Chapter Thirty-Eight

They called her Elegy.

The captive Charred continued to mull over that name as the ship soared back toward Beacon. She'd watched the killer's display on the deck, though her view had been partially obstructed. She'd had to lean to the side, look out through the open door between rooms, past the two people at the controls, through the windshield, into the darkness.

She'd watched him fight, and had hungered.

That. She wanted that.

She could not be Elegy again. She did like the name; the part of her that knew words understood what it meant. A song for the dead. And she was dead. It fit.

Elegy. She would be Elegy. Not the same Elegy, but different people could have the same name.

The killer stepped through the door and closed it behind him, soaking wet, bare-chested. She felt as if he should have a cinderheart glowing there. It was wrong that he didn't. One did not fight as he did without a cinderheart.

Yet he had. And far, far better than the Charred.

She wanted that.

He had told her she should live for something. She had just seen that he was right. The rest of the Charred, they'd fought like children, like bullies with no training. He had fought with the grace of the wind itself, fully in control, channeling his anger and his frenzy into his smooth motions.

A weapon was far, far more dangerous when the tip was sharp. When you could put all your force into that single point. And her anger, her desire to fight and move and do and act and kill and strain and struggle… All of that would be far more dangerous if she could channel it into a single point as well.

That was why he'd won. The Charred were bludgeoning weapons, while he was a spear.

The woman stepped out of the cab. The one they called Rebeke, Elegy's sister. She met the killer, then pulled back, as if before a bonfire. She clasped her gloved hands before her and stood in place.

"That was incredible," Rebeke whispered. "It was also terrible. So terrible."

"The art and butchery of the spear," he said. "I know. Zeal, you should call in that we're on our way!"

"Already raising them," he called. "We had to escape the bubble of the Cinder King's ships. They had a radio jammer in place."

Rebeke went to help care for the four others, who had been knocked out in the heat and were only now recovering. They were weaker than Elegy was. So she didn't bother with them.

A moment later, a voice came from the cockpit. Elegy tilted her head back—as if not alive with constant energy trying to make her move—and listened. She had to learn to listen. Had to learn to control it.

Only then could she fight as he had.

"Zeal?" a woman's voice said over the radio. One of the old ones who led. "Oh, praise Adonalsium. Did you get them?"

"Five sunhearts," he said. "They're sitting in a sack right next to me, Confidence. We're on our way."

"How long?" The old woman sounded scared.

Elegy hadn't understood fear until just now, when she'd felt it along with the other Charred. Because she'd lied to the killer. Though she no longer heard the voice, she could still feel the Cinder King. His emotions, which had—just now—included fear.

"I beg a moment as I calculate our course," Zeal said. "How…how are you all?"

"The sun continues to advance, and our opportunities to outrun it diminish. There is a corridor of darkness, the peak of the mountains touching the shadow. Alas, it vanishes quickly. Two of our ships are beyond repair. We've moved everyone onto the remaining eight, but there is not room for them all inside, so some sit upon the decks. Waiting."

"We'll have the sunhearts divided into parts by the time we arrive," Zeal said. "Have everyone ready to go. We'll be there in…a little over half an hour. Hopefully."

"May you outrun the sun, Zeal," the old woman whispered.

Rebeke took out her knife to divide the sunhearts, and the killer stepped up to her. "Can you spare one of those for me?" he asked.

She stared at him, then at the stolen sunhearts, clearly mentally calculating what Beacon would need. She met his eyes and nodded, handing a full sunheart to the killer. He walked away, holding it up near his face. Then the light of it faded, and his eyes seemed to glow for a moment.

He did have his own cinderheart inside. It simply wasn't visible.

"I watched you fight," Elegy whispered as he settled down nearby.

He glanced at her.

"I want that," she said. "I want to do what you did. I want to be able to kill like you killed."

He thought for a bit before speaking. "I'd hoped," he said, "that spending time with your sister, with this people, would make you start to want the things they have. Not the things I do. The old Elegy—"

"I'm not her," Elegy cut in. "I can never be her. I want to learn battle like you do it. You said that I need to focus on something, deliberately. I have chosen."

"You'll need control," he said, "for my kind of fighting."

"I figured that out already," she said. "I know it. But how? How did you learn?"

"Slowly," he said, leaning back against the wall, eyes closed. "Step by step, Elegy."

"I don't understand."

"When I was first given a spear," he said, "I didn't know how to hold it. I didn't even know how to stand. Each time I sparred, I had to dedicate all my thoughts to standing correctly. The more I did it, the more natural that stance became. It's like…I didn't just learn the lesson, I internalized it. That left my conscious mind free to think about something else. Since my body now stood properly on its own, I could wonder about how I held the spear.

"Then that grip became natural, so I could focus on thrusting with precision. I could learn to change my grip, resetting my stance so that I was oriented toward the enemy. Each of these things slowly became instinct. Through deliberate practice—to learn that specific thing. And each time, once internalized, that left my mind free to try something else. To be honest, though, I had a huge advantage over most people on this path."

"You had teachers?" she asked.

"No. I could survive mistakes." Looking weary, he opened his eyes. "I got Invested, like you. It came to me via some oaths I made and a bond to a being of pure Investiture. Like that rock at your core, but with a worse sense of humor."

She thought she heard something then, as she sometimes did around him. A different voice that seemed to say…a joke?

"My Investiture let me survive wounds I shouldn't have," he continued, "and learn from my mistakes in a way that is exceptionally difficult to do as a soldier. Normally you end up dead, and all your learning evaporates like rainwater in the sunlight.

"But I could learn, keep growing, until…" He held his hands out to the sides. "Until I became what you see. A mess of a man sometimes, but one with instincts for battle honed over decades."

"I want it," she whispered.

"I suppose that will do," he said, then reached up—as if to let her out of her last manacle.

She immediately felt her eagerness growing. The heat from inside her cinderheart spreading through her body. The thirst for the fight energizing her.

"No," she forced herself to say, making him hesitate.

"Why?" he asked.

"If you set me free," she said, "I will attack you. All of you. I feel it." She paused though, feeling… Feeling. Feeling something other than the heat. "But that is progress, isn't it? That I spoke to you of it?"

"I'll take it as such," he said, nodding and leaning away from her bond. "Thanks for the warning. But you're going to have to learn to control it. If you don't, you'll never learn anything else."

"I can fight," she said, "even with that heat."

He shook his head. "It's not enough just to fight, Elegy. Those other Charred, they could be left in a pit to fight for centuries, and they'd barely learn anything. You must choose to practice. Choose to learn." He met her eyes. "Choose to control it."

She nodded slowly, then settled back, thinking. Until they neared the place where the ships had crashed.

Where it was growing dangerously bright.