Chapter Twenty-Three

They were kept on Beacon's largest ship, a cylindrical vessel that served as a central hub. Nomad had learned that Beacon didn't always assemble in the exact same way; ships would hook together and spread out organically. Metal sheets placed over holes made it look more cohesive than it was.

Some general rules were followed, however. Larger ships in the middle. Smaller, faster ships on the outside. And this hub structure at the very center. He'd taken it for a large meeting room, but as they stepped inside, he realized it held something far different: an enclosure for the dead.

They had configured it like an aquarium. An enormous glass drum, twenty feet tall and twice that wide, dominated the room, leaving only a narrow circle around it for observation. They'd filled the central column with smoke. A shifting white mist, like—

Like leaking souls, he thought, walking up to the glass, hands in the pockets of his long brown leather coat. He was accompanied by Rebeke and Zeal—who had gotten permission from the Greater Good to bring him to this hallowed ground. A rack on one wall, opposite the large aquarium, held depleted sunhearts.

"Have you ever," he asked, glancing at the tens of lifeless sunhearts, "left those out again in the sunlight?"

"Of course we have," Rebeke said. "They don't recharge. We can't even find them afterward most of the time, but the few we've recovered were as dull as when we left them."

Damnation. That made sense, though. They'd of course tried that—probably one of the first things they had tried. He looked back at the aquarium—they called the enclosure itself the Reliquary. He found that name oddly inappropriate. These weren't relics. Those were usually the bodies or body parts of holy ones whose souls had departed. This was presumably the opposite.

He didn't see them at first. He only saw that shifting mist. It was light and effulgent, but thick. If the dead existed inside that chamber, he couldn't—

A face formed from the mists and pressed up against the glass, eyes glowing red, hands—made of smoke—slamming against the barrier. It had a gaunt face with a drooping jaw and sunken cheeks.

Nomad jumped despite himself. Even though he'd been expecting it, seeing a shade was unnerving. When he'd been on Threnody, these things had been incredibly dangerous. Society contorted around their existence, living by strict rules to avoid angering them. When the eyes went red, these things were deadly, seeking to kill. Yet here, the people of Beacon kept them like…pets?

"We fled the Evil," the ghost said in a whispering voice, like rustling papers. Another appeared over its shoulder, just a vague, smoky outline of a person with red eyes. "Then we fled Threnody. We are your Chorus. We remember. We came here, to the land of the twilight rings, to make our own world. Do not forget. Adonalsium will claim us eventually. Live. And remember."

Well, the knight says, at least we know how they keep their lore straight through the generations.

"On your homeworld," Nomad said, "these things kill people."

"They'd kill us," Zeal said, "if we went into the Reliquary."

"Are they self-aware?" Nomad asked.

"I sustain an uncertainty in that regard," he replied. "They'll answer questions sometimes. Other times they give no answers, only recitations."

"They mostly only talk about the past, though," Rebeke said. She'd stepped up beside him and watched intently through the glass. "About lore, history. Almost nothing about themselves. Each member might as well be interchangeable. We don't know if they remember their individual lives. They're like…living history books."

"‘Living' being a loose term," Zeal added.

Nomad nodded, thoughtful. "That's far more than what I'd expect from them, knowing the shades of Threnody."

"We were the first who died on Canticle," a shade whispered to him. "The first to live in this land and devise the designs of flight—based on the ships that brought us here. But then we died and rose as shades. Remembering."

"Shades do not remember," another said. "We are not shades. We are the Chorus of the people."

"But others," another said, pressing against the glass, "must be given to the sun. This is the sun's land."

"Do this not," the first said, "and shades will overrun the world. Such a small planet. They will take everything. They would rip and destroy you."

"As we would," another added, "if allowed. To taste the flesh of the living. To drink their heat."

"So sweet," another said.

"So sweet," the first agreed.

"They…do that too," Zeal added. "Talk about killing us. It's rather unnerving."

Such invigorating places you take me, Nomad.

"There!" Rebeke said, pointing. "There, it's him."

"You don't know that, Rebeke," Zeal said softly.

"What?" Nomad asked, noting the way she stood so close to the glass, peering into the mist. "Him?" It took him only a moment to realize. "Your brother?"

"I saw his face among them," Rebeke said.

"We think that maybe," Zeal said, "people who die without being given to the sun are drawn to join the Chorus. They say that shades will rise from those who die and don't become sunhearts, but we rarely experience that—instead, sometimes after a death, we see mist gather and move to the Reliquary."

"It was him," Rebeke said. She seemed to be trying to convince herself. "Though he spoke like the others, as if he'd been there from the beginning…"

Nomad didn't have much reason to care either way. "What does this have to do with my engine designs?"

"Show them the schematics," Zeal said.

"The ghosts," he said flatly, "are engineers."

"No," Zeal said. "They're… Well, you'll see."

Nomad sighed and pressed his designs against the glass. The red eyes gathered around, faces crowding to see, mouths moving as they whispered—but they didn't say anything intelligible. They inspected all seven pages, one at a time, as he held them up. Then they faded back into the mists.

Zeal waved to the side, where a man stood on watch. A worker? A guard? A clergyman? Some combination of the three? He engaged some machinery and lowered a piece of unrefined metal from storage. The chunk was wide and flat, with dirt still stuck to the bottom. It looked like it had pooled on the surface of the ground when it was liquid, then hardened there.

More such followed. Some copper, he thought, and a variety of other metals—while that first and largest piece had been mostly iron. It all entered the mists from the top, and Nomad realized with discomfort that there was no lid on this enclosure. Inside, the mist churned and grew brighter.

"What are they doing?" he asked Rebeke quietly.

"Building your machinery."

"How, though?"

"We don't know. You put in resources. You show them detailed instructions, and you get out the thing you want."

"When a new settlement is founded," Zeal said, "we always take some of the smoke. We're not sure how far we can divide it—but it's worked so far. You can transport it in special containment devices. We took some of it from Union, along with an older containment unit acquired by absorbing a smaller community."

"How long will the fabrication take?" Nomad asked. If they were building something, why was the enclosure so silent?

"Depends," Zeal said. "For something like this, under an hour. They're faster when it's something they've done before, though."

Under an hour to fabricate complicated machinery? He wasn't going to complain—though even if it was true, their deadline was going to be very tight.

I think they're building it like I build things from myself, Auxiliary said. You've seen this before. You use it every day, Nomad.

"You don't absorb raw materials and spit out permanent devices," he said.

Yes, but isn't that actually more reasonable than what we do?

Well…maybe it was. He'd grown so accustomed to Auxiliary that he sometimes didn't consciously appreciate how extraordinary the spren was, using up only a minimal amount of Investiture from Nomad for each manifestation. That said, this did explain why so few on this planet had acted shocked by what Auxiliary could do. He supposed if your entire society was based on arcane mists materializing objects at your whims, Aux fit right in.

"Would you like something to eat while you wait, Sunlit?" Zeal asked.

"Sure. The spicier the better."

"Spicy?" Zeal asked, as if the word were unfamiliar.

"Just bring me anything," Nomad said with a sigh.

Zeal nodded, leaving Nomad and Rebeke standing beside the glass, watching the shifting mists inside. Someone out there in the cosmere would probably be fascinated by this. Threnodite shades who were somewhat self-aware? And who could rearrange the structure of metal as if it were Investiture to be sculpted? Maybe that was why the Scadrians were here, in their secretive research station beneath the ground.

Thinking of that, of course, reminded him of how much he had yet to do. Even if the modified engine worked—which it wouldn't, not on the first try—he had to find a way to get this people enough power to survive the rotation. And even if they did that, they needed a way to find the opening to the Scadrian base. How could they manage that? Presumably the only ones who really knew its location were living in it.

No. The Cinder King knows… he thought. So how do we get the information out of him…

"You don't like it, do you?" Rebeke said from beside him.

He frowned, not following her.

"Being called Sunlit," she said. "You grimaced when Zeal said the name. And earlier you asked us to call you Nomad."

"No, I don't care for Sunlit," he said. "You're right."

"Why? It's a title of honor, of great respect."

"Anyone Invested to the level I am could have survived a few seconds in the sunlight. Even if the term is one of honor—which I can understand—I don't think it means anything. I like to earn my titles, and I don't feel I did anything particularly interesting in this case."

She nodded slowly at that. "But earlier you told Contemplation you didn't mind if she called you that. Why say such a thing if it bothers you?"

"Because," he said, "sometimes it's not about you individually. Sometimes it's about being a symbol. Sometimes you just adopt the name you're given because it inspires people. I've seen it happen. Didn't think it would happen to me."

Zeal returned with some snacks, and they continued waiting. Eventually, after about forty-five minutes, the glow in the enclosure faded. The worker operated the simple crane to bring from the mists a realization of Nomad's schematics: parts to modify their engines.

"Now what?" Rebeke asked, sounding excited.

"Now," Nomad replied, "we install this on an engine and watch it explode."