Matthieu paused at the hidden entrance to his home to look out on the desert yawning behind him. It was well into midmorning, and the night chill had been thoroughly banished, replaced by the scouring sun, one that always seemed so aggressive, so puissant compared to the cloud-shy sun of his homeland. He'd had centuries to weigh the two, and he'd decided that he preferred the Egyptian one over the French. It was more honest.

  It helped that the heat didn't affect him. He'd learned how to siphon just enough energy off of the rays shining from above and radiating from below, had become expert in it. All the air in his Shroud was kept at the kind of pleasant chill one would normally expect from a well-ventilated cellar, or a rainy autumn evening.

  A vulture circled overhead. Matthieu smiled up at it, pleased to see the ghastly thing. Last time he'd awoken he'd read that most local birds of prey seemed to be trending towards extinction. Maybe some of this current generation of people would be the ones to figure out how to hold off a bit on the all-consuming depravity for once.

  He remembered the newspaper tucked in his pack, how the cover story centered around some wicked contraption called a "land mine," and reminded himself not to get too optimistic.

  Matthieu ducked through the chiseled slat in the rock that served as a doorway, through a hanging rug serviceably dyed to match the color of the mountain's face, and into the candlelit dark of his home.

  Fitz was sitting in the main room, candles lit around him in a loose ring, dressed in just trousers and his sleep shirt. His sword, of course, was with him, draped across his crossed legs as he either prayed, meditated, or half-slept sitting up.

  He walked into the "kitchen," one of four chambers cut with perfect precision from the rock, decorated sparsely with some of Fitz's furniture, antiques now, from back when he had been in one of his woodcrafting phases. At the sound of him setting his pack on the dining table, Fitz stirred.

  "You went out?" Fitz's bass rumbled, echoing pleasingly in the chamber. That had been an intentional touch of Matthieu's, back when he'd first carved the rooms, an attempt to mimic slightly the acoustics of the cathedral back in Chartres. Hearing Fitz's voice in that churchy register always made him a little nostalgic.

  "Alas. Couldn't sleep." Matthieu dug a pastry from his bag and tossed it to Fitz, who caught it without opening his eyes. "Seems I wasn't the only insomniac."

  "What is this?" Fitz cracked an eye, sniffed at the food, crinkled its wrapping.

  "Something for your sweet tooth. There's a little waystation, about a league south, they were selling the things by the bushel. Throw the clear bit away, though, that's-"

  "I know what wrapping is," Fitz chuckled. He tore through the covering, poked the pastry inside. "It's moist. Like a little cake. Chocolate?"

  "I presume."

  Fitz made a little grunt of appreciation. "Chocolate. For my money, one of the best things to come out of the New World."

  "I'm partial to rubber, myself. And corn. Try it, I'm curious now."

  Fitz took a bite, paused, then coughed into his fist. He hacked, stood up, and rushed to the kitchen where Matthieu was laughing, already holding up a bin for him to spit it into.

  "Too sweet?"

  "Lord, yes, ugh," Fitz spluttered. "Like all the sugar of a score of cakes, boiled down and crammed into one. Too much."

  "These people must be desensitized," Matthieu laughed. "That wasn't even the worst specimen. Next to it, on the shelf, they had the same variety, but jelly-filled."

  "I don't envy the poor things. They'd be bored senseless by your pies."

  "All fine by me. More for us." Matthieu sat down, started rifling through the spoils of his trip: newspaper, paperback, magazine, a little handheld trinket on a chain that produced a thin light when a switch was pressed, multitool. When he looked to see if any of this had grabbed Fitz's interest, he saw the man was staring intently, as if he was looking through the rock of the far wall. "Distracting, isn't it?"

  "Like a blazing fire in my peripheral vision. I can't ignore it. Definitely can't sleep."

  "What do you think it is?"

  Fitz stared for a while more before speaking. "A call to arms."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Whatever it is that's burning this bright, whatever energy source is fueling this… beacon. Every Consecrated man, woman, and child on God's earth is probably just as drawn to it as we are." Fitz shrugged. "I'd wager they'll flock to it."

  "And we all know what happens when a Consecrated meets their own."

  "They run away together and travel the world for a thousand years?" Fitz glanced back at Matthieu, stony features lightened just a shade, the closest the man's face ever came to playful.

  "Still only a little over six hundred," Matthieu laughed. "And we've always been exceptions. No, I expect you're right. It'll be a bloodbath."

  "Like some sort of great, terrible tourney."

  Something in Matthieu's chest twinged at that. Fitz was being careful not to show it, was always careful to couch any mentions of combat or fighting in appropriately disparaging terms, but Matthieu knew the man better, he supposed, than any man had ever known any other. Fitz missed fighting.

  Fitz’s eyes remained locked on that distant, invisible point. “How was it out there?”

  “Still barren for a few leagues around Sinai. A few more roads, even more of those motor vehicles than last time,” Matthieu pulled away, glanced back at the books and papers strewn on the table in the other room. “Their photographs are better, their electricity more ubiquitous. More cheap trinkets for sale and more outposts to sell them at. Same as usual. I really only had a brief glimpse, though, I didn’t bother going down into a city. Could be an interesting outing, if you find yourself so inclined.”

  “I still don’t speak the language.”

  “Arabic? I know enough to make do for both of us. Or we could travel farther, get to somewhere that still speaks the King’s.”

  “You want to make a trip of it?” Fitz crooked an eyebrow. “You’re usually the homebody between us.”

  “I’m allowed to feel the occasional spark of wanderlust,” Matthieu said. “We could go back to Paris. London.”

  “Gah, not London. I feel like I’m still coughing up dregs from the fumes I breathed in last time.”

  “That was well over a century ago, dearest. I imagine they will have figured out a way to clean up the air a little since.”

  “I would think we’d have both learned not to get our hopes up too high about the rabble by now.”

  “Coming up with fancy solutions to problems caused by their previous fancy solutions seems to be the one thing they’re getting good at. Fine, though, no London. Venice, maybe? Jerusalem?”

  “How long has it been since we last visited America?”

  Matthieu’s stomach sank a little lower. “A little over a hundred and forty years, by my reckoning. That’s quite a voyage, though.”

  “For us?”

  “It’s halfway around the world.”

  “I could make that in a night. You could probably do it in less.”

  “That might draw some attention.”

  “From who? A watchman posted in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?”

  “They have sensors, now. Telescopes in the sky.”

  “Well, then let them notice. It’s not as if they pose any threat to us.”

  Matthieu shrugged. “They might. By now.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it.” Fitz finally tore his gaze from the far wall, looked down at Matthieu quizzically. “You don’t actually want to travel.”

  “I’m the one who suggested it.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s what you want.” Fitz folded his arms, studied his partner. “No. What you’d rather do, now, is what you’d always rather do. You’d be more than happy to pop down to the nearest hamlet big enough for a bookstore, spend a day or two gathering a little hoard, and then coming back to read through it until sleep takes us both again.”

  “Maybe I want to broaden my horizons a bit.”

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  “We’re old men, Matthieu. We already broadened our horizons to their bloody limits half a millennium ago.” Fitz squinted. “No. You’re trying to placate me. This is a diversion.”

  “Dearest, a diversion from what?” Matthieu waved a hand at their quiet, motionless hideaway.

  “Don’t feign ignorance with me.” Fitz leveled a finger at the far wall. “There’s a screaming beacon of bloodthirst and power shining in our eyes right now like a second sun, and you’re running yourself ragged trying to change the subject from it.”

  Matthieu tensed. He’d guessed this conversation’s end five minutes ago, but he knew now that it was unavoidable. “Say what you want to say about it, then.”

  “I suggest we do take a trip. I suggest we heed this mysterious call.”

  “Oh, so it’s a call now? It was a ‘screaming beacon of bloodthirst’ five seconds ago.”

  “Don’t you accuse me of having a hidden motive. You’re the one scrambling to pretend you’re not afraid of engaging with anything new.”

  Matthieu sighed and massaged his forehead. “I’m afraid of very little anymore. I’m tired. There’s a significant difference.”

  “I cannot conceive of how someone who spends decades at a stretch asleep could possibly describe themselves as tired.” Fitz was standing now, pacing, his fingers flexing, like they itched for a hilt. “I personally am a hair’s breadth from jumping out of my own skin, Matthieu. I need to do something.”

  “I suggested we do something!” Matthieu stood too, loomed over Fitz. “We have the entire world to travel, we have decades of history to be surprised by. There is so much-”

  “I don’t want to go on another blasted vacation!” Fitz snarled. He took a breath, made an effort to sound more measured. “That is not to say that I disdain our time spent together on our travels. We made many fine memories. At pain of death, no one could ever compel me to claim otherwise. But I am travelled out. I have had my fill of polite pilgrimages. What I want, now, more than anything, is-”

  “To fight,” Matthieu said. “You want to fight and kill people.”

  Fitz crossed his arms, defensive. “I don’t relish killing.”

  “And yet you love to fight. You always have.”

  “You say this as if you’re accusing me of some sin, to want what I was, from the time I was a boy, trained and made to want. I know it’s been a long time, but I cannot believe that you forget that I am a soldier. That you are a soldier!”

  “And I cannot believe that you forget Agincourt.”

  Fitz closed the distance, jabbed one finger in Matthieu’s face. “I will never forget Agincourt. That was not a fight. That was a mud-splattered folly, orchestrated by weak men.”

  “Unlike your tourneys.”

  “Yes!” Fitz backed up, barked a laugh. “Yes, Matthieu, unlike my tourneys. Sure, I concede that they were far from the most Christlike pastime, they were often skewed and unfair, they were bloody and mean, but they were real. Men enter a field, agree to shared rules, and leave the field duly sorted, strongest to weakest. To end up in that former camp, time and time again, was one of the great joys of my life.”

  “The very greatest, I presume,” Matthieu deadpanned.

  “No. No, of course not, don’t try and trap me like that. You know damn well that that honor forever belongs to you, to our time together.” Fitz softened. “But, and please do not take this quite so personally as I know you will, I have had centuries of you. Hundreds of years of nothing but you. It’s to your credit that I still find you endlessly lovely, Matthieu, but I need something new or I fear I will go mad. A man cannot subsist on cake alone, sweet tooth or no.”

  "And this 'something new' you so desperately crave, it would consist of, what," Matthieu found himself growing heated now, a layer of frustration congealing atop the growing pit of despair in his chest, "us flying across the ocean to cut swathes through whatever Consecrated men, women, and children have already flocked to this beacon? We crush a few strangers we've never met and have no reason to disdain, and you add a few shiny new tools to your armory, and then what? Random bloodshed to what end?"

  "Power!" Fitz replied, exasperated. "Power, obviously, Matthieu. We've seen just how much more able we become when we best another Consecrated in combat, when we take of their sacrament. I imagine we'll have the pick of the world's best, here, to sup on to our content. The world's power, concentrated in us? We'd be gods."

  "Why the hell would I ever, would we ever even begin to want that?"

  "Because every time we wake up, we play through the same blasted farce, and I'm growing sick of doing nothing to avert it."

  "If you're really so tired of visiting-"

  "We awaken and venture out, we see the state of the world and its people. We find immediate evidence that they are just as low and cruel and heathen as they've ever been. We despair that man continues to languish so, that they can't seem to help themselves, and then we, like a pair of hapless fools, shrug our shoulders and go back to bed."

  "They might be turning it around now. I would need to do some more reading, but the last few times we awoke, I got the impression that war, as we knew it, was going extinct. That sanitation, and- and literacy-"

  "Why wait?" Fitz was excited now, eager. He grabbed Matthieu's hand. "Why damn a billion men to squalor while the species at large bungles through another hundred years of trial and error? When we could end that all now-"

  "That isn't how it would work, and you know that." Matthieu pulled away. "God, Fitz, I thought by now you'd know better-"

  "Explain to me how near omnipotence wouldn't-"

  "We'd get the power and it would corrupt us!" Matthieu's voice was high and reedy with fervor now. "Because that's what absolute power does to every. single. person who ever brushes up against it! Do you not remember the endless parade of kings and crusaders we personally-"

  "That's not absolute power!" Fitz was yelling too, now. "Titles and land, levies, congregations, these are imitations of power that boys conjure to convince themselves they're gods. Godliness, actual godliness, is the station of men like us, and us alone. We who bear the Shrouds."

  "Which is exactly what the kings say about their nations, what the barons say about their riches. Fitz, you're just reciting every despot's favorite talking points but replacing 'god and country' with 'Shroud and Consecration.'"

  "The difference being that King Charles was a typhus-ridden invalid and we are men who can level mountains with a gesture."

  "That means nothing anymore. These modern men, their leaders, they have access to weapons that can do the very same, and can unleash them at the thousands, at will."

  "Look me in the eyes and tell me that, were one of these bombs to detonate right here in my hands, it would even begin to injure either of us."

  Matthieu studied Fitz's face, slightly rosy with zeal, and tried to conjure up the few factoids he'd read about man's new Bomb to End All Bombs. He looked away. "I would have to do more reading on it. But you're forgetting, too, all the other Consecrated. There very well could be some stronger than us, by now."

  "Bah. I'd like to see that."

  "You look at me and tell me you're sure."

  It was Fitz's turn to balk. "Maybe stronger than me or you alone. But both of us? Together?"

  "What if there's one as strong as five of us? Ten? We show up raring for a duel, and run into some monster like that, then what?"

  "Then it kills us and we die," Fitz spat. "I don't know why you protest so. That's what you want anyway."

  Matthieu darkened, his mounting despair finally solidifying into a black certainty. He stared resolutely at the floor, fists clenched, and resolved not to speak again until Fitz did. He only had to wait a few moments.

  "You cling to your version of our old faith. That is fine. Admirable, even. It gives you strength and direction, and I would never deny you something that brings you such comfort." Fitz's voice was soft, understanding, and full of certainty. "But the God you continue to worship, he would cast you into the pit, were you to kill yourself. He would damn you, and the thought stays your hand."

  "I don't want to kill myself."

  "But you want to die."

  "I do not."

  Fitz groaned, glanced around their quarters as if looking for help, then softened his voice again. "Every time we wake up, you wish to return to sleep sooner than before. Last time, we were only awake for, what, two weeks? Matthieu, it wasn't so long ago that we would remain awake for years. Decades. Remember Istanbul, when we-"

  "You never object to us returning to bed."

  "I don't object because I feel the same growing malaise you do." Fitz gestured to the far wall. "But we have an answer to this malaise, now. A purpose has been delivered to us, and your reaction to it is to shove it away and withdraw even further. You don't eat, you barely touch me, you do little else but skim your books and wait to slumber again. This pattern, when followed to its end, naturally concludes in you deciding to die."

  "You take me for a weaker man than I am."

  "It's not weakness!" Fitz threw up his hands. "It is not sin. Matthieu, we have been alive so long. So much longer than anyone man ever has, I imagine. Would it be all that surprising if it turns out man just isn't meant to keep his passions up for hundreds of years? I mean, God, it's a miracle you still care about-"

  "It is a sin. The gospels condemn-"

  "Oh, the bible condemns murder, which you have already done." Fitz began tallying on the fingers of one hand. "It condemns theft. It condemns disloyalty to one's lawful sovereign. It condemns treason. It condemns buggery, which-"

  Matthieu slapped Fitz across the face. The fact that the blow connected with the man's cheek means that Fitz had manually dropped his Shroud and allowed the slap to pass through. Fitz took the blow wordlessly, silenced himself.

  "Do not throw the gospel in my face!" Matthieu hissed. "I know the Word. This is not a matter of doctrine, this is a matter of what I know, from fucking incessant study and prayer, to be right and to be wrong. Those men we killed, we killed for the right reasons. The theft has been repented for. The disloyalty was warranted. Every minute I've spent with you, that was right. But to remake myself in God's image so that we can play King of the World, or to snuff my own life short, just because I'm bored?! That would be wrong."

  Fitz's jaw clenched, his eyes bore holes in the floor. "I might not remember my Psalms so well as you, but I have a moral compass too. It seems to me that passing more centuries in sleep and idle pleasure while our fellow man suffers is also wrong."

  "You don't care about that." Matthieu's guts roiled with rage, and with shame for having been so easily deciphered. "You just want to fight. You just want to be nineteen again. You want to relive your tourney days, innocents be damned, your fellow man be-"

  "Innocents? Save for you, every Consecrated I've ever met was a feral, vicious bastard. You're painting this as a moral failing because you're afraid to admit that-"

  "You just want to fight!" They were both shouting again, voices echoing in the stone chamber. A few tears welled in Matthieu's eyes as a plan materialized, one that he knew he would be helpless to keep himself from enacting. He crossed the room in a blink, threw open Fitz's bedside chest, and began hauling out items: pauldrons, mail, greaves, dirk.

  "Matthieu, what are you doing?"

  "I'm granting your wish." Matthieu stepped aside, jabbed a finger at the armor and weapons strewn at his feet. "Gird yourself."