Epilogue

Elegy dropped from the ship and ran across the dark, muddy ground. Rebeke followed more reservedly, steering a small hover-platform. Only one rotation, and already she was acting with so much decorum, one might think she'd been born to leadership.

They found the sunken pit the scouts had reported. A large hole in the ground, with several feet of mud at the bottom. Within it, waving excitedly, were the people of Beacon. Some waded in the mud, while the young had been placed on top of the powerless ships.

They'd survived. An entire half rotation in the sun, and they'd survived. Elegy stood there, grinning, practicing her normal emotions—then leaped to Rebeke's platform as it descended. She got her sister muddy, but who cared? Mud happened all the time.

The Beaconites got out of the way of the engine on the bottom of the platform, which sent pungent steam up from boiling mud as it landed. Several other ships lowered ropes for the stronger to climb, but this platform was for the elderly.

Three women were soon helped up. Muddy, exhausted, the Greater Good had withstood their ordeal. They looked to Rebeke, who had found a dress she could wear that was cut low to reveal her cinderheart and scarred skin.

Compassion understood first. "Sunlit…Woman?"

"Sunlit One," Rebeke said softly.

"The Cinder King?" Confidence asked.

"Dead," Rebeke said. "We hope to recover his sunheart and use it to power Union for a while. It feels appropriate."

"You need to hear," Contemplation said, smiling a wan smile as the platform lifted off to take them to Union to recover. "There is a way to recharge sunhearts."

Rebeke nodded. "He told us. Before he…left."

The three women looked to her. The word lingered. They didn't know for certain. Might not ever know for certain. Had he somehow survived, or had the sun taken him?

But Elegy's heart—which she was training to feel joy—wanted to believe. The dome had stayed up for the day, protecting the Beaconites, before vanishing and leaving only a pit of mud. She had an instinct that said when they recovered the Cinder King's sunheart—the last one that would ever need to be made—it would be alone there in the soil.

"We have work to do," Rebeke said softly as they rose into the sky. "We've already had some communication with people from other corridors—one group even sent a delegation. But we need to reach them all and tell them what we've found. We give this information away freely, as it was given freely to us. We stop the sacrifices."

"As you wish, Sunlit," Contemplation said.

"No," she said, smiling. "Not as I wish. You are our rulers."

"But—" Confidence gestured to the cinderheart in Rebeke's chest.

"This lets me control the Charred," Rebeke said. "But we're trying to wake them up slowly, to teach them. And I won't see any more of them made. We'll use them for protection, so long as they choose. But I will not be another tyrant. I will be…a symbol, Confidence. A beacon. Nothing more." She smiled, looking to Elegy. "As my sister taught us."

Elegy still hoped she'd get to fight now and then. But if not…well, she was just going to have to find new emotions and activities to enjoy.

And as they rose into the sky, she found that—instead of sounding boring—it felt like an adventure.

* * *

Staff Sergeant Truth-Is-Waiting withdrew from his conference with the people of the floating city. He slouched as he walked, certain these people would be intimidated by military discipline. He didn't want them to remember him. He was on tenuous enough ground, pretending to be from a town in another "corridor" come for explanations.

He slipped into the ship he'd stolen from the first town they'd visited. Inside, other members of the Night Brigade watched the door with hands on weapons. They stood down as he nodded to them, then he slipped into the cab.

The Admiral waited here. They had an admiral, despite being an army. It was their way. Tall, with short black hair and a full military uniform, she stood facing away from him, her hands stiff at her sides. The Admiral was…not the kind to rest. He didn't think he'd ever walked in during a mission and found her sitting.

"Report," she said quietly, resting a hand on her Continuity Chain—the silver, whiplike weapon rolled up and hung at her hip.

"He was here," Truth-Is-Waiting said. "They talk about it freely. He reportedly died about a day back, local time. Fighting the king of this place."

"Died?" the Admiral said, her back still to him.

"Reportedly. Shall we pry for information the, uh, more painful way?"

"You think they have any useful answers to give?"

"Frankly, sir? No."

She tapped her foot in thought.

"I did find something fun," he said. "Scadrian ship, embedded here. Doing ‘science.' They had him and didn't report it to us—or even send an amiable greeting. Rude, don't you think?"

She turned to him, eyes glittering, a rare smile turning up the corners of her lips. "Very rude."

"Maybe," he said, "we should pay them a visit and see what they know." He shrugged. "Besides. Folks here are our cousins. Feels wrong to slag them for being in the wrong place."

"Being in the wrong place," she said, "is the main reason people get slagged, Truth."

He shrugged again.

"We'll proceed with the Scadrians," the Admiral said. "They will have recordings. We'll find those far more reliable than accounts from a bunch of backwater peasants anyway. I have a feeling he's one step ahead of us again. How does he do it?"

"Figure he's just rightly scared."

She didn't reply. But as he left, two shades—with glowing red eyes, bearing the uniforms they'd been wearing when they'd died—joined him from the corners of the room. The Admiral needed no vocal command for them, and their movement meant she obviously wanted to be alone. Not even accompanied by the dead.

She did not like hearing that their prey had slipped away again. Truth hustled to the main chamber.

It was best she remain alone during a time like this.

* * *

Zellion sat on the beach, listening to the water roll across the sand, feeling…strange to be out in the sun. Just a normal one, but still. He kept feeling like he should be hiding.

He had a good sense of time, but it was stressful to sit there, waiting. Marking the passing of counted heartbeats with scratches in the sand. Until he was reasonably certain that, back on Canticle, the Beaconites would be out of the sunlight and into the darkness.

If he waited too long, they'd suffocate. So he had to use his best guess and summon the weapon back when he thought it was safe. It appeared in his hand as a sword, and he used it to—at long last—cut that stupid weight-increasing band off his leg.

He stretched, feeling freed from a thousand pounds. And yet, another weight replaced it—one upon his soul.

"Did I get the timing right?" he asked. "Did I just burn them alive or did I set them free? Did they get crushed by dirt above? Did Elegy save Rebeke?"

Silence. Auxiliary was dead. Worse than dead, burned away entirely—nothing remaining in the Cognitive Realm. This sword was now a corpse, one truly separated from the soul that had inhabited it.

No voice interrupted his musings to act as a replacement for his withered conscience. He was completely alone.

He'd likely never know what happened to Rebeke, Elegy, the Greater Good, and all the other Beaconites. Because he couldn't afford to look backward, didn't dare bring the forces that chased him anywhere near people he cared about. If he ever returned there, they'd know the place meant something to him. Everyone he'd ever spoken to there would become a target.

He had to hope that, since he'd only been there a short time, nobody would realize how deeply he'd come to care for the planet and its people.

In the distance, he spotted another boat. They passed this way often, though he saw no other land in the area. Just this atoll he'd appeared on—and it had been a few inches under water during the recent tide change. It lacked even a single tree.

He groaned softly, climbing to his feet, then formed Aux into a mirrored shield and used it to catch the sunlight. In minutes, the ship had turned his way. The people crewing it turned out to be Sho Del of all things. He hadn't known there were any enclaves of them off Yolen.

Their small ship arrived, and he waded out to meet it. It was time to start running again.

The End