Page 41 of The Sunlit Man

“And how precise is their memory of the exact location? Did they memorize the positions of the stars? There are no persistent landmarks on this world. So—”

“So,” she admitted, “those who saw the door could have been ina different location entirely. And it is reasonable, I admit that the coordinates we’re relying upon could be a lie meant to confuse people, in case this very situation arose.”

“Exactly,” he said, leaning low against the wind. “I just had a chat with him. He’s a tyrant, but fortunately for us, he’s a stupid tyrant—with more ego than brains.”

“Pardon, but youchattedwith him?”

“Yeah. Long story.”

It’s really not, the knight observes. He stopped by. You flew up.

“That’s not the long part of it,” he said in Alethi. “The long part would be explaining why I flew up there.” He continued in the local tongue. “Contemplation, he knows. He’s figured out you swapped the keys.”

“Not to offend unduly, Sunlit—but did you tip him off to it by accident?”

“Think that if it makes you feel better,” he said, “but he didn’t need any help from me. I watched him piece it together—all he needed was the information that Beacon was searching this area and that you’d brought everyone from your city. He isn’t as smart as I first thought him, but even he could put two and two together.”

Contemplation was quiet over the line.

“Look,” Nomad said. “He’s gathering his forces and will be upon you soon. It’s time to pull out and retreat to the darkness.”

“If we retreat,” Contemplation said, “we will be dead before we can rotate to this position again.”

“If you don’t retreat, you’ll be dead a lot sooner. Doesn’t seem like a difficult decision to me.”

She sighed. “I’m just…so tired of running.”

“Lady,” he replied, “you haveno ideahow well I understand that.”

“I shall speak to the rest of the Greater Good,” she said, “and we shall decide. You have young Rebeke with you still, I hope.”

“I’ve got her,” he said. “She’s a tad stormy because I made her leave a cycle behind, but she’s in one piece—and has no extra holes in her.”

“It is well,” Contemplation said. “She may not be our Lodestar, but she is a symbol to this people now that her siblings are gone. I offer this request: endeavor not to get her killed. At least, not before the rest of us fall.”

She cut off, and Nomad was left to worry that they wouldn’t heed his warning. Fortunately, by the time he got back to the main body, they were organizing as he’d wished and moving back toward the darkness—which had moved pretty far off by that point. The horizon was growing brighter. Probably still an hour or so from full daylight, but he dipped his cycle lower anyway, to be deeper in the planet’s shadow.

Down here, the plants were growing. Not as quickly as they’d been just on the edge of dawn, but the growth was perceptible. The landscape he’d left behind had been barren, full of mud and crags. This one was overgrown with life, moss on virtually every surface, grass waving in the winds, and it even bore small thickets of trees, their branches reaching toward the rings. It felt like an entirely different place; landmarks he’d noticed before leaving were now obscured by the foliage and deep greenery.

How did seeds survive the cataclysmic heat of the day? Storms. The plants on this world must be something extraordinary. Andthe animals? As he zoomed past, he startled a group of gazelle-like creatures, who leaped up from feeding and bounded toward the darkness. Their eyes glowed faintly golden. Invested in some way.

He found the quadcycle’s central fuselage where they’d left it, the other jets keeping it aloft. After locking the smaller one into place—and releasing Rebeke, who took over driving—they joined the rest of the ships, flying away from the sun in their ceaseless trek.

For a time, Nomad thought maybe they’d actually escaped. Then they reached the rim of the cloud cover, where even reflected sunlight didn’t reach—and he saw something in the darkness beyond. A multitude of burning red lights. Seconds later, several dozen enemy ships zoomed out, on the attack.

“They were searchingfor us,” Rebeke said. “While we were out here, they were in there, hunting for Beacon!”

She was right. The ships coming out of the darkness veered to the sides in surprise. They’d gotten orders to fly back to stop Beacon but hadn’t expected to run into it so soon. For a few confusing minutes, chaos reigned. Both groups of ships broke up, swarming in all directions. Nomad’s stomach tried to crawl up his esophagus as Rebeke dove toward the ground. The radio became a barking frenzy of questions and orders.

“To the east!” Contemplation’s voice cut through it all. “Gather to the east. Make into the darkness and follow the Beacon!”

Rebeke veered that way, their engines burning a strip of ash through the plants beneath them, which whipped at Nomad’s legs. He craned his neck, expecting to see weapon fire above. But there was practically none. Just a sharpshooter blast here and there.

He reminded himself that they didn’t have guns mounted on their ships. Instead he saw a couple of enemy vessels bracket a blue-striped Beaconite ship and lock on either side, like they were docking. Soldiers leaped from the Cinder King’s ships, rushing the Beaconite’s cockpit.

Before he’d found his Torment, he’d lived on a world without firearms. Back there, they’d engaged in a more personal, brutal kind of combat—the kind where you were forced to watch the other fellow die as you found the most efficient way of separating his blood from his body.

This conflict felt more like naval warfare on his homeworld: no cannons, no artillery, just ramming and boarding. It was cumbersome, but it made sense here, since capturing a ship was among the most constructive things you could do, simultaneously shrinking the enemy force and enlarging your own. In addition, the Cinder King’s military strength relied on the Charred, who were most effective in close-up combat.

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