He said it without reproach, but the weight of the six years was in it all the same.

I tried to imagine carrying such a thing — a sealed letter containing a man’s whole hidden design, addressed to people who did not yet know they were part of it, waiting for a confluence of a death and an arrival that might never come at all.

Hollis had kept my father’s secret through my father’s funeral, through six years of my running the empire in ignorance, and he had done it because he had given his word, and his word, unlike almost everything else in my father’s world, had turned out to be real.”

He drew out the letter.