Incarceron

"Well, well," he said.

For each name a series of images blinked rapidly over the page, appearing and disappearing in quick succession, until Attia touched one with her small fingertip and it froze, opening into a full-length picture of a hunchbacked man in a yellow coat that filled the page. When she let go, the pictures rippled again, hundreds of images of the same man, in a street, traveling, talking by a fire, asleep, his whole life catalogued there, his body growing gradually older before their eyes, bending, on a stick now, begging, leprous with some terrible sickness. And then nothing.

Fi

"So how has this Blaize got all this?" Keiro raised his head in sudden shock. "Do you think I'm in here?" Without waiting for an answer he crossed to the shelf marked found a long ladder, and set it against the books, climbing easily up. He began to take the books out and shove them back, impatient.

Attia had crossed to the A section and Gildas was busy reading, so Fi

F and looked for himself.

FIMENON

FIMMA

FIMMIA

FIMOS NEPOS

FINARA

His fingers shook as he turned the page, tracing down until he found it. FINN

He stared at it. There were sixteen Fi

Images rippled. Himself crawling in the white tu

There he was, looking younger, cleaner, his face a mask of fear and tearful determination.

It hurt him to look at it. He tried to turn back, but this was the first image; there was nothing before.

Nothing.

His heart thudded. He scrolled on slowly.

He and Keiro. Images of the Comitatus. Himself fighting, eating, sleeping. Once, laughing. Growing, changing. Losing something. He almost thought he could see it going, the ever-changing images showing himself becoming someone harder, watchful, scowling, always there in the background of Keiro's quarrels and schemes. One image showed him in a fit, and he gazed in horrified disgust at his curled, convulsed body, his contorted face. Quickly he let the pictures run on, almost too fast to see, until he jabbed down and held them still.

The ambush.

He saw himself frozen, half out of the chains, grabbing the Maestra's arm. She must have just realized what a trap she was in; her face was caught in a strange, hurt, almost bruised look, her smile already stiffening.

If there was more he didn't want to see it.

He slapped the book shut, the sound loud in the silent room, making Gildas grunt and

Attia look over.

"Find anything?" she said.

He shrugged. "Nothing I didn't know. What about you?" He noticed she had left the A section and was up among the C's. "Why there?"

"What Blaize said about no Outside. I thought I'd look up Claudia."

He went cold. "And?"

She was holding the book, a big green volume. She closed it quickly and turned, shoving it back into the shelf. "Nothing. He's wrong. She's not in Incarceron."

There was something subdued about her voice, but before he could think about it Keiro's hiss of wrath jerked him around.

"He's got everything about me in here! Everything!"

Fi

"Forget your petty histories." Gildas looked up, his sharp face lit. "Come and read a real book. This is the journal of one Lord Calliston, the one they called the Steel Wolf. He is said to have been the first Prisoner." He turned a page. "It's all here, the Coming of the

Sapienti, the first convicts, the establishment of the New Order. They seem to have been relatively few, and they spoke to the Prison in those days as they spoke to each other."

Now he did sound awed.

They crowded around and saw that the book was smaller than the others and the text truly handwritten, with some scratchy pen. Gildas tapped the page. "The girl was right. They set the Prison up as a place to dump all their problems, but there was a definite hope of creating a perfect society. According to this we should have all been serene philosophers long ago. Look here."

He read aloud, in his rasping voice.

"Everything was prepared for, every eventuality covered. We have nutritious food, free education, medical care better than Outside, now that the Protocol rules there. We have the discipline of the Prison, that invisible being that watches and punishes and rules.

"And yet.

"Things decay. Dissident groups are forming; territory is disputed. Marriages and feuds develop. Already two Sapienti have led their followers away to live in isolation, claiming they fear the murderers and thieves will never change, that a man has been killed, a child attacked. Last week two men came to blows over a woman. The Prison intervened. Since then neither of them has been seen.

"I believe they are dead and that Incarceron has integrated them into its systems.

There was no provision for the death penalty, but the Prison is in charge now. It is thinking for itself"

In the silence Keiro said, "Did they really think it would work?"

After a moment Gildas turned the page. The whisper was loud in the stillness. "It seems so. He is not clear about what went wrong. Perhaps some unpla

He pointed out the words as he read them, and Fi

"... or is it that man contains within himself the seeds of evil? That even if he is placed in a paradise perfectly formed for him he will poison it, slowly, with his own jealousies and desires? I fear it may be that we blame the Prison for our own corruption. And I do not except myself, for I too am one who has killed and looked only to my own gain."

In the vast silent room only motes of dust fell through the slant of light from the roof.

Gildas closed the book. He looked up at Fi

A footstep in dust made them look up. Blaize stood on the gallery that circled the skylight, gazing down at them, his hands tight on the rail.

"You need rest," he said calmly. "Besides, there is no way down from here. Until I decide to take you."

CLAUDIA HAD been meticulous; sca

Finally she had seen Evian and told him to argue about anything. As long as her father remained in the Great Chamber until well past midnight.