Page 26 of The Sunlit Man

The three women nodded. He slipped out, leaving Nomad to settle down in a seat at the table. He tipped his chair back against the wall, but didn’t put his feet up this time. He was, after all, feeling far more respectful.

“If it is agreeable, Nomad,” Confidence said to him, “I should like to inquire regarding the spirit that accompanies you. Rebeke tells us you can materialize objects at will?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” he replied. “But the way I do it is my own secret. Sorry.”

They let it drop, which he found surprising. How did they know that Auxiliary was a spirit? And why didn’t they push harder? One thing he’d noticed everywhere his travels took him was the universal fascination with Auxiliary. People often treated his abilities as a sign of divinity, or at least of extreme favor with divinities.

Here, they simply let him brush them off with a single sentence? How odd. They turned to other topics, discussing how they’d gather the people and how to find the entrance to the facility—the Refuge of Stone, as they called it. Apparently it wasn’t easy to locate.

Rebeke didn’t join the conversation; she turned to getting the others more tea. Curious. Outside, when they’d been running for their lives, she’d seemed a desperate rebel. Now he saw her differently. A young woman in a wet dress, her hat lost in the fighting. She was splattered with mud the rain hadn’t washed off, her shoulders drooping, her posture slumped. She had been through a lot today.

What kept her here when she should have, quite justifiably, headed for her bed, or at least a change of clothing? Perhaps it had something to do with her sister. Hadn’t they said that the woman—now transformed into one of those Charred—founded this city and came up with their plan to escape into the Refuge? Where did that leave Rebeke?

Her brother died today,he remembered.She watched his head get vaporized while rescuing their sister.Yeah, that dull expression, those rote motions. Rebeke was in shock. He knew what that was like. Carrying on by sheer force of will, trying to keep busy. Because if you stopped, if youdidgo to bed, you knew what would happen.

You’d have to face it.

“So, Aux,” Nomad said in Alethi as they waited. “Are we going to talk about how you went against my explicit orders and contacted Wit?”

The knight shuffles uncomfortably beneath his squire’s pointed question,Aux said.He tries to reply with confidence, but the nervousness in his voice betrays him.

“What did you hope would happen?” Nomad asked. “Did you think Wit would sweep in here, prop me up with one of his little morality tales, and I’d just go back to whistling?”

I remember…revelations in light. Transformation.

“Those were rare days,” Nomad said, shifting his gun against his shoulder. “Most change doesn’t happen with a revelation in light, Aux. Most change happens as a slow, steady slide toward the pit. Like how we age, step by shuffling step toward the grave.”

You don’t age anymore.

“My body might not,” he whispered, “but my soul sure does. It’s been rounding that pit for years. Step by step, Aux. We wear away. Ideals are like statues in the wind. They seem so permanent, but truth is, erosion happens subtly, constantly.”

The others continued to confer. “This will be dangerous, Greater Good,” Jeffrey Jeffrey was saying. “I offer this as fact: we will have to disassemble the entire city and bring it along, to be ready once the prospectors locate the entrance.”

“We will make this clear to the people in our explanations,” Compassion said. “Thank you, Jeffrey Jeffrey, for your frank assessment. But thisiswhere our hopes must rest. Contemplation is correct. We cannot survive as we are. Our sunhearts die, and our resources dwindle.”

“Either we must access this Refuge,” Contemplation said, “or we must die by the Cinder King’s brutality. He will not accept our surrender, and the people will know that.”

“Imagine,” Compassion said, “a place beyond his influence. A place where we can prove that our way is better, that we do not require his tyranny or false ‘unity’ to survive. If Zeal’s mission had failed, we would perhaps have to accept worse options. But with that key, we have a chance.”

Confidence, tall and intense, turned away from the table. “Whichprovokes my memory. We have not yet discussed a punishment appropriate for the one who disobeyed our strict commands and in so doing, cleaved unto chaos and jeopardy, sowing both to all who accompanied her.”

Rebeke, who had been quietly cleaning up the hotplate and teacups, stiffened. She looked back at the table, then cast her eyes down.

“Hey,” Nomad said in their tongue, “maybe give the girl a break. Without her, you wouldn’t have me.”

“This is not your concern, outsider,” Confidence said.

“If you haven’t noticed,” Nomad said, “I don’t really care what you think is or is not my concern.” He stood up as Zeal returned, bearing some equipment. Nomad placed his gun on the table, then held out his hands.

Zeal looked to the Greater Good—who nodded their approval—before beginning work on the bracers.

“You keep saying,” Nomad continued, “that you’re different from the Cinder King. That you resist his tyranny. It seems to me that if you’re trying to establish a place different from the one that guy rules, you’d want to avoid punishing a person who is just doing their best to help.”

The first bracer came off. Zeal set it on the table with a thump, then moved underneath the other one, working.

“Thank you for the lecture, young man,” Confidence said dryly. “Perhaps, with age, you will come to realize that abalanceis needed. Tyranny is awful, but not all authority is to be rejected. It is common for the young to have trouble with this concept of moderation.”

“How old do you think I am?” Nomad said, amused.

---