The sword was different in his hands at developed depth than it had been when he first lifted it from the Fifth Gate's room wall.
He had known at foundational depth that it carried something. The Observer had registered it as a record rather than a weapon, the sword's function informational rather than combative, the blade shaped into the form it had because that was the form the Emperor had given it rather than because the function required an edge.
At developed depth the distinction between carrying something and being able to access what was carried resolved.
He held the sword across his palms and looked at its surface and the Observer's reading opened the record the way a key opened what it was cut for, the structural reading finding the layers of information embedded in the blade's composition and beginning to parse them in the order the Emperor had organized them.
