“I think I know the way,” Dugras said, dumping a round of steaming asparagus onto his plate. “With her help, anyway,” and he nodded at Shirri. “We could probably reconstruct a map there.”
“There’s no need,” Pamyra said quietly, staring at Cyrus. “You’d know where it is; the building stood in your day. It’s in the old guildhall quarter—though it hasn’t been called that for many years.”
Cyrus blinked. “I … do know where that is, yes. Where in—”
Pamyra shook her head. “I can’t recall which guild made their home there. It’s one of the four biggest. You know—that all stand at the crossroads staring at each other across the main avenue.”
Cyrus felt a smirk grow on his face and he turned to Vara, who was daintily picking at her salad while listening intently. “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we find Isabelle at the top of this den of iniquity? Presiding from Endeavor’s old guildhall?”
Vara made a hard snort of impatience, practically wilting her lettuce as she dropped her salad fork with a clang and turned to face him with glaring eyes. “My sister is not so stupid as to choose ‘running a criminal syndicate’ as her career path.” She paused, retrieved her fork, and said, more quietly, “Also, I would kill her out of shame if that were true.”
“And now we know the wellspring of all our troubles,” Alaric said, still standing unsteadily at the head of the table. “But I cannot imagine they will leave that place unguarded for long, should we mean to attack it—”
Hiressam cleared his throat. “I don’t … mean to insert myself here where I am … perhaps unwelcome …”
“You are very welcome here, Hiressam,” Alaric said, “as are your thoughts.”
“Unless you’re going to be the new Ryin, in which case they’re not only unwelcome, but I may stab you with this salad fork,” Vaste said, brandishing his own. “It’s not as though I’m going to use it to actually eat salad, after all.”
“You should try it,” Cyrus said. “In the absence of physical exertion, it could help you curb your arse growth.”
“Your growth as an arse is quite unchecked at the moment,” Vara said, looking a little scandalized that he would say such a thing among strangers.
“I find Vaste’s arse quite delicious,” Birissa said, attacking yet another ham. “It’s plump. Moist. Like this.” And she took another bite.
Vaste’s eyes gleamed with triumph even as he picked at this plate. “Told you,” he singsonged under his breath.
“So these are the legends of Sanctuary,” Pamyra said, a little muted. She stared across the table at him. “I suppose I so long imagined this moment … that being here, among you … it couldn’t be anything but a disappointment.”
“I’m often disappointed in the presence of Cyrus,” Vaste said. “Especially when he’s nude from the waist down.”
Vara just rolled her eyes. “That would be never, then?”
“We had lives before you thawed your cold heart for him, okay?” Vaste looked pointedly at her. “There were adventures. Countless adventures. Some did not include pants. You would know this if you hadn’t been so busy spurning him for the first decade of your acquaintance in favor of a book that essentially laid out your entire romance.”
“I don’t think The Crusader and the Champion quite captured the complicated nature of our romance,” Cyrus said, then flushed red. “Also … some of things in that book sound a little uncomfortable.”
Birissa leaned toward Vaste. “Have you read this book?”
Vaste glanced at her. “Yes, why?”
“We should try those things later,” she murmured.
He started to open his mouth, and seemed caught between pleasure at being asked and partial revulsion in thought of what that might entail. “So … you’re saying later … we’ll—”
“This is the strangest dinner I’ve ever had,” Dugras said.
“Sorry,” Cyrus said. “We’re like this all the time.”
“No, you’re all fine,” Dugras said, “I mean, a little odd, but—” And he lifted up two dishes, one with a strange mixture in it that seemed to include small ears of corn no bigger than Cyrus’s littlest finger, and another that was composed of some sort of white grain. “I’ve never seen rice or baby corn in Arkaria. Ever. They don’t make it here from Amatgarosa, even by airship. Yet you have them both.”
“Sanctuary is a unique place,” Alaric said with a faint smile.
“Certainly a wondrous one,” Dugras said, putting the dishes down after scooping out considerable helpings for himself. “If I’m invited again, I must bring my captain.”
“Please do,” Alaric said. “The more the merrier.” And he turned his gaze to Pamyra. “At least … most of the time, I would say that. But there seems to be something troubling you, m’lady.”
Pamyra looked at Alaric, and the intensity of her glare, apparently reserved solely for Cyrus, faded. “I have … nothing against you.” She looked around. “Most of you, obviously. You seem good people, and … truthfully, I have been waiting for this day much of my life.”
“You’ve been waiting to meet dead people for most of your life?” Vaste asked. “I thought I was the only one that did that—or at least I did, back when there were dead people around. Now I seem to spend most of my time eating and hoping that Birissa would see the virtues of my tight arse—and now that the second thing is accomplished, what’s left but to eat?”
“Why were you seeking us, if I might ask?” Alaric directed his attention to Pamyra again, and shuffled uncomfortably. He seemed to be favoring the neck wound that Gaull had given him. It caused Cyrus a prickle of concern to think of Gaull and how he’d managed to bring low even the Ghost.
Pamyra drew in a deep breath, looking as if she were composing her thoughts before speaking. When she did open her mouth, the words came slow and steady. “I have long thought of you. All of you. For most of my life, now, in fact, I would say. The search for what happened to Cyrus Davidon after he rode off into legend—” And here she glared at him once more, “has filled my every day for the last nine hundred and more years.”
“That’s a long time to devote to this lunkhead,” Vaste said. “But his bride still has you beat, I think, as holder of that record.”
Vara shot him a sour look.
Pamyra stared at Cyrus, and her eyes burned and her lips curled at the side. “I have sought you for so long … questions desiring answers aching in my breast—”
“She’s awfully teed off at you,” Vaste said, leaning forward and stage whispering across the table at Cyrus. He then nodded at Vara. “Did you two accidentally have a baby before you left? Maybe that one has a particular axe to grind?”
“No,” Cyrus said, and Vara echoed him, both of them pointed enough that even Vaste scooted back an inch in his seat.
“I am no child of theirs,” Pamyra said, sounding vaguely affronted at the thought. “Nor of his alone, nor hers—”
“Whew,” Vaste said. “I was afraid there was going to be some absent-father drama there for a second.”
“There is,” Pamyra said, leaning forward, not taking her eyes off of Cyrus. “For you … you killed my father.”
The table fell into a shocked silence, to which Vaste, so helpfully, added, “You’re going to have to be much more specific. I mean, just by killing King Danay alone he probably orphaned several hundred—”
“They were all grown,” Cyrus said, turning a savage gaze on Vaste, then back to Pamyra.
“But you did kind of wreck their inheritance, didn’t you?” Vaste asked. “You know, ruining the kingdom, turning it into a place where they didn’t really matter as much. There are probably a ton of pissed-off former royals hanging onto a grudge for you—”
“I was never a royal,” Pamyra said. “I am the daughter of a lowborn man, not a king.” She stared at him with fiery intensity. “But I have a grudge, for you did kill my father.”
“Again … need specificity,” Vaste said, and holding up his
hands, miming a long parchment. “This list would go on and on. I mean, do you know how many people’s he killed …?”
“I’m sorry,” Cyrus said, feeling quite struck by Pamyra’s anger and keeping a close watch on her hands. They hadn’t produced a weapon yet, but if she could hurl magic like her daughter, she wouldn’t need one. “I don’t know who your father was—”
“Oh, but you do,” Pamyra said, leaning forward. “And my mother as well. She spoke of you often, told me all about how you steered my father to this place—where he met his end.”
Cyrus stared at her, and a vague stirring at the back of his mind began to piece the clues together. Her familiar expression—her dark, tousled hair—he’d chalked up her somewhat haggard appearance to being a prisoner of the Machine, as Dugras and Shirri had been, but now that he looked at her, the hair especially—it seemed a natural state and reminded him of—
“My gods,” Cyrus said, awe rushing over him.
“He was your best friend,” Pamyra said, as a single tear streaked down her cheek, “and you led him to death against the dragons.”
“Still a long list,” Vaste muttered. “Getting shorter, but still—”
“No, it’s not,” Vara said, eyes fixed on Pamyra. “It’s a very short one, indeed.”
“My father was Andren,” Pamyra said, looking at Cyrus with a mixture of contempt and fury, “and you … you killed him.”
“Wow,” Vaste said, into the silence that fell afterward, so thick that even the clattering of silverware might have seemed like a pistol shot, “your consequences really do suck.”
50.
“You’re Andren’s daughter …?” Cyrus asked into the congealing silence. After Vaste’s wisecrack, no one had spoken. Even Birissa had stopped eating to study the impending scene. Hiressam sat uncomfortably, eyes pointed at his boots and nowhere upon the table.
“With Arydni,” Pamyra said. “Perhaps you recall my mother.”
“She would be difficult to forget,” Cyrus said quietly. “Is she …?”
“Shortly after you left, she died,” Pamyra said, her face slightly red. “But not before she told me what happened to my father.”
Cyrus let out a short breath. “I’d known Andren for years. I knew he had a daughter … but I never met you in all that time.”
“It is the way of elves,” Vara said quietly, “to sometimes go years without seeing family. We are so long-lived, the interval seems perhaps shorter to us than it would to humans.”
“My father and I had a falling out,” Pamyra said, hard-eyed. “Over his drinking. But he’d written to me. Said it was … finally over. He wanted to meet, and I’d consented.” She stared Cyrus down. “He wanted me to meet his new wife-to-be.”
Cyrus felt the cold knife of regret slide into him. “Martaina.” And now she was dead, too. Chills ran over him, tickling his skin, and he lowered his head to stare at his empty plate. “I’m sorry, Pamyra. I failed Andren. As I failed … so many people.” He swallowed, the feeling of a thick knot buried in his throat threatening to choke him. “Not just the dead of Sanctuary, who I have led pointlessly into battle all these years … but the dead of Luukessia, of Arkaria, that fell because of the consequences of my actions that have consistently come back upon me like ghosts of the past, like sins I cannot cleanse myself of.” He stared at his black gauntlets, palms up in his lap. He felt as though they were coated in crimson guilt. “There is no forgiveness for the things I have done. There is no hope for—”
“No.” The voice was strong, definite. It rang through the Great Hall like a sounded bell, the clarity pure, and every head in the room swiveled to hear and see the speaker.
Alaric Garaunt stood, helm off, at the head of the table, his eyes upon Cyrus. “Enough of this.”
“Enough, indeed.” Cyrus replied. “Alaric … what is the point of what I’ve done? I’ve unleashed so much harm in this world—why would I keep doing these same things—intervening, fighting, going to war and expecting something different to happen when—”
“Because,” Alaric said, “of hope.”
Cyrus let out a ragged laugh. “Hope implies that things will get better. How do I even fix this? What’s the point of fighting the Machine when—”
“Stop,” Alaric said, firm. “Despair bleeds out of you like life’s blood. The consequences that have come to this world are hardly the product of your choices alone, but you want to take responsibility for all of them. Responsibility is a fine thing—if you mean to do something about the problem. But if you do not—if you mean to accumulate sorrows like some strange trophies to sit in a case while you wallow paralyzed—”
“Well, I was enjoying wallowing until now,” Vaste muttered.
“—then what is the point of taking responsibility? Yes, we killed Mortus. Yes, you set it off,” Alaric said, heated. “But Mortus could have died by any means. You were pushed into it by Bellarum, and do you believe for one moment that if you hadn’t killed him, he would not have eventually equipped and sent his servants, the titans, to do the thing instead? Or some other unfortunate soul bent into his service?” Alaric slammed a fist against the table. “Yes, you bear a part of blame, of the guilt, as do many of us at this table—”
“Not me,” Birissa said, looking mildly offended.
“—but if you can’t see past that guilt to a future in which you correct the problem, in which you actively work—for as many years and decades as necessary to reclaim the lands taken by the scourge—then yes, you will have failed. And what was the point of taking all that responsibility upon yourself? To simply feel terrible? Why? Surely there are reasons closer to home for you to feel terrible.”
“Impotence,” Vaste said.
“I don’t think that’s his problem,” Curatio said.
“Well, he sure is acting impotent,” Vaste said.
“But Alaric,” Cyrus said, raising his head. “Let’s just use the example before us—the Machine. Let’s say we go marching over to their headquarters right now and do what we do. Kill them all, burn it down.”
“I love it when we do that,” Vaste said.
“Sounds like fun to me,” Birissa said, ears perking up. “When do we start?”
“What happens after that?” Cyrus asked, staring at the Ghost, who stood silently watching him at the head of the table, darkness broken only by the burning hearth and the torches that surrounded them on sconces from the walls. “What steps into the place voided by this Machine when we’ve—”
“We do,” Alaric said.
Cyrus smiled, but it lasted only a second. “Alaric—”
“Cyrus,” Alaric said, cutting over him, “in case it has not become apparent to you, I don’t care for the shape of this world, either. I see our fingerprints upon it all the wrong ways. The void we left behind, the empty places where we failed to act—they work upon my soul, too. The guilt, while not perhaps as raw as yours, is ever present for me as well. I hoped that the world would do well—that the land of Arkaria would thrive—in our absence. It has not.” His eye glistened. “You ask me what will happen when this task is complete? And you began, I believe, to ask me what happens to this world … when we move on again?”
A hard silence fell. Cyrus looked at him and nodded once.
“We will not be moving on again,” Alaric said, and his voice rang out over the room. “For me … this is the last stop. I will remain out of the ark this time—”
“What? Where’s the ark?” Shirri asked.
“Sanctuary is the ark,” Vaste said. “Keep up, will you?”
“… What?” Shirri blinked.
“—from now until the end of my days,” Alaric said. “Which will hopefully be considerable.” He smiled faintly. “I don’t mean to leave again, the way we did last time; I would not have then save for Vara being as badly injured as she was. But our absence is keenly felt, and the day is here where we must reckon for our mistakes and for the disaster that has befallen these lands that I love.” He looked d
own for a moment. “I speak now not only of Arkaria … but of my home, Luukessia, as well. These places cry out for aid—and starting here, and starting right now—I mean to give it.”
“This is … really inspiring,” Dugras said. He’d stopped eating, too. “I’m feeling kind of … swept up in this right now.”
“Alaric casts a mean speech spell,” Vaste said.
“Spell … what?” Dugras asked.
“We will be the guardians,” Alaric said, and now his face was set, eye fixed, the determination like stone cementing his features. “The sentinels on watch for this world. And where we begin is right here. Reikonos must be freed. Arkaria and Luukessia will be saved. But this is where we start. Our duty remains clear as ever. Our ideals—those of Sanctuary—have carried us a thousand years to this place, where we are desperately needed. I have heard Shirri say it, over and over again—
‘There is no hope in Reikonos.’
“Well,” and here Alaric’s eye glinted with determination, “I mean to change that. I will bring hope to this city, even if I am alone. I will fix that which lies broken in this place, and then I will turn my eye to the next challenge, and the one after, until there are none remaining upon these shores. I will fight these battles until I either fall or there are no more before me. I will fight for the people—for my brethren—and I will do so all the remaining days of my life.”
Hiressam rose to his feet, chair clattering as he did so. He drew his sword and took it by the blade, thrusting the hilt toward Alaric. “If you will have me, I will fight with you. For all my days as well—truly, this time.” He looked at Alaric, eyes burning. “I failed Sanctuary once before, and since the day I realized the gravity of my mistake, I have done nothing but try and make amends. I carried the ideals I learned here into every day I have walked since, trying to bring them to life like a faint flame in the dark—and I have failed on my own. If I may add my light to yours, if my life may serve this quest … I will give it gladly. You need but ask.”
Vaste slid his chair back and stood, wavering only a little. “I have been thinking only of myself these last days.” His cheeks looked a deeper green than usual. “Worrying about my people. About my legacy. About my place in the world. Gods, what a selfish prick I’ve been—”
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