Page 56 of The Sunlit Man

“I wouldn’t want to depend on me so much either,” he agreed. “But your options are all pretty terrible right now. So this is where we are.” He shrugged.

Aren’t you supposed to be good with people? the knight asks. You seem to forget that fairly often.

Well, he was right, so what did it matter? Besides, his gut told him that this frankness was what these people needed. Auxiliary might not have been able to see it, but thiswasbeing “good” withpeople. In this situation. It was a stark time for a stern people living on a harsh world. They didn’t want sugar coatings.

They nodded and sent someone to confirm to the engineers that they’d agreed with his plan. He turned to go, but Confidence spoke, stepping toward him.

“Sunlit,” she said. “I want you to know that you are appreciated.”

He paused. He hadn’t expected that. This tall woman with severe features was the one who had been most resistant to his ideas.

“We know,” she said, the other two nodding, “that you were likely offered a deal by the Cinder King. It is his way. He enjoys having power over people and will do whatever is required—even pay them, though he hates it—to achieve that end. You could have thrown in with him. You did not.”

“He broke his oath,” Nomad said.

“Regardless, you have our thanks. Do not mistake my skepticism for hostility. We appreciate you. And if we do manage to crest those mountains and find the Refuge, I will be the first to offer you my warmth in thanks.”

He nodded, and a bit of actual gratitude—real, genuine emotion—cut through his grungy patina of cynicism and exhaustion. It was nice to be appreciated.

“I don’t need that warmth you offer,” he said. “But maybe you could tell me something. Rebeke says there’s a way to give heat to a sunheart, like it was a person?”

“Yes,” Contemplation said. “But this is useless. It barely charges the sunheart at all—a person could give their entire soul to it, and it would only keep a ship in the air for a short time.”

Because they only have one BEU of Investiture,Auxiliary mused.Yes, interesting.

“I need to know how anyway,” Nomad said. “For my experiments. I tried it earlier with a sunheart, and nothing happened.”

“Was it a drained sunheart?” Contemplation asked.

“Well, yes.”

“That won’t work,” she said. “You can’t give your soul to a corpse. You need someone living. Or a—”

“A charged sunheart,” he said, smacking his forehead. “Damnation. Obviously.” Therewereways to put Investiture into inanimate objects, but it tended to be much harder. And much more dangerous.

Sunhearts were consideredaliveby the reckoning of Investiture. At least, charged ones were. Storms. He was an idiot.

He needed to try again with Elegy.

He left themto divide the people among the chosen buildings while he went to test his realization. They’d harvest the sunhearts of the other ships, then leave the surplus hulks behind. As he’d suggested, they did keep one scout ship with a prospecting device—they picked one where he’d been living, the one that had belonged to Elegy—and the hovercycles.

He rushed away, Rebeke close behind. Before going to his quarters, he asked Rebeke for permission, then stopped beside her hovercycle and pulled out its sunheart.

Hmmm…Aux said.I’d guess around two hundred BEUs in this one. Far less than what powers a full ship. Still, on a lot of planets, that would be a wealth of Investiture. Enough to reach the Second Heightening, and here it’s used for simple locomotion.

“At a steep cost,” Nomad said, heading toward his quarters, Rebeke still trailing behind.

Even on highly Invested worlds, a person’s soul isn’t more than three BEUs,Aux replied.You are right about this Investiture coming from somewhere. Keeping this city flying, though it’s much smaller than Union, must require sunhearts worth tens of thousands.

He’d considered that. He considered it again, then continued on his original path. Back at his room, Elegy was still chained to the wall—and yes, that was still uncomfortably strange. Stormfather help him if his master ever found out about this situation. Wit’s delight at the potential jokes—most relating to Nomad’s methods of getting a woman to stay near him—would be able to power small cities.

Nomad held up the sunheart, which glowed with a simmering deep red light. Yes, it made sense. For the Commands he’d been using, you needed people, or things, with life in them. In essence, he had been trying to command a dead hound to do tricks. This time, he held up the living sunheart to Elegy.

It glowed with the power of the soul that formed it. And when he spoke the words of the prayer Rebeke had taught him, their mother’s soul knew what to do. It drew forth some of the life from Elegy in the form of radiant smoke that glowed a luminescent red.

Perfect. Now they were getting somewhere. He grinned, pulling back and digging out another notebook.

“I still don’t understand the point of this,” Rebeke said as Elegy, as usual, snarled and growled.

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