The Most Fragile Thing of All

"Every action we take, every day, is built on trust. We would not walk into our houses if we did not trust the roof to not collapse upon us. We would not marry our wives if we did not trust them to not smother us in our sleep. And, on a practical level, we would not let our harvesters work our fields if we did not trust them to not stray from their course and run loose to wreck the fields. When you repair a machine, you must trust your knowledge, you must trust your tools, and you must trust yourself to do the job with steady hands."

-from The Practical Farmer's Guide to Machinery by Bertran Lieu

Sid returned to Emerri and then Yora as though under a cloud. One jump before the Son of Emerri was due to be in radio communication with the planet, Sid drafted a letter to both captains, confessing that he had lied and manipulated the situation in order to participate in the chase after Yan. Although he didn't care about either of the captains on a personal level, since he knew he was about to be punished, he might as well not let it fall on their heads as well. It might anyway, because a Fleet ship had lost a battle to a ship with a crew of one and a pirate vessel. That was not supposed to happen.

He hid himself in his room aboard the Son of Emerri after that, and no one bothered him. Perhaps they should have.

He had also begun drafting a letter to Ervantes's family, telling them that their son was dead, but he kept stumbling over the words and giving up in fits of rage and exhaustion. He knew it was his responsibility to write such a letter, but he had no idea what to say. What had he said to Shoto Warez? It was a tragic accident. Well, Ervantes being dead was a tragic accident, too, but this one that was entirely Sid's fault.

And all the while, he thought about what Sandreas was going to say to him. He couldn't quite imagine it. What punishment would the Emperor give? Sandreas had threatened to kick him out, once. He might still do that, decide his whole round of apprentices had been a failure and pick new ones, better ones, from the upcoming crop of Academy graduates. He might even kill Sid, if that was the case. Probably not. He was being hyperbolic with himself. If Sid were no longer to be Sandreas's apprentice, he would just go back home to Galena. Possibly stripped of his powers. Yes, the Emperor might very well do that as a punishment.

What would that be like? To go home in complete shame, without even the one thing that had let him escape his home in the first place? He could imagine it all too well, and that was the problem.

At the bottom of the elevator on Emerri, they were met with a security escort, and all the crew from the Vortex and Son of Emerri who had come down to the surface of the planet were flown on a private plane to Yora. From there, Sid was sent to his apartment, no stop at Stonecourt, no message from Sandreas.

He thought for a second he had gotten off easily because it was the middle of the night, but Sandreas would have stayed up to yell at him. He didn't have the energy left to think about it. He collapsed into his bed and slept.

In the morning, there was still nothing. He checked his phone, his schedule. It was blank, as though there was nothing going on at all. He looked at the internal information service to see if Sandreas was somehow off planet travelling, or maybe had missed that Sid had returned. But no, Sandreas was in Yora. There was just nothing. No word. No message.

It haunted Sid, penetrating even through the haze of sadness that he was operating in. Perhaps Sandreas wanted him to apologize himself. Sid got dressed and walked to Stonecourt, as he always did. The sun was bright overhead, but the air was thick with moisture in this hot tail end of summer. Being in space always made him forget what weather was like on the ground, no matter how briefly he had been gone, and he had taken several trips lately. Too many trips. He thought about how scattered the passage of natural time felt as he walked, slowly, not even sure if he was being trailed by the usual security that followed him when he was on planet. He hadn't seen Hernan.

Again, he was in a kind of cloud. His thoughts came one at a time, drifting preternaturally slowly through his consciousness. Ervantes was dead. Ervantes was dead because Yan had killed him. Ervantes was dead because Yan had killed him, because Sid had put him directly in danger. He still hadn't finished writing his letter. He kept mentally adding words to it as he walked.

He was let into Stonecourt without fuss or comment, and he plodded his way towards Sandreas's office.

"Hello, Apprentice Welslak," Ms. Rosario said at her desk outside. "What can I do for you?"

"Is First Sandreas around?" Sid asked. The words seemed to stick in his mouth, barely making it out.

"I'm afraid that he's not taking visitors at this moment."

"Oh. Please let him know that I stopped by."

"I will." She had a pleasant expression on her face.

"Is there anything that I need to do?" Sid asked. "Did he leave me any instructions?"

"No, Apprentice Welslak," she said, still smiling that professional smile. It rang false, but that might have been only because Sid was experiencing the world as though everything had a layer of film across it, preventing him from somehow accessing the true state of the world. He was numb, but everything felt wrong at the same time.

"Oh. Let me know if there is anything, I guess," he said.

"I will do that."

He left, and went to his little office, but there was nothing for him to do there aside from pull up a blank document and try once again to draft a letter to Ervantes's family, or draft a message to Sandreas as just a way of reaching out. Time slid by like dripping molasses. Sid stared blankly into space.

He got up.

He went down to the basement of Stonecourt, trying to find Halen. He wasn't in his office, nor his rooms, nor the training area, nor anywhere that Sid could find him.

Perhaps he should go to the Emperor?

He went to the Emperor.

The Emperor's door would not open, even when he stood in the antechamber and waited, even when he tugged at the elaborate door handle himself. There was a distinct sense that he was being ignored, deliberately. The Emperor hadn't left, quite obviously, and in previous visits had been quite receptive to Sid. This was a cold indifference, one that Sid was beginning to feel more keenly than had the Emperor swooped into his brain to terrorize him.

He felt safe, perhaps, that he was not about to have his power taken from him, and that no one was going to take him to a dark corner to torture him, but this was a stasis that gave him nothing to do but dwell.

That was probably the point.

Sid went home.

For several days, he showed up at Stonecourt, checked to see if anyone would speak to him, found that the answer was no, and then wasted his time, staring into space, dreading and hating every second of every day. He couldn't put words down in any message to anyone that mattered. He was unable to even bear looking at news. Dossiers and briefings were not making it into his inbox or onto his desk.

One day, he caught a glimpse of Sandreas as he was walking through the halls. Sandreas saw him; they made eye contact. Then he turned and walked swiftly away, leaving Sid more alone than he had ever been before.

He didn't understand what the conditions were for ending this punishment. He hated himself. He had spoken to no one in days beyond his checkins with Ms. Rosario in the mornings, however futile they were, and simple pleasantries when ordering his lunch. He was beginning to feel like a ghost in his own skin. A complete non entity.

Sid went home. Sid went home and did not return to work the next day.

He turned off all the lights in his apartment and he lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He did not sleep. He did not eat. Time passed in a miserable haze. Days, he was like this, drinking only water directly from the faucet when he felt himself grow unbearably thirsty.

In that state, every thought that drifted across the conscious part of his brain felt both fragmented and profound. Every fleeting instinct and snatch of bright memory carried with it an emotional weight that was beyond comprehension.

It was like how he had been after the Sky Boat, in many ways, but here the feelings of sadness and guilt were more personal, the isolation much more severe, and the avenues for escape fewer. He supposed he could kill himself, but what good would that do? And running away, he could do that, he supposed, but then where would he be? The only thing he could do was wait here, suffer, until someone decided to end his suffering.

It was interminable.

Lights flashed above him, breaking the stupor that he was in. He was confused, at first, and thought that perhaps they were a hallucination cooked up by his brain to combat the complete darkness in which he had wrapped himself. But then they flashed again, and he remembered that he had wired his doorbell to flash a set of lights, as he always did.

He felt weak and cold as he got out of bed, still wearing a cassock of days before, and he stumbled to his door in the dark, the lights flashing insistently again and again, like lightning bolts that lit up the scene in instantaneous slivers, blinding him briefly each time.

Sid pulled open his front door, blinking rapidly to clear his eyes in the unexpectedly bright hallway light. He didn't know exactly who he was expecting to see there, but it certainly was not the person that he found.

Renay, his sister, stood there, with her hands planted squarely on her hips and a disapproving look on her face. Sid hesitated for a second, then shut the door on her, turning away to go back to bed.

Renay was not dissuaded in the least, though, because she kept flashing the lights until he came back and opened the door again.

"What?" he signed.

She barged past him into his apartment and found all the light switches, flipping them on. The state of the living room could have been far worse, since Sid had not been having a fit per se, he'd just been laying in bed doing nothing. He hadn't thrown his furniture everywhere and made a mess. Still, Renay wrinkled her nose at the stale smell in the room, pulled back the blackout curtains from over the windows and threw them open, letting fresh air and afternoon sunlight in. Sid watched her do this without protest, feeling too limp and shocked to stop her.

When she was done, she turned to face him, looking stormy. "You smell rancid," she signed. "When did you last shower?"

Sid didn't have an answer to that question. He shrugged.

"When did you last eat?"

Again, he didn't know how much time had passed, so he shrugged again.

"You are an idiot." She signed this angrily, but then her anger seemed to break, and she strode directly across the room and hugged Sid, crushing his arms against his sides. She released him after a long few seconds, then stepped back so that they could fully see eachother. "I was so worried about you."

"Why? Why are you here?"

"I got a letter from your boss, along with a letter of travel aboard Guild ships to get me here as quickly as possible. I thought you might be dying. I didn't even have time to pack."

"I'm not dying," was all Sid could sign in response. His thoughts were muddled.

"And God, you smell so bad!" Renay was really focused on this. "You need to take a shower before anything else. Where is your bathroom?" Sid pointed it out and she walked behind him, put her hands on the small of his back and pushed him towards it. He complied. Inside, she admired the luxuriously large tub, but eventually just turned on the shower. "You. In. I'm going to order delivery food. I'm hungry."

She left him alone in the bathroom, and Sid felt distressed and uncomfortable as the steam from the shower fogged up the room around him. He stood practically frozen in place, almost unable to get his limbs to move to take off his dirty clothes and get in. Time ticked by as he fought with himself to move, and then he did, and it was like a kind of dam breaking.

He felt better once he was clean, got dressed in fresh clothes, and found his sister staring out his living room window at the view of the city.

"You can see Stonecourt from here," she signed. "Wow."

"I usually walk to work. It's very close."

Her phone flashed in her hand. "Food's here."

"Fast."

"You took half an hour in the shower. I'll be back." She left, leaving Sid alone with his thoughts, what few of them he had. She returned less than a minute later, bearing something that smelled greasy and spicy and delicious. She handed it to him. Sid realized exactly how hungry he was, and it was all he could take to not immediately rip open the cardboard boxes and throw himself at the fried chicken and rice inside. Renay fished through his cupboards to find some plates and cutlery. Sid sat at the table, and, as soon as he was allowed to by the physical presence of silverware, scooped himself some food and began to eat. He could hardly taste it for how fast he consumed it, though he had the vague impression that it was very good. Renay got herself some at a much more sedate pace. They didn't talk while eating. When Sid had eaten himself to the point of illness, he felt at least a little bit more human, or at least a little more like a person who could experience sensations and interact with the world, rather than laying still in a pitch black room for an indeterminate amount of time.

"I was told to look out for you throwing a shoe at my head," Renay signed.

"I wouldn't."

"Oh?"

"I've gotten better since then. I can hurt people who bother me in much more new and creative ways."

Renay frowned. "Not encouraging."

"Why are you here?"

"I told you. Your boss told me to come."

"Did he tell you why?"

"He thinks that only I can stop you from self destructing, I think."

"I'm not—" Sid began, but then realized that he was. It was partially Sandreas's fault, though, for freezing him completely out of his life.

"Sure. What is the matter with you?"

"I can't tell you," Sid said. As much as he loved his sister, he wasn't about to go divulging state secrets to her.

"Yes you can. First Sandreas said..." She wrinkled up her face, as if trying to decide how to say the next part in sign. "Tell me about your comfortable fantasies breaking." The phrase jogged Sid's memory unpleasantly. It was a sign that she had indeed gotten permission from Sandreas.

"You spoke to him?"

"Just before I came here."

"And he said that?"

"Yes."

"What else did he say?"

"That you're being punished for doing something that could have killed you."

"Anything else?"

"Not really." Sid didn't think that likely, as Sandreas never wasted an opportunity to say something to impress his listener. He wondered if his sister was lying to him, or if she had just been duly unimpressed by meeting the Empire's leader.

"Was Halen there?"

"Who?"

"Sandreas's..." He floundered, again not wanting to reveal too much to his sister. "Bodyguard," he settled on, even though that wasn't really true at all. Sid gestured the approximate dimensions of Halen's body, indicating him to be very broad and tall. Renay shook her head.

"He was by himself."

Sid nodded, not saying anything.

"So, tell me. What are you in trouble for?" Renay demanded, leaning forward. "I didn't come all this way to have you not tell me."

"It's a very long story."

"All the better."

"You remember Yan, right?" He fingerspelled her name, then used the sign name he had come up with for her, feeling a pang as he rested his hands over his heart.

"Of course."

"I guess it started with her..." he began. And he told his sister the whole story, starting with Yan being kidnapped, telling her how it had happened and who really had done the kidnapping, which itself involved explaining so much. He described rescuing Yan from the planet she had been trapped on, and sending her home with Kino, and a brief aside to talk about why he had been out with Kino to deal with the Guild ship in the first place. And then he told her about learning that Yan and Kino had run away together, Sid coming home to secretly take his place as Second, and how he felt like he had to face Yan.

Renay absorbed all this information only half patiently, interrupting constantly to ask clarifying questions. Sid didn't mind. It was good to get it all out on the table, have a chance to see the whole story from a broad perspective, through his sister's eyes, when she wasn't involved and emotionally tied up in it all.

"You still haven't told me what you actually did," Renay signed.

"I will. There's just a lot of context that you need. Anyway, we found out that Kino was on Hanathue..." And as he began to tell her about Bina Warez, and how he had gone to go give his consolations to her father, Sid's hands slowed and then stalled as a kind of dawning horror of realization came over him.

"What?" Renay asked, seeing his pale face and the way that he stopped.

"I think Sandreas is threatening me by having you here," he signed. "Cruel."

Renay frowned. "Why do you think that?"

"Halen wasn't with him when he met you." The pieces were clicking into place. "Halen is the one who thinks that going after Bina was a wrong choice. If he wasn't there, it might mean that they're fighting again, and Sandreas is going against Halen's wishes, and using you as..." Sid threw up his hands helplessly.

"Why would First Sandreas's bodyguard have so many opinions?"

"That's complicated to explain, and not really your business."

Renay stared him down, but on this point, Sid wouldn't relent. "So you think you're being threatened?"

"I think it's a message, that if I don't do what they want me to do, more people I love are going to die." He looked at his sister, and imagined how Kino would have felt, seeing her sister dead. He couldn't quite imagine it. Renay was vibrant and alive, and Sid would do whatever he needed to keep her that way.

"I didn't feel threatened. First Sandreas seemed very honest with me."

"He is a good actor. And dangerous."

"Do you not trust your own boss?"

"I don't know. He doesn't trust me."

"He said you're going to take over for him."

It was nice to get a bit of confirmation that Sandreas still considered Sid his Second. That lifted a little bit of the burden of fear that Sid had been operating under, but it didn't take it away completely. He ran his fingers through his hair, an action which Renay studied intensely. "Maybe he's not threatening me. Maybe he's saying that having you here is safer, because Kino might go after you and everybody else as revenge for her sister."

"I don't know," Renay replied. "It might not be that complicated."

"Everyone's playing games on different levels," Sid said. "I should have never gone into politics. It doesn't suit me."

"Too late now." She narrowed her eyes. "You still didn't tell me what you did. Stop dodging the question."

And so then Sid was forced to describe, in agonizing detail, how he had lied in order to turn the Vortex from its course. He talked about how the ship had fought with Yan, and almost won, until the pirates showed up to save her. And then how she had used her own ship as a weapon, something that nobody had ever thought of happening, crashing a ship intentionally, and how that had disabled the Vortex and allowed her to escape. And how Ervantes was dead.

The horrible thing about signing was that, even though Sid's eyes were burning with tears that wouldn't quite come, and his throat was painfully closed, he could just keep telling the story with his hands, even though they shook. One motion after another, detailing it until he ran out of detail to give. He felt horrible.

"And you really loved him?" Renay asked.

Sid nodded.

"I'm sorry," she signed. "Are you going to go to his funeral?"

"I keep trying to write a letter, to his family, to apologize. But I can't do it. I don't think I could."

"Why did you do it? Go through all that. You knew it was dangerous, right?"

"I thought that there was no way that the Vortex could lose. I didn't know that Yan was so dangerous. And I wanted..." He couldn't express what he had wanted. It was a desire so fundamental to his being that putting it into words or sign seemed impossible. "It was my comfortable fantasy," he signed. "Even if I couldn't get Yan to come back, I wanted closure."

"Did you get it?"

"No."

Renay was thoughtful for a second, and she pressed on with the conversation even though Sid was visibly upset. "So I think I see why I was told to come here," she signed. "Maybe you're right, and it is a threat. But I think that First Sandreas knows that you didn't get what you want, so..." She shrugged. "There's a chance you could continue to be absolutely braindead and do it again."

"I—"

"You don't think that's a possibility?"

"Yan's not going to be stupid enough to—"

"You think if the opportunity presented itself, you wouldn't go right back after her? You think you wouldn't put yourself in danger, especially now that the one guy you cared about is dead? You don't have anything left to stop you, right?" She leaned forward, almost comically angry. "You didn't use your brain, and you ended up getting a bunch of people killed, and First Sandreas thinks that you might do it again, first chance you get. Am I wrong?"

When Sid didn't answer, she asked again, her motions even more jerky and full of emotion. "Am. I. Wrong?"

"I don't know!" Sid threw his arms up in frustration, then leaned his head on his hands on the kitchen table, staring down at the surface of it. He didn't want to look at his sister, didn't want her to continue demanding things of him.

She waited until he lifted his head up again, which took a while.

"You're not going to, right?"

"If I make some kind of promise you'd kill me for breaking it," Sid signed. "From where I am now, I don't want to, I don't think I would go after her. But in three years? If the opportunity comes to me?" He shook his head. "I know that Sandreas doesn't trust me."

"Do you trust yourself?"

"I've never trusted myself," he signed. "And when I did, everything turned out like this." He had made a bad call, but it was a call that he had made. This was the crux of the problem, perhaps. He was being trained to take over for Sandreas, a job which involved doing nothing but making decisions where lives hung on the line. Sid had made a decision based on his personal desires, his whims, without thinking things through, and it had ended in utter disaster. He was proving to Sandreas that he couldn't make decisions but anything other than his own pride, and that was a mark of shame. He couldn't hide behind Yan to make choices, like he had aboard the Sky Boat, and in the future he wouldn't be able to claim that he was just doing what Sandreas wanted, as he had when he argued with Kino while rescuing Yan.

Renay shook her head. "Maybe if you trusted yourself more, this wouldn't have happened."

"What do you mean?"

"You're wrapped up in Yan this Yan that. Cut it out." She slapped her palm on the table to emphasize the point. "You're the only one who matters."

"But she was my friend." And Sid's throat was closing up again.

"And she isn't any more. Get over it. She tried to KILL YOU." Renay delivered these words with such force that she nearly fell out of her seat. "If you had died, I would be so mad. And it would destroy dad."

"I know."

"So apologize to me, idiot," she signed. "And then apologize to Sandreas and say you'll never do anything so fucking stupid again in your life, and then write your letter to your dead boyfriend's parents and tell them you're sorry for killing their son, and you keep apologizing until everyone thinks you've done it enough. Then you go on with your life." She paused. "I'm waiting."

Sid couldn't look her in the eye, his brain refused to do it. She leaned forward over the table, pushing empty cardboard food containers out of the way. She grabbed his shoulder and shook it. "Come on," she signed. "Just fucking say you're sorry, okay?"

She shook him again. "Come on, come on!"

Sid still couldn't meet her eye. He wanted to apologize, but he couldn't apologize to Ervantes, who was dead, and that was killing him. He would have begged for forgiveness, but Renay couldn't forgive him for that.

"Please, Sid," she signed, using the sign name that their mother used, not the silly one.

He covered his face with his hands, taking heavy breaths to stop himself from crying. It was useless, though, and the tears came anyway, leaking onto his fingers, hot at first, then rapidly cooling as they hit the outside air.

Renay got up and came around to his side of the table to hug him. He didn't relax in her grip, but she rocked side to side until he stopped breathing quite so much, and the tears stopped coming. When she let go of him, and he was finally able to open his eyes and look at her, she signed, "I shouldn't have been so mean."

"I'm sorry," Sid signed, and he meant it. "You're right. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

But Renay didn't smile, and Sid didn't feel any better. Apologizing wasn't going to make the pain go away.

That night, Renay slept on his couch. She had explained that she had been given a room elsewhere in the building, but she didn't want to go to it, so Sid gave her some blankets and pillows and let her be in his living room.

Predictably, he did not sleep well, and he woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in a cold sweat from an unremembered nightmare. He left his bedroom to go get a glass of water from the sink. While he was out there, he busied himself with cleaning up the mess from their dinner, which had not been dealt with before. He didn't have to worry about waking his sister up with the noise, as long as he didn't stomp around enough to vibrate the floor, or turn on enough lights to bother her. He looked at her on the couch behind him as he put away the dishes. She was curled up so peacefully, looking small and very, very out of place in his apartment.

He had never expected her to come here. He hadn't thought about it much, but even if he had replaced Sandreas as First, he never pictured his parents visiting him on Emerri. His home life seemed so incongruous with his professional life, they would have seemed exactly as out of place here as Yan had seemed when they had visited his family's house. Yan again. He couldn't stop thinking about her, but his sister was right that he had to. She needed to be put out of his mind.

All the dishes put away, Sid didn't know quite what to do with himself. He thought about going back to bed, but he wasn't tired. He should at least get out of the main area of his apartment so that he wouldn't bother his sister. Maybe he could go for a walk. The fresh air might do him some good.

He resolved to do that, and headed back to his bedroom to change into clothes. As he passed his sister on the couch, he noticed on the coffee table her phone and a thick business card, one that looked incredibly familiar. He placed it: it was the same one that Sandreas had given to him after his apprenticeship interview. Renay had been texting Sandreas, then, probably. Reporting on him.

He was conflicted, desperately wanting to know what she had said, but not wanting to know at the same time. The curiosity won out.

He picked up her phone and unlocked it. She should have really changed her password at some point in the last five years, but Renay's habits died hard, Sid supposed. It was lucky for him. He swiped through to her recent text messages, with an unsaved number.

> Hi First Sandreas. I talked to Sid. He's not doing great. You should probably talk to him yourself.

> I think I convinced him to not do anything stupid in the future

> and to maybe stop thinking about ap. barcarran so much

> but you should see him again

< Either you're a miracle worker, Ms. Welslak, or you're overestimating what "anything stupid in the future" might look like!

< I appreciate your help.

< I will speak to Sid in a few days

< Please keep me informed to any changes in his status.

Sid placed the phone back down on the table where it had been left, then went and changed into clothing with which he could walk outside. He left a note for his sister informing her that he had gone, just in case she woke up to find him missing.

Outside, the sky was dark, though if he stood at the right street corner, he could see far enough down past the buildings that the sky began to have a hint of lightening on the edges. It was early, and the air was filled with that crisp and cool smell that only came right as the summer was on the cusp of becoming fall. It was probably going to be a hot day out, but as it was, Sid wrapped his arms around himself as he walked, rather chilled.

He didn't walk with any particular direction in mind, but he ended up passing by Stonecourt. He hesitated for a second outside its gates, feeling the eyes of the guards upon him. He turned away and walked the other direction. Sandreas had told his sister that he would speak with him in a few days. He only had to be patient.

His mind felt clearer now. The misery that had been stifling his thoughts had shifted slightly, perhaps because Renay presented an exit from the pure, crushing loneliness that he had been operating under.

Maybe she hadn't been brought here as a threat. Maybe Sandreas or Halen had decided, really decided, that she was the one person who could make him see sense. Some part of him resented that conclusion, but he stomped on it as one might stomp on a bug.

He had known that he had done something wrong. He knew logically that it would be insane for him to ever do anything like it again.

But, perhaps, he had needed his sister there to force him to say it to another living being, as a reminder that he was not the only person in his own life, now that Ervantes was dead.

The sun was peeking up over the horizon for real now, casting the lower half of the sky a splendid pinkish purple. Sid was again trying to mentally compose his letter to Ervantes's family, walking aimlessly into the sunrise, when he perceived a shadow fall into step about a meter behind him. He had caught a half glimpse of the figure's reflection in a darkened store window, and recognized it almost immediately as Halen. Sid didn't turn around, and Halen didn't step up to his side.

Sid interpreted the distant companionship immediately as a kind of message from Halen, though he couldn't tell if the message was also from Aymon. They walked together but apart, until the sun had crept more fully into the sky. Sid looped all the way back around to his apartment, wanting to return home before Renay woke up. As Sid pushed open the door, he saw Halen peel away and walk swiftly down the street, as though he had never been there.

Renay and Sid spent the next several days together, which comprised of two main phases: Renay pestered him for a while to get his life together (which primarily consisted of writing the letters he had been trying and failing to compose), then she got bored and demanded that he show her around Yora. Unfortunately for Renay, even though Sid had spent most of his life in Yora, it was only so thrilling to point out the Academy grounds and Stonecourt.

The constant presence of another person helped.

The constant presence of another person who spoke his native language helped.

The constant presence of his sister, who knew him intimately and was not afraid of him or connected to his usual work, was a balm.

She didn't express opinions on what Yan and Kino had done, and he was glad that she didn't. He didn't ask for her opinion because he was worried about what she might say. It wasn't as though he had gone heavily into the details of Kino's original reasoning, because he didn't entirely understand it himself, so perhaps Renay just felt that she didn't have enough information to comment. She seemed only concerned with him keeping himself alive, which was a goal that Sid could at least try to achieve.

After a few days of this, Sid had at least drafted a letter to Sandreas and to Ervantes's family. He agonized over who to send them to, then decided that he could suck it up and send Sandreas his directly. He sent Ervantes's family's to Halen, asking if he could forward it to the appropriate people.

He waited in stasis for the rest of the day, worked himself up into a nervous fever during the night, and received a reply the next morning, from Sandreas, asking him to meet in Stonecourt.

So, the silent treatment was over, and somehow the simple instruction to meet made Sid more afraid than he had been before. But he came to Stonecourt alone, leaving Renay behind.

He waited anxiously in the antechamber outside of Sandreas's office, watching Ms. Rosario type something into her computer, glancing up at him occasionally.

"He should be here in a minute," she said. At one point, Sid might have simply gone into the office by himself to wait, but this time, he didn't. It felt like it would have been overstepping the bounds of the administrative leave he had been placed on, and he was doing his best to toe the line. Or, at the very least, he had sworn that he would do his best.

Sid bounced his leg up and down with a frantic energy that he hadn't remembered he possessed. He was worried that over the past many days of not really speaking aloud, he might have somehow forgotten how to talk.

Sandreas came in. He didn't look at Sid directly at first, said nothing, just nodded at Ms. Rosario and opened the door to his office. Sid stood hurriedly and followed him inside. Sandreas sat at his desk, leaving Sid to stand somewhat awkwardly in the middle of the room, his hands jammed deeply into his pockets.

"Take a seat, Sid," Sandreas said, pointing to the chair on the other side of his desk. Sid jumped to comply.

Sandreas didn't say anything for a second more, just swiped through some documents on his tablet on his desk. His fingers hovered over its surface for a moment, then he powered it off, folded his hands, and looked at Sid. Sid forced himself to meet his eyes, even though this was a clear moment when the eye contact was supposed to feel uncomfortable.

"I read your letter," Sandreas said. "Both of them, actually."

Sid just nodded. It didn't surprise him, and he hadn't had much expectation of privacy, since he had sent Ervantes's letter directly to Halen.

"It makes me glad that you managed to see the error of your ways," Sandreas continued. "But I think that knowing an action is a terrible choice is not enough to prevent you from taking it. Do you have anything to say about that?"

"I wasn't prepared for the price to be as high as it was," Sid said. "That's not an excuse."

"You are correct on that count." Sandreas waved his hand for Sid to continue.

"I know I can't explain why I did it enough to satisfy you."

"I'm not asking you to explain why you did it."

Sid wasn't sure what Sandreas was looking for. "Do you want me to tell you that my pride got the better of me?"

"There's not a right answer that will let you out of the hole you're in, Sid. The right answer would have been to not lie to Captain Slater on your ride back from Hanathue. You've already failed the test. This isn't a retake or a relitigation. We are having this conversation to figure out how to move forward."

Sid nodded, though he wasn't sure what he was agreeing to. "I know you think that I might do this again."

"Tell me I'm wrong to be worried. See if I believe you."

He didn't know what to say. "I know you sent Renay over so that I would be more aware of the consequences of my actions, and what that could mean for everyone else. You didn't have to do that."

"I summoned her here because I knew that you were liable to completely collapse without a peer to hold you accountable. It wouldn't have been the first time. Since we are out of actual peers for you, I decided a sister would probably suffice."

Sid shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I want to be able to promise that I'm not going to be stupid, but I trust myself less than you probably trust me."

"Unfortunately, though, you are the only one capable of deciding if that trust will be misplaced or well founded." He paused for a second. "Sid, I have no choice but to trust you. I can put you on as close of a watch as possible, keep you by my side, not let you out of my sight, prevent you from making real choices, all of that. I could do that. But I can't stop you from being the one that God chose to be my apprentice, and thus my successor. "

Sid was pretty surprised that Sandreas was talking about God. "You could choose other apprentices."

Sandreas laughed. "I'm not getting any younger, and I don't think I could endure much more of this. I don't know how my own master made it through her tenure with me." He shook his head, melancholy written across his face. "It's too much, trying to trust your entire legacy to someone and watching as they fail. I couldn't give up on you and try a second time."

Sid felt that he probably would have given up on himself at this point, had he been in Sandreas's place. After all, Sandreas had threatened to kick him out once before, but that was when Yan and Kino were still contenders, so to speak. Well, Kino never had been, secretly, but Yan was. This would have never happened if his position and Yan's had been reversed. Yan wouldn't have been as stupid as he was.

"What will happen if I do fail?" Sid asked.

"The Empire will depend on you, someday. The Emperor can advise you, but it will be your job to be nimble, decisive, and correct. I'm not asking for perfection, just an honest attempt at it."

"That didn't really answer the question."

"Do you want me to say that when you take my place, if you fail the whole Empire could collapse? You already know that. I don't need to walk you through this."

Sid shook his head. "I know." He looked at Sandreas, whose steepled hands tapped against eachother. "Why didn't you punish me?"

"You're still on administrative leave for the near future. It will be my discretion when you return to real work."

"That's not a punishment."

"Would having the Emperor take the power from you actually cause you to change your behavior?"

"Maybe?"

"That punishment is a shock to the system that works well once. I wouldn't bother doing it again, especially not now, when you are likely to be in physical danger. I didn't have Halen spend so much time training you just to have it all go to waste because you didn't have the power available."

Sid nodded. "There were other things you could have done to punish me."

"Like what?"

"I don't know." Or, he did know, and he didn't want to say it aloud.

Sandreas shook his head. "Sid, I wouldn't do that to you."

"You wouldn't?"

"I let the punishment fit the crime. In this case, you are perfectly capable of punishing yourself because your lover is dead."

Sid looked down at the surface of Sandreas's desk. "Yeah."

"Whatever mental paces you've been putting yourself through is worth more for your critical thinking skills than any punishment that I could actually give to you. Space to reflect is the most valuable thing."

"I guess." Ervantes being dead did not feel much like a punishment, more like a weight that was pressing down on Sid and suffocating him. Still, if Sandreas thought that was what punishment was, he really shouldn't complain. There was, of course, a part of him that wanted to be punished more for the sole fact that he had caused Ervantes to die; he deserved some consequence for that alone. If someone had stabbed him, that would have been fair, Sid thought.

"Do you not think that this teaches you the lesson?"

"It does, I mean, the lesson about decisions..." Sid was fumbling with his words, trying to explain. "But there's no punishment for Lieutenant Cesper-- I mean, I killed him. That's..." He trailed off. His hands were clenched into fists in his pockets.

Sandreas didn't speak for a moment, just gazed across the desk at his apprentice. Though Sid was comfortable with the silence, he was uncomfortable with the critical gaze he was under.

"I have some good news for you," Sandreas said, suddenly shifting. Sid couldn't hear his tone, and his expression was so flat, he couldn't tell if this was intended as sarcasm or real good news. Sandreas picked up the tablet on his desk, pressed a few buttons then held the tablet out to Sid. Sid couldn't quite see the screen, but he reached for it. As he held it in his hand, Sandreas said, "Here is a picture of Lieutenant Cesper, as of a week ago, in Yora Central Hospital."

Sid couldn't believe the image he was looking at. It was Ervantes, looking rather nervously at the camera, with his leg in a cast up to the hip. He was sitting on a hospital bed, but he was wearing civilian clothes-- tee shirt and shorts. Sid couldn't speak for a second. All the words he thought of died somewhere between his brain and his lips. His hand shook holding the tablet so violently that he was forced to put it back down on the desk.

"Is this real?" he asked, feeling his voice croak on the way out.

"Yes."

"How?"

Sandreas took the tablet back. "There's a report you can read." He appeared pensive. "I'm afraid that telling you how might be grounds for you making further poor decisions."

"I swear I won't," Sid said.

"To put a long story short, Yan is too merciful for her own good. She rescued about two dozen people from the piece of the Vortex that she stole, and she dropped them off in an unmarked shuttle in Hanathue's orbit."

Sid's mind churned as he processed this. It made perfect sense. It made him love her; it made him hate her.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"This was part of your punishment, obviously," Sandreas said dismissively. "I wanted you to understand the consequences. Of course, this might backfire by having you think that all bad choices can have personal happy endings, but--"

"No," Sid said, interrupting Sandreas. "I know they don't. So many other people also died. This is just crazy."

"You are either the luckiest man in the universe, or God is protecting you and yours."

Sid shook his head. "Can I see him? Where is he?"

"No."

"No?"

"Lieutenant Cesper is on medical leave until his leg heals completely. After that, I will personally reevaluate his career path."

"You can't do that!" Sid leaned forward.

"Sid." Sandreas's face was suddenly stormy. "You are aware that I am being extremely merciful by not simply imprisoning him immediately, are you not?"

Sid didn't respond, scowling at Sandreas. His temperament had flipped completely with this new knowledge. In the back of his head, he knew that was a dangerous thing, because if he was too impudent, it could cause Sandreas to, in the future, need to devise new and crueler ways of punishing him (if he assumed that this one had lost its potency immediately). But still, he couldn't allow Ervantes's life to be destroyed on his behalf.

Sandreas didn't seem to appreciate Sid's angry silence. "He should have stopped you from your idiocy, as should Hernan. Even I bear some kind of responsibility for it, as I should have realized I needed to prioritize protecting you from yourself over keeping this problem contained to very specific parts of the Fleet. That secrecy cost me. But your lieutenant spoke with you, learned exactly what you were about to do, and failed to stop you, completely and willfully."

"I promised him that I wouldn't let him take responsibility for this."

"He mentioned that to me. I advise you in the future to not make promises that you can't keep."

Sid was angry, now, and he leaned further forward over Sandreas's desk. Sandreas didn't budge. "What would Halen think about you using him as a pawn here?"

Sandreas, to his credit, did not rise to the provocation. "He's lucky he hasn't been court martialed and shot," he said. "You would do well to not deliberately be antagonistic, when I could have also never told you that he was alive."

"You're acting like I should thank you."

"Who else are you going to thank? Yan?"

"Don't talk to me like that."

"You can see him when I decide you're ready to see him. It might be never, if you keep behaving like a child whose favorite toy got taken away."

"He's a person, not--"

"He is a Fleet officer, and he serves at the will of the Empire. If the Empire wills that he serve once again on an exploratory ship, as he did during his first term of service, that would be more than fit and proper, considering his station and experience. If that means he is outside of ansible range for the next several years, so be it."

"You wouldn't."

"I most certainly would."

"Are you trying to make me hate you?"

Sandreas slapped his desk, a sudden movement that made Sid jump. "I am trying to make you see that there is more to life than whatever your whim is at the moment. Your personal feelings do not matter here."

"Clearly, they do."

"If you came in here ready to infuriate me, you could have hardly done a better job at it."

"I'm not trying to make you angry, I'm just--" Sid realized that he was digging himself too far deep into this hole, so he stopped. He was trying to consider the situation with as fresh eyes as possible.

Sandreas waited a tense moment, as though to confirm that Sid wasn't about to try to say anything more stupid. Sid bit his tongue, hard enough to actually hurt. It was a good thing that Sandreas didn't understand more than a tiny bit of sign, because it made his desire to continue yelling in that other language more than useless.

"I'm not trying make you miserable on purpose," Sandreas said. "But you do not have a clear head right now, and you need to get one. You come back here when you're ready to start working again, for real. Don't just show up tomorrow because you think it will make me happy, because it won't. Figure out what you need to do in order to keep yourself rational, and then come back armed with that knowledge. I need to trust you, and that begins and ends with you being able to trust yourself. Do you understand?"

Sid didn't really, but he nodded slowly anyway, unsure if this meant that his punishment was over or not.

"When you return, and after you have proven yourself, then I might allow you to see your lieutenant again. Make this count."

"Okay," Sid said, keeping himself as steady and even as he could.

"Good. Out." Sandreas pointed at the door, then looked down at his tablet. He didn't acknowledge Sid as he got up and left.