“Thank you, I think,” Palamedes says in response to her comment about his sanity or lack thereof, charging right past the question of his relationship with Clarke without so much as a blink. “You are correct, though. Before I showed up here, I was Master Warden of the Library, which is a fancy way of saying I was a scholar with the somewhat ridiculous duty of telling other scholars what to do.”

He waves at his notes. “And as you can see, old habits die hard. We knew so little about the Serena Eterna when the first of us arrived for this particular journey, so gathering information was imperative—I would say it still is. Thankfully, that’s something I’m rather good at.”