Page 93 of The Sunlit Man

“I’m not ready!” she said. “I can’t control it.”

“A lesson for you,” he said. “You nevergetto be ready. You just have to move forward anyway. That’s something Kaladin taught me.” He undid her manacle.

She immediately leaped to her feet, pushing toward him aggressively. He locked eyes with her and waited for the punch. Which…through a battle conveyed by the twisting of expressions on her face…never came.

Something thumped from outside—a Charred jumping onto their deck. He had little hope they’d be scared away by a simple kata this time. The Cinder King was backed into a corner. His forces would fight.

Elegy turned toward the sound and growled softly.

“Stay close to me,” Zellion said, “and don’t lose control. Remember, we aren’t here to kill. We’re here to survive.”

“I just want to fight.”

“Fight withpurpose,” he said. “Never forget the why.” He raisedhis empty hand, and a glittering spear appeared in it. He’d been draining away the patina on his soul using the little sunheart, but it was still satisfying how easily he managed to create the weapon.

“Take good care of him,” Zellion told Elegy, handing the Shardspear to her.

“Why give it to me?” she said, taking the spear with reverence.

“Because you lack training,” he said, “but I still need backup. You’ll be far more effective with that than you will be empty-handed, and the fact that it can cut through anything will make up for your inability to thrust with it accurately. Just be careful—don’t stab the ship, and do your best not to hit me. Cuts from weapons like that are storming tough to heal.”

He nodded to Elegy, who nodded back, eyes alight with eagerness. Together, they burst onto the deck.

Zellion used hisspear to catch the arm of a Charred swinging a machete at his head. He heaved back, then tripped the fellow—but before he could deliver a death blow, Elegy was upon the Charred, stabbing at him repeatedly with her spear. It didn’t cut his flesh, but his soul—and when it went into the Charred’s brain, his eyes burned and shriveled like coals, his cinderheart going out.

Once he was dead, she kept going, stabbing down through him into the deck itself. Zellion caught her arm, making her pause.

Maybe we should be a little more…reserved with her weapon, eh? I’ll try to remember to blunt it if she goes too far.

Zellion looked Elegy in the eyes again. “Be careful.”

She nodded, wide eyed,waytoo excited. At least she was enthusiastic.

Only one Charred had made it to their ship; he’d come off ahovercycle, which—unfortunately—had fallen behind after he’d leaped over. It was now vanishing into the distance behind them.

TheDawnchaser, the most maneuverable of the Beacon forces, flew a little off from the main formation—which was made up of the four gunships surrounding the small cluster of four densely packed passenger ships.

It was an extremely vulnerable position, something the majority of the Cinder King’s pilots seemed to recognize. While their leader and his most elite had flown off in their fastest ships, the rest buzzed around the Beaconites. Fortunately they didn’t immediately go for the transports; they took the more obvious option of trying to take out the gunships.

People often aimed for the defenses first, as if there was a kind of hierarchy you were supposed to follow. He wasn’t going to complain. Rebeke, following his instructions, swung theDawnchaserin close to Zeal’s gunship—which had five Charred swarming its deck. Once close, Zellion jumped. He hit the deck with spear in hand, drawing the attention of the Charred before they could go for the people inside the cab. At Zellion’s suggestion, they’d kept the gunships clear of civilians. Just a pilot and copilot in each one.

That left tons of people on the decks of the transports exposed to gunfire and shrapnel. He tried not to think about that as Elegy landed beside him, and they engaged the Charred on the deck of Zeal’s gunship. The two of them made a good team—as Zellion proved effective at seizing attention with his flashing spear and tactical strikes. The Charred focused on him, which let Elegy tear through them with the borrowed weapon.

In seconds, four of the Charred were down, and the last one leaped off the deck toward another gunship passing nearby. Zellionnodded to Elegy, who was grinning, and they followed—soaring through the air. As they landed on this second gunship, they met another group of Charred.

These, though, scattered instead of fighting. They surged off the ship to nearby passing enemy vessels.

That was wrong. Very wrong. He knew from his experience with Elegy that Charred preferred to fight, no matter what. They would only run away if directly and forcibly instructed to do so. He glanced to the side and saw small cinderhearts on the deck—perhaps attached with magnets—glowing from the center with wiring and casing around them.

He grabbed Elegy by instinct and threw her toward theDawnchaser, which was sweeping back their direction. He jumped a second later, then the ship behind them—poor people in the cab included—went up in a bright explosion of red fire and burning metal.

Elegy landed on theDawnchaser, then stumbled, staring down at the wreck as it plowed into the muddy landscape below—then detonated again, the shockwave rattling their own ship.

“Cheating,” she hissed, her cinderheart pulsing with a white-red anger. “That’scheating.”

“There are no rules,” he said. “We’re the ones who brought cannons to the fight.”

He felt like a fool, though. He’d known they used explosives. The Beaconites had deployed them effectively in their initial raid to save their friends. He should have prepared for this. The maneuver made sense, as the bombs would work even if Zellion proved too frightening or powerful for the Charred. They didn’t need to fight. They just needed to be mobile delivery mechanisms.

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