Page 62 of The Sunlit Man

Right, of course, yes. But…I do wish we could pause a little more often and just enjoy the view.

Enjoying views was for someone who didn’t have a gun to his head.

Off to his right, one of the ships broke away from the main bulk of the city and fell off, smashing to the ground below andinterrupting the waterfalls. A work crew moved on, having recovered the sunheart from that ship. They entered the next one in the outer ring, and soon it detached and dropped off as well. Then a third. They were inanimate masses of metal, yet in this situation they seemed somehow forlorn, even tragic. Gravestones for the city that was no more.

As he watched, he was joined by Contemplation, walking with a cane—her hair wet, despite the protection of a wide-brimmed hat that had been pinned to it. Surprisingly sheshadedher eyes against the light of the rings. As if even that dim light bothered her.

“We are getting uncomfortably close to those mountains, Sunlit,” she said. “At least that engine of yours seems to be working.”

“We should still do a test run,” he said. “When we’re closer to the peaks, we should take one ship out and let it fly up high to confirm that the engine works as intended.”

“We could, perhaps, use the one assigned to you.” She nodded to the side, where he could pick out his home on Beacon—a ship with only a few small rooms in it, a wide deck, and a bulbous cab near the back. “It was Elegy’s ship, named theDawnchaser. She had it reinforced, so she could try to push into the great maelstrom at the edge of night, drawing ever closer to the sun.”

“Why would she want that?”

“It was one of her ideas for survival,” Contemplation said. “The Cinder King leaves people to die in the sunlight, then keeps a force of ships patrolling the edge of the great maelstrom—ready to snatch those sunhearts from the ground the moment it is safe to do so. Elegy wondered if there was some way to travel the great maelstrom itself—that boundary between the rain and the sunlight—and get them before the Cinder King could.” She shook her head. “It provedimpossible. Even if we could make a ship survive long enough, there was no way to leave the ship and recover the sunhearts.”

“The more I hear about Elegy,” he noted, “the more I like her.”

“Because of failed ideas?”

“Failed ideas lead to successful ones, Contemplation. They’re the only thing that does.”

She nodded, thoughtful, looking along the slopes, toward that great maelstrom. A place not in the sunlight, but dealing with the effects of its passing. He still hadn’t figured out the mechanics of this place. Why that tempest didn’t lead to planetwide unlivable weather patterns. Why the sunlight even burned on the level it did in the first place.

“Elegy always did seek the light,” Contemplation said. “Then one day the Cinder King rammed it right into her chest…”

Yet another ship collapsed, joining the trail of broken heaps they left behind.

“You know,” he said, “in my homeland, we have a story about someone who got too close to the sun. It’s a common enough theme across cultures and worlds. It never ends well.”

“If it pleases you to reassure me,” Contemplation said, hands on her cane, “then you are failing. Since that’s essentially what we’re going to be doing in a few short hours. But…what is this story you reference?”

He hesitated.

Go on, the knight whispers, it’s all right. I want to hear it. Give in a little.

“They came from the east,” Nomad said in the local tongue so Contemplation could understand. “Giants, in armor forged of the deepest metals. A horde of death and destruction that atethe land, consumed villages like insects swarming the crops. Ripping. Smashing.

“My ancestors fought them, because what else could you do? Submit to a force that only wanted to devour you and the civilization you stood for? We waited in ranks, each of us smaller than the invaders, but strong as a whole. Walls of honor and training, the only possible way to stem that tide of destruction. They called themselves the Alethi, but we knew them as the Tagarut. The breakers, it means. Those who leave only death.

“It was during the fourth invasion of our Ulutu Dynasty, the dates so old that no scholars can agree on them, but it is generally thought to have happened during the days of our fifteenth emperor. The Tagarut came again, as they were like the storm itself. Regular. Every generation. Another warlord. Another invasion.”

“Giants, you say?” Contemplation said, looking up at him. “Compared toyou?”

“Yes,” he whispered as another part of the city fell. “I’ve stood among them. Called some friends. They stand closer to the sky than any people I’ve ever known, Contemplation.”

“How do you befriend something so terrible?”

He smiled. “Legend says a change happened during that final invasion of the Ulutu Dynasty. The breakers—tired of falling to our armies—decided to try a new tactic. They decided to conquer the sun.

“‘What a lofty place,’ they thought. ‘It must glow with riches to shine so brightly.’ The Tagarut found the highest mountain and began to build scaffolding. They brought their greatest war machines, their towers for taking cities, their ropes, and theirShardbearers. And they climbed up to the sun itself, intent on destroying whatever people lived there, despoiling their land.”

“They climbedtothe sun. So it’s a fanciful story.” She sounded disappointed.

“Truth and fancy intermingle in almost all stories, Contemplation,” he said. “Especially the old ones. You cannot abandon fancy without gutting the truth. But in this story, yes, the central idea is fancy—for they reached the sun, eager to find weapons and tools they could use to finally claim my homeland.

“But the sunlight was too bright. The riches of the vault of the Almighty itself glowed with an intense heat. The Tagarut could not carry the gemstones they found, for they shone so bright as to destroy a man. The proud giants, the terrible warriors, were forced to flee—beaten not by spears or shields, but by the very treasure they sought to claim.

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