* * *

  Bullets raked their lethal trails not feet above the crater’s lip. But each volley was silent to Tanhkmet, immaterial.

  The force of Iumatar’s whisper drove him back, and he fell onto his heels all but thoughtless, save for one, as war all around him raged.

  That the imperial house might yet endure.

  Ever since the catastrophe, Tanhkmet had taken the utmost care to guard against hope. He’d constructed fortifications, barricades and redoubts in his mind against it, then safeguarded his psyche behind those walls.

  He wouldn’t have survived the burn of another false promise, as had so withered him before. It would’ve broken him, finally and completely.

  So in those last, dark weeks, he’d refused to entertain even the slightest intimation of hope, in whatever rare ways it had presented itself. That sobriety might’ve even served him well, in that time.

  That even one true heir of Setet yet endured. And commanded for their resistance.

  But whatever master of fortification he might’ve been — in truth, Tanhkmet was a hopeful man.

  It couldn’t be helped. Wishing for the success and happiness of those around him was an inclination innate to his temperament. And he’d managed to abstain, but not without cost.

  And so just as well, in those last, dark weeks — all while he’d sworn to never again entertain such thoughts — that repressed desire to hope had instead amassed within him, like dry leaf-tinder piling in layers atop the forest floor.

  He wondered if that hidden hope had swayed him, despite how deep down inside he’d kept it sequestered.

  Perhaps it led me astray.

  He looked down at the sergeant beside his mud-caked greaves, whose determined consternation remained on her pink-scarred face even in unconsciousness.

  But perhaps not, he thought.

  The sergeant, of whom Virgil had been so fond.

  Virgil, whose wisdom he’d never once been wrong to trust.

  Tanhkmet was standing, then. He hadn’t even noticed himself rise. It hadn’t even been hard.

  The sergeant's words echoed back to him. As he stood, and faced down the coming enemy, still he heard those words in perfect clarity, and realized at last whether he believed them. What in truth he’d understood from the moment she’d spoken, after lighting up the whole of the battlefield as she fell from heaven, a miracle before his very eyes.

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  Aurelia lives.

  And as he knew the truth of those words —

  His vis — the extinguished flame of will, purpose, and hope, against which he’d so long guarded,

  Like the dry forest floor, touched by some spark of wild lightning —

  In one great sudden surge,

  Caught fire, once more.

  * * *

  Billowing licks of flame leapt from the thick maroon band burning Tanhkmet’s crown as he trudged back from the front. Behind him, the enemy’s assault drew back, repelled one last time — leaving in no-man’s land dozens of white-coated bodies perforated by their own reflected rifle-fire.

  The air sang as shot and shrapnel sought him, but did not reach him. Every ally sensed him near, and heard the humming of his barrier halting incoming projectiles, and felt all the more steadfast in their meager positions. Legs and torsos ceased buckling, and boots planted heavier on the ground. Even the earth’s shaking after volleys of cannon fire stilled beneath his feet, as he tread the cratered field.

  The flame of one other presence had never vanished to Tanhkmet wholesale, even when their line had veered closest to collapse. He found it then, when a swelling caprice of storm winds thinned the haze of gunsmoke: Junius’ glowing silhouette, lit against the night by his navy crown. His most faithful lieutenant, still fighting to preserve some meager light in that small corner of the battlefield, between the fire of his vis and the muzzle flare of his rifle.

  “Captain! Did you feel… whatever that was?”

  Tanhkmet didn’t spare the words. He simply hefted the unconscious body slung across his shoulders.

  Volley fire met his barrier, and ricocheted off nearby stone on either side of its outer limits. Neither of them so much as flinched.

  “Gods— Gods above! Is that… fucking… Iumatar? The sergeant!?”

  But Tanhkmet knew they didn’t have time. In a matter of minutes, the behemoth above would encompass the civilian evacuation into the arc of its battery.

  “She’s alive,” he said. “The princess. Just as that white-coat said.”

  Junius' shock lasted no more than a heartbeat. He stumbled through a dozen rapid considerations.

  “Well… but— what can we even do? Most of us are on the last of our ammunition—”

  But Tanhkmet only laid a hand on his shoulder.

  And so without another word, Junius understood his duty.

  Rearguard action.

  The lieutenant-commander’s expression cleared, as all distress and fraught confusion at their hopeless circumstances was replaced with simple, single-minded determination, and resolve. Grasping the hand that rested on his shoulder, Junius even somehow managed a smile.

  Tanhkmet fought a sudden surge of emotion, as he started to pull away. Strength, passion, and sorrow if but least of all.

  “As soon as you see the transports underway, you’re to throw down your weapons,” he ordered. “Do you hear me? Live, if you can, today.”

  Junius held his gaze, then at last raised a soft salute in farewell.

  “Speed of the gods go with you, Captain,” he replied, as the navy darkness of his fire pulsed with new and surging strength. “See you on the other side.”