AS EVENING FELL WE gathered in the Trifecta, between the Legion and Engineering and the now-closed Iudex tower. They had built a bonfire there, a four-beamed structure with an ornate woven roof. In the center lay stacks of blackwood, soaked in oil, and atop the stacks rested four wooden figures, anointed in black, purple, red, and blue—a symbolic pyre, for each of the Iyalets that had lost officers.

As the sun set the holy men of the imperial cults lit their thuribles and bathed the pyre in holy smokes and sang of the Khanum, of the march to the sea, of the building of the walls, and of the Empire that awaited us on the other side of this life. When they finished a Legionnaire stepped forward, limping on a crutch, and lit a torch and placed it at the bottom of the pyre, and as the fires blossomed I stood among the weeping crowd and said my thanks to the officers who had fallen during these dark days—both those who had perished in the savagery at the walls, and those felled by the twitch, in this city we deemed civilized.

The crowd departed, yet I remained, my thoughts black and cloudy from all the suffering I’d witnessed, memories I’d never scrub from my soul. Then I saw I did not stand alone: the hulking figure of Captain Miljin stood at the edge of the pyre, staring into the flickering flames.

I approached until I stood beside him. The heat here was so great I felt the hairs upon my face curling. There was a distant, solemn look on the captain’s face, and for a long while he did not notice me. Then he did a double take and stared, as if surprised to find me here, a glint of madness in his eyes.

“Oh,” he said. “Kol.”

“Evening, sir,” I said. I bowed.

He did not answer but resumed staring at the fire. A long silence passed.

“How are you doing, sir?” I asked. An absurd question to ask, but it was all I could think to say.

“Tell me…” he said.

“Yes, sir?”

“Were you there, in the room, when she unmasked Uhad?”

I hesitated, then nodded. I did not tell him that it was I who’d laid bonds on the immunis and escorted him to the cells.

Miljin stared into the fire for a moment longer. “And…did you ever suspect?” he asked. His voice was terribly hoarse. “Did you ever know it was he who wove such evil about all our ears, all this time?”

“I didn’t, sir. I had no idea. I don’t think Ana truly knew until after Nusis was killed.”

“Killed on my watch,” he said. “In my city.”

Another long moment passed. Ashes danced around us like pollen on a spring breeze.

“None of us knew,” I said. “You couldn’t have known, si—”

“Don’t,” he said sharply. “Don’t bother.”

I looked away, still bathed in the heat of the pyre, and held my tongue.

“But…I was right about one thing,” he said. “The Empire has less need of brawn these days, and noble battlers, and more need of plotters and schemers. Like your Ana. And you, perhaps.”

I did not know what to say to such a thing. I held my tongue.

“You’re leaving soon—yes, Kol?” he said.

“Yes, sir. In a few days, I think.”

He nodded. “Then will you do an old man a favor?”

“If I can, sir.”

With a grunt, Miljin unbuckled his scabbard and gazed at it for a moment. Then he held it out to me. “Will you take this with you when you go?” he asked.

I stared at the scabbard, the mechanical hilt glinting in the dying light of the pyres.

“I’m not staying in the Iudex, Kol,” said Miljin. “Not my place anymore. I’ll return to the Legion, to what I know best. Walls and titans and bombards and the sea.”

“Sir, I—”

“But it’s as I told you—swords have little use against a leviathan. They’re better applied against them’s who make it difficult to fight leviathans. And this one will do more for the Empire to go with you, to wherever your path takes you, Kol.”

I took the scabbard from him, bewildered. Again, I marveled at its lightness, its leather warm from the heat of the flames. “You mean back to Daretana, sir?” I asked.

Miljin finally smiled. “Ha! You think you’re going back to Daretana, boy? How quaint.”

I wondered what he meant by that, but then I heard a voice: “You’re all right!”

I looked over my shoulder and saw the Legionnaire on the crutch approaching, his head haloed by the setting sun behind. It took me a moment to spy the shabby, earnest smile of Captain Kepheus Strovi within that shadowy face.

“You remember how to open it, Kol?” said Miljin beside me.

Distracted, I returned to him. I nodded. “I do, sir. But—”

“Good.” He nodded to me. “Good luck in your travels, Signum. I wish you much honor, and great success.”

Then he turned and marched away, stumping out of the Trifecta toward the east.

---

—

KEPHEUS AND I walked the lanes of Talagray, moving slowly as he was on a crutch—a memento he’d won when the titan-killer had been fired. “Blasted me clear off my platform,” he said sheepishly. “Twisted my ankle. Medikkers should have me right in a day, but they’ve larger issues to deal with.”

“I saw it from a distance,” I said. “The thing, coming to the breach. I saw it…It had a face? And seemed to be trying to speak?”

“We killed it,” he said gruffly. “And held it back. That’s all’s that needs to be said of it.”

We did not talk any more of what we’d witnessed, he at the walls and I in the city. The things we’d seen and done now felt too big for words. Silence was a better language. Yet I did tell him of all that Captain Miljin had just said to me.

“Yes…” said Kepheus sadly. “It must be a hard thing, to go from the Legion to the Iudex.”

“Why so?”

“Well, in the Legion, you know each wet season if you have won or lost. Yet in the Iudex, you can do all your duties aright, and catch every crooked soul—but at the end, there is no putting right what wrong was done.”

I said nothing to that. I thought of Uhad, and how all his memories of so many injustices had changed him. I wondered, for the first time, if my own would do the same to me.

“You’re leaving,” he said finally. “Yes?”

“I…I think so,” I admitted. “Our investigation is done. And you?”

“I shall stay here. My family has asked me to return home, but…There’s more to do. And I mean to do it, until there is no more.”

“ ‘The fulcrum on which the rest of the Empire pivots,’ ” I quoted.

“Ha! You remembered.”

I gave him a look.

“Oh, right,” he said. “I suppose that’s not terribly surprising…But. Here. I’ve a gift for you, Dinios.”

“Oh. Well. You didn’t…”

He handed me a paper package. I did not need to untie it to know what it was: the scent of tobacco flowed from the paper the second I squeezed it.

“Pipes!” I said, laughing. “Shootstraw pipes. You’ll bankrupt yourself, giving me these.”

“I won’t.” He smiled at me. “I just hope they taste as good as the one we shared.”

I smiled back. “I don’t know how they could. That one had its own taste.”

We fell silent, facing the east. Perhaps it was the sudden weight of so many memories I now had within me, but I felt tears in my eyes, and tried to wipe them from my face.

“I’m only here for a few days longer,” I said. “It feels so little time.”

He leaned forward and kissed me. He smelled of leather, and oil, and the frail curls of fretvine leaves.

“This is Talagray,” he said. “Nothing is certain.”

I took him by the hand, and together we returned to the city to find what sweetness we could in the few days we had.