POV: nomad
Summary
Zellion does not want to go back to his cabin because Elegy is in it. He walks away from the landed ships to be alone, looking up at the rings — he has seen ringed worlds before, but never ones this vivid. As with most things in life, the brightness is a trade-off: vibrant rings, terrible sun, the way the people inside him are also a trade. If he had not been through the horrors that scarred him, he could not have fought to bring Rebeke and Zeal home. He also would not be broken.
He steps up onto a rise. The earth is springy under his feet. Plants stretch up his shins as he stands on it. His new shoes — not the proper boots he likes; only what the Beaconites could provide — are inflexible because they have not yet seen any horrors. They will get worn in. They will also get worn out. He wonders if souls can wear out the same way. He once would have said no, that a person is too valuable to ever be reduced to a worn-out scrap. Yet here he is, taking these people's offered warmth and love while he leads them toward a lie.
Aux tells him, with quiet awe, that the adoption was beautiful and that he is now Connected fully to this place — a man of two homeworlds. *And we will have to leave this one too*, Zellion says. As always. Aux hopes they can at least enjoy it for a time first. Zellion hisses, frustration spoiling the moment. Enjoy what? The knowledge that these people are doomed? That he saved them not to bring them to salvation but to use them to get himself to safety?
A young tree is unfolding beside him, leaves trembling. Rebeke climbs the hill with a fresh brown-leather coat over her arm — Aux saw her coming and conspicuously did not mention it. She has been with the Chorus having the coat made; she missed the laying-on of hands. She slips her glove off and offers him her hand. He catches her by the cloth at her wrist before she can reach his face. *I think you might want to give something more than they did*, he tells her. She glances away and blushes — *why shouldn't we find a little comfort in the few hours we have left, they might be the last*. He does not begrudge her comfort, but not with him. He is too old.
*Old? I am of age. A decade or so is nothing after what we have been through.* He smiles. He nods toward the ring of ships and the old women who lead her people. *I am older than they are.* Her jaw drops. *Well*, she eventually manages, *I don't care.* He answers gently that he does — and that even if he did not, he is going to leave. Whatever happens, he must walk away. His years have not given him wisdom, but they have given him knowledge, and he knows the hurt that walking away causes when attachments have already grown.
She glances at his hand on the new tree's bough, where the little vines have already wound up his fingers; he tries to pull back gently and ends up snapping them. *You could stay*, she says. They could fight whatever is hunting him. He smiles thinly. She has no idea what she is offering against. She points out that they had been told no one could ever crest a mountain, and yet here they all stood on top of one — his mountain, she says, was just one more peak. He likes the way she says the new name. He suspects it is the Connection reinforcing itself in him; he cannot even quite name what that does to a soul. He tells her, finally, that he cannot be what she is looking for.
She does not run; she stays on the hill with him, looking up at the rings. After a while, voice soft, she says she no longer wants to learn to kill the way he kills — she does not want to be that terrible. *Not that you are*, she stumbles. *It is*, he answers. *Beautiful too*, she says. He used to believe that. There was a time, he tells her, when he could stand tall even when fighting — before his Torment seized him. He was a knight, he says, of a very exclusive order. Two different orders actually, at two different times. For the first he had been one of their leaders, with oaths supposed to convert what he did from terrible into, if not beautiful, at least honourable. And then he was given charge of an extremely dangerous item — one that could kill a Shard, he says, one that could break a world — and the carrying of it ate important parts of him out. It tore apart the soul of one of his closest friends. It took the armor from him. He came out the other side a husk, and not only for what the thing had done to him. For what he had done. He had to ask himself, when it was all done, whether honour itself was nothing but a sham invented to dress up killing — perhaps, he had thought, the deepest poison ever poured into the worlds.
Rebeke asks softly whether what he did for them today was that same blight, that same poison. He hates being asked to make that call. He just wants to keep running. He admits to himself, briefly, that he is still making excuses for walking away and has never gotten down to the real reason he is the one who can do it. *No*, he tells her at last. Protecting her people by fighting the Charred was not evil. But he does not think he can ever call it beautiful again — not if she could see how much fun he was having while he did it.
She pales. She still wants to help her people, she says, even if not by fighting; by leading, perhaps. There will be time to figure that out once they have found the Refuge. He grimaces — she has just handed him the opening. He tries again. The sanctuary they are looking for is not what they think. A place built by outsiders to protect *themselves*. She cuts him off — *don't say it*. She sees it in his eyes. They have a story, she tells him, about an ancient man who asked to know his fate and so hope was extinguished forever, for he knew the answer. She refuses to be that man. She means to keep her hope. He tells her to maintain hope in something real — that if the Refuge proves nothing, the path to safety the old Elegy envisioned is still open: throw off the Cinder King. *Where has that gotten us?* she asks. He answers that it has made them into a beacon — that others will see; every tyrant becomes weak or exposed eventually, and given the chance the people will pull him down themselves. She thinks, then shakes her head. The old Elegy could have persuaded Union to do it; they do not have that Elegy anymore. They cannot survive any longer out here either. They ditched the farming gear. They have one prospector. They have no food and no living space. Their only real hope is the Refuge. So he is to keep his concerns to himself and leave them with hope. He takes a breath and nods.
*All right then*, she says. What next? How do they find the entrance, and how do they punch through the Cinder King's forces to reach it? He knows they have survived. He will array everything he has to stop them. *Well*, Zellion says, then this is where her people are lucky to have a killer in the camp. It is past time, he says, that someone showed the Cinder King a real fight.