Page 34 of The Sunlit Man

She nodded.

She seems comforted, the knight notes, even though the squire didn’t say anything actually helpful.

“Knowing you aren’t strange,” he explained in Alethi, “ishelpful. Knowing others felt like you did. Sometimes it’s the only thing thatishelpful.”

“Why do you do that?” Rebeke asked. “Talk gibberish sometimes?”

“It’s my own language,” he said. “In other places, Rebeke, people speak all kinds of words you wouldn’t recognize.”

“But why speak it now? When nobody can understand?”

“I’m offering prayers,” he said, picking a lie he thought might appeal to her, “to one of the ancient gods of my realm.”

Please, no, the knight says. I’m no god. I work for a living.

Nomad checked to make certain his cycle had some flight time left, then nodded down toward the crash. “Come on. Let’s go check on him.”

“Why?” Rebeke said. “He’s dead.”

“Lesson number one about being a killer, Rebeke,” he said. “Always make sure.”

Rebeke pointedly didn’tlook at the corpse. Nomad considered forcing her to confront it. No use in her trying to pretend she hadn’t shot the fellow. If she really wanted to protect her people, this wouldn’t be the last man she’d have to kill.

He didn’t bother. It wasn’t his job to train her. Instead he did a cursory inspection of the corpse—and when he found a treasured picture, obviously drawn by a child, tucked into a pocket, he slipped it back into place without mentioning it to Rebeke.

She was kneeling beside the wreckage of the scout’s cycle. “We’ll salvage this,” she said, then walked to her own cycle, lifted the seat, and pulled out a tow cable stored inside. “Even if it’s beyond repair, salvaging this is easier than harvesting metal from the iron fields.”

“Iron fields?” Nomad asked, crouching down.

“Places where molten metal coats the surface each rotation,” shesaid, walking back. “One corridor north. We sneak in during the darkness and pry up some of it before the Cinder King’s forces arrive.”

“And you use this how?” he asked, frowning. “Do you have full fabrication plants on your ships?”

“Fabrication plants?” she asked, cocking her head. “We use the Chorus, obviously. The spirits, like the one that follows you, create the objects we need.”

Ahhh, the knight intones. That sounds interesting.

“Stop trying to bait me,” he muttered in Alethi, then switched to her language. “Send someone else to salvage this, Rebeke. What is that blinking light there on the dash of the cycle?”

She cursed softly, lowering her towline. She knelt again, tapping a small, green-on-black indicator screen that was cracked but still flickering.

“What is it?” he asked.

“That shows an incoming radio signal,” she said. “The speaker is busted, so we can’t hear what they’re saying. But…”

“But someone was calling this fellow when he went down,” Nomad said. “Which means we got out of range of your signal blockers before he died. Damnation. He probably radioed in the moment he had a chance.”

“It’s what I’d have done,” Rebeke said.

“This means they know he’s down and that something, orsomeone, killed him.”

“What if they send more troops? What if they send Charred? What if they bring theentire city?”

Nomad stood up, dusting off his hands. “Surely you know the answer to that by now.” He started off toward his cycle. In front ofhim, the brilliant display of erupting earth had subsided, leaving the field pocked with holes and mounds of black lava rock.

“Nomad!” she called from behind. “I don’t want this. To be a killer. To be like…like you.”

He looked back, and a glib response came to his tongue.

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