“Then why are you here now?” I ask.
“Four days and nights I fought in the rotunda. Those that crossed me fell to my blade. Myself and one pale Nightsider were left standing. Camglobes hovered between us. We met like storm gods. Equally matched, though in the end, I stood victorious. When I looked down upon him, however, I didn’t see a warrior who had slain many in the arena that day, only a boy. Someone’s child. Someone’s brother. I sheathed my sword.”
“You showed mercy?” I ask, shocked.
“It was the greatest humiliation I could have given him. The High Synod ordered me to take his head or forfeit my own.”
“He would have killed you had he the chance. What was one more life against your love for Qualia?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” the dark man concedes. “The pointlessness of it? The fact that they ordered me to do it? The knowledge that it wouldn’t stop there and I’d be forced to kill many more? You may find yourself in such a moment one day. I have taken life only once since that day.” I remember Snaggletooth, the Hauler that he killed for me. “If I ever again kill, it won’t be because someone ordered me to.”
We sit for a beat, then—
“You bound me to take the life of someone of your choosing? You won’t kill on anyone else’s word, but you’d condemn me to kill on yours?”
“I never said it was fair, Edmon.” His skeletal face smiles like a grinning death’s head.
I seethe, but the bargain has already been struck.
“So you were sent to the Wendigo?” I growl.
“Directly to the Citadel,” he corrects. “I humiliated Chilleus of the Julii. Death was too good for me. I was tortured. Qualia was murdered in public. She could’ve lived, Edmon, found another husband, had children . . .” There is a hitch in his voice as he chokes for a moment. “The following year, Chilleus Julii entered the arena again and slaughtered everyone in an attempt to wipe the stain of his loss from people’s memories,” the old master says with disgust. “Vengeance burned inside me. I could have died with my brothers aboard the Perseid. Or with the Zhao monks on their sphere. But when I imagine what’s beyond this life, I don’t see resolution, only a certainty I’ll no longer exist. I’d fight to keep what little life I have, no matter that it fades into decrepitude, no matter that it is full of hate.”
Islanders are taught all life comes from the sea. To the sea it returns. Nightsiders believe death in Combat is the only honorable death. The fallen are burned in veneration. I’ve never thought much of joining the ancestors beneath the waves or as sparks in the sky. Both options seem better than the truth that Faria gives. The murders of my mother and of Nadia and all the others before and since seem like such a waste. My heart grows cold.
“Dead men don’t seek revenge,” Faria mutters.
I’ve made an oath to punish those who have killed my loved ones. That’s all that matters.
“You were a singer, they said,” Faria says, interrupting my thoughts. “They said your songs of rebellion shook this little world.”
“Once,” I answer. It feels an age ago.
“Sing something now,” he suggests.
I feel ridiculous. I’m bald, bearded, and a filthy, stinking, dirt-monger in rags.
“Any tune. That’s all this old man’s asking. Don’t worry about Goth,” he says. “He’s frightened of the light. He’ll have found a spot in the depths of the tower and won’t come out until the moons have passed.”
I think on it. “My mother once told me my people were here before the Great Song, before the hybrids, back to the time of the Elder Stars. This song is from that time.”
Faria nods.
“Across the stars, spread far and thin,
The mother calls us home
Much too late, now we begin
To answer the call alone
To home, to home, through black of night
To home, to home, on edge of light,
From all, to one, born, and live, and die again.”
Silence holds memory of the final note. The light of the moons begins to fade. “Edmon,” Faria says softly. “You were not meant to be caged.”
The universe is littered with corpses of what’s meant to be.
“The Fracture Point burst in the skies the day I was born,” I say. “Nine years later, I saw some of the first off-worlders to come to Tao in decades. There was a captain that didn’t look so different from you, Faria. He was dark as night, strange reddish hair. He didn’t have the same tattoos or facial markings, but he looked like you. Could he have been the child of one of your brothers or . . .”
My voice trails off. Faria is disconcerted by this mention, I can tell.
“We only have a few more moments” is his only reply. The cell returns to shadows, and I’m blind again. Faria stands. “I take my leave,” he says. “The guards will come, and they must find their healer waiting.”
“Master, thank—”
“Not until our enemies are dead and our thirst satisfied. We meet again in six months’ time,” he says. As silently as the moons slipping past the window, he’s gone.
CHAPTER 22
NOCTURNE
The next six months are dark and lonely. There’s a rhythm in their passing. I wake, train, and push my body to the limit, and after the exhaustion, I meditate. I find the cells inside, push the lactic acid out of my muscles, and repair the damaged tissues. Then I begin again. It’s a delicate balance.
I practice the Dim Mak. It’s not easy. There are only so many times that I can make my own arm or leg go limp without becoming bored. The first tries are terrifying. If I cannot duplicate the strike to return feeling to the limb, damage will be permanent. By the twentieth time, I revel in my new powers. The five hundredth time, I might as well be asleep. I need to practice the more lethal strikes, but I can’t practice on myself without permanently paralyzing my own body, so I’m decidedly against it.
I punch and kick the reinforced obsidian of the dungeon wall. My skin grows tough and calloused. Soon it’s the rock that splinters under the force of my blows.
I remember when Phaestion showed me his famed siren swords. I couldn’t hold them then. Now, I breathe deeply. I feel the vibrations beginning deep within my belly. I cultivate them and strengthen them. They boil like water in a kettle; their frequency becomes fever pitch. There’s nowhere for them to travel but up. Like a flash flood, the energy rushes through my thorax. I channel it as I unleash my fist. Through my shoulder, my arm, through the tips of my fingers, the current courses. I picture my father, Edric Leontes, the leviathan, leering. The vibrations release as I hit the dungeon wall.