Week 9

  Zhao Tong waited until Tanith’s story had settled in the room before he took his turn.

  It seemed at first as if he would pass. He poured more tea, then even refilled the candle with meticulous attention. But when the silence held, he offered a wry smile.

  “I will tell my story, though it is not as academic as the Professor’s,” he said. “But first, I must admit: I remember, sometimes, another life. Not as a man.” He eyed Callie. “I think I was once a horse.”

  Briar snorted into her cup.

  Zhao Tong grinned. “I am serious. In dreams, I see myself as a warhorse; brown, ugly, not especially fast, but loyal beyond reason. I served the same master from birth until the day he died, and then I was killed and buried next to him, as tradition requires. Sometimes, I wonder if I only became a man because I was too stubborn to die in a more dignified fashion.”

  He said it lightly, but Callie heard the steel under the joke. There was a kind of wariness in his every motion, a readiness to pivot from story to violence if the need arose.

  “My true life began in the capital. My parents were tailors, poor, but they taught me to work and not to complain. I joined the Imperial Guard at sixteen—too young, but I lied about my age. I was good with weapons, and better at following orders. Within three years, I commanded a squad. Within ten, a regiment.”

  Tanith was watching him now. She seemed to know this part of the story, or at least the flavor of it.

  Zhao Tong continued. “I had a talent for survival, not glory. My units always lost fewer men than the others, because I taught them to run before they had to die. You would not think this was a skill, but in our world, even retreat must be learned.”

  Callie nodded silently.

  “Twenty years I gave to the Guard. My greatest accomplishment was a defeat: during a useless and forgettable war, my regiment was cut off, abandoned by our generals. One hundred men, behind enemy lines. I led them home, through three months of wilderness. We survived by scavenging, diplomacy, intimidation, and discipline. Only seven died.”

  He paused, letting the words hang.

  “When we returned, the other commanders called us cowards. Said we should have died with honor, rather than ‘betray our posts.’ They stripped me of my rank and exiled me.”

  There was a hush, deep and almost reverent. Even Ember, half asleep, seemed to listen.

  “After that, I became a mercenary. There is nothing noble in it, but I got to choose my battles. I grew to like the freedom. Sometimes, I even missed the old rules, but I knew better than to seek out new masters. Then, one day, a young woman from the capital came looking for me. She offered gold, but that was not what caught my attention.”

  He looked at Callie, directly. “She said I was needed to keep the peace in a town on the edge of nowhere. She said, if I succeeded, my ‘account’ would be clean and I could retire. Of course, I did not believe her. But I liked the sound of it.”

  Callie’s mouth had gone dry. She recognized the cadence, the setup; she had written this quest, too, for a failed pilot about the limits of heroic loyalty and the cost of survival. She had even cribbed from Xenophon for the dialogue, because she was pressed for time.

  She tried to speak, but Zhao Tong was not finished.

  “I came to Apsu’s Respite because I wanted to see if it was possible to live a life that did not end in pointless death. I joined the Archive expedition not for glory, but to see what kind of people would risk everything for a rumor.” He grinned. “I found Professor Tanith lost in the stacks. She could have run, but she stayed and used her magic to slow the monsters so that others could escape. I liked her. She reminded me of some of my men—too clever for her own good, but loyal once she decided to trust.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  He turned to Briar, his voice softening. “And you, Gatherer. You remind me of my sister. Smart, but reckless. Always in trouble, but never for the wrong reasons. I think you would have made a good scout in my regiment.”

  Briar ducked her head, embarrassed.

  Callie felt a lump in her throat. “Why stay with us, then?” she asked, voice tight. “You know what’s coming. You don’t owe us anything.”

  Zhao Tong’s eyes were flat and steady. “Because I do not want to die for nothing. If the Audit comes, and the Engine tries to erase us, I want to see if you can outwit it.” He sipped his tea, then added, almost shyly, “And… I have a personal request.”

  He took a breath, gathering the words.

  “My sister is alive, in the capital. She has suffered from illnesses all her life; fevers, fits, even a wasting disease that almost killed her. Every time, she survived. But now, she is sick again, with something worse. They say she is becoming a monster. The Healer’s Guild won’t touch her. They say she is too far gone.”

  He met Callie’s eyes, and the world seemed to shrink to just the two of them. “I want you to look at her. If there is a way to help, you will find it. If not, then at least you can tell me the truth.”

  Callie’s heart thudded. She remembered writing this questline too; she had even given the sister a name, but the details had all blurred in the years since. She’d been so proud of the “earnest, emotionally plausible” ending that Belus had demanded she shoehorn in. Now, it tasted like ashes.

  She looked at Zhao Tong, saw the truth in his words, the real hope mixed with fatalism. The soldier who had spent a lifetime running from death, only to find himself begging for a miracle at a stranger’s table.

  Tanith put a hand on Zhao Tong’s arm, and he covered it with his own, the gesture as brief and unembellished as everything else about him.

  Briar spoke first. “If anyone can fix her, Callie can,” she said.

  Callie looked at her friends, her patchwork party of recycled code and recycled hope. She wondered if she had ever written anything worth saving, or if, in the end, every scenario was just a way for the system to feed itself.

  She wiped her hands on her leggings, then nodded to Zhao Tong. “I’ll try,” she said.

  The soldier bowed his head, the tension leaving his shoulders for the first time all night.

  Callie glanced at Tanith, then Briar, then at the candle, which had burned down to a nub.

  She thought of all the stories she’d written, all the characters abandoned to the margins. Maybe this was the Engine’s real trick: not to make you a hero, but to make you care enough to try.

  ***

  They stayed that way for a long time. Four humans and one monster, orbiting a cooling tea pot, each lost in the wake of their own history.

  For Callie, the silence felt heavier than anything else that evening. She counted the beats of it: Tanith absently sorting the tea cups by color and size, Zhao Tong folding a napkin into symmetrical triangles, Briar running her finger around the rim of her bowl.

  It struck her that these people, for all their quirks and private griefs, had become her first real friends in a hundred years. The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it landed like a punch in the gut.

  Because Callie remembered every line she’d ever written for Tanith’s type: the abrasive theorist who secretly longed for approval. Zhao was the loyal, haunted soldier, always running to or from some final, unfinished job. Even Briar, in her own way, was a familiar archetype: earthy, brave, allergic to self-pity. And Ember, well. Ember was the only companion she’d ever had who didn’t care what story she’d been told to play out, as long as the belly rubs kept coming.

  She wondered, for a moment, if she had simply surrounded herself with versions of herself: all her old attempts at being a person, now refined and repackaged by the Engine, turned loose to keep her company. The loneliness of it stung, but so did the honesty. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

  “You okay?” Briar asked.

  Callie wanted to say: I am not okay, I am the loneliest person who ever lived, and yet I have more than I deserve. She wanted to say: I think I wrote all of you into being, and that makes me responsible for your suffering. She wanted to say: Please, please stay.

  Instead, she reached over and took Briar’s hand in hers, felt the roughness of gatherer’s calluses, the scar on the first knuckle where she’d cut herself prepping stew three nights ago. It was real. The warmth of it, the shape of it; real, and new, and absolutely not something Callie would ever have written for herself.

  She was still holding Briar’s hand when the others started to drift away. Tanith excused herself to update her notes, Zhao Tong claimed he needed to walk off the alcohol, but Callie knew he just wanted to give her a moment alone.

  The room was quiet again, save for the wind pressing against the windows and the rhythmic thump of Ember’s tail. Briar leaned her head on Callie’s shoulder, hair tickling Callie’s cheek. Within a minute, she was asleep, the sleep of someone who had lived hard and loved harder, and expected to do it again tomorrow.

  Callie brushed a stray hair from Briar’s face, then bent close, lips at her ear.

  “There is nothing about you which was planned,” she whispered. “There is no one I love more in this world.”

  Ember raised his head, blinked once, and thumped his tail again.

  The last of the lamplight flickered, then faded. But the warmth in the attic room stayed, even as the Engine outside spun its gears and readied its next move.