Page 91 of The Sunlit Man

“And what you did in protecting us?” she said softly. “Was that a blight? A pernicious evil?”

Storms, he didn’t want to have to make that call. Judge between evil and honor. He just wanted to keep running. Why did questions like this always bubble up if he stayed in one place too long?

How many excuses would he make for walking away? And would he ever be able to dig down within himself and find the actualreason he’d done it? Not the surface-level, easy explanation. But the core of what made him, of all people, capable of turning his back on everyone he’d loved?

Rebeke was waiting for an answer to her question. She looked at him, bright-eyed and curious.

“No,” he told her. “Protecting your people by fighting the Charred was not evil, Rebeke. But I don’t think I can ever call it beautiful again.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t say so either. Not if you could look inside me and see how muchfunI was having during that fight.”

She paled visibly. “I still want to find a way to help my people,” she said, looking away from him. “If not by fighting, then by leading. But there will be time, I suppose, to figure that out once we’ve found the Refuge.”

He grimaced. She’d storming handed him the opportunity, hadn’t she? Even if she didn’t know it. He couldn’t just saunter past that one and pretend nothing was wrong.

“Rebeke,” he forced himself to say. “I have to say it again. This sanctuary you’re looking for. It doesn’t—”

“Stop,” she said, spinning on him. “Don’t say it.”

“You should know what it actually is. A place created by outsiders to protect themselves. A—”

“You told us earlier there was a chance,” she said. “Is that still true? Is thereanyhope that a place exists where we can find safety?”

Storms, he wasn’t certain he could maintain that lie. This was almost certainly a Scadrian research facility, by that key. A place to house a small group of scientists come to study the way Canticle’s sun worked.

They would have watched this people with the cold detachment of researchers with subjects. He’d been there. He’d seen that kindof attitude. It wasn’t universal among scientists, but this would be a self-selecting group. And as proof, he knew they had done nothing to help so far, despite the terrible lives this people lived.

“Don’t say anything,” she said. “I see it in your eyes.”

“But—”

“We have a story,” she said, “about an ancient man who asked to know his fate. In it, hope was extinguished forever. For he knew the answer.”

“It’s…a common variety of myth,” he said. “I know a dozen variations from a dozen different planets.”

“I will not be that man,” she said. “I will maintain hope.”

“Then maintain hope in something real,” he said. “If the Refuge proves to not be real, you need to find another path to safety. The one your sister envisioned, Rebeke. Throwing off the rule of the Cinder King.”

“Where has that gotten us?”

“It’s made you into a beacon,” he said. “Others will see. There comes a time when every tyrant is weak or exposed. Given the chance, his people will topple him themselves.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain,” he said.

She thought a moment, but shook her head. “Elegy could have persuaded the people of Union to overthrow the Cinder King, but we don’t have that Elegy anymore. And we can’t survive any longer out here. We have ditched our farming equipment. We have asingleprospector. We don’t have food, living space, supplies.

“Our onlyrealhope is to find the Refuge. It’s what the Greater Good wants, and it’s what our people want. So keep your concerns to yourself. And leave us with hope.”

He took a deep breath, then nodded.

“All right, then,” she said. “What do we do next? How do we find the entrance and how do we get through the Cinder King’s forces to reach it? He knows we’ve survived. He’s going to array everything he has to stop us.”

“Well, this is where you’re fortunate to have a killer among you,” Zellion said. “Because it’s time to show the Cinder King what anactualbattle looks like.”

Rebeke was right.The Cinder Kinghadbrought all his forces to bear. He lined them up, dozens of ships and hundreds of Charred, hovering in the air just outside the cloud cover of the shadow. Waiting exactly in the place where, one day ago, the Beaconites had tried to locate the Refuge.

Judging by the look of those forces, the Cinder King thought he was ready for anything. That made it oh so very sweet to watch as Zellion’s ships emerged from the rain and opened fire with large, ship-mounted guns.

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