Page 101 of The Sunlit Man

“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 youtellthem?”

“Why would we reveal such a useful secret?”

He had to do something. He had totellthem.

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 absolutewrongtime 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’swhy the Night Brigade is here! Rusts, there’s a bounty on his head big enough to buy a smallplanet.”

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 willcut 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.

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