Chapter Thirty-Three

They were off in under ten minutes—the amount of time it took to unlock Elegy's ship and gather Zeal's team. The four people were more rough-and-tumble than the rest of the Beaconites he'd met—with thick work gloves, overalls of coarse cloth, and long coats. When they spoke, there was less sugar in their language and a lot more spice.

He'd begun to think of these people as monolithic, but that was never true. Even two siblings would reflect their culture and upbringing in different ways.

Nomad tasked Rebeke with the actual flying, and they lifted off, skimming the muddy ground, leaving Beacon—what was left of it—huddled in the mountain's shadow, helpless before the advancing sun. Nomad wished the Dawnchaser were more dynamic—and a little less like some kind of bulbous insect.

"So let me get this straight," said one of Zeal's team—a beefy guy swathed in so much leather that Nomad wondered if he'd depopulated an entire corridor of beasts to make the outfit. "We are flying into the blessed maelstrom itself."

"Indeed," Zeal said, standing on one of the seats by the wall, leaning back, arms folded.

"Then," the guy continued, "we are going to get out of the ship—still in the great maelstrom, mind you—and find the blessed sunhearts?"

"Yup," Zeal said. "Well, you'll be getting out of the ship to harvest them, Hardy. I'll be running operations from the comfort of the cab, probably munching on some tea cakes. Oh, and we dumped all our harvesting machinery, so you'll have to dig them out by hand."

The group chuckled. From what Nomad had gathered, this was how they ran operations—Zeal organized and maintained the team, but he relied on the others to do most of the fieldwork.

"You blessed fool," Hardy said. "We're all a group of blessed fools."

Wait, the knight says. Is that fellow using the word "blessed" as…as a curse?

"It's a conservative religious society," Nomad said in Alethi. "You use the tools you're given." Then, before any of the others could interject, he spoke in their language. "I'll be going out into the storm, not any of you. We brought you because Zeal insisted that I have you here for backup."

All four stared at him, then they nodded as one.

"Well, that's good enough for me, then," Hardy said, settling back. "Wake me when we get there."

"You'll know," Zeal said with a grin. "Oh, you'll know." He looked to Nomad. "We're behind you, Sunlit. It's enough for me that you think this will work."

"I appreciate it," Nomad said with a nod.

In the corner, Elegy began to stir, finally. They'd brought her because, as before, there was really no other place to put her. He supposed they could have locked her to a random part of Beacon's deck, but in the frenzy of motion getting ready to leave, he honestly hadn't thought about that.

She blinked awake, then pulled back against the corner, glaring with primal confusion at the assembled group. Until her eyes settled on Nomad. Recognizing him, she seemed to relax.

He turned and climbed into the cab with Rebeke, wanting to keep his eyes forward. Always running. Always watching for the next chasm to jump.

Are you worried, the hero muses, about how much those people back there trust you?

"Not if it helps us all keep moving," Nomad said.

Would they tell you, though, if this were a terrible idea?

"They did tell me."

And went along with it anyway.

"Because it's going to work," Nomad said. He settled into the copilot's seat next to Rebeke. On the dash next to her was a small glowing fragment of sunheart. It didn't have much of a charge, but he was still surprised to see it. He thought they'd gathered all those up and bundled them together for this ship to use as a power source.

"Thank you," she said to him, "for letting me come along. The others always treat me as some kind of…memento or figurehead or…"

"Mascot," Nomad said.

"I don't know that word."

"Kind of like a good-luck charm."

"Because they followed my sister, their great Lodestar, and to a lesser extent my brother," she said. Her voice caught a little when she mentioned him. "They don't follow me, though."

"You're young," Nomad said. "People underestimate the young."

"Can you…" She took a deep breath, steeling herself, gloved hands on the controls. "Can you teach me to be a killer?"

"I'm not so good at it myself these days."

"What do you mean?" she said. "I've seen you resist. I know you're a killer."

He smiled. If she thought this shell of what he'd once been was a killer… "I don't have time to teach you, Rebeke. Give me a few weeks and maybe I could train you in some combat skills. But that's merely learning to fight. Learning to kill…it's something else."

"They're different?"

"One requires skill. The other…"

"No conscience?" she asked softly.

"It's the existence of a conscience that makes it difficult. Combat training is about preparing you to act regardless of conscience—usually via repetition. We make it so that your body knows what to do before you actively consider what it will mean. Or what it will cost you."

"That sounds horrible," she whispered.

"You're the one who asked."

She gripped the control wheel tighter, eyes forward—though the landscape had grown dark. They'd entered the shadow of cloud cover, and rain sprayed the windshield.

"You don't need to be a killer," he said, "to get people to respect you, Rebeke."

"Then how?"

"Keep following your gut. Keep doing what needs to be done. You'll get there."

"When?"

"Can't say," he replied. "But don't be so eager. There are burdens to being in charge that you're not considering. I guarantee it."

She glanced at him. "Is that what happened to you?"

"Let's just say that leadership didn't agree with me."

That's not true, Nomad. You were a good leader.

"Aux, ‘good' isn't enough. Life, like measurements in science, often depends entirely on your frame of reference." Then, to keep Rebeke from brooding, he reverted to her language. "I think Elegy is getting better."

"She remembered something?" Rebeke said, eager.

"No," he said. "But earlier she didn't seem quite so feral, quite so eager to kill everyone around her. We had a conversation before we went up the mountain. I think it might have gotten through to her."

"Thank you," Rebeke said, "for caring about her."

"I have empathy for abandoned soldiers," Nomad said. "Being one myself." He nodded toward the sliver of sunheart—just a fragment, smaller than a person's pinkie finger. "What's that?"

She glanced at it. "Mother's soul," she said softly. "The main core was drained almost entirely in the escape. Solemnity Divine cut me off this small piece, as she thought I might want to keep it close on this mission."

"Do you?"

"I don't know," she said. "I'm starting to wonder if I fixate too much on the dead and not enough on living."

Strange words, the knight notes, for a woman who lives in a society that is powered by the dead.

Nomad picked it up off the dash. He still needed a way to tweak his own soul, to make it so he could fight—actually fight—if he needed to. "Mind if I take it, then?"

"Go ahead," she replied. "I thought that if I kept her sunheart close, I'd feel her. But I never have."

He mused on that, turning the sliver of sunheart over in his fingers. Then he sat back, closing his eyes. "I'm an idiot," he muttered.

Now, now, the knight says. You're not an idiot, Nomad. An idiot is someone without knowledge or ability. You're something else: a person with knowledge or ability who misuses it. That makes you a fool instead.

"And you got those definitions from…"

Wit, naturally.

"Of course."

So what are you being a fool about?

"These sunhearts," he said, tapping the sliver with his fingernail, "worked on Elegy because everyone on this planet is Connected. I'm not sure how or why, but their souls see one another as the same. They can share heat with one another. It's become deeply embedded in their culture. But they couldn't do it with me, even when I wanted to. So…"

So this sunheart can't draw strength from your soul, because it's from this planet, and you aren't.

"Exactly. Linguistic Connection isn't enough. I'd need something more to be able to draw upon this." He could feed off their power, like he could almost all forms of Investiture. But the sunhearts refused to let him put anything back in, to lance his soul, because they didn't accept him as one of them.

It's useless to you, then?

"I could maybe hack it with some rare devices," he said. "Which I don't have access to here." With a sigh, he heaved himself from the seat.

He had been so very close to escaping the Torment in some small way. Realizing it was impossible felt like hitting a wall.

He wanted to be moving. Physically, not just in a vehicle. He entered the back room, but there wasn't a lot of space here for pacing. Zeal and his team—except Hardy, who was napping by the wall—had huddled together and were munching on some rations, laughing.

How do they take such joy? the knight wonders. They're right on the edge of destruction.

"They've always lived on the edge of destruction," Nomad replied. "I suppose they learned to find happiness in the moments between disasters."

Then…what's wrong with you? Why can't you do that?

Auxiliary asked it without malicious intent; Nomad knew him well enough to tell that, even without vocal inflections. It still felt like a dagger to the gut.

He closed his eyes to the laughing people and settled down on a bench near the wall.

"They know me too," Elegy whispered.

He glanced to where she sat, chained. He knew some women caretakers had helped her with physical needs earlier, but he felt a stab of shame for the raw skin at the sides of the manacles and the way her outfit—that long open-fronted robe and trousers—hadn't been changed since they'd pulled her out of the mud.

She was focused on Zeal and his team, her eyes…confused? Her expressions were tough to read.

"They keep looking at me," she continued, "as if expecting to see a spark of familiarity. Like…I don't know. I used to have words to describe such things. I no longer do."

"They did know you," he said. "Everyone in Beacon did."

"I don't remember them, yet they all remember me," she said. "Yes…they remember me, but they don't know me. Not anymore."

"There are some," he said, "who would find that liberating. You're completely free from who you used to be, Elegy. You can make of yourself whatever you want. There are many who would like to abandon the burdens of their pasts."

"You?"

"No. Not me." He looked up at the ceiling, wishing he could see the stars. "I don't particularly like who I am, but I cherish what I've learned about myself. It lets me trust in certain truths."

"I don't know what to trust or believe," she said. "The voice in my head was so confident…"

"Do you think it knew you?" he asked. "Who will you follow, Elegy? The person who demands you kill? Or the person you used to be?"

"I don't know that person."

He nodded toward the others. "That person you used to be, she inspired all of this. Everything these people have done to be free? That was her, the old Elegy." He shrugged. "You can't be her, but you can trust that she knew what she was doing. By the ideals and community she helped create."

She slunk down, lowering her eyes. "The voice," she said, "might come back. I feel it building, whispering at the edges of my mind. It might corrupt my heart again."

"Then use this," he said, taking out the sliver of sunheart Rebeke had given him. He pressed it into her chained fingers. "Keep that. If the voice returns, speak the words: ‘Bold one on the threshold of death, give this sunheart my heat that it may bless those who still live.'"

She repeated the words softly. "Why those words?"

"It will siphon off a smidge of your soul and put it into the sunheart. Not enough to power the thing, unfortunately, but your soul will naturally abandon the pieces that are less…less you, I guess. Either way, it should help keep you sane. That's how I helped make you become more aware."

He nodded at her encouragingly, then unlocked one of the manacles. She looked at him hungrily, a certain savagery still lurking within. He smiled at her, but pointedly left the other manacle on. One hand free was the most he was comfortable giving her right now.

He left her studying that sliver of her mother's soul. Hopefully he hadn't somehow just handed her the power she needed to energize herself and break free in order to destroy him. Storms, he thought he'd gotten past trusting people who were that dangerous.

He walked away with a sense of dread. But—as he'd grown proficient at doing—he ignored it for now. Instead he returned to the cab because he heard thunder.

He arrived just in time to see the great maelstrom through the windshield as it broke the darkness ahead.

It was on fire.