Page 83 of Love, Nemesis
“It’s that look on your face, like someone’s died and you want to hit me.”
“Maybe that’s just my face.”
Cal offered him the leaf.
“I said I’m fine.”
“All right,” Cal replied, withdrawing it.
“Why are you so dead set on making a name for yourself?” Lethe asked before Cal could pursue the topic further.
Cal looked through the trees, shrugged, and then started to fold the leaf in his hands. He folded and unfolded it like paper. “I want to be in the books, you know?” he said after a while. “Everything is changing so fast. It seems like the only thing we really care about is the past. I’d like to be a part of it.”
“Dead?” Lethe asked.
“I want to be like the Riders of Saint East. I failed my tests, you know. The only reason I’m a Number is because we started losing so many to the Mystics. I’m not the best at anything, but I want it more than anyone else. That’s got to mean something.”
Lethe withheld his cynicism, trailing behind Cal as the pathway narrowed. They started uphill. Cal’s expression changed as he reached the top of the hill.
“Are we close?” Lethe asked.
“That’s it,” Cal said in amazement. “Xal Xel.”
Lethe rode up, examining a fiery reflection from beacons sitting on the towers inside a grand city. He’d seen depictions of the grand Mystics cities, but there was something different in the experience of one of them.
“It’s a fortress,” he noted, examining the great stone walls behind the first series of huts and fields. Rows of towers and buildings built a honeycomb of elaborate residences within, the tops of the walls lined in grand statues.
“You see those?” Cal asked, pointing to the beacons. There were four of them in total, positioned equidistant from each other just inside the city walls. “They’re made of glass from the Atlases of soldiers. They’ve put them up there like trophies.”
“And they’ve just let a couple of us walk right up to it.”
“They never have to worry about Statesmen trying to cross the border. We’re too far and few between, and their strongholds here are too big. Our best defense is the fact that many of them don’t want to cross into the State because their families will be dead by the time they get back to their homes in the deep Mystics. Time here goes faster the deeper in you go, and of course, the core of their civilization is the most developed after all these years.”
“Well, I’m glad I brought an expert with me,” Lethe said, taking in what he could of the great city. “So, the fact that an entire army has left to hit the State’s capital is a pretty dramatic move on their part.”
“The Mystics hate The Great Light,” Cal said. “In their world, the mutation is a serious legend, something that’s haunted them forever. This war has got to feel like a holy cause to them, especially now that they have evidence that the State has The Great Light. The Numbers aren’t even seen as human to them. The Mystics see an Atlas activate, give it a decade our time, and in their century or so, we’re suddenly monsters of time, guarding The Great Light.”
“Time turns everything into a legend, I guess,” Lethe said.
They sat there in silence for a moment, Lethe’s mind, now of all times, escaping back to the cabin, back to Ana, back to the past.
He rubbed his chin, feeling for a moment he’d left too soon. He already felt strained, one restless part of him had wanted to leave, the other wanting to stay and talk to her.
But what could he say?
Like a message from beyond the grave, the coincidence of meeting Ana was jarring, for a reason he couldn’t quite place.
His wife’s painful death would always be a crime—a wrong in the universe that in his mind could never fall into place as part of some plan. It didn’t need to. He’d accepted the direction of things.
He’d seen the pain in Ana’s eyes like a canyon between them and felt that release of forgiveness when he’d kissed her forehead. The idea that he could offer that release to anyone amazed him. Why look for his forgiveness, knowing what he’d done in the Burning? She’d just been a child when she’d served the Strike, but he’d been well aware of the crime he was about to commit at the Burning.
Now, a woman with her own rules and ideals, she was striving to put the past behind her. He admired that.Admiration is all it is, he told himself as he dampened down every other feeling.
The situation suddenly seemed very fragile. It would only get worse as the days ticked by.
Lethe felt his flask in his hand, measuring the weight of what Snake Bite remained. He only had enough Snake Bite to sustain him for a few more days, barely enough to get back to En Sanctus already.
The best-case scenario used to be that Madness in his blood would drive him into isolation in the mountains. The impulses and sensations around him would feel too intense and cluttered. Without any grounding force, he’d isolate.
