The sybil child rested on Virgil’s chest, perhaps asleep, on the cot where Tanhkmet found them in the dank infirmary.

  Both seemed to be regaining their health, and for that at least Tanhkmet was grateful. Just the sight of Virgil sitting up under his own strength filled him with joy. It would’ve been enough to make him forget his troubles, were his troubles not so far beyond the ordinary sort.

  He took a seat beside the cot, and shared Virgil’s weak smile. As he reached to pet Caesos, the boy flinched, but then relaxed, curling further into Virgil’s arms.

  Tanhkmet looked away then. He never knew the right way to start, when he needed help.

  “What is it?” asked Virgil.

  “I… don’t know. Everything. It’s actually out of my hands now, for the most part, I suppose.”

  Virgil watched him, and waited. Tanhkmet sighed.

  “That junior officer, of yours… the one you’re so fond of—“

  “The one who saved my life,” said Virgil.

  “Yes. Of course,” said Tanhkmet, already ashamed. “What… makes you think so highly of her?”

  “Besides…?” Virgil smirked.

  “Of course. What about her is…?”

  “Hmm.” Virgil drew back, stroking the silver wisps of his beard. “She’s got a real good eye for the field. I’d go as far as to say she’s gifted at those kinds of assessments, really… the only problem is actually prodding those insights out, if there’s too many others around. I think she could make a good leader, if she could just find her voice.”

  Tanhkmet raised an eyebrow. She’d certainly found her voice, alright.

  Virgil reached for his hand, then.

  “I heard about what happened, you know,” he murmured.

  “Gods,” Tanhkmet breathed. “I should’ve come down harder against dissent the first time, in the first meeting. It's just that, the points they’re caught up on… I can’t not empathize with wanting to fight. But that let it all get out of hand… then before I knew it, I couldn’t do anything but retreat, out there, once she got a hold of the crowd. I almost had a mutiny.”

  “Has she left yet?”

  “No. It's dark now, but they’re still outside, repairing the airship. ” He shrugged. “I suppose… I suppose I could still go back out there and order her to stand down. It's not like I ever gave her permission to go. Junius and I just left… it was all we could do.”

  “...But you don’t want to have her stand down, do you?” Virgil said.

  Tanhkmet stared at the ground.

  “How could I?” he whispered.

  Virgil squeezed his hand.

  “I mean, of course I want to go back out and stop her. Be realistic, Turn. That soldier she’s with? Even if she disavows herself, even if she kills herself to avoid capture — that man could say anything he wants to his people. Hundreds of thousands more could die on his whim, once they’re gone.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “That doesn’t really seem in the enemy’s best interests, assuming the rest of us are giving up arms,” said Virgil.

  “That’s what she was saying, of course. But we don’t know that for certain. These people killed an entire city before even revealing their existence to us. They have a completely alien way of thinking… they might as well not be human. Who knows what they would consider a provocation, and what they might do in response? And there’s just no way, no way at all he won’t betray her, as soon as they’re out of sight… all that matters is what he’ll say to his superiors, and what that’ll mean.”

  “‘They might as well not be human?’ Do you really believe that?” asked Virgil.

  Tanhkmet didn’t know what he believed, himself.

  “I heard the prisoner got your attention for a few minutes out there,” Virgil went on. “You were listening to him for at least a little while. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I’m listening to anyone who wants to tell me what I want to hear, nowadays. Even when that turns things so unmanageable… I’ve gone weak, Turn.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second,” said Virgil. “Don’t talk like that.”

  His smile was gone by then, his grey brow knit together. Caesos whimpered in his sleep, and Virgil cradled him tighter in his arms as he seemed to think for a long moment.

  “So you’re saying these people… are like phraints. Too alien for any of us to understand,” said Virgil.

  “Well… I don’t know. People from across the ocean — I mean, never before, in all history—“

  “You spoke with him,” Virgil said gently. “You heard him out, at least for a little while. You even… you didn’t grill him as hard as you could’ve, at first. Maybe because you were trying to save him some undue distress. So, how alien… how inhuman could he have possibly seemed to you, then?”

  * * *

  Tanhkmet watched as the small airship pulled away from its moorings, then began limping upward into the sky.

  “Who the fuck does she think she is…” Junius muttered. He spat on the ground.

  Tanhkmet said nothing. What was done, was done.

  A sudden wind flit over the outcropping. It tasted of more than just the usual sulfurous dust of that place.

  “I asked around about her,” said Junius, as they watched the airship grow smaller. “Apparently she had a record at the academy. Tore two fingers off an upper-house cadet the day they received their sabers. That’s why she’s a sergeant instead of a second lieutenant. I mean, gods above. How does someone like that even graduate?”

  Tanhkmet looked at Junius, then. It seemed to put his lieutenant ill at ease, even as he said nothing to him.

  “I remember, very vaguely, teaching her a few times during guest lectures,” Tanhkmet said eventually. “She was always conspicuously quiet, as far as I remember.”

  “Oh — huh? Is that so? I suppose… you can’t always tell… I suppose.”

  Tanhkmet sighed. He had great respect for Junius’ many strengths, but nuance wasn’t one of them.

  Before long the airship was just a speck, then swallowed whole by the deepening night as twilight’s last rays faded.

  “Well... I assume we should start getting everyone ready to depart,” said Junius.

  Tanhkmet considered the shifting sky for a few moments longer.

  “Have them get ready to depart… yes. Take point with the civilians first, then Lycera will mobilize the soldiers.”

  “And then—“

  “And then nothing,” Tanhkmet said to his lieutenant, with sudden firmness of purpose.

  “Sir?”

  “Once Lycera finishes disposing of the sensitive documents, she’ll follow your lead. Have the troops be ready for an overland march by tomorrow morning. We can’t leave the civilians alone here, so we’ll have to wait until they’ve started the trip west.”

  “West?”

  “We’ll go east, civilians will go west. They aren’t the ones surrendering. The transports I called to ferry them should arrive before the night is over. But they’ll have to wait to depart until tomorrow at the earliest, because the pleasure yachts the westerners could spare will all be over-capacity. They’d struggle through the wind and rain at best, and break down or crash at worst. In fact, reinforce the outworks, before you start mobilizing anyone. Have those who aren’t guarding the new prisoners pile sandbags—“

  “What do you mean, wind and rain? Sandbags? There isn’t a cloud in the sky.”

  Tanhkmet rolled his shoulder joints, feeling their rare aches.

  “Its clear now,” he said. “But a storm’s coming.”