Chapter Forty-Five

Sitting was too easy. And that made it hard.

Head tipped back. Eyes closed. Breathing even. It let Nomad hear the small sounds: the persistent, ubiquitous—yet oft inaudible—sounds of life. Fingers tapping on touchpads. The deep, musical voice of the ship's Awakened Steelmind giving a status report. People chuckling softly—the aftershocks of a joke that had been too quiet for him to hear.

But there was no motion. No place to run, no place to be. In moments like this, when he wasn't solving some problem or scrambling from one disaster to the next, Nomad could hear his own thoughts far too easily.

"Am I a coward, Aux?" he asked.

For being traumatized? I'm not the greatest expert on humans, but I hardly think that's an appropriate way of looking at what has happened to you.

"Even so," he whispered. He could feel that jar of pure Investiture on the desk nearby. He'd settled here, just within reach of it—but knew he'd be watched at first. He hoped his slumped posture, his tired features, his lack of vibrance would put them at ease.

He couldn't steal it yet. Not quite yet.

"Report, sir," a voice said halfway across the room. "That ship in orbit earlier? Night Brigade."

Another voice, cursing softly. "Why are they here?"

"No idea. Shall we…ask?"

"No, don't reveal us. Hopefully their purpose is unrelated."

Tensely Nomad waited, wondering if they'd put it together. He listened for the telltale sounds of people turning toward him, of someone making the connection. Mysterious Rosharan mercenary. Night Brigade in orbit.

Nothing. Nomad wasn't surprised; the Night Brigade didn't like people to know why he was important. The Dawnshard was a weapon too valuable to sell. If you knew about it, you either hunted it yourself—or you ran far, far away.

When are you going to go for that power source? the hero asks.

"Not yet. Soon."

"Hey!" a voice said from another part of the room. "That Rosharan was right—this is interesting. We should have been watching."

He let his eyes flutter open. A worker sipping tea had turned on one of the large wall screens, displaying an overhead view of the landscape outside. So they did have a satellite system in place? Or perhaps drones?

The view zoomed in on the Beaconite ships flying for the shadow with all they had. Which wasn't much. Two gunships down, the last two trying—awkwardly—to dogfight.

"Are those ship-to-ship guns?" a woman asked. "When did they discover those? I thought we were withholding that technology until later."

Nomad stood up, entranced. Maybe…maybe they…

One gunship went down. Another pilot—maybe Zeal—dead. And the rest…even from the distant perspective, he saw Charred dropping from approaching enemy ships onto the transports. He couldn't hear the ultimatum, but he wasn't surprised when the surviving ships executed a landing.

Surrender. The people of Beacon had, at long last, given up.

It was a death sentence. But what choice did they have?

He stumbled against a desk, realizing he'd been walking forward unconsciously, hands making fists. Was this really who he was? The man who ran away? Was that what he'd been trained to be? Was that who he wanted to be?

He couldn't help it. He whispered the words, the old words of his oaths.

Nothing happened.

He slunk back to his wall, where he dropped to sit, then huddled down, cheek to the floor. Exhausted.

Wait, Auxiliary said. Wait. I thought that would work. I thought…if you wanted it back…

"You wanted a revelation in light." Nomad squeezed his eyes shut.

Well, yes. Why…

"Consequences," he whispered. "I walked away from my oaths. I made the decision. And now…now there are consequences."

Why, though? You've never told me why you walked away after leaving Roshar. After all we'd been through together. You abandoned all you'd followed. Why would you do that?

Was it time? Time for the deepest, hardest truth—the answer that felt like teeth on pavement to acknowledge?

"I don't know," he said.

Liar.

"Not this time," Nomad whispered. "I don't know, Auxiliary. I just…did it. I can't explain my mindset. I can't justify it. I disavowed my oaths. It's the choice I made. But I didn't have a reason."

You have to. Everything has a reason.

Here was why he'd never tried to explain. For all his apparent humanity, Auxiliary was a creature of Investiture. Immortal. Slow to change.

Nomad huddled down further, pulling into a ball against the cold steel as he heard others in the room discussing the Cinder King's capture of the rogue city. He heard them noting how ominous it must feel to have an entire city descend upon you. Union had arrived.

Nomad… Sigzil. I don't understand.

"Humans," Nomad whispered, "are…inconsistent sometimes. We do what we feel. We can't explain it. I look back on the choice I made, and it feels entirely unlike me. But I did it; I made the choice. In the heat of a moment.

"It doesn't matter if it's what I wanted to do or what—logically—I should have done. The consequences stand. This…this is who I am."

He couldn't go back. He had to move forward. Keep going. He'd gotten so good at staying ahead, at moving, at…at running.

Why, then, was he in the exact same place?

He put his hands to his skull, digging his fingers into the skin. How could he run so hard and never get anywhere? The journey was supposed to be the important part, wasn't it?

Why, then, was he so miserable?

Part of him wanted to burst out of this place and go looking for the Beaconites, but what good was that? He couldn't make a home for them, a safe place. And if he got caught by the Night Brigade, it could mean the deaths of millions.

He had no answers. He didn't know his destination. Maybe that was why he was so lost. Hard to be anything else if you didn't know where you were going.

It wasn't a revelation in light. More, one in tears.

The room had fallen silent. He forcibly ripped himself away from his self-loathing, looking up long enough to see why. The Scadrians had mostly turned to watch the screen with the Beaconites, where the Charred were retreating toward Union—the massive city hovering in the near distance. At first, hope sparked—but like an ember from a fire released into the cold, hungry night, that hope died immediately.

The Charred had taken the sunhearts from Beacon's ships. They were leaving the people alone in the growing grass. Lit by too much light. The sun, never resting, was close to rising again. The Cinder King was going to leave the entire town's worth of people as offerings. Nearly one hundred and thirty-five souls.

The brutality of it was minimal on the grand scale; Nomad had just been thinking of the deaths of millions, the fall of planets. Yet there was a terrible personal cruelty to this event. Even the Scadrians picked up on it, every single one of them staring at the screen in silence. The postures of the Beaconites, falling to their knees in sorrow and terror. The abject abandonment of Union cruising away, leaving them behind, deaf to their pleas.

The Cinder King certainly had learned his lessons in tyranny well. Granted, that wasn't the sort of thing humans needed mentoring in. Too many of them could intuit how to be terrible all on their own. He'd been there himself.

Soon the screen had drawn the attention of everyone in the room except the most focused workers. An opportunity. The glowing Investiture Cell was right within Nomad's reach. He stood up, and nobody glanced his way.

He could take it and be gone in a moment.

He didn't.

He…he couldn't.

Are…we going to do anything? the knight asks his faithful squire.

"Yes," Nomad said. "We're going to watch and witness."

The words drew the attention of a nearby scientist—a woman with a ponytail who had been too interested in her work on a pair of sunhearts to be distracted by the screen. But she found him interesting enough, apparently.

"Who were you talking to?" the woman asked him, narrowing her eyes. "I thought you said you were unoathed. Do you have a spren?"

Damnation. He'd grown careless. These people could see the signs he hadn't needed to hide from the Beaconites.

"Just an old habit," he said. "It's nothing. What are you doing there? Are you transferring Investiture between two different sunhearts?"

"Yes!" she said, sitting back, displaying the age-old joy of a scientist who was pleased to find someone who actually cared about her work. "We recharged this one earlier. We're studying how much we can stuff into a single sunheart."

Recharged.

"You recharged a sunheart?" he asked, numb.

"Well, of course. Using that sunlight."

"The people have tried that," he said. "They told me. Leaving out a used sunheart doesn't do anything…" He stood up straighter. "Wait. It has to do with the strange current of this world, doesn't it? The way the core of the planet draws Investiture and heat from the sun? Sucking it down, like it's creating an electric circuit?"

"Yes!" the woman said, looking at him more closely. "How did you know? That took us months to figure out."

"The sunhearts don't recharge normally…" he said. "But the ground melts. People go aflame. Anything trapped between the sun and the core is like…like interference between two opposite electric poles." He looked upward at the lights in the ceiling. Modern ones, but reminiscent of those from long ago.

"An incandescent bulb," he whispered. "I thought of it earlier. It glows when current passes through the filament—but not because the filament is good at conducting. Rather the opposite. That filament resists and loses energy as heat and light. Radiating it. That's what makes a light bulb work.

"Normal sunhearts…the Investiture just passes through them, doesn't it? That's why nothing happens if you leave a used one buried. But when they're formed in the first place, it's because a soul is resisting—causing the Investiture there to flare. Like the light of a light bulb. That's what captures all that power and leaves behind a sunheart."

The woman folded her arms on the table. "Yes," she said. "Have you been intercepting our communications? Is that why you know this?"

"How do you do it?" he asked, ignoring her question. "How do you recharge them? Wait. You put something else into them, something to be burned away by the sunlight? That temporarily blocks the circuit—or offers resistance to it."

"Some heat from a local works," she said, studying him. "We have a few captives. They prime the sunhearts with a little of their heat, then we leave the sunhearts out. It works. Use some special Investiture instead, and you get a corrupted cinderheart to make the Charred."

Storms, that made sense. It was a simple answer to recharging the sunhearts, but one that would take either happenstance or a deep understanding of Investiture to try. No wonder the people of Canticle had never discovered it.

"Are you an arcanist?" the woman asked, her frown deepening.

"Nothing so grand," he said, staring at her powerfully glowing sunheart, charged far beyond its regular capacity. "You realize this solves most of their problems, right?"

"Making Charred?"

"No, the first part! If the people out on the surface knew, they could recharge their power sources endlessly. No more sacrifices. Just a little bleeding of their warmth to prime depleted sunhearts, then bury them and return to find them glowing again!"

The researcher shrugged. "I suppose."

"Storms!" Nomad said, hand to his forehead. "Why didn't you tell them?"

"Why would we reveal such a useful secret?"

He had to do something. He had to tell them.

The air broke around him—the fragments of his ancient armor trying to push into reality again. Some from his first oaths, some from his second. Either way, it was the absolute wrong time for them to be doing that.

"Oathed after all…" the woman said, noting the shards. "Arcanist… Rosharan… Dark skin…" Her eyes went wide.

Damnation.

Nomad lunged for the Investiture Cell, but she snatched it off the table and backed away, raising a hand and tapping the metal device on her glove. Instead he snatched the sunheart she'd been working on, the one they'd overcharged.

Fortunately he didn't have any metal on him, so—

He was thrown violently backward, Pushed by something at his waist. His metal belt buckle. Right.

He slammed into the wall.

"We have a problem!" the researcher shouted to the rest of the room. "I've read about this man! He's why the Night Brigade is here! Rusts, there's a bounty on his head big enough to buy a small planet."

The other Scadrians spun, looking away from the sad sight of the Beaconites—who had gathered in a huddle amid their fallen and powerless ships—as the sunrise loomed. Nomad ripped off his belt before it could be used against him again, then he summoned Auxiliary in his flashiest form: the enormous, six-and-a-half-foot Blade, wavy, with ornamentation near the hilt.

Most people had never seen a Shardblade in person, but they'd heard the stories. Even a group like this—who could have overwhelmed him with their technology—froze at the sight of it.

"I'm leaving," he told them, voice harsh. "You get to choose. You can stand in my way. Or you can continue to breathe."

"Leaving?" one of the Scadrian leaders said. "It's less than five minutes to sunrise, idiot."

Five minutes from us? Auxiliary said. Then the Beaconites have a good fifteen before it reaches them, as they flew a short distance before being downed. We can work with that.

Nomad backed up to the elevator, enormous sword in one hand, sunheart in the other. "Operate it," he said to them.

Nobody moved.

"Operate it," he said, "or I will cut my way out."

"You'd destroy the integrity of the hull!" a woman cried. "We'd be killed by the—"

"Then don't make me do it!"

Storms. What was he doing?

He didn't have an explanation. That's how people were sometimes.

The door to the elevator opened. He stepped inside, dismissing Auxiliary—as in this shape, he was big enough to be awkward. The elevator worked, though, and the Scadrians didn't try anything. It spit him out onto a landscape that had changed dramatically in the minutes since he'd left, an entire forest of spindly trees growing up from the mud.

Nomad—Zellion—looked through them toward the building sunlight. Storms. They'd said under five minutes, but he doubted he had that long. He turned and started running.

It's what he did. It had always been enough before. This time, he'd rounded the entire planet, but found himself where he'd begun.

Sunlight rising. He felt it on his back. The trees around him started wilting. Withering.

You can't outrun it, Auxiliary said. Was that…soft nuance to his voice? It had been years since Zellion had heard that. Even you can't outrun that light.

He kept trying, sunheart clutched to his chest.

Zellion, Auxiliary said, you'll need to fly to reach them.

"I can't!" he shouted. "I…I can't, Aux. I've tried."

The sunlight grew more oppressive. Trees darkened, smoldering.

Zellion kept running.

You're a better man than you pretend to be, Auxiliary said. Even still. Even broken as you are.

"I'm just a fool. A callous fool."

We both know that isn't true. Because the smart thing to do, the callous thing, would have been to attack Beacon the moment you got to it. Steal their sunhearts, leave their ships stranded. You didn't do that.

No. He hadn't. Because whatever he said, he was still a man, not a monster.

Zellion. My friend. You're worth saving.

He started crying as he ran.

When you reach them, Auxiliary said, make sure they know the secret. Make sure you save them, Zellion.

"But—"

Listen to me. Just listen. I can give you a little burst of power, like we discussed.

"No! I'll use the power from this sunheart."

And will that make you fly again?

No, it wouldn't. Because it wasn't power he lacked. It was something else.

I will make you what you were. For a short time. I am the leftover strength of oaths sworn. I am the truth you once knew. Take it again, for the briefest time, and soar.

He felt warmth begin to spread through him. It was a different kind of Investiture…drawn from the remnant of Auxiliary's soul.

I will burn away only myself, Auxiliary said. My personality. That should leave you with my body, the weapon, to still use. This is my destination, but not yours.

"You can't do this, Aux. Please."

You don't get to decide. I know about consequences. I understand that you betrayed your oaths.

But here's the thing, Zellion. Here's what you never have understood. I also swore to be better than I was. I became a Knight Radiant. I spoke the words.

And whatever you did, I never betrayed my oaths.

You protect those people, Zellion. I've carried you as far as I can. You'll have to find the rest of the way on your own.

An awesome, familiar power welled up inside him. As the sun finally broke the horizon—causing the forest to burst into flame—armor formed around Zellion.

And his eyes came alight.