Delani stepped down from the bench. They all knew their duty, and Soren wanted to do his. He picked up his tray and returned it to the kitchen before hurrying to catch up with Delani. He wasn’t the only one wanting to speak with her, but their conversation needed to be held in private. Delani must have agreed because as soon as she finished with the other wardens, she gestured at Soren. “Walk with me.”
The breeze blowing through the air was cool but not cold, and Soren’s field uniform kept him warm enough. The gas lamp lights scattered in intervals down the street hadn’t been switched on yet, but the setting sun still provided enough light to see by. Their boots crunched over gravel as Delani headed back to the cluster of administrative buildings rather than the barracks.
“Will you give me a border?” Soren asked after they’d put several buildings behind them on their way back to the governor’s office.
“No,” Delani said.
“Governor—”
She rounded on him, stepping close, single eye narrowing. “I need wardens here to protect the island and rebuild as much as I need them in the field. You’ve proven your priorities are not as strictly aligned as they need to be.”
Soren’s mouth went dry. “I amloyal.”
“You interfered with a government when that is not our way,” Delani said, voice low and hard. “I will not overlook your indiscretions nor your decisions.”
“We wouldn’t know about the death-defying machines or therionetkasif I hadn’t.”
Delani stepped back, lips flattening in a hard line. “I’m sure the information would have come to light eventually, but that is beside the point.”
“Itisthe point. Governor, I’m an able-bodied warden, and I want to be on the road.”
“And I can’t disregard the broken one behind you.”
Soren lifted his chin, refusing to back down. “We all come from broken roads to be a warden.”
Delani was quiet for a few seconds, taking his measure, and she must have still found him wanting, for she shook her head and turned away. “My previous order stands for you. As a warden, you will obey it.”
Soren watched her leave, hands clenched into fists, feeling as if the fort was a prison he’d never be free of. Taking a breath, he spun on his feet and made his way back to the barracks. His shift at the telegraph machine had been interrupted by the incursion, but the hour meant the next shift would be taking over.
His room was only large enough to fit a narrow bed and a small dresser, with a weapons rack and a single shelf screwed to the wall. He undid his gun belt with its double holsters and hung it from a peg. The knife strapped to his thigh and the poison short sword secured over one shoulder soon followed.
Soren sat on the bed, the thin mattress sinking beneath his weight. After a moment, he pulled the vow from beneath his shirt and leather vest, staring down at the roaring lion head in profile pressed into the gold. He pressed the tiny button at the top, the face sliding open. Hidden inside was a smear of dried blood, Vanya’s vow a promise Soren had carried for years.
He slipped his fingers beneath the top of his vest, sliding them into the inside pocket there and pulling out a folded piece of paper he went nowhere without. When he unfolded it, the ink and seal on the Imperial writ that acted as the Imperial emperor of Solaria’s voice was as crisp and bright as when it had first been printed and signed.
Soren might not ever see Vanya again, but the pieces the other man had left behind were ones that Soren could never let go of. Perhaps things would be different if he could, if he’d never known Vanya’s affection. But he had, and Soren couldn’t pretend they didn’t exist the same way he couldn’t pretend his heart didn’t hurt from Vanya’s absence.
Being a warden meant being nameless and stateless, with no stars to guide them down a road that only followed Maricol’s borders. Sitting there, holding memories in his hands, all Soren could think about was how much he missed Vanya’s touch and how lonely this road was without him.
Five
CALLISTO
Callisto heard the desperate prayers meant for Aaralyn all the way in Solaria.
She paid them no mind until one slipped through, belief meant for the Dawn Star in their plea. She turned her face north, the sun high in the sky over the Southern Plains, her shadow barely a black halo around her feet. The travelers who’d died of thirst in the back roads from drinking out of a bog had already ended their road, guided into the stars by her helping hand.
She left the bodies behind, stepping into the aether and feeling it burn her from the inside out, like an all-consuming fever. The Dawn Star came back to herself in some other land, the prairie grass beneath her feet soaked in blood. She stood on the precipice of a deep trench, one that stretched quite a ways. She could see more dug into the earth behind huge, spiked iron balls meant to deter automatons and vehicles from advancing.
Soldiers hunkered down in the trench she stood over, most of them dead, but there was one who continued to load his rifle with shaky hands, face pale, uniform stained with blood that wasn’t all his. He prayed as he reloaded, eyes glassy as he cranked the gears on his rifle to load another round.
“Please, Callisto,” he begged around cracked lips, voice carrying an accent found in Ashion frontier towns that bordered Solaria. “Please let me live.”
He was hers more than Aaralyn’s in that moment. Callisto looked away from the soldier and across the battlefield at the advancing force led by sentinel-class automatons steered not by a human hand but by magic. Those automatons could go where humans couldn’t, driven forward by the command of a magician held safe behind the battalion. Callisto watched it approach with dispassionate eyes. Her ears filled with prayers of the dying and the living and the ones who were almost dead, like the young man who clambered up the side of the trench to throw himself against the edge.
He took aim, the last of his squadron to do so, desperate to hold a broken line. Callisto stood witness to the bullets the Ashionen soldier got off before a grenade launched by the sentinel-class automaton landed within the trench. He tried to climb out, to get clear, but the resulting blast flung him past Callisto and onto the bloody battlefield, back ripped to pieces from the explosion.
The Daijalan soldiers in their green uniforms kept advancing, but Callisto ignored them and went to kneel beside the young soldier. He looked at her, through her, with glazed-over eyes, a prayer fading on his lips.
