Chapter Text
EPILOGUE
They asked, “Do you love her to death?”
I said, “Speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life.”
⚭
Sixteen months and six days after the centre of her universe blew itself apart, Camilla Hect walks out of the underworld with a resurrected body, a piece of her soul forever exchanged with that of another’s, and one hell of a migraine.
She comes to herself in a rush, blinking dazedly at the circle of people that surround her. Everything is luminous, and none of it clear. Indistinct mutters crowd against her ears; faces full of worry, or confusion, or outright curiosity swim in and out of focus. Camilla braces her palms against the gritty, petrol-stained road and pushes to her feet on legs that feel newborn, her heart hammering with the knowledge that there is a second person beside her, doing the exact same thing.
“Cam,” the person rasps.
His voice is hoarse, scratchy with newness, but it’s his.
Camilla ignores the sixteen members of her family, the thirty-two eyes trained unwaveringly in her direction. She ignores the rebels milling about in the background, some of whom are already glancing at weapons with the poorly-veiled desire to aim them. She ignores the various dull pains of her unclothed body, and the butterscotch halo of dawn that’s pouring down the on-ramp of the motorway, and throws herself into Palamedes’ arms.
The force of it knocks him backwards. He staggers as her wrists lock behind his neck — but he doesn’t let her go. His arms close around her, fingers lacing together over the small of her back, and for the first time in a year and a half, he’s murmuring her name into her hair with his own dear mouth and she’s sobbing harder than she ever has in her life, through a smile that stretches the entire width of her face.
“Warden,” she gasps, between the heaving breaths that rack her body, “Warden.”
“I’m here.” A hand rises to stroke circles between her shoulder blades. “Cam, darling, I’m here.”
“You’re— Is it—”
“It’s me. It’s alright, it’s me.” He tightens his hold as she slumps against him in relief; brushes his lips over the centre of her forehead. “My magnificent girl. You’ve been so brave, for so long. I’m here, I’ve got you. Rest now, sweetheart.”
Camilla Hect, cavalier primary and Warden’s Hand, has never — could never — deny her necromancer a single thing he asked of her. At his whispered command, she buries her head in the crook of his neck and lets the world dissolve into black.
When she wakes again, it’s to a quiet room and beams of soft, lemon light, streaming through a ruffle of curtains. Camilla rubs the grit from her eyes, squinting against the brightness. Her body aches all over. Her mouth is as dry as a desert. There’s a weight pressing against her chest.
It’s only when her hands rise tiredly to push it away that she realises the weight is an arm, heavy with sleep, attached to a body that is warm, and whole, and half-covering hers.
She wriggles out from beneath Palamedes’ slumbering form, breath catching in her throat at the perfect, familiar physicality of him. The bed could be any bed they’ve ever slept in; the room, any room. He’s lying in his typical, dreadful way: mostly on his stomach with his nose squashed into the pillow, so that his breath comes in shallow huffs and snuffles. His right leg is hooked over both of hers. His right arm, now that she’s moved, is strewn over her lap, its fingers closed in a gentle fist amongst the folds of bedlinen.
On impulse, she reaches out to smooth back the locks of hair tumbling over his forehead. He looks younger than his years, as he always does in sleep, his eyelashes unfairly long and dark against his cheeks, his lips plump and parted ever so slightly.
He looks exactly as she’d pictured.
It’s impossible to keep the delight from her face. Beaming so brightly that her cheeks sting with it, Camilla traces the tip of her index finger along the ridge of her adept’s brow, down his restored temple and cheekbone. Palamedes shifts at her touch, mumbling into the pillow. His one visible eyelid flutters; cracks open slightly.
“Shhh,” she whispers. “It’s nothing, Warden. Go back to sleep.”
He nuzzles into her hand, hums once in soporific agreement, and falls quiet.
Still smiling, Camilla drags her eyes from the sleeping body beside her, and studies the room she’s awoken to. It isn’t large. Its furnishings are sparse: the bed she and Palamedes are lying in; a squat dresser opposite; an old but comfortable-looking armchair in the corner. There’s a jacket folded neatly over the arm of the chair, and a stack of clothing on its seat; soldiers’ gear, plain and serviceable. Her backpack has been placed at the foot of the dresser — and lying innocuously on its dark, polished top, as if it’s been waiting there the whole time, is their spiral-bound notebook.
Camilla tosses back the covers immediately. Palamedes stirs at the sudden movement, rolling onto his back and flinging an arm up haphazardly over his face. She pauses, feet already halfway to the floor, and the notebook momentarily slips her mind as she studies her necromancer again, free of blankets this time.
Someone has dressed him, at least in part — and her, too. She glances down at the loose, button-up shirt she’s wearing, long enough to skim the tops of her thighs. Unlike the t-shirts sitting on the chair, this isn’t Blood of Eden standard-issue. It’s lavender, for one thing, its cuffs edged with grey satin piping. It’s also familiar, the top of a pyjama set she’s seen any number of times on late-night visits to her sister’s quarters.
Palamedes, naked from the waist up, is wearing the matching bottoms.
Camilla laughs aloud, clapping her hands over her mouth a moment too late. Her adept peeks out from the crook of his elbow, following her gaze to his cotton-clad legs.
“What?”
“They’re Kiki’s.”
For a moment, he simply blinks myopically at the pyjama bottoms. Then he groans and sinks back into the pillows, covering his eyes again, with the flat of his palms this time.
“I think it’s her way of apologising, Warden.”
“I think it’s her way of making me suffer.”
“That too, yeah.”
“Cam?”
“Mm?”
“Never tell anyone about this.”
Camilla snorts. “As if anyone would believe me.”
She climbs to her feet, brushing her fringe from her eyes, then pauses again, horror creeping in to replace the hilarity. Her hair is flat from sleep, but clean. It smells faintly of shampoo. She glances back at Palamedes, and a flush of warmth steals into her cheeks immediately; he’s just as freshly-scrubbed, free of the dust and grit of the tunnels, his hair curling tightly over the nape of his neck.
Someone has obviously bathed them, as well as dressed them, before putting them to bed.
Camilla draws a slow, fortifying breath and makes her way across the room to the armchair, praying with every fibre of her exhausted being that it was his mother, or one of her dads, or even Pyrrha as a worst-case option. Anyone at all but her elder sister.
The dresser drawers are full to a one with towels and washcloths, so she moves the folded clothing to the top of it instead. As she settles into the chair with the notebook, dragging the backpack into her lap, Palamedes clambers to his feet and wanders to her side. His gait is strange: half-his and half-hers, not exactly hesitant but a little too cautious, as if he’s just returned from zero gravity. He perches on the very edge of the armchair, looking down at his legs like he’s not wholly sure how to control them.
Camilla shuffles wordlessly to her left. Her adept slides gratefully down beside her, letting his head come to rest on her shoulder.
“Here,” she says, plucking his spare spectacles out of the backpack and passing them over.
He slips them on immediately. As he gazes around the room he can now see clearly, Camilla paws through the backpack, tugging out the twin rolls of their robes (Palamedes shakes his open immediately, shoving his arms through the sleeves with a sigh of relief) and a couple of pens. Uncapping one, she flips the notebook open to their most recent entry — then frowns, and lifts her head.
“What day is it?”
Palamedes stares at her blankly.
“I have no idea.”
A beat passes. With perfect synchronicity, Camilla and Palamedes dissolve into peals of laughter.
It takes them a quarter of an hour or more to wind down, fits of hysterical giggles seizing them anew each time they try to meet one another’s gaze. Eventually, Palamedes inhales the way Wellbeing taught in their mindfulness modules: deeply, through his nose, to the bottom of his lungs. He holds the breath for a long moment, before blowing it out again in a slow, sobering whoosh. Cupping both hands along the line of Camilla’s jaw, he leans forward and gently rests his forehead against hers.
“I missed you.”
“Me— Hey.”
She draws back, deftly plucking his glasses off so that she can gaze into his eyes without interference.
They’re his eyes, without question: the soft smoke colour she’s always loved, as clear and calm as still water. But not wholly, not any longer. At the inner edge of his iris, ringing his pupil, is a feathered halo of stone brown.
“Cam?”
“Your eyes. They’re—”
She bounces to her feet, drags him up by one arm to the oval mirror above the dresser. He leans forward and, with his nose half a handspan from the mirror’s surface, breaks into a grin of pure delight.
“Cam! Oh, that’s…”
He spins to face her, and his smile widens even further.
“You too. Look.”
Camilla turns; faces the mirror, studies the pair of eyes that peer back from it. Their irises are the colour of winter soil, just as dark as they were for the first twenty years of her life.
Except for their outermost edges, which now fade from slate brown to a perfect, pellucid grey.
“Oh.”
She reaches out with one hand, presses the tip of her finger to the mirror’s silvered surface.
“We really did it.”
Palamedes’ arms snake over her shoulders, enfolding her in a tight hug. His eyes flit to the mirror, catching her own in its reflection.
“You did it. My beautiful, blessed cavalier. Camilla, darling, I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”
Camilla slowly raises one eyebrow.
“If I recall correctly—”
“Oh, now, don’t do that. Excessive recollection is terrible for one’s humours.”
“So’s my knee.”
Palamedes unwraps his arms and turns her, bodily, to face him. A playful smirk dances across his face.
“You wouldn’t,” he says softly. “Not when you went to such lengths to bring me back in one piece.”
Camilla slips her arms around his waist and, with a smirk of her own, leans in to murmur her reply against the shell of his ear.
“Wouldn’t I?”
“Hmm.” His lips bow in thought. He bumps his nose gently against hers. “What if I—”
The door swings open. The Master Archivist of the Sixth House sweeps inside.
“Children,” Juno breathes, the way Palamedes does whenever he has a breakthrough. In an extremely uncharacteristic display of emotion, she strides across the room and wraps her arms around them both. “You live!”
“Morning, Archivist,” Camilla laughs, permitting herself to be squeezed for a few seconds before she wriggles out of Juno’s embrace.
“Afternoon, actually.” The Archivist steps back and turns to her son, appraising him in a single, piercing glance. “How’s the new corpus?”
“Indistinguishable from the previous, as far as I can tell, Cam’s a marvel. How are your new eyes, while we’re on the subject?”
“Same eyes, in fact! We were fortunate enough to locate a flesh adept sheltering in the Barracks. Cataracts reversed, and everyone much the merrier for it.”
“I can imagine,” Palamedes smiles. “How long were we sleeping?”
“In total, or since the pyrotechnics ended?”
“Excuse me?”
“Worry about that one later, then. Eleven hours, give or take. How long have you been up?”
“Twenty minutes?”
“Eleven hours and—” she glances down to her right wrist, where a complex clockwork is strapped, “thirty-three minutes.”
“Well, I don’t know about Cam, but I could do with eleven more. Possibly even twice that.”
He tilts his right ear towards his shoulder until the joints in his neck pop audibly, then repeats it on the other side. Juno winces at the display, but Camilla simply lifts an eyebrow appreciatively at the ferocity of his stretch.
“Since when do you crack your joints?”
“Picked it up in my travels.”
“Gross.”
He returns her grin with a blinding of his own; reaches up to chuck her under the chin quickly before turning back to his mother.
“Where are we, Archivist?”
“A safe house. ‘Safe’ meaning distant, from what I can gather — we’re so far from that God-verdammt city that I can see the stars your Commander kept speaking about.”
Camilla twitches aside the ruffles of curtain to reveal the planet’s egg-yolk sun, sinking towards the horizon. “When did the sky change? And where’s Number Seven?”
“Four nights ago. We think the Beast is orbiting a neighbouring asteroid — not the one we’re parked on, thankfully, although I’d like to see it have any effect through steel that thick. If Dominicus couldn’t do it… Anyway, no one’s been able to pinpoint its exact location. It doesn’t register at all on the Commander’s systems, and as you can imagine, they’re not especially keen on tracking it physically. I doubt they they’d even have a craft quick enough. Our tech would be hard-pressed to keep up with it.”
Palamedes, who has been blindly groping along the top of the dresser for the past several seconds, gives a strangled squawk and hastily shoves his spectacles back on, clearly preparing for the oncoming war over his clandestine knowledge of the Library’s lowest level. Juno doesn’t mention the Installation, however; she plows right on with an absent wave of her hand.
“Your Nona seems to be able to sense it, after a fashion. She’s been sketching out maps of the stars it’s passing, which have given us its approximate speed and trajectory. Not ideal, but better than nothing, I think you’d agree! It’s not near, in any case — which I believe is what you were hoping to ascertain, Warden.”
“Finally, some good fucking news.”
She favours him with a wry expression. “I wouldn’t get used to it. You know well enough by now that the moment you solve one problem, three more put their hands up.”
“Are you talking about here, or Collections’ administrative department?”
“Archivist, is Nona okay?” Camilla asks hurriedly, before Juno can launch into one of her impassioned tirades about Sixth House bureaucracy, specifically as it relates to her research. The Master Archivist reaches up and gently squeezes her shoulder, in the same calming manner her son so often has.
“She’s fine, Camilla. I’m not sure that I’d go so far as to say she’s well, but she’s surprisingly resilient. And quite attached to you, as it turns out. She’s asked about fourteen times since breakfast if she can visit you yet. Only stopped because a canine wandered past — which she just about hurled herself through a window to get at.”
“That’s Nona,” Palamedes chuckles. “Number one fan of dogs the world over.”
“She’s… singular. To put it mildly.”
“You know what she is, then?”
“Someone who cares for you both a great deal.” Juno’s eyes narrow contemplatively. “Pyrrha Dve has given us some insight.”
“Does Nona know what she is?”
“I believe so. She’s quite reticent to speak of it, which one can hardly fault, and she becomes hysterical if anyone else tries to. But she did say you’ll need her when you’re back, to put everything right.”
“I better go talk to her,” Camilla mutters, leaning down to retrieve the pen and notebook from the seat of the armchair.
Juno’s face brightens immediately.
“Ah, good, they did bring it up for you! I lost track of who was looking after what in the rush to get everyone into the transports and out here. I’ve another, if you’d like it. You must be running out of space in that one by now. And in any case, you don’t seem to have used it entirely for expressions of affection.”
Camilla’s stomach drops like an iron weight. Palamedes makes a sound like he’s swallowing his own tongue.
With her hand clenched around the pen hard enough to break it, she glances across to her adept, molars grating violently as her jaw clenches and unclenches by turns.
Glad we wrote in shorthand.
She can probably read the fucking shorthand, Cam!
“Oh, take those looks off your faces,” Juno continues, her voice entirely too cheerful. “I’m kidding! Mostly. I did employ gloves the moment I realised what it was. And I can’t pretend I’m not pleased. I must confess, I sometimes wondered if I’d done the right thing, giving you all those books. You were the absolute despair of your second circle Masters,” — this she delivers directly to Palamedes, with an expression of outright joy — “they were forever bemoaning the notes you wrote one another in class. But I think even they’d agree that it’s all ended rather sweetly.”
Palamedes, his cheeks flaming, shoves his glasses as high as they’ll go, and says briskly, “Mother, did you come here purely to torment me about my correspondence?”
“Not in the slightest. I came to see if you’d woken yet — they’re about to serve the night meal. Are you hungry?”
“Famished,” he replies at once, and when Camilla raises her eyebrows in question, adds defensively, “What? I haven’t eaten properly in eighteen months.”
“Wait here, I’ll bring something up. It’s still chaos out there, and half the Oversight Body will be peppering you with questions the moment you set foot out the door.”
“What about the other half?”
“They’ll wait til they’ve finished dinner.”
“Archivist, where did you find this?”
A look of quiet wonder settles over Juno’s face as she glances at the notebook Camilla’s holding out — and for the briefest of moments, Camilla is granted a vision of her adept, decades from now, when his smile lines have deepened and his hair is streaked with pewter.
“It was the strangest thing. It was just after you fainted—”
“She didn’t faint,” Palamedes interjects, in wounded tones, “I told her to sleep.”
“—and right before this one did—”
“We’d been awake for five days!”
“Your sister went haring off for medical supplies, and when she came back, it was just… sitting there. Beside what, I gather, was once your jacket.”
“Tern’s jacket.”
“Well, it’s ash now. I’m dying to know how this came out unscathed. There was nothing special about that book whatsoever when I gave it to you.”
Palamedes lifts the notebook from Camilla’s hands, running his thumb lightly over its spiral binding.
“One last gift from the River.”
“Speaking of which! I want to hear everything the first moment you’re able. Sod a written report — oh, I know they’ll want one from you, they’re already talking about it — but I expect to have it from the Master’s mouth.”
“Naturally,” he agrees, with affable smugness, passing the notebook back to Camilla. “Perks of parenthood.”
Juno laughs, and reaches out to pat his cheek in a quick approximation of motherly affection.
“There are some members of this House who would argue themselves blue that their Master Warden is just like his father. But here we have proof! His mother’s son through and through.”
“Indeed. And may said son remind his mother of her promise to bring him nourishment? Before he passes dead away from starvation?”
“Oh, pish. If you didn’t expire during your ninth circle, you’re hardly likely to perish after a day’s hard sleeping.”
“If you really want—”
“Alright, Warden, I’m leaving! I shall return summarily.”
She disappears as quickly as she came, in a swirl of robes and braid, the door swinging shut with a quiet click behind her. Camilla stares at its blank wooden surface for a moment, then sits heavily on the end of the bed. Thin rays of sunlight fall across her lap, streaking her knees copper.
“Do you really think this was a gift from the River?” she asks, turning the notebook over in her hands as Palamedes settles beside her.
“I can’t see why not. The River gave it to us while we were there. Why shouldn’t it return it once we left?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t think we can ever know for sure, Cam. Like so much of the River. Now, put that away,” he slides the book from her hands, dropping it on the far side of the bed, out of her reach, “and kiss me.”
She arches an eyebrow.
“Is that an official directive from the Warden?”
“Camilla.”
Camilla smiles, a soft and wicked thing that no one but Palamedes will ever bear witness to. Then she leans forward and kisses him.
As his mouth opens against hers, a thought strays through her mind: that this is technically his first kiss, and in a way, hers also. The first where they are something other than necromancer and cavalier, Warden and Warden’s Hand; the first that’s truly free of the longing, heartbreak, and responsibility they’ve each carried for the past fourteen years. It’s sweet, and pure, and easy. Palamedes’ hands tangle in her hair, and Camilla’s fingers dig into the bones of his hips, and she kisses him until she forgets that there’s anyone or anything left in the world but the two of them.
When she finally stops for breath, Palamedes flops backwards onto the mattress, pulling her down alongside him.
“Oof,” he splutters, as the point of her elbow jabs him in the ribs. He scrubs a hand over his face, groaning against his palm. “God, I’m tired. I wasn’t kidding when I said I could sleep for another day.”
“I could probably sleep for another year,” she admits, fighting back a yawn at the mere mention of it.
“Then sleep.”
“Can’t. We’ve got work to do. Or did you forget the part where we agreed to kill God?”
“We have all the time in the world for that.”
“We should get dressed.”
“In a minute,” he replies, already wrapping his familiar, newborn limbs around her.
Camilla hesitates for only a moment — then she settles her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes, drifting into the twin beat of their hearts as the setting sun gently paints its beams across their bodies.
⚭
She’s sliding the last of their notes from Canaan House into the backpack when Palamedes pokes his head around the bedroom door, a decidedly sheepish expression on his face. He glances quickly around the room and — with a sigh of obvious relief — slips inside, depositing himself onto the end of the bed in an unholy tangle of limbs.
“Where’s Kiana?”
“With Baba, at the transports. They left about twenty minutes ago. Did you finish the calculations?”
He nods, extracting the notebook that’s wedged under his arm and proffering it to her apologetically.
“Looks like we’ll be taking my mother up on her offer — I just filled the last of this. Those quadratics were obscene, Cam. I understand now how Oversight managed to spend six full weeks on them.”
“But they’re right?”
“They’re right. One quick plunge and straight on to the Ninth, then Nona can work her magic.”
“How is she?”
“Surprisingly strong, If I’m honest. Master Sjette’s wards are stunning. I’d love to work through the theory with her once all this settles, she’s got more talent than the entire Parapneumatics department combined. Did you know she spent two years in sponsored research on the Fifth when she was younger?”
Camilla shakes her head. Setting the notebook carefully atop the dresser, she folds herself into a cross-legged position beside her adept. He curls one hand fondly over her knee.
“That’s how she and Reuben met. He apparently vowed he’d marry her and move to the Library after their very first date.”
“He must be missing her,” Camilla replies softly, picturing her leonine predecessor, currently millions of kilometres away in the hulking shuttle-station of the Sixth House.
To her surprise, Palamedes grins.
“That’s exactly what I said. Hannah went to great lengths to assure me that he absolutely wouldn’t be, and that they’ve never had a more peaceful marriage since Reuben started cataloguing Master Zes’ new apple hybrids for fourteen hours a day.”
“Fourteen?”
“He is — direct quote — in his lane, unbothered, moisturised, flourishing.”
“Huh. Maybe you should take up botany. Got to be safer than your hobbies to date.”
“And deny you the chance to keep yanking me out of harm’s way at the last moment? Never. You’d be bored witless within a week.”
“I’d sleep well at night.”
“You sleep well already.” Palamedes slips his hand from beneath hers and curls his arm around her shoulders instead, pulling her in snug against his side. “Anyway, you’re the one of us with the green thumbs. Why don’t you become a botanist, and I’ll sit in the corner and watch from a jointly-acknowledged safe distance?”
“Done.”
She tips her head sideways, knocking her temple gently against his in agreement. He laughs, low and warm.
“Are you ready?”
“Almost. I just need to repack that.”
She gestures to the armchair in the corner, where the backpack rests, its zip wide open in expectation. Scattered around it is a small mountain of items — most of them handed to her by friends and family members over the past couple of days. Palamedes blinks owlishly.
“Did we bring all that?”
“No. Oversight collectively decided that, after sixteen months as an incorporeal spirit, you probably needed to indulge your sweet tooth.”
“Ooh.”
“Later, Warden.”
“Spoilsport. Alright, you finish up here. I’ll get the stragglers moving in the meantime.”
Dropping a quick kiss to the crown of her head, he pushes to his feet, surreptitiously plucking a small package from the pile on the armchair as he passes it.
“Back soon, dear one.”
“I saw that,” Camilla calls drily, grinning to the empty room as his answering laughter bounces down the hallway and fades into the distance. Then she climbs to her feet, returning her attention to the bag that will, once again, safeguard their worldly possessions.
She starts with her clothing, such as it is. Palamedes has insisted on wearing his robes in spite of the ever-present heat, so there’s only her own to deal with, along with her woollen cardigan, which even he’s been forced to concede is too warm for the weather. Rolling both tightly, Camilla slides them in the bag, tucking the now-full notebook behind them, against the pile of Canaan House flimsy. Palamedes’ cologne (which he’s once again wearing, and which she will swear on the River itself has never smelled so wonderful) slots in between the two rolls of fabric, safe from jostling. The tea goes in next: two matched tins, which her sister had pressed into her hands the first afternoon they’d woken.
“Figured you’d have run out by now,” she’d said with a flashing grin, as she’d handed Camilla the tin of soothing water-mint from Koniortos. Camilla had been about to hug her in thanks when Kiana, looking vaguely in the direction of her boots, had passed over a second tin — this one the sweetly floral tea that Palamedes always drank — and added gruffly, “Him too, I guess.”
It hadn’t stopped there. Her fathers had greeted her at breakfast the next morning, both wearing equally embarrassed smiles as they passed her two boxes of the dark, salted truffles she bought Palamedes for every name day, birthday, and special occasion she could justify.
“I thought I was meant to fetch them,” her baba began, his eyes twinkling in amusement as they flickered to her dad, “and he…”
“We thought he might as well have them both,” her dad finished. “Since he’s been away so long.”
Hannah Sjette had been next, depositing a bag of colourfully-wrapped sweets with her usual rosy smile, followed by Kester Cinque, who’d spent almost half an hour trying to pry hints about the River from her, before finally giving up with a shrug and a good-natured, “All right, keep your secrets!” He’d only made it two strides from the table when he suddenly slapped his thigh, turned back, and pulled a fat packet of caramels from the pocket of his robes.
“Almost forgot! For the Warden. I remember he quite enjoyed them last time — and he really is terribly thin, isn’t he?”
And on it went, until she’d accrued at least a dozen boxes, tins, and bags of sweets, from just about every member of the Sixth House Oversight Body.
Camilla surveys the sugary pile on the seat for a moment, then scoops it up between her hands and deposits the entire lot into the top of the knapsack, drawing the leather ties together as quickly as she can.
Only three items now remain: her own gifts, each one more precious than any epicurean candy.
She lifts the largest of them, holding it at arm’s length as she studies it once more. The paper is creased all over from being folded and stuffed into Nona’s pocket, but the drawing on it is still clearly visible, and oddly touching, in a way Camilla can’t properly define.
“Will you keep it, Cam?” Nona had asked in a rush, thrusting the page at her like it was a hot coal. “To remember me?”
Camilla had looked at the girl, skinny and desperate, her eyes twin suns in her dusky face.
“Sure, I will.”
The picture, refolded, slips it into one of the narrow pockets on the side of the backpack, where the plasters and salves normally live. The knife from Cell Commander We Suffer — “Better in your pockets than mine, I think, Camilla Hect.” — slots neatly into the other. As Camilla fastens the buckle over the knife’s hilt, her eyes slide to the final item left on the seat: a slim journal, bound in dove-grey leather.
Carefully, reverently, she lifts the book she has never yet used. Strokes its butter-soft cover. Opens it to the brief dedication that hides within.
For when you can’t sleep
x
She brushes the tip of her finger gently over the x. It’s just one of countless kisses Palamedes has inscribed to her over the years, a drop in his epistolary ocean, but it summons a memory with all the strength and immediacy of a tidal wave. Slowly, Camilla sits on the end of the bed, the journal still open in her hands, and lets her mind return to a night of seven years earlier. To two lanky teenagers, squashed together in a reclining chair; to a boy who cooled and calmed her, until she fell asleep with his hands splayed over her bare skin and his breath whispering past the shell of her ear.
A shadow appears in the doorway.
Camilla looks up, already certain of who she’ll see: the same dear boy, his hair a little wilder, his jaw a little squarer.
Palamedes strides through the doorway. His eyes crinkle at the corners as they find hers. His face lights up the same way it did that stifling, long-ago night, when she’d wandered into their living room, as restless as the solar storm that had been raging outside.
“Is that…”
He flops down beside her, leaning in to examine what she’s holding more closely. A beatific smile spreads across his face as he reads the dedication.
“Yeah,” Camilla says, unnecessarily, and digs into her pocket for a pen.
Unlike their repurposed school workbooks, the journal has a proper opening leaf, with a neatly-stamped heading — THIS BOOK BELONGS TO — and three dotted lines beneath it. Camilla sets her pen against the first line, inscribing her name in neat, looping cursive before holding both journal and pen out to Palamedes.
“Your turn.”
“Cam, I bought this for you.”
“And I want to share it. Go on.”
His brow crinkles in thought for a moment — then his face clears abruptly. Hunching forward, he quickly scribbles something, and passes it back to her with a small, pleased grin.
THIS BOOK BELONGS TO:
Camilla Hect
Palamedes Sextus
together for the rest of this life, and everything beyond it
Palamedes pushes to his feet, but Camilla remains exactly where she is. She looks down at the names on the page. She presses her fingers to the last three words; feels the enormity of them, stretching out into their future.
In a minute, she will stand. She’ll tuck the journal into one of her customary pockets, and they’ll walk out the door, to begin the journey that will take them back into the River and out the other side, to the Tomb that was once locked and the rock which must now be rolled away. But for the moment, they’re here. The world is still. The boy who stands before her is not the Master Warden. Not one of the First. He’s simply Palamedes.
And he’s hers.
Slowly, she lifts her head, looks up at her adept. He’s leaning casually against the dresser, his eyes fixed on her, his adoration as plain as the nose on his face. She stretches out her left hand.
Palamedes steps forward and takes it, lacing his fingers through hers.
“How many days have we been back now? Two?”
“Three.”
With her free hand, Camilla turns to the first blank page of their newest notebook, and writes.
(2)1.1.3
⚭
There was a story that circulated in the long centuries that followed the death of God — or rather, several stories, which wandered in and out of one another like the branches of a river.
Some said that a brilliant light filled the heavens when the Emperor died, blue and green and deep bruise-purple; that it lit the Empire from beginning to end, and in its wake came the four great harbingers, who tore God’s faithful from their shelters and devoured them in a single swallow. Some said there was no light at all, not even that of a single star, and that a winter which lasted a generation descended upon the Houses Nine.
Some claimed there was both a dreadful light and a fearful darkness, and at the place where they met, a great winged creature rose up, with skin of brass and eyes of flame. And beneath the winged creature stood a fearsome sword-bearer, whose blade was like unto lightning; whose flowing cloak was as the night sky.
One tale said that God, having gazed once more upon the face of his enemy, threw himself into the River of Death, there to await what its shores might bring.
All the stories agreed on one fact, however: that in the second year of the Emperor’s second myriad, two new Saints arose from beyond the River and defied the King Undying. They were Saints who wielded flame and sword; Saints whose wisdom was proclaimed loud from one side of the System to the other, that the myriad of slaughter was now ended, and a new age would begin — an age of reconciliation, of prosperity and understanding, where kin would rediscover kin, and the powers of death and life would be woven together in harmony.
The historians who came later called them the Saints of Love and Honour.
And these Saints spoke true. Under their auspices, a new sun rose over the Houses that were and would be: a sun which burned with radiant warmth, whose rays stroked the backs of stray dogs and the heads of stray children; whose light painted the oceans green and teal and aqua, warming the water, feeding the tiniest of the tinies and the largest of the large.
The sun, at the centre of the new world, shone butterscotch gold and watched its children with a fondness.
No story can tell everything, and some tales are fated to be lost to the years. But one book, stored in the deepest archives of the Fourth Great Library, preserves an account of the earliest years of the new, free world. It is a curious story, told in parts, by several hands. It does not document the Destruction, nor the arduous years of the Restoration. It does not speak of glorious battles, or fearful struggles. It tells simply of two people: of their quiet days, and their small moments alone together; of the life they forged in the glow of a sun that seemed to shine for them in particular.
This book, alone of all books, records the initials of the Saints who saved the world: P.S. and C.H.
⚭
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
and death, i think, is no parenthesis