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Nabain Palisade climbed onto the walls of Sky Dagger Keep. His breath trailed out into vapour.
Clouds covered the sky. The light from Sky Dagger’s fires bounced off those clouds and onto the snow below them, making the whole night glow. A good omen, of sorts.
He reached the top of the stairs. Ah, he was right: there she was. It was easier enough to find her, nowadays. You looked for the places people were not. People came to the walls for their watch shifts, but no one lingered to look down at the sight below them.
Except for her. Dorado leaned against the ramparts, watching the path to Sky Dagger. She didn’t turn to acknowledge him.
Nabain stepped to stand beside her. Below the walls, fresh snowfall covered the battlefield, creating a new ridge over Draknor’s corpse. The arms of frozen Never reached out from under their blankets of ice, like they hoped to catch your feet.
“Here to tamper with a witness?” she asked.
He jumped at the sound of her voice. He’d expected a watchful waiting that did not need words, and then to be the first to speak. “No.” He pulled a backpack off of his shoulder, and rummaged through it. He fished out a jar of scar salve. “I know you have not said yes before, but that has to hurt in the cold, so I will offer once again—”
Dorado turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised and flint in her eyes.
The jar went heavy and cold in his hands as the pieces fell together.
She’d got that scar just as they fled from Novarra. He’d seen wounds opened by Archadian horns, with their deeper pits and rough edges. He’d assumed it was from a Hexed, because that was what made sense. He stammered. “I apologise, I did not mean it like that.”
“I know.” Dorado turned back. Someone more paranoid would say it looked like she was staring out to the horizon, where land and sky touched. She stayed silent.
Nabain itched to break it, and then itched to leave, before she spoke again.
“Did you ever speak to Serikali?”
“Not as often as I would have liked.” The broken promise settled over his shoulders like a yoke. But even under that weight, he still could carry curiosity. Dorado was direct: if she changed topic, there had to be a reason.
“So have I. We spoke in her rooms once. She called me 'Dorado the Adamant,' and I felt just too— high and mighty hearing a Chosen call me that. So I told her that just Dorado was fine. Then that's what she called me. Just Dorado."
Nabain chuckled despite himself.
Dorado rested her whole weight against her hands, gripping into the stonework. She sighed. “It was a joke, but ever since we left, I wonder if she meant it seriously too. That whole talk was about titles. Having to take them up.”
The problem with being a doctor was there were some connections you could not help but make. The height of that scar was perfect for Azar rushing at someone, head down and in a fighting stance.
“Do you think she was calling you up to the mantle of justice?” he asked.
Dorado made a noise that was not a laugh. “I told her I hated titles. She talked about how people needed them, how maybe one day soon I’d need to pick one up. I’m glad to be rid of the damned thing.”
Dorado was a fighter, yes, but he’d like to say he knew her well enough to say she didn’t rejoice in killing. She was honourable. She wouldn’t take credit for something in case that put her up too high. She would give the version of the story that made her sound the worst.
The fires of the camp crackled behind them, the smoke rising to join the cloud cover.
He was soft enough that he would not say aloud that he saw what she was doing. It was her choice to keep a secret.
But he was cruel enough to answer her candour with his own, and ask a weighty question. He needed advice— and he needed it from someone where when you explained what you were doing, their principles rubbed off on you because you were too afraid to disappoint them. “I only spoke to her a few times. She gathered a few of us, asked us to hold each other close, against those that would use us—” Oh, he hadn’t expected his voice to choke like that. He cleared his throat. It didn’t help. “Aoife said she was asking for a ‘consonance beyond consonance.’”
Dorado just looked at him. Cool, calm. Like she was waiting for him to make his next move, to close the distance, before she moved herself.
It would be so much easier if she opened her mouth. “I fear I did not understand what she was asking us for.” It was a comforting lie to believe that if he had understood, he would have found the courage to take the necessary action.
“Did you help Azar take Novarra?”
“Apart from opening the gates?” He raised an eyebrow.
“You saved people there.”
He readjusted the straps of his backpacks. “I don’t think failing to blow up the senate is the same thing as keeping that promise.”
She looked back out at the horizon, her first movement in several breaths. “You can’t change the past. What can you do to keep it now?”
“I would have thought you would have said something about failing to keep promises. Things that get broken in death.” Practical things. The things a commander would say.
“No, that would be— it wouldn’t even be Judet. Someone who likes people even less than her.” Dorado said. “So, are you going to do anything?”
Dorado seemed to have the right idea about gripping the parapet. Nabain joined her. The rough grain of the stone dug into his fingers. “I wouldn’t want to be too hopeful and say the Never threat is gone, but it’s not what the Legion formed to face. When the snow thaws, it will be a different fight. Maybe now is not the time, but—” Maybe the Legion starts and ends with Serikali. “Maybe you’ll be our last commander.”
“There’s Lance,” she suggested.
I would prefer it if you did not kill him, though. “We’ll speak with the whole Legion. Your people would appreciate that, I would think.” There was still no good way to discuss the two different remnants of the Legion, lest it re-inflame old bad blood. At least if the Legion no longer existed, who the ‘true’ Legion was would cease to matter.
She frowned at him, though not in anger. “That’s not the answer I expected from you.”
“You expected me to act like I was still with Azar?”
Dorado didn’t deign to answer that question. She exhaled. “You don’t need a court martialled murderer helping you with your plan—”
“—you’re not court martialled yet—”
“—But know that I’m tempted.”
The white of clouds and the white of the snow in the dim light all merged together, creating a grey field that seemed to reach out forever. “Do you think it’s what she would have wanted?”
“All we’ve got is our best guesses.”