Jaysynn tumbled over in his sleep and woke up with a start.
He was on the grass, outside, loose dirt at his fingertips. A man was there. The moon cast little light, but it lit up the gravestones, and it turned the beads of sweat on the man’s forehead into drops of silver light.
Jaysynn was quickly on his feet. He knew he was in the graveyard, and he knew that this man, Governor Vac, had taken him here.
“Relax,” Vac said. His voice was quiet and full of phlegm that mixed his natural tone with a soft growl. “I just went to a lot of trouble to dig you up. I’m not the least interested in burying you again.”
“Dig me up?” said Jaysynn. He was on guard, but lowered his hands.
Vac looked up, and his eyes glowed in the soft midnight light. “I went through with the plan,” he said. “Now I’m going to throw this coffin back in here and cover it up again, and you’re going to leave this castle and never step foot in it again.” He nodded. “Do a good work in Thyrion.”
“If I do, you’ll have a friend there.”
“Fine,” said Vac. “But let’s not stand around chatting about it—I don’t want to attract any attention. Just go, and when you’re away from the castle grounds, check your shirt pocket. There’ll be a note in there that will tell you everything you need to know. Now get the hell out of here.”
Jaysynn stood there, looking for last words, but Vac dragged the coffin back into the hole and, with his back turned toward Jaysynn, scraped loose dirt over the top of it with his shovel.
Jaysynn tapped him on the shoulder, but he went on working. He walked around in front and patted him on the side of the arm. Vac looked up, clutching at his shovel, to see Jaysynn extending an arm. They shook hands, and Jaysynn left him to his work.
* * *
When Jaysynn found light enough to read by, spilling out of the windows of one of the finer homes in the Old District, he pulled from his pocket a key and a piece of paper with an address written on it. He recognized the street name from his earlier travels in the city, and it only took him a little wandering back and forth to find the place.
It was in a block of buildings on the edge of the industrial district. The neighborhood was in shambles: much of the industrial district, once driven by generators and magic machinery, was obliterated in the Cataclysm. But this building stood among a number of warehouses. Many of them were damaged, and some bowed down to the ground.
The one Vac had sent him to was in the best shape of any of them. Corrugated steel siding and a sturdy front door. The key fit, and Jaysynn opened the door.
There was no light inside, but it felt like bare walls and an open floor, with maybe some furniture or boxes stacked along the far wall.
A flit of movement. Not an animal. There was a person inside. Maybe another would-be assassin. Jaysynn backed out of the light of the doorway to conceal himself and began feeling around the unpainted drywall, hoping to run into something he could use as a weapon.
Across the room a match head exploded into light, and soon an antique oil lamp was burning brightly, driving out the shadows where Jaysynn tried to hide, and lifting the veil of darkness that hid the other person in the room.
Her hair was long and blonde. The curve of her cheeks was gentle, and her eyes were bright, although one of them was black and blue.
“Just the sight of you heals all the trouble of the day,” Jaysynn said.
“I’m afraid I’m not much to look at,” said Kyrie, turning her eyes down and the bruised side of her face away.
“Did Vac do that?” Jaysynn said. He punched his palm. “I’ll give him a piece of my mind,” he said. “I’ll…” but he trailed off. The taste of anger was in his mouth, but it dawned on him that Vac was a friend, and that he might never see him again. There was no benefit at all in getting angry.
“Well, anyway,” he said, “Vac pushed me off the shore and set me sailing.”
“How’s that?”
“I had to make a decision I wasn’t ready to make. So I paid him a visit so he could force me into making it. We’re going back to Thyrion.”
“Jaysynn,” said Kyrie, shaking her head, “you could be killed.”
“I’m already dead,” he said. “Now it’s time to rise up.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jaysynn laid his hands on Kyrie’s shoulders. “Listen, somebody has got to worry about the problems in this world. Somebody has to set things right again in Thyrion. And I figure, why not the Emperor?”
Kyrie wrapped her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest.
“So,” Jaysynn said, holding her, “Did Vac give you that black eye?”
“No,” she said, backing out of the embrace so they could see face to face. “It was the skinny one. But really they treated me well—aside from the interrogation. They took better care of me than anyone else in the prison, I think. And when they let me go they gave me an escort to this place and even gave me some food and supplies—a couple of these boxes are for us. And your knife is in the top one. They told me I was welcome to stay here for as long as I liked, but that I shouldn’t leave until I received further orders. I guess they meant from you.”
“You got an escort!” Jaysynn said. “All I got was this piece of paper.” He held up the letter with the address on it.
“Well,” said Kyrie, setting the lamp on the floor and taking a step closer to him. “I’ve got a piece of paper for you, too.”
He held out his hands, and she laid into them a wadded up note. He unfolded it and turned around so he could read it by the light of the lamp. It read, “I’m still here.”
And there she was, the giddy glimmer in her eye, the soft pale skin of her cheeks (now bruised), the calm and casual slope of her shoulders.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I don’t know where my next steps will take me. I still don’t know the first thing about destiny. But I’m glad you’ll be here as I figure it out.”
Kyrie made up a bed for each of them: no pillows, but a couple blankets laid across the plywood floor. Wind crept in under the door, which had no threshold, and swept across the hard floor where they slept.
It was a night spent in discomfort and poverty, but it felt somehow like true rest. They knew in their hearts that they were now slaves of their own destinies, but it felt strangely like freedom.
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