Kamila

I will kill the Emperor.

I will kill him again and again if that is what it takes.

I’ve given up things I did not have to give up: love and dignity, the hope of a better future, the merest possibility of happiness: but I will have this. I will have what I want. I will kill the Emperor.

I write this not because it is smart of me to do so. I may be in disguise, but if a Gaurl recognizes me as Other, demands to search me, and if this book is found and read, then I will be forced to fight. That is fine. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I write this because I must remind myself who I really am. Every day. Because her voice is constantly needling me, pushing me to the same goal I already hold, and if I don’t remember who I am then I can’t remember that I seek this goal not for her but for myself. That she has no right to dictate who I am, and that I will brook no interference.

I will kill the Emperor.

You, Karla Enok, will not. You may sit back and watch, since you don’t have the decency to admit you’ve been dead for two hundred and fifty years. But you are not me, and you will never be me.

I will kill the Emperor.

In the battle

She burned from inside with each step forward and with each precise movement of her blade. Wallshaker stayed by her side, and as long as her hand was on it, every motion she made was a thousand years practiced, and the chaos of the battlefield just made sense. She heard a change in the rhythm of gunfire bursts, and she sprinted from cover into the trees. The sounds that echoed in her skull sounded right, like whispers, telling her when it was safe, when to stay huddled out of the way, and when to strike. As long as her hand didn’t leave the blade, she knew every form, she knew every step she needed to take, and even though her muscles burned and her eyes were bloodshot and her ears rang, it was easy. All of it was easy.

And then there was her – that whisper of guidance from the base of her skull, that knew the minds of the enemy. Every Invictan soldier, all their aspirations and fears from childhood, every ounce of hate they’d poured into this campaign, the sure knowledge that their problems didn’t matter because their enemy was here, here in the Vale, to be slaughtered, to excise themselves of pain and guilt and fear, to enact all of it upon the hated enemy.

Every mind follows its own rhythm, and in battle, they make a din one cannot comprehend. But the attuned mind finds the common thread, and knows it by name: frenzy.

Kamila stepped out of the trees just in time to run a soldier through the throat. Her momentum carried her forward and through, and she twisted, using her momentum and the remaining sinews of the dying to put a shield of ceramic armor between herself and the hail of bullets. Making herself small like a tightening spring she shrugged her shoulder so that the crossbow fell into her hand, fired again and again, and stopped only when the gunfire in the woods ceased.

She pulled her sword free and turned toward the center of the chaos. Above it all, He waited. The air seemed to shift its place around him, and beneath him, so that he was a thousand feet in the air, and the Battle-Clan warriors that approached him – the worthiest opponent they’d met yet, a God on Earth! – looked like dancers floating in the sky, clashing with a titan. Only they struck at nothing, no matter how many axes and bullets they brought to bear, for the Emperor was simply there and not there.

She saw her opening and ran towards him, and the mountains sprung up before her, carrying her up impossibly steep cliffs. She leapt like a goat in the heights, from rock to rock, scrambling – the spines in the mountainside stung her hands through her gloves and her feet through her boots, and she left blood trails behind. Snow covered her.

She shook it off, and growled in unison with the echo in the base of her skull, the growing echo, this is not truth, this is not truth, this is not truth – and the mountains were an open field, but still always running forward, and at the top of the mountain there stood the Emperor, quiet at the center of a conflagration of death. This is not truth, this is not truth, this is not truth – the echo faded to an inaudible buzz, disappearing behind the ringing in her ears.

Kamila approached the Emperor. He loomed over her, a tower in the center of a great field of bones. Kamila took a step forward. Her foot would not budge – she glanced down, and tar coated her up to the knee. She pulled her leg from it slowly, painfully, but the shifting of her weight only sunk her opposite leg in further. She stumbled, and fell forward, and the tar – burning hot, bright with the souls of the dead and damned – caught on her neck and chest and stomach, splashed on her head, and into her eyes, and she screamed –

Only her mouth was full of it too, and when she tried to wade forward through it, Wallshaker caught in the tar and was lost to her –

This is not truth, this is not truth – she was lying on the ground next to a bloodstained rock. She looked up. Her mother’s blood was warm still, against the rock in Etyslund. Around her, Invictan soldiers – their helmets pushed down tight over their heads, rifles hanging from their black ceramic armor. They stared with bright red eyes. Blood gushed from their necks, but they walked – a circle enclosing around her. The vise tightened. Something shoved against her back and she caught herself against the stone, sharp rocks cutting hands. The arm of an armored Invictan soldier wrapped around her neck and dragged her back up, with every part of her stinging. She twisted, snaked her hand up through the space between her neck and the arm, and took a step out to the side, lowering her center of gravity. She took the heavy soldier onto her back like a backpack, gasping out a breath under the weight of an entire world, and turned to the side, throwing him off. She stumbled away.

She was crawling through the dirt while pieces of steel rained around her. The man nearest her, dragging himself forward, stopped suddenly and quietly when a fragment of an airplane’s fuselage tore through his back and pinned him forever to the earth. Kamila bit down her bile and continued forward. Around her the Wypsie Battle-Clans were raging and screaming, their shields held high, rifles pointed toward the enemy, vanishing and reappearing in flashes of light. Together they made a great aurora, a beautiful show of lights to Kamila’s tired eyes. The sound of air parting hissed above her and Kamila glanced up to see a fragment of a plane falling toward her. This is not truth, this is not truth – the man with the bloody voids for eyes, Oscar was that his name, stood over her with full armor over him and a shield in his hands, and the steel bounced away –

This is not truth! Kamila crouched in the tall grass next to the corpse of a Valer militiaman, a gaping wound in his torso with no steel around to match it. She looked up in time to see a warrior from Nie-Wypsa flash into place in front of the Emperor, who stood unassuming, perhaps fifty paces from Kamila. The Emperor’s eyes flickered to those of the warrior, and his face grew slack with fear for a moment – he sees what is not there, while we have our brief respite of truth – before his body disassembled itself. The sound of cracking ribs echoed across the field and he doubled over and did not get back up. His legs stayed standing where they were while the rest of him tumbled to the ground.

Your fate if you forget what is real and what isn’t, the echo insisted. Don’t stop listening to me, or you will die.

Kamila burst up to her feet like a sprinter, firing her crossbow toward the Emperor. Soldiers moved in to close the wall around their God, shutting her away. But He was right there. So close. The Wypsies and the Valers were closing in on the Emperor, while the Invictan lines began to shatter all around, but as long as the Emperor stood and the world still fell victim to His influence, as long as He was still the center of the storm and everything else seemed warped and wrong in the spaces between instants of certainty, it couldn’t be over. Between shots of her crossbow, as she ran, Kamila ducked – under the swiping spear of an Invictan warrior – and glanced over her shoulder at the walls of the city. They were invisible behind the dark wind. She stood up to her full height, facing down the Emperor. Old eyes turned toward her.

The Emperor of the Invictans. The Sun of Gaurlante. God. And He was standing before her, almost within reach of her sword. He looked at her… tired eyes. Cold eyes. And behind them was something neither tired nor cold, but desperate – and angry – something that reached through the cornea of the human being it inhabited and snaked out toward Kamila, sensing in her something almost as old, something that it knew. Hello, you old bastard. Glad to see you again. Kamila raised her sword.

The Emperor flew backward, bursting into motion suddenly as His personal guards attempted to rush in to fill the gap. But Kamila was already running, and they were armored for close combat with their heavy weapons, not for a chase. The battlefield was too chaotic already – they began to give chase, but they stumbled and slowed and Kamila moved far faster than them.

Wallshaker’s memory whispered to her. Viper striking from the rushes. She clambered up the banks of a polluted ancient river and swiped widely with her sword, using her opposite hand to enhance her forward momentum. The Emperor continued back, dancing away with each passing half second from her strikes. The world shifted around her – she was standing in front of a great stone wall, and she shouldered through it – she was at the bottom of the ocean, and she found a working submarine to carry her to the surface – she was chained in a dungeon, and she tangled up her chains until they broke. Viper striking from the rushes into rising crane into lunging like thunder, pivot and parry three to the lone soldier coming in behind her, riposte to the throat and draw back quick, need to pivot again and hustle to get closer.

Kamila stalked toward the Emperor of the Invictans while their formation broke. All around her flaming stone rained, and Adma assassins died on the many-speared hands of the Priest Zhiren, and the earth itself seemed to be made of air. Kamila turned for half a second to see Zhiren staring down at her, hurling fire and lightning from on high – yet he smiled at her, and the bolts always landed behind, driving her closer toward the Emperor, never between her and her target. Mind-addled, she did not think to thank him or rebuke him.

Then came the Hunters and the Battle-Clan, together, two dozen or more of them rushing in to the Emperor with their weapons bristling, each man or woman a tooth of a many-headed beast. The Emperor continued his headlong flight backward, old tired eyes finally losing track of the movements on the battlefield, until he fell into the mob. His ears, under all the stimulation, went half-deaf under the shouting of his Devotees, and above all of them, the spirit of the Empire itself, screaming to get out of this failing body. Kamila held her sword forward, viper coiling to strike, and dashed forward, spotting familiar faces in the crowd. “Hold him still for me!” she shouted, eyes wide, livid, teeth grit.

A dozen knives plunged into the Emperor’s body, and when the knives came out, so did his blood – the Emperor’s blood, shed for the first time since the spirit came to him. He gasped, unable to process the pain he was feeling, as his Devotees abandoned him one by one, except for Aivor, still screaming from inside his body, screaming with the pain He felt at the same time that he felt it. With every scream of the emperor, He screamed too. Lucian grabbed the emperor by the shoulder and dragged his body back, pushing his head back, and put his knife up to the neck of the frail man. His head fell off his body as the head of a mere human, a moment before Kamila caught up to the mob and ran the emperor through with Wallshaker. She screamed and kicked the headless body, twisting her sword and trying to pull it out. It stuck – probably caught on a rib – and she kicked again, staring at Lucian’s bloodsoaked face. “He is mine! He’s mine!” She pulled her sword free with a rib-nick on it, raised it to swing back down, and struck the corpse. “He’s mine!” Kamila sobbed, impaling the emperor’s body and leaning over it. The mob backed up around her, leaving only Lucian, staring in what she could only describe as shock and pity – and how it made her hate him!

All around them the world shifted and roiled – quickly resuming its proper shape. Behind Kamila, the walls of Kivv still stood. In the south, the Invictan army’s survivors were mostly fleeing. More bodies of Valers – Adma and militia – lay around Kamila than she could have hoped to count. Her head swam and stung – she looked at the bodies, the bodies of Valers, of her friends and neighbors, and saw only faceless corpses. None of them had any definition, none of them had any feature, none of them had names. She stumbled over the bodies, but each time she pulled herself back up.

And the spirit of Aivor washed over the land, and the voice in the base of her skull whispered: We are only getting started. He is still here.

It did not take long for Kamila to find Him. He came to find her first, after all. While the rest of the army – even the Emperor’s personal guard, who could not know who would be his successor, or who perhaps did not care now that the whole force was being so clearly routed. Warriors with Ordian weapons, blades that shifted to reveal barrels of guns and launchers of acid, fire, grenades, chased the Invictans south. But He came – Zhiren stood before her, smiling.

“The mantle of God is mine,” Zhiren said, and though he smiled his voice was hoarse. A tear rolled down his cheek. “Oh, the beauty at my fingertips, and oh, the power…” He turned toward Kamila. “Let the army run. I don’t need them to destroy this land. I’ll burn you and everyone you love.”

Kamila snarled, flicking the blood off her sword. “Prove it, then.”

He raised his hand to do so, and Kamila felt a charge rising in the air, a horrible heat. She started walking forward, but suddenly could not breathe, and without the breath in her lungs and with the oxygen in her lungs and brain fading, each step was labored, burning her already-fatigued muscles. Wallshaker fell from her nerveless fingers, the memories abandoning her as the sword stuck in blood-wet marsh. Her vision narrowed, darkened, blurred. Fire streaked toward her in a wall, fanning out from Zhiren’s hand. White filled her vision, roaring filled her ears. She sensed little but the horrible smell of death in the air.

Then she stumbled forward through the fire, breathing again, gasping, wheezing, and fell to the ground. She landed with her face almost in the bloody mud, dirt that had been dry under the spring sun until hours beforehand. The leather of her gloves, torn and covered in her blood and the blood of others, came off her hands in tatters.

She sat there while the sun moved slowly in the sky until it was straight over her, beating down on the back of her neck. She rose slowly, breathing steady again.

Kamila reached behind her neck to find her hair singed off – an uneven mop of burnt-ended hairs left behind on the back of her head. Over the omnipresent stench of gore that she felt would never leave her nostrils, the smell of her own burnt hair was almost imperceptible. The battlefield was full now of wandering warriors, gathering up their weapons, checking for survivors, hoping to find their friends among those still living. Medics crawled out from behind the protection of the city’s south wall, carrying their gear from one prone body to the next, checking pulses, hoping their skill would suffice to revive the ones who still drew breath.

Kamila stood still for a few minutes before she really saw what she was looking at in front of her, but when she saw Zhiren’s corpse laying facedown in the mud, his spine bisected by an axe, she took in the sight with more tired resignation and fatigue than excitement. She bent down and picked Wallshaker up off the ground, sheathed it slowly, and approached the corpse.

“We’re still just getting started,” she said under her breath, speaking straight from the itching base of her skull. She laid her hand on the back of Zhiren’s head, drew in a breath, and stood back up.

And she kicked him. And kicked, and kicked, and kicked, and kicked, and kicked, and kicked, and kicked, and kicked, and

Lucian’s hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off, growling over her own shoulder at him. “Leave off,” she muttered. “Aren’t you happy?”

“Aren’t you?” Lucian asked aloud. “We did it. We saved the city.”

Kamila scoffed. “Look around,” she said. “What do you call this?”

Lucian’s eyes grew sad and distant. “I call it a pointless tragedy,” he said. “But we live another day.”

“And so does the Emperor.”

Lucian gestured toward the decapitated, mutilated body on the far hill. With the piles of corpses between them and him, it took Kamila a few seconds to process what Lucian meant. “Do you think you sliced him up enough times?” he asked, snapping her back into the real world. “He’s extremely dead, Kamila.”

“I mean the Emperor, not the man.”

Lucian sighed. “You know it’ll probably be years before we have cause to worry even a little about that. I doubt the Invictans will attack the Vale again for a long, long time. They lost too much here.”

“We lost too much!” Kamila shouted, hand on the hilt of Wallshaker again as she stepped forward toward Lucian.

And Lucian just nodded and held out his arms, catching her, holding her around the shoulders. “We did. I’m sorry. But they won’t be back. I promise you that. They won’t be back.”

“It won’t be enough,” Kamila said firmly, evenly. “Come with me, Lucian. Let’s follow them right back to the Gaurl Core, find out who the Emperor’s new host is, and kill Him. Then we’ll kill Him again and again and again, as long as it takes. He just wants to go home? Well, He doesn’t get that right. He killed my mother! So you tell the Hunters we’re going south. As soon as everyone is ready.” She pulled back. “Can you –“

“I can’t do that, Kamila. We all make our own decisions. And I can’t support this course of action. There’s too much still left to do here.”

“You can’t stop me from going.” Kamila kept her head angled low, glaring up into Lucian’s eyes. “I’ll go.”

“And abandon the family you have left?”

“They don’t want me around.” Kamila narrowed her eyes. “I ruined my family, Lucian.”

“Then fix it,” he insisted.

“How?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I don’t – I don’t have a family, alright, haven’t in a long time. I can’t give you the answers!” He scoffed and shook his head. “But I do know that if I had the opportunity you have – you know, the people you’re so afraid of, at least they’re still alive, some of them!” Lucian brushed a bit of something too horrible for Kamila to want to think about it off of his arm and looked up at the wall. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We’re both exhausted and covered in blood. Get some sleep, Kamila, before you try to do anything.”

Their walk back to the city was slow, slogging over piles of bodies, both so tired they had to stop at times to lean against the wall and wait till their heads cleared. They murmured to each other in low voices as they went. “You know there’s nothing for us, staying here,” Kamila said. “I can’t fix what I’ve broken. I’ve tried.”

“Have you?” Lucian paused to spit a gob of blood and saliva onto the ground. In the dark aftermath of the adrenaline rush, he looked like he might collapse onto his knees at the least breeze. “Don’t bother asking the other Hunters, Kamila. We make our own decisions, I said. We’re not going to follow you. They’re not going to follow you. They have more important things to do.”

“More important things than killing the Emperor? Such as what?”

“Such as keeping the Vale safe while we rebuild. Or have you forgotten?” He lowered his chin to his chest, then rolled his head back, breathing a slow, luxurious sigh between cracked teeth. “We protect Mirshal.”

“From Invictus.”

“From whatever may hurt us. And now, that means we protect the Vale. We keep ourselves safe. We survive, Kamila – we don’t go running into the wilderness for revenge. We won today.”

“If this is winning…”

When they entered the city, it was quiet. People muttered to one another, but none – not even the scared civilians happy to finally be free of this siege, happy that their allies and their weapons had finally come into position in time for the battle to begin, overjoyed that they’d lived to see another season – raised a voice in shouting. Kamila stumbled past dozens of resting militiamen staring into distances that were not there, her steps shuffling, dragging against the cobblestone road interrupted by bombed-out sections. Somewhere along the line, she lost Lucian – they hadn’t spoken in some time, and he must have stopped following alongside her. She glanced to the side and saw Hilda and Lucian standing against the wall of an intact house, arms locked together, heads touching. She sighed and dragged herself on.

She found her brother sitting in his garden – the flowers in full bloom now, and a few vegetables beginning to sprout too. The garden was undisturbed – although dust floating through the air from many explosions coated the petals and leaves, the colors were just as vibrant, just as alive as they’d always been. He stood up, wordlessly, still with that stupid smile forever on his face, but his eyes were glistening and when she took a step over the fence he threw himself against her, arms around his older sister’s back, sobbing.

“I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again,” Kamila whispered. “When they took you away… I thought they were going to kill you.”

“I thought they were, too,” Aleks said. “And then in the battle… I thought you’d all die. Thought it was over. I was waiting. Scrying. Everyone we lost…” He turned his head, looking down at the flowers in his garden, pushing the back of his head into Kamila’s stomach, almost painfully. “And all I could do at the end was stand there listening to the bullets and wondering ‘where’s mine? When do I get to go?’”

Kamila bent down and hugged Aleks tighter, feeling a deep relief she couldn’t describe. “I thought you hated me,” she murmured.

“No,” Aleks said. “You’re… different. Have been for a long time. But so am I. So’s Hilda. So’s… dad.”

“Dad’s dead,” Kamila muttered. “We have to accept that. We haven’t heard from him in seasons.”

“He’s alive,” Aleks said. “I got a message from him. A couple of weeks ago. He said he’s on his way. He should be here any hour now, by his schedule.”

Kamila felt a cold emptiness in the pit of her stomach. “How long have you known?”

“I just said,” Aleks repeated, “a couple of weeks. I think. It wasn’t long before I was captured.”

“You didn’t tell me?”

Aleks stepped back, uneven. “At first I didn’t think you’d want to hear. And then you were busy and always somewhere else and I couldn’t get hold of you. And then…” Aleks shrugged. “I think it’s better anyway. This way, you didn’t have to spend all that time worrying if he was going to get hurt, right? Because you thought dad was already dead. That way –“

Kamila slapped Aleks across the face.

He reeled back and turned away. “That wasn’t called for,” he said, adjusting the collar of his long coat. “You should get some sleep, Kamila. We both should.” Though the sun was still in the sky, Kamila felt a fatigue that went through her whole body and into the very marrow of her bones.

So she did.

And in the night, the decision came to her. That thing at the base of her skull resonated and hummed, and she pushed against it, rolling through unpleasant dreams, until she came to her conclusion.

In the morning she filled her backpack, belted Wallshaker to her hip, showered, changed her clothes, and went out to watch the sun rise. After washing the scorched ends of her hair down the shower drain, she was left looking almost like a soldier. She hated it, but there was nothing to be done.

The city was still quiet, but people – and indeed the streets still thronged with the war’s survivors – mumbled constantly to one another, creating a din of overlapping voices, each barely loud enough to be heard more than an arm’s length away. Kamila walked down the road as the earth slowly got brighter, the sky glowing a deep orange and crimson. Most of the streetlamps were shattered, but a few still shone with soft yellow light. Cold water still ran down her face, down her body, onto the ground, carrying away the last of the stink. But the air was still thick with dust and blood. Carrion birds had descended while Kamila slept. Inside the city, bodies weren’t visible – many must have been carried off to be buried or at least moved inside for now.

Kamila stopped once again to double-check her map before she made for the gate. It helped make her decision, seeing the little mark of the train station two weeks’ walk away. It wasn’t that long ago, she told herself, she’d made a journey on foot across the Vale like this. Yes, she hadn’t made it alone before. But Hilda had only been slowing her down for most of it. Alone, she’d go quicker. If she could scavenge an Invictan vehicle from the field before she left, she’d get even further, faster.

When she saw Hilda and Lucian standing in front of the twisted, half-broken remains of the Rust Gates, Kamila almost stopped there and turned around. She could go back inside, stay in the city, wait another day or two and then slip out when no one would expect to see her. She wouldn’t have to look her sister in the face again. But…

Both their eyes kept darting to the land outside the gate.

And Kamila drew in a deep breath, pushing away the buzzing at the base of her skull for just a moment. She shifted the weight of the pack on her back and walked toward the gate.

Hilda, of course, saw her before Kamila got there. When she got close, Hilda walked up to her, took her hat off, and threw her hands around Kamila. “I’m glad you made it,” Hilda said.

Kamila stood stiff, uncomfortable. She looked between Lucian, who watched with obvious unease, and her own sister, who quickly ended the hug and stepped away, looking up at her. Kamila sighed. “I’m glad you made it too, Hilda,” she said, trying to sound normal.

“What’s wrong?” Hilda asked. Her eyes flickered over Kamila’s shoulder. “Why are you carrying all that stuff? Where are you –“ and her eyes flickered again for a moment, though she did not seem to be looking past Kamila, but through her, to something a thousand paces behind and a thousand paces into the future. “You’re leaving. Aren’t you?”

Kamila sighed. “You don’t want me to stay, do you?” She almost immediately wanted to bite back her words again – hearing the way she had said it, the bitter tone in which it came out. But no taking back what’s already been said, no taking the words and hiding them away.

“You know it isn’t like that, Kamila,” Hilda said. “I’m worried, I want you to be okay. I mean, I understand if you don’t want to stay, but –“

“And you do?” Kamila shook her head. “You won’t go back to Etyslund, will you?”

“I don’t want to go back,” Hilda said, looking away.

“I have to go back.” Kamila’s eyes narrowed. “How can you not want to go back at all? It’s your home.”

Hilda’s brows tilted down and she looked up, mouth thin and stern. “If you ever really talked to me, you’d understand. But when’s the last time we really, really talked?” Hilda held out a hand, reaching up to place it on Kamila’s shoulder. “But we both have to do what’s best for ourselves. If you… want to go to Etyslund, I’ll…” She looked toward Lucian. “I’ll go with you.”

“I’m not stopping there,” Kamila said. “You know I can’t stop.”

“I know.”

They stood, Kamila looking down at the crown of her sister’s head, for a while.

“I’m sorry,” Kamila said. “For everything I’ve put you through. I know I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. I know I only made things worse for you. I know there were a lot of times when I should have done more to help you, when I could have stepped in to make you safer, and I didn’t do anything.” She put her arms around Hilda’s shoulders, leaned down, and tried not to let her voice break. “I… hope you can forgive me.”

Hilda, without breaking the hug, turned her head and leaned against Kamila. But her grip on Kamila’s arms tightened for a moment, uncomfortably so, then loosened. “You don’t need my forgiveness,” she said quietly. “And I want to give it, but I can’t. I’m sorry. Things are too… tangled up in my head. I don’t know what I want.”

“I do need it,” Kamila whispered, breaking away from the hug.

“You don’t,” Hilda replied. “You’re strong. I’m sorry. But you’ve always been stronger than me, Kamila.”

I’m stronger than you – I’m better than you – I’m worthy –

Kamila sobbed, and hot tears stung her eyes, blurring her vision. Hilda turned away. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I just don’t want to lie to you. I still care about you. I want you to be happy. But I can’t just…”

Kamila nodded. “I understand.” And shouldering her burden, she went out through the gates.

As she went out toward the battlefield, she saw a group of three figures, heavily laden with packs, inching along the outside edge of the south wall. One of them was clad in a patchy Valer long coat, one looked like a Gaurl, and one – wore clothes Kamila didn’t know. The man in the Valer long coat turned toward her, and she recognized immediately the face of her father, and he recognized her. They ran toward one another and embraced.

“Kamila, you’re alive! You’re alive! You’re alive. And Hilda? Aleks? Are they well?”

“They’re as well as can be expected,” Kamila managed to breathe. “But dad, I’m leaving. I… are you okay? What happened? Aleks said that you sent him a message, but you were gone for so long before then, I –“

Luca Buday stepped forward and gave Kamila a quick hug. “We got lost,” she said. “He came to help me in Carakhte, but we got… misplaced. And we made a new friend along the way.” She gestured toward the newcomer. “Kris. And we brought medical supplies, to help rebuild. We weren’t sure the city would still be here when we arrived, but…”

Stepan gestured at the field, at the carrion birds that were picking over the mountain of death, eating their fill. “But it’s over, isn’t it?”

“It’s over… today.” Kamila nodded.

Stepan’s eyes narrowed and he huffed in a breath. “But you said you’re leaving? Why?”

“Dad, I can’t stay here. I’ve caused too many problems. I’ve hurt Aleks, hurt – hurt Hilda. And I have things I need to do.”

“Won’t you at least stay… for me?” Stepan squeezed tighter.

Kamila didn’t even try to hold back the tears. But when she regained her voice, she said through a hoarse throat: “I have to. I’m sorry, dad. I can’t stay here. I can’t.”

“Can’t you try? Keep the family together? Please, Kamila, you kids are all I -”

“The family?” Kamila sobbed bitterly. “That ship has long since sailed, dad. You, Aleks, Hilda – you have the chance to be happy. Me? I can’t be part of that. I’ve fucked up too many times.”

“Language, young lady,” Stepan whispered, and Kamila’s tears became laughter.

Stepan pulled back, leaving his hand on Kamila’s elbow, and looked into her eyes for a long time. Then he looked down at her feet, at the backpack slung over her shoulder, at the sword belted on her hip. Finally he adjusted the brim of his hat so it lay over his eyes. When he pulled the hat down, Hilda’s face flashed in Kamila’s eyes. The base of her skull buzzed angrily.

“Stay alive, Kamila,” Stepan said. “And come back someday. When you’re ready.” Then he hugged her one more time, and walked onward, and was gone.

Some time later, sitting astride an Invictan vehicle, Kamila pulled out to the west of that which remained of the Rust Gate. Hilda and Lucian were still at the inside of the gate, now joined by Stepan, Luca, Kris… and Aleks. They gathered together, talking, already catching up for lost time. They were a long way off, but Kamila thought they were smiling. She saw them in the distance, hand in hand. “Lucian!” she shouted, too far off for them to hear. “Offer’s still open! You can’t just walk away from this!” But he was already gone, she knew, and Hilda too. They were gone from her, because she was gone from them. The mountains loomed high over Kamila in the distance. She turned her wheel to the southwest and began to drive down the road. To Etyslund one last time, and then to the border. There was nothing left for her in this land.