Teams And A Pilgrim

The Game Of Empire.

Axor and Diana are a team, a pilgrim and his local guide. Targovi moves them around like chess pieces for his intelligence-gathering purposes although with an outcome that is beneficial to all three and also to many other beings.

A hypothetical sequel might have featured:

Targovi and Diana as an intelligence team, maybe with the same trader cover that Targovi had had, but now operating outside the Patrician System;

Axor continuing his research, now funded by Flandry;

encounters between team and pilgrim, whether accidental or engineered by Targovi for nefarious reasons.

Their researches might overlap. The Ancients/Chereionites are of interest both to religious seekers and to military intelligence - and imagine if Aycharaych has survived Flandry's bombardment of Chereion.

Axor tells Flandry:

"'God bless you , whether you like it or not... What you endow goes beyond space or time.'"

-CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE, p. 453.

Does it? I am interested. Let's see it.

How Targovi moves Axor and Diana around:

they are travelling to the Larboard and Starboard Islands on Imhotep but he diverts them to Daedalus;

they are spending time in the capital, Aurea, but he diverts them to travel down the Highroad River as far as Lulach;

he diverts them away from the river to Zacharia Island and, this time, they hit pay dirt.