“A fool could never have made a kingdom.”
“You listen too much to others. I am not a fool.”
“Naw, you really aren’t, are you? Fair’s fair. What are you then?”
He chooses carefully. “Liar. That is what I truly am.” The sigh of a man disappointed in himself eases out of him. “A liar who lied because he did not want to die. Because he did not want to live in the ice without a people. Is that a sin?” He sits in penitence and stirs the coals, searching for something. “I know you laugh at firebones. Others see you fall in mine victory and think you blessed. But we know how lucky you were to live. All my life, I looked in firebones and saw nothing. Nothing but my own spirit growing darker and gods more distant. Not once did they answer me. My father said they were not real. Only the chains of our masters.” He grasps his chest. “But inside this heart, a coal burned. Wanting them to be real. Something to be real. This world is so cold, you know?”
Freihild knows. It’s why she fears to lose Valdir. And I know. I know all too well. He reaches into the fire to take a coal brighter than the rest. The stink of burning skin fills the air.
“I do not know if the gods are real. But something, someone, spoke to me, and the coal long dormant ignited. It was on Mercury. Using the bones of our braves fallen in the Rain, I saw a griffin in the flames. Winged and stained red, red as the eyes of a Helldiver. And the gray smoke that formed above the griffin took the shape of a fox, one old and cunning, but held back by thorns of darkness.” He looks up at me, the reflection of the coal burning in his eyes. “Fear became me. After so long…so long, my gods had spoken. But I feared knowing their origin. Feared my own doubt. And then I saw you on Luna. And I knew. I knew our path. Your path. And my Queen set sail for Mars. It is our destiny to be here. Yours, mine, Sefi’s.”
The fire crackles. In the dark, wind whistles through the ruins.
“You want to know what insanity is?” I pull out a gold ten-credit piece. I wave my hand over it, and it disappears. I pull it from behind his ear and feign awe. “Falling for your own con. You weren’t seeing the gods, you were high, oldboy.”
He takes no offense.
“There is a world to be seen through god’s breath. It is a real world. Vibrations. Energy. Fear. Exultation. But all that is in serotonin, prefrontal cortex, easily manipulated. Xenophon has told my Queen this many times. But my Queen knows something Xenophon does not…” His bones creak as he leans forward. “I took no god’s breath that day.”
He puts the red-hot coal in his mouth. Then he seizes my hand and spits the coal into my palm. I almost drop it. But he holds my hand closed. The coal is cool as snow. I’ve never seen that trick before.
“I know tricks. More tricks than you.” I turn the coal over in my hands. It glows with light. “What I have seen was no trick. Fire and ash will come. And end of worlds. Serpent will strangle wolf. Lion will battle lion. Darkness will battle light. Sister murder brother. Son murder father. Father murder daughter. This is what the fire told me. All I have seen has come true. As others are consumed, Sefi will rise from the ashes to bind the Obsidians, to become one with Red, to found a kingdom watched over by a gray fox. Watched over by you.”
An uncomfortable silence grows between us.
“There’s a lot of Grays in the worlds, oldboy. This one’s just passing through. I get my girl, and I’m gone.”
He shakes his head. “You have your games. I had mine. But a man must someday stand his ground, or he is no man. Soon, when Volga is returned, you will have a choice to abandon us or to stay. I know you will choose to be a man. You are here to watch over Sefi. It is your destiny, and we are your tribe.”
We finish the rest of the grog in silence. Bored of waiting for Freihild, Ozgard retires to our tent and tells me to wake him when she returns. I remain at the campfire as it dwindles, listening to him snore and creatures howl in the shrouded mountains.
Ozgard is a liar. A fraud. A charlatan running on thin ice. We’re too alike to ever trust each other, but also too alike to miss the chance to try. I envy him now. He’s found a cause. Where is mine?
Save Volga, then what?
Abandon my contract? Carve out a life on the run? Could I really stay?
Freihild is taking forever, and the fire is doing little to keep me warm. Remembering I have another coat in the ship, I head back. In the darkness, I lose my way, and wind up along a scree of rubble from a fallen tower. My hand light illuminates a rock carved with griffins.
The Gold orbital strikes from a decade ago melted most of the carvings away. It’s not right. The wings are unique to each griffin. Someone took care to carve this. And then, with a push of a button, a drone of a human wiped it all away.
A faint silver glint in the rocks distracts me from my melancholy. I climb up and shine my light on it, thinking it might be some relic or a starShell fragment. It’s neither. I almost laugh at my dumb fortune. How could Freihild miss this? It stretches in the darkness all the way to the base of a pale tree set against a jagged obelisk.
A few minutes later, I retired to our camp. I stir Ozgard gently from his sleep. He wakes with a snort, clutching a dagger under his furs with his good hand. “You want to see some magic, shaman?”
He grins. “Always.”
* * *
—
We retrace my path through the rubble and climb the pillar. The silver light washes Ozgard’s face of its creases. As he witnesses the field of nightgaze amongst the ruins, his expression becomes that of a child jumping into a public fountain on a hot day. The flowers are like pools of liquid silver. Ozgard’s thick hands stroke the petals with tender care. They curl around his dark fingers. A great laugh escapes him, and he walks in rapture, following the veins of flowers that skin the rubble and leaning towers in mutinous silver light.
He glances back at me. “Thank you for this gift. It will never be forgotten.”
I’m about to reply, when a subprogram in my brain flickers a warning. Something has changed. Ozgard senses the tension and frowns as I walk past him to the shattered obelisk I spotted earlier.
“What is wrong?” he whispers.