One
POV: nomad
Summary
Nomad wakes face-down in dirt among the condemned, his mind fogged from the Skip he made to reach this planet. The first thing his eyes focus on is a plant — a seedpod splitting and reaching for the dim light on one horizon at a speed that should not be possible. He aches; he is, briefly, tempted simply to lie still and stop running. Rough hands haul him onto his knees. The men holding him wear long trousers, high collars to the chin, gloves, wide-brimmed hats tied under the chin. One barks at him in a language he cannot follow, and Aux — the monotone voice in his head — apologises that there is not enough Investiture left for a translation.
Aux estimates roughly fifteen hundred BEUs in reserve, under eight percent Skip capacity. Nomad knows what that means: every threshold that makes him more than human costs Investiture to maintain, and Connection to the local language requires a reserve he does not have. He registers his surroundings as he wakes — the predawn light on one horizon, the plants sprouting wildly across the field, the men in long white coats hammering stakes into the dirt while others are chained down to them. The bearing of the chained ones — cries, pleading, dull resignation — tells him exactly what this field is. It is an execution.
When his captors move to manacle him he tries to throw the nearer man, and his Torment fires. His muscles lock; he stiffens in place; the men flinch back. When the lock releases his arms scream with sharp pain. The Torment is getting worse. Out of the crowd a new figure approaches: bare-chested, in a diaphanous open robe and golden bracers, his entire heart and most of his chest burned away and replaced with a glowing ember that flares when the wind catches it. The ember-man pulls a heavy bat off his back. He moves with supernatural speed; he is Invested. Nomad asks Aux for a weapon and Aux replies that he is not the one holding Nomad back — the Torment is. Nomad dodges a baton that shakes the ground when it hits the dirt.
He tries to bodycheck the ember-man and locks up mid-tackle. Aux, deadpan, observes that the Torment now blocks even minor physical altercations. The next swing of the baton catches Nomad in the face. By reflex he raises both hands and catches the next blow instead — and stops it cold. The watching prisoners shout in astonishment; the ember-man's eyes widen further when Nomad steps forward and shoves him stumbling back. Then a second ember-man swings from behind, Nomad's body freezes on the catch, and the baton hits him in the side. A fist puts him on the ground. The two white-coated officers hurry over and chain him to an iron ring set into a slab of stone in the line of prisoners.
The light on the horizon is no longer dim. It pours in too evenly, too brightly for ordinary sunlight, and the heat begins to climb. Aux confirms it: that light is too powerful to be normal sunlight on any habitable world. Nomad wonders if it is Invested, like on Taldain, and asks if Aux can absorb it. Aux is not sure — and as the light climbs in intensity he becomes sure of the opposite. The pour of power coming in, he says, would shatter him if he tried to drink from it. He does not think they should let it reach Nomad.
The condemnation officers and their ember-men have already run for a line of six-seater hovercycles parked nearby. The first lifts on jets. Nomad realises the hovercycles are the only way off this field, panics, and strains against his chain — the steel stretches but does not break. He shouts for Aux as a Blade and Aux reminds him, with awful gentleness, that the Torment forbids it; and that the light will kill Nomad but not Aux, who is already dead.
Then Nomad sees it. Weapons are forbidden; tools are not. Aux forms in his hands as a crowbar of white mist, he hooks it through the ring, throws his weight on it — and the ring snaps. He dashes after the last hovercycle as it lifts off, hurls Aux as a hook-and-chain that seals around a protrusion on the back of the craft with its other end locked to his manacles. The sunline reaches the field. The chained prisoners burst into flame. The chain snaps tight and Nomad is yanked out of the dawn at full speed, his skin screaming and his clothes already on fire, dragged away from one death toward something he has no way to name.