Page 54 of The Sunlit Man

He frowned, not following her.

“Being called Sunlit,” she said. “You grimaced when Zeal said the name. And earlier you asked us to call you Nomad.”

“No, I don’t care for Sunlit,” he said. “You’re right.”

“Why? It’s a title of honor, of great respect.”

“Anyone Invested to the level I am could have survived a few seconds in the sunlight. Even if the term is one of honor—which I can understand—I don’t think it means anything. I like to earn my titles, and I don’t feel I did anything particularly interesting in this case.”

She nodded slowly at that. “But earlier you told Contemplation you didn’t mind if she called you that. Why say such a thing if it bothers you?”

“Because,” he said, “sometimes it’s not about you individually. Sometimes it’s about being a symbol. Sometimes you just adopt the name you’re given because it inspires people. I’ve seen it happen. Didn’t think it would happen to me.”

Zeal returned with some snacks, and they continued waiting. Eventually, after about forty-five minutes, the glow in the enclosure faded. The worker operated the simple crane to bring from the mists a realization of Nomad’s schematics: parts to modify their engines.

“Now what?” Rebeke asked, sounding excited.

“Now,” Nomad replied, “we install this on an engine and watch it explode.”

It was a fineexplosion. Lit up the darkness with a flare of orange and yellow as the housing for the engine gave out. He probably hadn’t made it thick enough; he’d worried about that.

They stood at the edge of Beacon as it flew, looking out over the darkness. With some help, he’d installed the parts on a small hovercycle engine, then used another hovercycle to take it out and test it. They’d activated the prototype engine a short distance away via remote. It had soared up, and then…

The flash of its failure washed over the group and made several of them jump, even though Nomad had warned them to expect it.

“So that’s it,” Compassion said. The frail woman had been provided a seat from which to watch the experiment. “Our deaths are sealed.”

“Hardly,” Nomad said. “Itoldyou it would explode.”

“If we strap those to our ships, we’ll be strapping ourselves to bombs!”

“We’re not going to usethoseengines,” Nomad said. “Youexpectthe first one to fail. We iterate now. Build another prototype, a better one, and see what happens to it. And so forth.”

“And so forth?” Contemplation said, arms folded. Lit only by the running lights of the ships forming the city, her pale skin took on a spectral quality. “How long do you expect ‘and so forth’ to take, Sunlit?”

It was, he had to admit, a valid question. He’d already expended more than three of their hours on this work, leaving less than seven until they reached the highlands. How quickly could he revise and improve this design? How quickly could he experiment enough to find an engine that worked? A master engineer could have done it, undoubtedly.

Here, though, he was lacking. That wasn’t false humility; he’d always been interested in these kinds of things, but he’d chosen the path of a soldier instead. Well, he’d been thrust upon that path, and then he’d chosen to walk it.

Most of what he knew about engineering came from the first few years of his exile, when he’d fallen in with some scholars and really had a chance to learn. Fortunately he had a hope for help. Nearby, the slender woman who was head of repairs and engineering in Beacon had gathered her team, and they were looking over his schematics. He strode over to them, right near the edge of Beacon, with a drop into darkness beyond. He squatted down, and the lead engineer looked at him. Tan skinned with long black hair, she could almost have been Alethi—if not for her strikingly Threnodite name that he’d learned during the fabrication: Solemnity Divine.

“This is genius,” she whispered, hand on the schematics.

“Thanks,” he said. “But I think the boiler housing was too thin.”

Solemnity Divine nodded. “Dirge thinks so too, but I think it’s your seals here and here. But with tweaks, I think itwillwork.”

“The propellant will run out quickly,” another of the engineers warned. “We have three large water tanks for watering crops, but that’s not much to lift the entire city.”

“And if we pare down our ships?” Nomad asked. “Shrink Beacon to only the essential vessels?”

The engineers shared a look.

“Maybe possible,” Solemnity Divine said. “Even with that, I doubt we’d have much flight time. Maybe…two hours? Depending on how low we can get the city’s weight?”

“Long enough?” Nomad asked. “We just have to crest the peaks and start down the other side.”

“Should be,” she said. “Should be. It will be close, anyway…”

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