The Killing Light

by Myke Cole

  —The Book of Mysteries, I. 1.

  Xilyka helped Heloise to drag her father’s corpse into the throne room, then shut the doors behind her. Through them, Heloise could hear her people working with the Imperial soldiers to drag the devils’ corpses from the palace nave and throw them down the steps. She could hear Tone’s voice chanting over them all, engaging in some ridiculous ritual he claimed was purifying the space defiled by the devil’s presence. She could not hear Barnard, but she knew her old friend was standing guard just outside the golden doors, his hands folded over the butt of his massive forge-hammer, daring anyone to try to gain admittance.

  The throne stood in the half light, showered with the fragments of the shattered glass from the cupola above.

  Xilyka held Heloise while she wept for what seemed like hours, the stored grief slowly draining out of her, refilling even as she let it go.

  “I was hoping…” she said, when she could finally speak, “… I kept hoping that we would win this. That it would all be over. And then I was going to … And now he’s gone.”

  “I know,” Xilyka said. She had entwined her fingers in the filthy ruin of Heloise’s hair, was gently pulling the tangles out.

  “I was so cruel to him, since we left the village. I wouldn’t tell him I loved him.”

  “You were at the head of an army,” Xilyka said. “You couldn’t be seen mooning over your father.”

  “I was going to! I meant to. When it was over, and now it’s over, and…” A fresh round of weeping doubled her over, and Xilyka held her until it passed.

  “You didn’t have to tell him, Heloise,” the Hapti girl said. “He knew.”

  “How could he know? I was cruel to him, and I never told him what he meant to me, and he died knowing…”

  “… Knowing that his daughter had given the last of herself to save her people. Knowing that she had won the day. There could be no greater compliment you could have paid him, nothing he could have wanted more.”

  “I fought so hard to get here and now I don’t know what to do.”

  “There is only one thing you can do.” Xilyka pushed her back out to arm’s length, her hands firm on her shoulders. “You must mount those stairs and sit that throne. You must rule, Heloise.”

  Heloise’s stomach clenched, and suddenly the world felt every bit as close and threatening as it had on the staircase, when she had tried to exit the machine’s dead frame. “What … how can you say that?”

  Xilyka stroked her cheek. “Heloise, I see you. I know how much it grieves you to lose your father. I feel your grief, and I have seen how it hardens you, how it lifts you up to lead.”

  “Don’t say that. I’m not a Traveling Person. I don’t live as you do.”

  “That is not unique to us, Heloise. Loss lifts all up, it sets us all on high. You grieve your father, you are confused, bewildered. You just told me you don’t know what to do.”

  Heloise nodded.

  Xilyka pointed to the golden doors. “That is how it is for the people out there. All they have known and loved has been ripped from them. They move corpses and ‘sanctify’ that nave because they cannot think of what else to do. They are fumbling blindly.

  “Think of it, Heloise. You want to heal the world? You want to make this right? Then climb those steps. You are the first person to have drawn all the peoples together, to make the Traveling People fight beside the villagers and the Red Lords both. You can be to all of them what your father was to you.”

  “Sir Steven would never stand for—”

  “Sir Steven has no army, Heloise. He cannot stop you. And more, he respects you. You have shown him what you can do. He will treat with you.”

  Heloise stared up at the stone chair, the peeling flecks of paint so spare that they made the stone seem to glitter. The panic surged as Xilyka’s words sank in, along with the realization that it was precisely what her father would have wanted. He would have stood at her side through it all.

  “I won’t let Tone make me into another Emperor. No more stories. No more lies.”

  Xilyka shrugged. “People will tell themselves whatever lies make them feel most at ease. You couldn’t control that before and you won’t be able to control it now.”

  “Still. I will always speak the truth.”

  “I know you will, Heloise. And perhaps the truth will set things right in time.”

  Heloise looked back at Samson’s corpse, and despair replaced the panic, a wide gulf even vaster than the well of her grief. “Everyone is gone. What is the point of fixing things if I’m alone?”

  Xilyka gave a rueful chuckle, shook her head. “The Great Wheel reminds all of three things—all people lose alone, rule alone, and die alone. Even now, even in your grief, you must look to all, Heloise. It is for others that the good must live.”

  Heloise felt the words like a hammer blow, felt her cheeks redden. “You’re right, I’m selfish. I’m sorry.”

  Xilyka smiled. “You are not selfish. And you are also not alone. I am here, Heloise. If you take this throne, I will not return to the Hapti. I will remain here with you.”

  Heloise reached forward, cupped her cheek. She was painfully conscious of her missing eye and hand, of her burned skin, of her tangled hair. “But you are a Traveling Person. A throne is a chair, not a road.”

  But Xilyka leaned into her hand, kissing the palm gently. “It is a road, of sorts,” she said, “and will it be an easier road, if I am with you?”

  Heloise choked back tears. “You know it will be.”

  And then Xilyka took Heloise’s face in her hands, and kissed her. It lacked the melting, the stomach-churning desire of her kiss with Basina. Instead it felt deeper, calmer. Safer. And for all of that, better. They stayed like that for a long time, Heloise’s one good hand tangled in Xilyka’s hair, devouring her kisses as if she feared it would be the only chance she would ever get. But when they finally broke apart to gulp down air, Xilyka did not pull away.

  Instead, the Hapti girl pressed her forehead hard against Heloise’s. “And if it is a road,” she whispered fiercely, “then it is our road, Heloise, and we will walk it together.”

  Heloise glanced over her shoulder up the stairs, worn smooth by the passing of so many feet, to the base of the ancient chair that had dominated her life. Had anyone ever used it? She doubted she would ever know, that anyone alive in the capital knew. Real or not, the people outside the door believed in it, and that the power it represented reposed in her, behind the thin scrim of bone Tone had pointed to with his staff, within her beating heart.

  Just a chair, like any other, and nothing to be frightened of.

  Anyone could sit a chair.

  Even her.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With The Killing Light, I not only bring the Sacred Throne trilogy to a close, but I also put the finishing touches on a project that has deep, personal significance to me. I’ve made no secret that I set out to write this trilogy to prove, both to an audience and to myself, that I could write effectively outside the contemporary military fantasy subgenre (really a sub-sub-subgenre). I wanted to look in the mirror and know that people enjoyed my work not because it was an authentic military story written by a military service member, but because it was good. This book you’re holding is me checking that box, marking that question answered, and dusting my hands. I said I would do a thing, and now I have done it, and that feels pretty darn good.

  But the fact is that I almost didn’t do it. The Fractured Girl, the novel that was cut down and reworked into the book that became The Armored Saint, languished for three years as I tried and failed again and again to make it saleable. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t almost give up.

  It’s ironic that I set out to write this trilogy to prove I could work outside the military subgenre, because the trilogy only came to exist via a very military phenomenon—a great team coalesced around me. They believed in me when my own faith failed. They held me up when I fell down. They fixed the things I b
roke. They “had my six” as we say in the service. If it weren’t for them, I might very well be telling a different story, one where I threw myself at a task I wasn’t equal to. And that story would simply have ended there, without you ever getting the other, more important one—Heloise’s story.

  I owe more to this small army of partners and supporters than I can express, and so these inadequate thanks will have to do.

  First, to Justin Landon, who stuck with me through version after version and year after year, never flagging in his faith that it would see print, and who finally brought it over the transom and into the fold at Tor.com. Next, to Irene Gallo, who was willing to take a risk on an author stepping far outside his comfort zone. To Lee Harris, who took up the baton from Justin and the books across the finish line. And to the rest of the Tor.com staff, who worked tirelessly to bring these books to life: Katharine Duckett, Mordicai Knode, Caroline Perny, and Ruoxi Chen, and everyone else at Tor.com and the Tor mothership.

  This book had extra editorial assistance from Karen Bourne and Betsy Mitchell, who helped point out errors, boosted my flagging confidence, and kept the book on track.

  Thanks also to Joshua Bilmes and the staff at JABberwocky, who represented the whole series so ably.

  Thanks again to Kevin Hearne, whose early belief in the project helped me to keep going on it as the early rejections came in. Thanks also to Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig, whose Twitter antics have made the solitary writing life a little less lonely.

  Of course, thanks to Chris McGrath, who was able to execute incredible jacket art that both set forward his own vision and held true to the tone Tommy Arnold set with the first two books. There is nothing more gratifying than seeing your own art reflected in someone else’s. Thanks also to Greg Manchess, whose amazing design of Heloise’s sigil has now been tattooed on two people that I know of.

  And last, but certainly not least, thanks to all of you, who loved the series, told your friends, spread the word on social media, and most important, told me that it reached you. I’m no Emily Dickinson. I write to communicate, and closing that feedback loop—the reader telling me that my work has touched them somehow—is the whole reason I do this. Many of you took the time to let me know, and I will never be able to thank you enough.

  Heloise’s story is done for now. It’s been a tough road for her, but I know she’s grateful to have had you along for it.

  So am I.

  ALSO BY MYKE COLE

  THE SACRED THRONE TRILOGY

  The Armored Saint

  The Queen of Crows

  THE REAWAKENING TRILOGY

  Gemini Cell

  Javelin Rain

  Siege Line

  THE SHADOW OPS TRILOGY

  Control Point

  Fortress Frontier

  Breach Zone

  Legion versus Phalanx (nonfiction)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MYKE COLE is a devoted comic fan and voracious fantasy reader who never misses his weekly game night. His fandoms range from Star Wars to military history. He’s a former kendo champion and heavy-weapons fighter in the Society for Creative Anachronism. At the D&D table, he always plays paladins. After a career hunting people in the military, police, and intelligence services, Cole put these skills to good use on CBS’s hit show Hunted, and on the Discovery and Science Channel’s show Contact. Cole is the author of the Sacred Throne trilogy, which begins with The Armored Saint. He’s also the author of the contemporary military fantasy Shadow Ops series and its prequel Reawakening trilogy. His first work of nonfiction, the ancient military history Legion Versus Phalanx, will be followed by The Bronze Lie in 2021. Cole lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. March

  2. Council

  3. The People

  4. Caught Out

  5. Rent

  6. Breaks them all Alike

  7. The Enemy

  8. How We Love when We are Free

  9. Come too Late

  10. Sacred Throne

  11. To the Cage

  12. You keep it

  13. THE END

  Epilogue: Rule

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Myke Cole

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE KILLING LIGHT

  Copyright © 2019 by Myke Cole

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Chris McGrath

  Cover design by Christine Foltzer

  A Tor.com Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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  New York, NY 10271

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9599-3 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9598-6 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765395986

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  First Edition: November 2019