Page 36 of The Sunlit Man

They left the wreckage and took off, then immediately hid behind a natural merlon at the lip of the crater. Far to Nomad’s left, the sky was growing light with a predawn glow. Faintly so—this wasn’t yet even what he’d have called twilight on another planet. But sunrise wasn’t deadly on other planets, and twilight had never felt quite so ominous to him as it did here.

They powered down the cycles to conserve their batteries and kept watch—ignoring that looming light to the left. The rockshere were dark and glasslike. Obsidian, maybe. It reminded him of another place, another world he’d once traveled. A place where he’d met Auxiliary.

Rebeke dug out bread and sausage, slicing them and making a sandwich, using a spread that looked like oil with herbs. No butter, which he supposed made sense. He didn’t know what they hunted for meat, but those flying ships didn’t have room for cultivated livestock.

“Contemplation is wrong about you, isn’t she?” Rebeke asked, offering him some of the food, which he took. “She thinks you’re from some strange underground place, but I think you’re from somewhere more normal.”

“And where would that be?” he asked.

She nodded her chin up, toward the stars.

“Another world is more normal?”

“We came from another world,” she said around bites of her food. Odd, how they even ate with gloves on. “Chased by an ancient force known as the Evil.”

“It’s still there,” he said. “On your homeworld. I’ve seen it. Well, the manifestations of it.” Wild, unchained Investiture, come to life with its own alien will—forming mountain-sized figures with impossible, unnerving features and unknowable motivations. Threnody was not a place one visited to relax.

This comment finally threw her for a loop. She almost dropped her sandwich as he said it.

“Strangely, the Chorus—who hold our history—don’t speak of our leaving because of the Evil,” she continued. “No, they say it was the quarreling. The infighting that sprang up among our people.Conflict, hatred. My ancestors wanted to escape that, for it was more pernicious than the Evil itself.Strifedestroyed our people.

“During our flight from the Evil, there was more bickering among the people. My group…we listened to the preaching of a man: the servant of Adonalsium and the original Lodestar. We left with him to a new land. We chose this.”

Nomad grunted, trying his own sandwich, which proved to be terribly bland. What he wouldn’t give for at least some chili powder. Half the planets he visited had diets with all the flavor of a cup of water. Storms, back home, even thebreadwas spicier than this sausage.

Still, it was food, and he forced it down. Investiture could sustain him, but at barely ten percent Skip capacity, he would rather not waste it on mere metabolism.

“We were supposed to be free here,” Rebeke said, still watching the horizon. “From each other. I often wonder if the first Lodestar brought us here specifically to keep us running, to give us something to focus upon. A sun that destroys, like the Evil itself, always pursuing us. Until now, it has prevented us from turning on each other.”

“You’ve gone all this time without violence?”

“We had violence,” she said. “Crimes of passion. Arguments. But no actual killers. Notrainedones. That was the Cinder King’s innovation.”

Remarkable, the knight says. I can’t decide if they’re naive or impressive.

“It’s not human nature to kill, Aux,” he whispered in Alethi. “You must be trained to do it. If you want to be effective, at least.”

From what he’d heard, there were as many as fifty groups onthis planet, all running parallel to one another in these “corridors.” Enough of a population to foster interchange and prevent inbreeding, but it was also a situation begging for a tyrant’s hand. Scarce resources. Many small populations unaccustomed to working together.

In that light, itwasremarkable that it had taken so long for a Cinder King to arise. Nomad wasn’t an ethnographer. As much as his master had pushed him, Nomad’s interest had always been in engineering, the nature of Investiture, and the mechanisms one could create by manipulating it. Still, he had training from Wit about the nature of stories and the people who told them. So he recognized that these peoples’ stories were bound to be fascinating. Enough so that part of him wished he could stay and learn them.

But the pursuit, the chase, ever loomed. It drove away all other thoughts, like a predator ravaging a once-placid flock.

He couldn’t linger.

Hehadto get away.

So he watched keenly, instead of asking for more information. And well that he did, for he soon spotted a ship coming to check on the fallen scout. A single vessel, larger than most—perhaps the size of a small bus. Its ornamented sides glowed golden in the ringlight.

Rebeke gasped as he pointed it out. “That’s the Cinder King’sown ship!”

The Cinder King’sown ship?

Byitself?

Damnation. What was going on?

“Why would he come on his own?” Rebeke asked, her confusion mirroring Nomad’s own. “It makes no sense.”

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