin for a mouth. Every inch of its papery, dry skin was tattooed in glyphs, dark lines of jagged, spiky characters.

Each Custodian was identifiable from a crest on the hood of their robes. The Registrar’s symbol was an iron portcullis, encircled by a chain. That symbol turned towards them now, lidless, pupiless black-on-black eyes staring at them without expression.

“Observant Clio, you are late for this sitting.” The Registrar’s voice was as parched as its skin. “Observant Arkhe, your presence is not required.”

Arkhe and Clio exchanged glances. Arkhe made an after-you gesture. Clio muttered an expletive to herself, squared her shoulders, and said: “Yes, Registrar, there is a problem with the Witness.”

“A problem?” There was no curiosity, apprehension or anger in its voice.

“Yes, it, ah, damn, here we go again. Perhaps it would be easier if I just showed you.” Clio sat on the chair that extruded from the floor and placed both hands on the desk. A narrow line appeared between her eyes as she frowned in concentration.

The Witness thundered to life. The armatures rumbled and swung about the globe. The crystals at the end of each armature blazed into sudden, searing light, turning the surface of the central bronze globe first white, then burning it from view, washing it out in intense brilliance.

From the heart of this nova fire, images appeared. Arkhe, squinting, made out what appeared to be four massive spider-things, each slightly different—one furred, another bloated and cratered with round scars, yet another winged, the last spikey and horned—though all of them had twice as many eyes and about three times more legs than he was comfortable with.

“No,” Clio whispered. “No, it can’t, this is…”

“Yes, Observant Clio? What is it that concerns you?”

“This is wrong. Wrong.”

Arkhe thought Clio seemed oddly distressed for someone who’d just discovered that their world was not, in fact, in danger of collapsing and was instead happily continuing along exactly as it should have been, as it always had been. Which granted, was depressing in its own way, but hardly a cataclysm.

“I see no cause for concern, Observant Clio.” The Registrar managed to appear at once both irritated and impatient without the benefit of any facial expression.

“Before it wouldn’t, didn’t,” she twisted towards Arkhe. “It’s the truth, you have to believe me.”

Clio’s story had struck Arkhe as incredibly unlikely, which strangely made him believe it all the more. If you had to invent some hypothetical problem to drag another Observant halfway across the Archive in the middle of the night, surely there were more plausible stories you could have invented. Clio had never seemed especially excitable or eccentric, and besides, as a fellow Observant he felt he owed it to her to take her at her word, just on principle.

Whether or not he could say that under the Registrar’s intense, unblinking gaze was something else, though. He had nothing to support Clio’s other than instinct, stacked against the evidence of their own eyes.

“He’s right, Clio, looks fine to me.” Arkhe tried to soften the blow by giving Clio’s shoulder a quick, supportive squeeze before he turned to go. “I’ll let you get on with it. Catch up with you later and you can tell me all about it.”

He threw her a wink from the doorway. See old fish-eyes try that.

As the door swung closed, Arkhe’s last impression was of a razor-spined spider the size of an elephant, looking right at him.

* * *

The Elegiac Empress reigns for a year following the death of the Littoral Prince, until a new Prince is birthed by the living sea. At the end of the year the full-grown Prince sails to the Empress’s grotto to consume her and learn her song.

Arkhe stopped, frowning. Hadn’t he already read this one? It was familiar, but no, somehow wrong. Different. He flipped back through the pages, and yes, there it was: The Elegiac Empress reigns … only this time there were four princes, not one, and there was no mention of the ‘living sea.’ He checked the chapter titles: The first was labeled ‘Narrative Tradition I: The Elegiac Empress and Castration Anxiety,’ the second, ‘Narrative Tradition II: The Elegiac Empress as Vorarephilic Fantasy.’

“Vorarephilic?” Arkhe muttered to himself. “That’s a mouthful.”

Arkhe closed the book and pushed it back into the wall, wiggling it back and forth to ease it in. He felt oddly dissatisfied. How could you have a legend about such an important and powerful person, yet not have any agreement about what she actually did or how she died? What was the truth, what were the facts, who was she and what did she do? Someone had to know.

He’d ask Clio, but she had been avoiding him since that night she had come to his cell. Hurt, he figured, by his failure to stand up for her, or maybe the Custodians were keeping them apart.

He wondered if somebody was still observing world 174331, the world whose inhabitants had thought up the Elegiac Empress. Probably. It was only down here in the Eschatology Chapter that worlds went into terminal decline until they were finally and forever dead.

Speaking of which. Arkhe left his cell and with slow and heavy steps went down the corridor, up the long stairs to his assigned Observatory. ‘World 197202’ read the slate. Aion, the Observant from the previous session, was just coming out. He waved, Arkhe nodded in silent greeting, and then pushed his way in, sat on the book-bound stool in front of the book-bound desk and willed the Witness into motion. Light flared. Machinery grumbled and thundered. An image appeared.

There was a mountain of purple and grey stone. As it gained definition, it appeared to wobble. Its outline bobbed up and down in regular rhythm. As the Witness drew closer, it became clear the entire surface of the mountain was covered in millions upon millions of toiling purple and grey figures wielding hammers, pickaxes, shovels and mattocks, chipping and hacking and chopping away at the stone.

Arkhe shifted the view. A different mountain, yet the same scene. A termite swarm of creatures carpeted the surface, eating away at the stone. Rotate the view slightly, to look down at the plains below. From horizon to horizon, a countless number of grey figures clawed and tore at the landscape.

Arkhe puffed his cheeks and blew out a long, slow, weary breath.

This was why world 197202 was the responsibility of the Eschatology Chapter. The Griefs, a race of wakened-empowered silicate trollkin, had exterminated all organic life, and proceeded to declare war on the sea. For the last several centuries they had been quarrying every mountain range in their world in an obsessive attempt to fill every body of water with stone. Day after day, year after year, in an endless procession they took the boulders, stones, pebbles and gravel down to the shore and dumped them into the water.

Which didn’t leave much for the Observant to write about.

Arkhe flipped back through the record, reading the previous entries made by the other Observants. They mostly consisted of increasingly desperate attempts at creatively describing the incredible amounts of nothing in particular that weren’t happening.

Day 35,454: Excavations continue at the customary pace. Mount Fibel no longer the continent’s highest peak, replaced by Mount Enger.

Day 35,455: Brief moment of excitement when a Grief broke its shovel on the slopes of Mount Enger. New shovel obtained. Excitement over. Mount Enger no longer the continent’s highest peak, replaced by Mount Hellaka.

Day 35,456: A Grief fell into Gelter Bay while dumping a load of stone. Much consternation. A full-scale gravel offensive launched against the waves on the beach. The waves appear unintimidated by all the flailing and punching. An hour later, the Grief surfaces, unharmed. Of course. They don’t need air so they can’t drown. Mount Hellaka no longer the continent’s highest peak.

Arkhe wished the Elegiac Empress would pop over to this world and eat the whole pebble-brained lot of them.

Daydreaming of her burning eyes and floating rainbow hair, Arkhe began to write, a random scrawl, mindlessly copying what he’d just read: Day 35,457: A Grief broke its shovel on the slopes of Mount Hellaka.

From the Witness came a sudden, splintering crunch of stone, and then silence as the horde of Griefs ceased digging. The thunderous clap of nothing jolted Arkhe from his reverie. His head snapped up and the pen slipped from his fingers. He stared.

On the slopes of Mount Hellaka, the Griefs had formed a silent circle about one of their number, who held up two pieces of a broken shovel.

Arkhe looked down at what he’d just written, back up at the Witness, down, up, blinked, a quick shake of his head to clear his vision, looked down, looked up.

“Did I…” he said out loud.

It could be a coincidence, Arkhe told himself. Perhaps they were breaking tools all the time. Quarrying mountain stone wasn’t the easiest work in the world. Must be a lot of wear and tear involved. Or. Or—something else.

Arkhe shifted the Witness to view Gelter Bay. A long, snaking funerary cortege of Griefs approached the lapping waves along the beach, each one carrying an armload of stone. One by one, the Griefs waded knee-deep into the waves, and hurled their cargo into the water. A shower of pebbles, stones and boulders splashed down and sank. The Grief waded back to shore, replaced by the next in line.

Arkhe wet his lips with his tongue. What if, he thought, what if. He picked up the pen again. Set the tip to the open book. Took a breath. Started to write again: A Grief fell into Gelter Bay.

The next Grief slipped, fell backwards, splashed, and disappeared under the water.

“Shee-yit,” Arkhe whispered. “Shit, and shit, but also shit.”

This wasn’t how it worked. He’d been told this wasn’t how it worked. For as long as he could remember, this wasn’t how it had worked. They recorded history; they didn’t make it. And yet.

Arkhe waited for the Griefs to charge into the water and try to pound the waves into submission, just as they had in the previous entry. He waited. He waited a little more. The Griefs stood by, placid and patient, looking out to the sea expectantly. Finally, their missing companion arose, water waterfalling from his back, and it sloshed and splashed back to shore. The caravan of hand-tossed rock started up again.

“They remembered. They knew what would happen because this wasn’t the first time,” Arkhe reasoned aloud to himself. “So, it isn’t a one-way relationship, everything obeys normal cause-and-effect unless I write something in the book.”

The course of events could be altered. Rewritten. The Observants were not just passive observers. He had to tell somebody. Not the Custodians, of course, there was no conceivable way they didn’t know what the Witness could do, the power it had. Which meant they had lied to Arkhe, to every Observant, to single inhabitant of the Archive for as long as this place had existed.

He knew who he had to talk to.

Arkhe sprang from the seat when the bell rang, letting the pen roll across the desk and tumble to the floor. He shouldered the door open. Jerked back when a gray wall appeared in front of him.

The Registrar stood directly before the door.

“Observant Arkhe,” it said.

“Oh, hey. Hi.” Arkhe reached for nonchalance. “So. Um. How are you?”

“The Observation was satisfactory?”

The Custodians never asked if you were doing your job, they just assumed. It knew, it knew, Arkhe didn’t know how, but it knew. Maybe they could sense when you changed things. Or maybe he was being paranoid. “Oh, sure, you know. Lots of rocks, and, and … stuff.”

They stood in silence for an agonizingly long time. Arkhe fought down his impatience, clasped his hands tightly behind his back. Imagined he was driving his feet straight through the floor. If the Custodian had something to say, let it speak.

“It is Observant Clio,” the Registrar said finally.

“Haha, yeah,” Arkhe gasped in relief. It didn’t know. It wasn’t him. It was Clio! Whew, what a relief—wait a moment. He caught himself, cautious again. “Um, I mean, what is?”

“She begins to lose sight of our proper and correct mission. She has taken to flights of strange fantasy, rather than focusing on the task at hand. We have spoken to her, but you are a companion and confidant. Such words may carry more weight from you. Remind her of her duty, Observant Arkhe. It would be most … unfortunate if she were to fall into error.”

“It would? Oh, sure. Yes. It would.”

“Come.”

The Registrar stalked jerkily away, leaving Arkhe to scrabble after it. His skin prickled and not because of cold. There had been a threat. A clear, unmistakable threat.

He thought they were heading back towards the Observant cells at first, but the Registrar kept going past the stairs. They passed Observatories to either side. Observants leaving their sessions hurried past, eyes downcast, eager to avoid the Registrar’s attention.

“Do you understand the importance of what we do, Observant Arkhe?”

At that moment, Arkhe was entirely sure that no, he absolutely did not. Not the real reason anyway. But he would play along. “I mean, it’s a job, I do this in exchange for food and a place to sleep. I guess.”

“It matters that somebody is watching their lives. It matters that events are witnessed. It gives their lives meaning. That is what we do here. Through observation, analysis and disputation, we create meaning. We see the order in the chaotic lives of the millions we Observe. We find the truth. Which is why it is important that we get it right. Otherwise our records are lies. The truths we find will become falsehoods.”

Which truths, though? Which falsehoods? They must have passed over a hundred rooms by now, Arkhe thought. It sounded like a lot, until you read a book of myths and legends and realized how narrow a range that really was, next to the near-infinite array of possibilities. What was the truth of the Elegiac Empress, if you read only one version of her story?

“That would be a terrible thing,” Arkhe said, guardedly, dutifully.

“It would.” The Registrar halted in front of an Observatory.

Arkhe glanced at the slate, just visible beyond the Registrar’s elbow. The number on the slate was 174331. The world of the Elegiac Empress.

“You would like to know the truth, wouldn’t you, Observant Arkhe?”

Arkhe nodded, mute. He understood the knowledge that number implied. And the trade being offered.

“The truth is important. Ensure that Observant Clio understands this.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

* * *

The dining hall—or more properly halls, plural—were a series of long, windowless, rectangular rooms with high ceilings, filled from end to end with rows of tables and benches, all formed from books. There was a constant stream of Observants pouring in or flowing out at the start or end of their shifts, noisily tipping food back down their gullets, their loud conversations drowning out most attempts at thought or contemplation.

A kitchen and serving counter filled the far end of each hall, staffed by Villagers. They were like a smaller, less threatening version of the Custodians, similarly grey-skinned and flat-featured, but lacking the text-tattoos or heavy cowls. Verbose where the Custodians were taciturn, the Villagers chatted endlessly to one another as they stoked fires, stirred great steaming vats of stew and soup, ladled out bowls to waiting lines of Observants, Analysts and Disputators.

“Did you see what the Accelerants have been…”

“…what comes of letting a colony of spiders decide…”

“Thank goodness we have the Custodians too keep things in line…”

The Observants paid no attention to their inane chatter. It was all either about obscure trivia from this or that world, or extolling the supposed virtues of the Custodians. Either way, they talked a lot about very little, was the generally accepted view.

Arkhe accepted a bowl of something lumpy and brown with a nod of thanks, turned around and scanned the crowd. A Custodian prowled the aisles between benches, keeping watch, never speaking.

Arkhe found Clio in a corner of one hall, far from both the kitchen and the other Observants. He felt the Custodian’s eyes on his back as he wandered over to her table.

He set down his bowl and dropped into the seat opposite with a grin and hello. Clio looked up, returned her attention to her food and kept spooning up stew. 

“Hey,” Arkhe tried.

Clio snorted a dismissive breath without looking up.

“Look, I couldn’t say anything, not with the Registrar there.”

She slowly raised her spoon, took a long and noisy slurp.

“Look, I was wrong, and I know it,” Arkhe tried again, leaning forward over the table. “For sure. I got proof. Clio, will you listen to me? You remember the other day, you said the murder-spider world place was wrong? Well, I figured it out.”

Clio put down her spoon and regarded him, her face flat and expressionless. “You did.”

“Yes,” he pressed on, undaunted, voice a conspiratorial whisper. “You’re not going to believe this.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Try me.”

“It sounds crazy when I say it, but here it is: If you write something that didn’t actually happen in the record, it actually happens for real in the actual world. Actually. Pretty wild, huh?”

Clio nodded once, twice, slowly. “I know.”

“So I bet that’s what happened with your spider world, somebody changed what—” Arkhe stopped. “What. The. ‘I know,’ she says, all casual. ‘Oh, you can manipulate reality just by writing in a book? Big whoopie.’ And how, pray tell, could you possibly know?”

“How do you think? Because I did it. I changed the spider world.”

Arkhe sat back in his seat. “You what?”

“Well, it was so damned depressing,” Clio shrugged defensively. “All they do is hunt and kill things. Once they kill everything, they’re just going to die out. So I thought, what if some of them developed a conscience? You know. Started to empathize with their prey.”

She sighed sadly.

“Then the whole thing went blank, and when it came back, they were back the way they’d always been, mindless, murderous hunters. I’ve been thinking, and I think I know what happened. I think that’s why the world went black that one time: They erased what I’d done. Reset time, went back and rewrote it.”

“They? The Custodians?”

“Had to be. Do you see? It’s even bigger than what you think you’ve discovered. Not only can you change what is happening, you can go back and erase the past.”

Arkhe whistled, quiet and low. “That puts things in perspective.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the Registrar told me to talk to you about what it is that we’re supposed to be doing here. You know, add nothing, omit nothing, change nothing. You remember?”

“What’s the point of being honest and accurate if it’s killing them?” Clio snorted. “We’re in the Eschatology Chapter, Arkhe. If nothing changes, they’re all going to die. The Witness proves that any supposed honesty and accuracy is a lie, anyway. There’s no unalterable fate or destiny for any of these people on any of these worlds. They’re all puppets, playthings. It’s just us.”

“Not true,” Arkhe objected. “They don’t just stand around waiting for me to give them orders.”

“Why are they even there in the first place? They are reacting to a chain of events, but who started that chain? Whose worlds are they?”

“Clio,” Arkhe said, warningly, “I’ve asked the same questions myself, but you’ve got to let it drop. They know. The Custodians know what you’re doing, or what you want to do, and they warned me to make you stop.”

It was Clio’s turn to lean forward. “Doesn’t that raise any questions, to you? Why lie about it? Why pretend this is all purely factual, some kind of inevitable consequence of the way the worlds are? How do the Custodians benefit?”

A shadow passed across the table. Arkhe looked up, and saw the Custodian walking behind Clio’s chair. Arkhe smiled at it, innocently. It paused. Arkhe smiled so hard at it, his jaw ached. Clio frowned at his rictus grin and was about to speak when she followed his gaze, twisted around. Bobbed her head, quickly turned back. After a long moment, the Custodian moved on.

“See?” Arkhe whispered fiercely.

“So what? Aren’t you curious?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Don’t you want to know the truth?”

“But…” But the Elegiac Empress, he thought.

“Why these worlds, and no others? Why pretend at objectivity? Has to be a reason. We just have to figure out how to find it.”

Arkhe sighed. He had, he reminded himself, sat down with the intention to prevent precisely this kind of thinking. The problem was, this was exactly the question he’d first asked, right there at the beginning. “I…” he began. “I’m going to regret this.” Was he really going to do this? He was, wasn’t he. Goodbye, Empress. “I’ve thought about this, a lot. And I know where to look.”

“Where?”

“The Archive.”

* * *

There is debate among inhabitants of civilizations that have inherited traditions regarding the Elegiac Empress as to whether she was a historical figure (or figures), pure myth or some combination of the two. Her close ties to themes of authority, grief, loneliness and cannibalistic parricide or infanticide suggest that she may have served as a kind of object lesson or warning about the dangers of autocracy.

The Archive was not only the metaphorical foundation of their lives, it was the physical one as well. Down, down beneath the Observant Cells, burrowed into the rock the great, sprawling edifice rested upon, there you found the labyrinthian catacombs that housed the Archive.

There were no guards, no signs or gates or barriers at the entrance to the Archive. A few Villagers wandered in and out, some with records or analyses tucked under their arms, giving Arkhe and Clio mildly curious glances, but otherwise paying them no attention. In contrast to their normal chatter, here the Villagers were mausoleum-silent.

They stepped beyond the threshold, and stopped. Arkhe whistled, long and low.

To either side stood row after row of virtually identical shelves, disappearing into infinity, like the optical illusion produced by facing mirrors. A few scattered stepladders leaned against the shelves. In front of Arkhe and Clio was a kind of balcony that looked out over a narrow canyon running the width of the Archive, a stone’s-throw wide. On the opposite side of the gap was another balcony, more shelves and books.

Arkhe leaned out over the edge of the railing and looked up. There was another level above, and another above that, then another and another, shrinking with distance until after about a dozen they ceased to be visually distinguishable, running together until they disappeared into the unseen heights. He looked down and his head swam with vertigo. More levels, descending into eternity.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Clio spoke in a whisper. It was hard not to, in this place. The weight of all the stored histories pressed down on the air, all the long-dead and vanished people contained within their pages seemed to demand silence and respect.

“The beginning.”

“Where do we find it, and if you say ‘at the start’ I’m pushing you over the railing.”

Arkhe grinned. She knew him too well. “No idea,” he said cheerfully, instead. “I’ve never heard of any Observant ever coming down here, so I’ve no idea how anything is organized. Are the year zero records at the top or the bottom? Could be either, but I bet you they’re at the bottom. Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

“I have a better idea,” Clio tutted. She silenced Arkhe’s puzzled face with a raised finger: Wait. Presently, the soft tread of footsteps approached. One of the Villagers was toddling down the aisle towards them, a stack of books nearly higher than its head braced against its chest and clamped firmly between its arms.

Clio stepped out in front of it, “Excuse m—ow!”

The two collided, sending the books spilling in a flapping waterfall of ink and parchment.

“Gah, watch where you’re—oh, hullo. Are you Observants?”

Clio and Arkhe bent to help the Villager pick up its load. “We are,” Clio nodded, handing it the last book. “Could we ask you some questions?”

“Ooh, Observants. How grand!”

“A real dream come true,” Arkhe muttered. Clio elbowed him.

“Which world are you in charge of then?”

Clio and Arkhe exchanged glances and shrugs. What harm could it do?

“Er, 197202,” said Arkhe.

The Villager nodded sagely. “Lovely, lovely. Yes, that’s one of my favorites.”

“It is?” Arkhe laughed, then stopped when he saw it was serious. “For goodness sake, why? Nothing ever happens.”

“Yes, I know, I know,” it beamed. “Very calming and reassuring.”

“Reassuring? Nothing ever happens because everything’s dead.”

“Well, that’s just the way it is sometimes, you know?” the Villager said slightly huffily. Its good humor had evaporated. “That’s life. It’s reassuring to know how much better we have it.”

“It certainly is,” said Clio quickly, throwing Arkhe a warning glare to keep quiet. “In fact, we’re also so incredibly interested in that fascinating and, ah, reassuring world that we’d like to read the first-ever book written about it. Do you know where they’re kept?”

The Villager contrived to glare at Arkhe before pointedly turning to address Clio: “Inaugural editions? Why, of course I know where they are. I’d be happy to show you, but, well, you know.” It tilted its head significantly towards the pile of books pinioned in its hands.

“Arkhe.”

He stifled a groan. Dutifully, he held out his hands and said mechanically: “Why don’t I take those for you?”

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“I insis—toof” The Villager half-tossed the books into his arms.

“This way!” it said brightly, taking Clio by the arm.

Arkhe made a face at its back. Clio rolled her eyes at him over her shoulder, and mouthed B-E N-I-C-E. Arkhe batted his eyes innocently.

They went up, eliciting a told-you-so look from Clio to Arkhe. He hung his head in defeat and trudged up the stair after them, arms already beginning to ache, breath coming in heaving gasps. For something that existed purely in the mind, the past had a surprising weight. The Villager took no notice of his labored breathing, blithely nattering along as they walked, narrating each turn of their path.

“It’s all organized by Chapter, you see,” it was explaining. “Eschatology this way, Etiology over there.”

“What other Chapters are there?” Clio asked.

“Oh, there’s lots. Gosh. The Etiology Chapter, the Polemology Chapter, the Autocracy, Kakistocracy and Entropic Chapters…”

“Polemology?”

“Oh, yes, that’s another one of my favorites. Worlds that are in a constant state of unending war, you see. Jolly exciting.”

“Has there ever been a war in the Village?”

“Oh ho, no, why, the very thought. No, the Custodians would make sure that never happens. That’s why it’s so interesting to read about though, you see. It reminds us how lucky we are.”

The damn thing was lucky his arms were full, Arkhe thought sweatily, as each step increasingly tempted him to visit a short, sharp lesson in polemology on their guide. Be nice, he reminded himself. Be nice to the prattling little … no, no. He gritted his teeth. Be nice.

“Top floor, inaugural editions!” The Villager proclaimed after an hour of climbing.

“We can’t thank you enough,” said Clio with a smile and a pat on its arm.

“Ta,” added Arkhe, pushing the pile of books against its chest and letting go. There was a brief squawk and the Villager fell over backwards and lay under a kind of cairn of records, entombed within its tomes.

“Arkhe!” Clio hissed, helping it extract itself. Arkhe paid no notice of either her or the Villager’s muffled squawks. He wandered among the shelves, trailing his fingers along the spines, mesmerized.

The bookshelves were different here, set right into the grey stone of the bedrock, rather than being composed of books as on other floors. The bindings on each codex were different too, smooth and grey rather than the burnished wood or stippled leather of other volumes. They were clamped shut with black iron clasps. The floor was as quiet as a tomb.

Numbers in gold ran down their flat spines, numbers so small he’d almost forgotten they existed. Volume 1, Edition 1, 2, 3 … Arkhe was surprised to see that many series abruptly cut off, without even enough records to fill an entire shelf.

“Arkhe, over here,” Clio called.

He wandered back down the sepulcher alleys between tombstone volumes, and found Clio and the Villager standing by one of the shelves. The Villager huffed and looked away. Clio held a thick, grey codex in two hands.

“Here it is,” said Clio, handing the book to Arkhe, “the first record ever written about your world.”

He read the title: ‘World 197202v01e01.’ He snapped back the heavy clasps and opened it to the first page. It was dense with black-ink glyphs in a language Arkhe could not read, but instantly recognized. He’d seen it virtually every day. It was the language stamped on every Custodian’s skin.

Arkhe held the book vertically, pages open, and turned it towards the Villager. “Can you read this?”

“Of course.”

Arkhe crossed his eyes and looked at Clio. She rested a hand on the Villager’s shoulder, and asked: “Please?”

“Oh, very well,” it said. “The first line goes like this: ‘… and then they held conclave, and declared that they were the only things truly alive, and all others were a false life and must be destroyed.’ Is that enough?”

Arkhe frowned. “The first two words of the record are ‘and then’? I thought this was the first volume.”

“It is.”

“How can it start with a conjunction then?”

Clio tapped the Villager’s skin. “Think, Arkhe, where else have we seen this kind of writing?” she said.

“That’s right,” nodded the Villager. “That’s how the Custodians were first chosen. It’s one of our most famous legends, don’t you know? The ones who made the first stories, true stories, had them written on their skins so everyone would recognize them. Then we built this place for them to continue their work.”

Arkhe nodded, snapped the book shut. He’d heard enough. The worlds were chosen then, carefully selected. Eschatology, polemology, autocracy and entropy, there was a common theme there. There was a certain kind of cold logic at work. A mind, or set of minds, that saw value in destruction, in war and killing, in the lessons others would take from watching or reading about destruction, war and killing. The kind of world they would create, after watching or reading about those stories.

“Fear,” he said at last to Clio. “Fear and control. It’s all about these people, the Villagers, not us, not the worlds themselves. The worlds are just a tool, something the Custodians made up, like a, like a myth or a legend. The Custodians show the Villagers a small slice of possibility, and say ‘This is life.’ Life is hard and cruel and dangerous and the Villagers need the Custodians to keep everything peaceful and controlled and in order.”

Clio nodded sadly. “And the villagers can’t imagine anything else, because as far as they know, nothing else exists.”

Arkhe looked down at the heavy book in his hands, thinking of the deliberate and deadly winnowing it represented, the careful culling of any reality which did not fit the Custodians’ needs. “What do we do?”

“We’ll tell the other Observants, of course,” Clio said immediately. “There are enough of us. If we all refuse to keep observing, or if we change the worlds for the better, there’s nothing the Custodians can do.”

“Disappointing.”

The Villager let out a surprised squeal at the sudden sound and jumped behind Clio. Arkhe’s shoulders slumped. He should have known. They both should have known. He looked at Clio helplessly, and turned around.

There were a dozen Custodians there. The Registrar, the Steward, all the others, completely filling the corridor between the shelves.

“Thank you, you may go,” the Registrar said, looking at the Villager.

“I, ah. Yes, right. So. I’ll, ah, just be going then.” The Villager edged away from Clio and Arkhe, turned sideways to squeeze between the Custodians. It briefly hesitated beside the discarded stack of books it had been carrying, half-crouched, thought better of the idea, and scurried away into the darkness.

“I guess we’ll be heading back, too,” said Arkhe breezily.

“No.”

“Yeah, no. Didn’t think so.”

“Not in the way that you mean.”

“Is there some other way?” Clio asked.

“Yes. Come.”

Arkhe and Clio did not move. There was no way past the Custodians, no other way out other than over the balcony and straight out into the abyss. He reached for her hand, and she clasped it.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Come, do not be obstinate. We have no weapons, we will not harm you, but you cannot remain here in the Archive. Not if you resist our purpose. We will take you to the place you belong. Come.”

The Custodians flowed forward and closed around the two, their grey forms making grey bars lining the small square of their cell. There was nothing to do but follow where they led. Arkhe and Clio followed.

The Custodians set a slow and measured pace, looking neither left or right. As though they had all the time in the world. All the Villagers had gone. The halls were empty. The silent procession retracted their steps, back through the curated, carefully crafted past of a thousand worlds, down sedimentary layers, past people and places and things left where the tides of an imposed history had deposited them.

“Do they even exist?” Arkhe broke the silence, nodding at the shelves. “Or is it all just an illusion?”

“You continue to ask questions, Observant. From the first, we feared this might be your undoing. Your curiosity and her empathy. An unfortunate combination. As to your question, they are real. They are as real as you are. After all, where do you think you came from?”

“From one of those worlds?” Clio gasped.

“Of course.”

“If they are real, then you could make their lives better, you have the power, but you don’t use it.”

“Our purpose is not to coddle with lies, but to expose the truth. Enough. It is clear no punishment will deter you, therefore, your time with us is at an end. You will … be returned.”

“But there are other worlds?” Arkhe pressed. “Ones you don’t observe?”

“It is a meaningless question. There are an infinite number of other possible worlds. None of them exist in any sense that matters to us, because we do not observe them, and therefore they do not matter. One cannot lament the absence of that which does not exist.”

“They could though, if you wanted them to.”

“Enough.”

They led up and up, back through the Observant Cells and dining halls, where they drew nervous stares, then up still further, winding back and forth, higher and higher, until they finally led Arkhe and Clio into the Observatory. The other Custodians remained outside, only the Registrar went in. As they passed the door, Arkhe noted the slate hung outside had been wiped clean of its number.

“Stand here,” said the Registrar, motioning to a spot in front of the Witness. “This will be over shortly.”

An image flared in the Witness. Somewhere dank and dark, like a cavern but wet, glistening, bony ridges running up the walls.

“Arkhe, this is—” Clio said, her grip on Arkhe’s hand turning to iron.

In the center of the view stood a monstrosity with two dozen legs, stalactite fangs and star-flecked black eyes.

“—they’re not taking us home—”

The Registrar held the book open in one hand, the pen in the other.

“Run, Arkhe,” Clio began backing away, tugging Arkhe off-balance.

“It isn’t so scary. Look at it. It can’t hurt us.”

“How did we get here, Arkhe? They pulled us through the Witness. If they can do that, then they can…”

Something approached the lens of the Witness, growing larger and larger until it blotted out the view, so large no features or form could be made out. The surface of the Witness crackled, wavered, like distortions in hot desert sand. A long, slender knife-bladed tine came through the ripples and touched the floor, almost daintily. It was joined by half a dozen more. Then the Accelerant hunter heaved its body through interface between worlds and into the Archive. Its spines scraped the roof and venom dripped from its fangs.

One scythe limb snapped forward just as Clio tugged Arkhe completely off his feet, sending them both crashing into the Observatory door. The blade of the limb sliced the air over their heads, into the door and wall behind them, then carved a long, smooth horizontal line straight through the book-bricks from one side of the room to the other that bled vellum and parchment. The bottom half of the wall thumped outwards.

They scrambled. Clio rolled and rolled under the shorn-away wall, out into the corridor beyond. Arkhe crawled, glanced up, saw the axe-blade of a foot rearing above him, then come plunging down towards his head. He twisted sideways and the foot pierced through the floor. When it reared up again there was a jagged hole straight down to the Observatory below. A shocked voice from below cried “—ow my head—” and then Arkhe was on his knees and lunging through the gap beneath the door.

The Custodians were gathered about Clio, trying to pin her down, she was kicking and screaming and had one hand about the Enumerator’s throat. Arkhe lowered his head and charged into the knot of bodies, bowling the stick-thin Custodians aside, carrying Clio free to the other side. The Steward clung to his leg and dragged him to a halt until Clio lashed out with a foot and snapped its head back and broke its grip.

Arm in arm, they staggered away from the Observatory, down the hall, and then the battering ram form of the Accelerant crashed through the wall behind them. It paused, reoriented, skittered about on its legs. Arkhe and Clio ran.

They skidded around a corner and there was a pulse of air that kicked them in the back and sent them sprawling forward and a great bulky shape slammed into the wall, crashing straight through it in a tangle of needle-point feet.

“We can’t outrun it,” Clio gasped as she hauled Arkhe to his feet.

“Need help,” Arkhe agreed. They sprinted again.

Behind them, the Accelerant extricated itself from the ruin of the wall. It sprang back down the corridor and charged.

“Who?”

“Know somebody. Know of somebody.” They were still sprinting past Observatories. Arkhe tried to read the numbers as they sped past. No, not yet, getting there, not yet, where was it, where was the damned room.

“Help against that?”

“She’d help against anything, I bet.”

The Accelerant was gaining on them. Growing louder and louder. There. He found it: World 174331. “In here.”

Arkhe shouldered the door open and they plunged inside. Arkhe slammed the door shut. The Witness cracked and hummed. A world of iron grey water and snow-dusted mountains swam in the central globe. The Observant, Sige, twisted around, puzzled, not yet alarmed. “Yes?”

Arkhe lunged forward ripped the pen from Sige’s hand. “Hey!”

Arkhe set the pen to paper. Hesitated. “You’re going to want to plug your ears.”

Sige was getting angry. “What the—"

The door thudded. Metal fittings protested weakly. Another blow deformed the book-brick door, and a long bony scythe pierced the center. It sawed back and forth, enlarging the hole, spraying shredded scraps of paper and leather into the room.

“—hell is that?!”

Clio grabbed at the paper, tore and crumpled it into two balls and stuffed them into her ears, then handed two more to Sige. “I’d do it,” she yelled over the rending, tearing sounds.

Sige hesitated. Another claw reached for the rim of the hole, and another, and another, and they were pulling the door apart, ripping it away from its hinges. Sige gulped, stuffed the paper into her ears.

Arkhe didn’t look. He bent over the book. He prayed it would work. He wrote: The Elegiac Empress stepped through the Witness.

The door burst in a final spray of wadded parchment. The thing lunged inside. Impossibly huge, spiked and bony and hungry.

Everything went dark. Utter nightmare black, blacker than the bottom of an infinite abyss.

A soft glow came from the Witness, growing steadily stronger and brighter, made of every shimmering color and no color at all. The light limned the frozen figures of Clio and Sige, crouched on the floor, of Arkhe, still poised over the desk, of the Accelerant hunter, rearing, ready to strike. The light illuminated them and pinned them in place.

She came.

Floating on graceful, translucent butterfly wings, delicate and shiny and deadly, she came. Her four eyes were golden fires, and her mouth was filled with a thousand needle teeth. A shrill, keening, ear-clawing, nerve-sawing sound came from between those teeth.

Arkhe dropped the pen and clapped his hands over his ears. Too late. Far too late. Her song was turning him inside out, sucking his heart out through his throat, reeling him in like a fish on a line. His life was being slowly pulled out of him. There he was reading alone in his cell and there he was sitting and staring at the Witness alone, there he was eating in the dining hall alone, there he was dreaming alone, no friends, no family, no home, alone, always alone, he would forever be alone. Arkhe curled on the floor and wept. He cried like the tide coming in, great breaking waves of misery that rose only higher and higher.

He didn’t see the Accelerant quiver, twitch, curl its many legs in on itself in a tight ball as though trying to slip through the gaps in the air and disappear. Dark purple blood oozed from the cracks in its keratinous hide and pooled on the floor beneath it.

He didn’t see the Registrar, the Steward and the other Custodians waiting outside stand rigid- and still, then crack in orange-white lines, shrivel like paper in a furnace, blacken and finally flake into dust.

He couldn’t see anything but the great pit of nothing yawning inside himself, like a hole in the world. A black and lifeless witness. He fell towards it.

“You poor thing,” Clio said.

The song quietened, softened to a fingernail screech. Enough for Arkhe to force open his gummed eyes, knuckle away the tears and bring the room into streaky, blurred focus. Clio stood before the Elegiac Empress, looking up at her, floating just above her head. Arkhe wanted to shout a warning, get away, run away, but his jaw wouldn’t work, sound lodged in his throat like a fist. Clio reached up a hand, and gently stroked the Empress’s face.

“Abandoned by all those sons and lovers and husbands,” Clio murmured. “You must have been so lonely.”

The Empress grew quiet, stilled her song. The only sound was the lethargic beat of her impossible wings. The Empress floated lower, lower, down towards Clio, so close her wings caressed Clio’s shoulders. The wings cocooned around Clio, enshrouding them.

Arkhe got to his knees, agonizingly crawled towards them. Had to stop this. His fault. No other way but. Had to undo this. He bumped against Sige, still sitting transfixed on the floor. “Help,” Arkhe croaked. “Help her.”

Sige nodded numbly, rose to her feet in a trance and reached for the wings curled about Clio. At her touch, the delicate, glasslike material cracked and broke away. Sige reached again, and another hand-sized piece snapped free. Arkhe joined her, together they began to tear away at the shrouded wings, ripping away with both hands, faster and faster, fearing they were already too late. Arkhe wrenched a slab away from Clio’s neck, then her head. Clio’s eyes were closed, her face unmoving.

Arkhe dropped his useless hands. Felt his legs give out and thump him back to the floor again. He sat there looking up at Clio for a long time. She remained locked upright, held in place by the brittle, grey and flaking shell that had once been the Elegiac Empress. He couldn’t really see her though, not really. Just a dark shape. There was something at his side. That was Sige. She touched his head and said something. It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

Maybe the Custodians were right. Maybe every world was awful and the only honest thing to do was wallow in that awfulness. Cruelty was the one thing that could not itself be defeated by cruelty. Maybe that was the truth.

Clio opened her eyes. They glowed. Amber. She smiled and stretched her hands above her head and the last wisps of the Empress crumbled and drifted away. She turned towards Arkhe and her feet did not quite touch the floor.

Arkhe stared. Clio looked down, saw the gap between her toes and the floor, and gave a little giggle. “Must’ve been something I ate,” she said.

* * *

Our mission continues under the Elegiac Empress, Arkhe wrote in his journal. We meddle as little as possible, and only after careful consideration, and have agreed never to alter the past. Instead, our Empress has encouraged us to explore softer, more rounded and kindly worlds. I try. It can be hard, but I try.

The Disputators wonder if we merely are granted windows into worlds that already exist, or whether they are created new and afresh from our minds. I think they enjoy debate too much to reach any conclusion, but it puts a useful break on our more irresponsible impulses. Change comes slowly, but it comes.

Arkhe closed the book and lay it on the bed, in a band of morning sunlight now lazily creeping across the room. He watched it, or tried to watch it. Sunlight moved too slow for the human eye until you blinked and it had slipped away. That was fine. He didn’t mind.

There was a knock on the door. Grinning, Arkhe rose to answer it.