Page 20 of The Sunlit Man

Oh wait. Right. Auxiliary wasn’t around.

Everyone stared at him.

“Such odd words,” Compassion said. “I offer this thought: do you suppose he’s from a far northern corridor? They speak in ways that, on occasion, make a woman need to concentrate to understand.”

“If it pleases you to be disagreed with, Compassion,” Contemplation said, “I don’t think this is a mere accent. No, not at all. Regardless, there are more pressing matters. Zeal, may I be granted the blessing of seeing the object your team recovered?”

The short man reached into his pocket and withdrew something wrapped in a handkerchief. Outside, the wind was rising, the rain drumming more furiously on the metal ceiling and walls. The tapping on the ceiling was like nervous fingers on a bell, demanding service. All of them ignored that, however, as Zeal unwrapped a metal disc almost as wide as a man’s palm, with an odd symbol on the front. One that Nomad could read, but which heabsolutelyhadn’t expected to find on this planet. Storms.

What were Scadrians doing here?

“It’s real…” Contemplation said, resting her fingers on it, feeling the grooves in the metal.

“If it is not offensive,” Confidence said, “let me speak with bluntness. Do weknowthis is real?” The tall, elderly woman took the disc. “It could be a replica. Or the legends could be false.”

“If it is not too bold of me to say,” Zeal replied, “I offer dissent.It would not be fake. Why would the Cinder King have cause to think anyone would steal it? Few even know about his pet project.”

“This was my sister’s plan,” Rebeke said. “This is our way to freedom. Ouronlyway. Zeal…youdidit!”

Curious. Nomad was piecing things together. This hadn’t simply been a rescue operation—indeed, the rescue might have been intended to cover up a more interesting heist: the theft of this item, which he knew for a fact to be a Scadrian authorization key. Plastic key cards were, of course, eschewed by them. They had a fetish for metal.

This disc would open a door somewhere. And the people at the table seemed to know it, even if they didn’t understand completely what they were doing.

“But can we operate it?” Compassion asked. “Can we find our way in, past the ancient barrier?”

“We don’t even know if the legends are true,” Confidence said. “Yes, perhaps the Cinder King believes them. But I offer this contrast: what proof is there that these mythical lands beneath the ground exist? A place untouched by the sun? I speak with firm conviction: I willnotlead this people in confidence without evidence.”

“Sometimes,” Contemplation said, “no evidence can be found. I offer that, for a time, we must move by faith alone. Elegy—our appointed Lodestar—believed. She is the one the Greater Good trusted to guide our way in the darkness. This was her goal; that is enough for me.”

“I find that offering difficult and strange from your tongue, Contemplation,” Confidence said. “What of your calling, science and reason?”

Contemplation took the disc and held it reverently, her face—though aged—marked with lines of joy, her eyes dancing and aglow with the fire of new knowledge. Her dyed black hair might have been seen by some as vanity, but Nomad recognized it as a token of self-possession. She knew how she liked to look. And she didn’t care that others knew it was artificial. In expressing herself, the artificial became more authentic than the original.

“Even in science,” Contemplation said, “faith plays a role. Each experiment done, each step on the path of knowledge, is achieved by striking out into the darkness. You can’t know what you will find, or that you will find anything at all. It is faith that drives us—faith in answers that must exist.”

She looked to the others in the room, skipping Nomad, but including Rebeke, Zeal, and Jeffrey Jeffrey. The respect she showed them proved that the leaders were not uniquely important in this society; everyone mattered.

“It is a wild hope, these stories of a land untouched by the sun,” Contemplation admitted. “But we must ask ourselves. How long will we survive in this darkness? Elegy was right to move us here, but it was an act of desperation. And even now, our people wilt. We cannot grow food. We lose more ships and laborers every time we venture into the dawnlands.

“I offer this grim truth: we will die out here. Yet undoubtedly if we return to our previous corridor, we will be consumed by the Cinder King. We haven’t the knowledge of warfare and killing to fight him; we have not been graced with such brutal and carnal instincts.

“I offer a further grim insight: he will never again be taken by surprise as he was today. His killers will stand alert, prepared inwisdom against further hostility. The Cinder King will ne’er again allow a clever hack of their bracers, and his people will ne’er again let themselves become so distracted by their games that they slacken their guard.

“Today was our greatest victory as the people of Beacon. But I offer, in contrast to that peak, that today is the day we begin to fade. Without a solution, we will die. And so I ask: Confidence, is a little faith—a little time spent chasing a legendary reward—not worth the chance that we can avoid our fate?” She turned the disc over. “We trusted Elegy to get us here. We should trust her again and find this Refuge.”

“We should, by duty of our current accomplishments, test this key,” Compassion said. “And Zeal’s team should be commended for their willingness to steal it for us.”

“I offer this reminder:” Confidence warned, “the Cinder King will chase us for that token.”

“If it pleases you to be contradicted,” Compassion said softly, “he would chase us anyway. He desires greatly to destroy us. And that sense of purpose will have been bolstered by today’s events. Hemustdestroy us now, lest more of his people question how far his authority extends.”

Nomad listened with interest to the exchange. Yes, they understood what that key was. But they didn’t know the truth of what they’d find by using it. He was confident that even if they did open a door somewhere with the key…it would not give them some mythical “refuge.” That was a modern device, borne by Scadrian surveyors, to let them be located and give them authorization to return to one of their small, exploratory starships.

The conversation moved on as the winds raged even harder,rocking the city. They mentioned a “great maelstrom,” which he understood as a storm, not unlike a highstorm, that followed the sun at dusk. So he’d guessed right—this cloud cover was the aftermath of sunset, and rightatsunset was some kind of terrible storm.

He imagined the place as a planet with five phases. First: the lands he’d passed, where reflected sunlight grew plants. Second: the constant cloud cover, where rain was scattered. Third: the maelstrom at sunset, where sunlight vanished, leaving a cyclone born of pressure and humidity changes. Fourth: the superheated landscape where the sun reigned. Finally dawn, where men and women were left to die.

How odd to have found a land where instead of being chased by a storm, the people snuck up on its tail and hid within the edges of its cloak.

---