POV: nomad
Summary
Nomad is dragged side-first across the dirt behind the last hovercycle, plant detritus shredding what remains of his clothes and Aux quietly noting that his body has now adjusted to the planet's lower air pressure. Six percent reserve, by Aux's count. He could feel Investiture in the dawn light, he says, but trying to absorb it would have destroyed him — they will need a safer way to harvest the sun here. As Nomad bounces and skids he closes his eyes against the worse pain, the memory of prisoners turning to ash in seconds as the sunline swept the field. Some of them, he is sure, were calling to him for help. Years of being hunted have taught him that people die across the cosmere every day and he can only barely keep himself alive, and he still hates watching it.
The sky behind him darkens to twilight as the hovercycles outrun the dawn. Ahead, on the horizon opposite the sun, an enormous planetary ring rises — gold and blue, tipped at a slight angle — reflecting sunlight across the night side bright enough to see by. Aux observes that this planet must rotate slowly enough for these vehicles to flee the dawn. Nomad realises he is looking at an entire civilisation that has to keep moving to live: cities that run from the sun. His old habit of asking how a world works starts trying to wake up, and he beats it down — only the question of whether the engines' fuel will be enough to power a Skip away from this planet matters.
The hovercycles climb and fly for what feels like an hour, then arrive at a floating city: a ramshackle plate of single-story buildings raised thirty or forty feet off the ground on the burn of hundreds of engines, less a metropolis than a slum heaved into the air. The cycles dock by locking sideways into the city's edge with their engines still firing, contributing their lift to the whole. Nomad dangles by his chained manacles as the engines below him belch fire at his chain, which Aux happily handles. Looking up at the rings, he allows himself, for a moment, to register how beautiful they are — a crowned sky over a slum — before he is hauled onto the metal street of the city.
A crowd chatters over him. Five ember people stand behind it, heads bowed, embers cooled. The civilians are dressed exactly like his captors at the field: high collars to the chin, gloves, wide- brimmed hats; some women in skirts, others in long open coats over trousers. The crowd parts and lowers eyes for a tall man in a black coat with red-glowing edges, his eyes simmering a deep red as if lit from behind. He has the same ember in his chest as the warriors, though his skin has not been burned away around it, and Nomad reads him as their leader.
Glowing Eyes barks something at Nomad and gestures for the manacles to be removed. The officers hurry to obey. He bares one ungloved hand — the crowd gasps, though only an ordinary pale hand is revealed — and seizes Nomad by the face, plainly expecting something to happen. Nothing does. He shifts his grip, tries again, and looks surprised. Nomad mutters that if Glowing Eyes leans in for a kiss he is going to bite his lip off. It is a small, surprising thing — the joke. Years of being hammered down to almost-nothing have given him a sense of humour where there used to be only earnestness. His old master, he thinks, would be proud of him.
Glowing Eyes wipes his hand on his coat and re-gloves it. An officer steps up murmuring incredulously, pointing back toward the horizon; another whispers, "Sess Nassith Tor". Aux half- catches the words from a language he is still faintly Connected to and translates: "One Who Escaped the Sun". The crowd takes up the phrase reverently until Glowing Eyes roars at them to stop. He stares at Nomad, then kicks him square in the chest. The blow hurts, the Torment denies Nomad a return, and the man's smile broadens as he realises this stranger will not fight back. He sneers, "Kor Sess Nassith Tor", and kicks Nomad again for good measure before having him dragged off.
Nomad lets himself hope for a cold, hard cell where he might at least sleep and forget who he is for an hour. The hope lasts about a sentence. The whole city under him begins to break apart.