Theo followed the officers into the deeper chambers of the complex, where they came upon the telegraphy consoles and their switchboard at last. And indeed, despite a heavy layer of dust, most of the consoles remained in working condition, at least for some of the connections leading away from the city.

  But the Captain's spirits soon fell back dead just as they’d lifted, like shed leaves in the wind.

  After seeing his reaction to the responses they received over the wire, Theo realized she’d never before seen a man reversed from utter despair, to hope, then back to despair in any manner half as cruel. She couldn’t help but feel ashamed on Tanhkmet’s behalf for the transparency of his emotion, even despite her empathy. It just didn’t sit right with her to witness a fellow rhiza’s psyche bared so raw, and subject to such sudden caprice, even as she knew she was a hypocrite.

  The first nodes they’d managed to contact had informed them that the network at large was recovering from some strange, severe damage. Tanhkmet probed for a bearing on the situation elsewhere, at first avoiding any reference to the conditions of the capital. Most of the officers who replied mirrored his own confusion. At the very least, though, none reported any similar sort of catastrophe beyond that which had befallen Atum-Ra.

  It was then that Tanhkmet’s hope had peaked, even as he’d tried not to show it. Even as Theo struggled to concentrate on anything more than her own grief, nevertheless she wished that Tanhkmet would receive the news he so dearly wished to hear.

  But when they attempted to contact Hilomnos, to ask of the princess, there had been no response.

  They queried other nodes nearby, but none claimed to have an operational line to the eastern port. Worse, those who’d been in intermittent contact with Hilomnos earlier that morning explained that their last messages before telegraph silence had told of mysterious sightings, perhaps vessels, descending upon the city from the ocean. Hilomnos had requested instructions from the capital indicating distress, then desperation. And those other nearby nodes added that they’d heard the intermittent rumble of artillery barrages from afar, then witnessed fires raging above the city’s walls. The last reports out of Hilomnos, they said, told of strange soldiers overwhelming even the rearmost defenses, farthest from the coast, including a company of the Imperial Guard.

  After reading those messages, Tanhkmet had been quiet for some time.

  Theo knew he imagined the calamity that had come to Hilomnos. Widespread and indiscriminate destruction, if perhaps not quite as instant and total as Atum-Ra.

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  After almost a minute, he at last directed Lycera to send out a short message across the network, to inform all other nodes of Atum-Ra’s condition. All armed personnel in the eastern provinces were to withdraw from their posts, he ordered, and regroup with him at the stronghold.

  After Lycera finished, Tanhkmet mumbled something about checking on the boy, standing with a movement like an automaton. Drifting out of the room, he left Theo and the other officers in silence beside the telegraphy equipment.

  There was a special, rarer despair that could afflict someone, Theo learned that day.

  The sort possessed by Tanhkmet she’d never known firsthand, or even observed before in anyone else. But nevertheless, she came to understand it, as the man received news of Hilomnos.

  It was the despair that takes someone after they believe all is lost, that all hope has vanished, before being thrown one last, believable, glimmering shard of possibility. A hint of promise, lasting just long enough to be entertained, despite caution.

  Only to have that final glimmer as well, in its turn, destroyed.

  Even when their first bout of despair had once itself seemed to be the limit of complete and total hopelessness, Theo saw that the pit down which they fell afterward appeared many times deeper.

  * * *

  Tanhkmet took some time to find the infirmary in the stone-carved halls’ dim light.

  His armor slid together with every step, each thick plate dragging across another with harsh scraping resistance, before at last he drew up to the old and dirty cots.

  Caesos was curled up on another bed, where he’d laid him earlier. The boy had fallen asleep, and he envied him.

  Tanhkmet lowered himself onto a cot, armor and all, with ginger caution. Like burns coated his skin, as if he’d been one of the soldiers too far from his barrier before the shockwave. Stored pain, which until then he’d managed to keep contained, was overcoming his hold against it at last. The first tendrils were creeping through his defenses before he’d made ready.

  The pain of dozens of bodies otherwise incinerated, otherwise scattered by sudden force and pressure, and swept away in those vicious winds. Pain which he would concentrate away from his charges and onto himself, and prolong, and with time and focus permit to burn off and away. But pain which he could not remove from the world.

  Atop the mattress’ meager comfort, he allowed the first trickles of pain to reach him, drip by drip. He concentrated on the boy’s shallow breathing, clinging to its calming rhythm like an anchor against the swelling tide of agony.

  Forcing the pain to sublimate at a controlled minimum, as to be bearable by his mind and body, was an expertise he’d gained over a long career of study, practice and survival. He’d mastered that aspect of his technique to the point that he knew the exact degree of suffering just at the limit of his tolerance, just less than what would kill him. After so many years, as much was even simple for him.

  Those next nights, controlling the dispersal of that which he’d subsumed — rather than allowing it to simply flow into him unabated at its full and lethal strength — was the most difficult battle he ever fought.

  Nine Inch Nails