Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When did it start? No, the better question is: when did it end? When was it set in stone—your fate, and his, and everything else that could never be?

Was it the second time you stood before the Pacific Ocean, the sunset on the waters telling you against your every instinct that there was such a thing as the objectively beautiful and good? Was it the first time you ran to him or the last time you ran away from him, not knowing there would not be another? The night you received the message. The night you sent the message. The time you spit off the highest mountain in the world. The time you wrote his name in the snow and erased it before he could turn around, when you were both small. The first time you decided cynicism suited you well. The first time you realized it did not suit you at all. The day you pulled the trigger, startling dozens of white seabirds against the blue summer sky. You still feel guilt about the birds, have nightmares about them and not the blood. In your dreams you always look for the blood. Was it the night you saw the halo around the winter moon?

No, maybe it was the first time you met him, after all. 

Hey! My name is Boris. What's yours?

Um…Yang. Yang Wen-li.

“So is it a date?”

“It’s not a date! How many times do I have to say it? It’s not a goddamned date.”

“Sounds like something someone going on a date would say.”

By this point, Boris Konev thinks, he really should have gotten used to Marinesk’s…attitude towards him. What should he call it? Good-natured ribbing? Fatherly concern? His administrative officer certainly looks a lot older than the four-year difference between them. If anyone dares suggest that this premature aging was caused by the irresponsible antics of his own captain, Boris will be the first to refute it. Although they’d probably be right.

“I’m just taking care of business,” he says, hoping a sudden attack of guilt, or god-who-doesn’t-exist forbid, sentimentality isn’t showing on his face. “That’s all.”

“Well…have a good time, Captain.”

“When I come back…” he stands around with his hands in his pockets. “I’ll be leaving Phezzan first thing tomorrow. Will you be all right?”

“It’ll all be smooth sailing from here. I’ll make your loan payments on time every month. The maintenance on the Beryozka won’t fall a day behind. The crew and I will fly only safe, profitable missions.”

“Was I really that bad? I’m going to miss you, Marinesk.”

“You’ll be back in no time. They’ll let you go after a year or…three? At most.”

“Don’t say three! I can feel my soul escaping from my body. Ugh. Though who knows if Phezzan will last that long.”

Now Marinesk is giving him a strange look. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like you know the future, Captain. It has a way of coming true.”

“That’s because I’m brilliant. So when I tell you we’ll be rolling in riches before your accursed three years are out, you’d better believe it.”

“Do you remember what you said, after we met Siegfried Kircheis? That it was a shame a nice person like him wouldn’t live long.”

“Oh.” Now he is feeling the chill of the desert night, even though the sun has only just set. The news of Kircheis’s death had come in just two days ago. “You know I was just mouthing off. I didn’t want him to die. I mean—he was the nicest Imperial I’d ever met.”

“But you had a feeling, didn’t you?”

“I suppose I did.”

“That’s why I haven’t doubted you, Captain.” Marinesk appraises him with an unreadable look, a remarkable glint in unremarkable dark eyes. “You have a good read on people. On situations. Use that to keep yourself safe on Heinessen. Keep your friend safe, too.”

“Hey, we’re not talking about him, alright?”

“I guess tonight isn’t a date because you have a much bigger date to keep on the other side of the galaxy, huh?”

“Now you’re just messing with me. Yang Wen-li wouldn’t even have tea with me. Meanest bastard I ever met.” This is such a blatant lie that Boris is surprised his nose hasn’t grown three sizes bigger. But something had compelled him to say it. Like holding onto a talisman, a superstitious ritual some traders perform before setting off on a long voyage. The thing he had said after meeting Siegfried Kircheis, out in the endless night, still echoed in his head.

A shame, isn’t it? Nice people don’t live long, especially in times like these.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you to remove your hat in the presence of a lady?”

“My apologies, Miss Saint-Pierre. Our Landesherr’s got me working so hard that I can’t remember where my head is.”

He probably shouldn’t have said that. She smirks; eyeshadow like storm clouds pressing in on the desert horizon, hair the dusky red of a polluted sunset. An audience with a celebrity like Dominque Saint-Pierre is a rare thing, and he should at least try to be a little more serious. But it isn’t a date, and thank the gods-who-don’t-exist for that. Boris isn’t so foolish as to make eyes at the mistress of Adrian Rubinsky.

“So,” he says. “What did you want to see me for?”

They have a private balcony at a restaurant so exclusive there is neither a sign nor an obvious front entrance. In the dim blue twilight the lights of Phezzan are coming on like another sea of stars, the pale vertical line of the space elevator in the distance like a sword struck into the earth, a monument to human ingenuity or human hubris. Dominique studies the view instead of him for a while. “Are you happy, Captain Konev?”

He doesn’t like that. He had thought this would be a negotiation, or perhaps some favor would be asked of him that Rubinsky was not to know. But now it feels more like a test.

“Of course,” he says. “Couldn’t be any happier.”

“I understand why you wouldn’t want to go so far from home.”

“I’m a traveler by nature. Going to Heinessen doesn’t bother me.”

She studies him, smiling or not smiling. A waiter brings them drinks he does not remember having ordered. “It’s a great honor to be personally appointed by the Landesherr to a prestigious position—or some rubbish like that. Adrian was the one who wanted you for the job. You weren’t my first choice.”

“I beg your pardon?” Okay, now he’s offended. He doesn’t want the damned job, but not the first choice? Why, that’s an insult to the names of Konevs everywhere, and—

“No offense intended. You’re a free spirit. That is your greatest asset, but it doesn’t make you suited for public service. My concern is that once you are on Heinessen, you will be—rebellious.”

He finds his throat dry, takes a drink quick. “I won’t be. I assure you.”

“I’m not here to admonish you. If anything, I sympathize.” Dominique’s voice is musical, soft enough to sound genuine. “Your personal feelings…that makes the matter complicated. So let me speak to you as a friend, a fellow citizen of the only planet that understands what freedom really means. Go to Heinessen. Do your job at the Commissioner’s office. But if you find that you cannot bear it, then quit. Turn in your resignation. Before you do something rash. Before you act on your personal feelings, your personal attachments. Leave. You will fall back into debt, and I can’t guarantee that your ship won’t be sold for scrap. But that will still be better than the alternative.”

Every word leaves him more incredulous than the last. “Is that a threat? Is your Landesherr going to put a hit on me?”

“Captain Konev,” she says. “If you do choose to stray from the course, Adrian isn’t the one you should be worried about.”

“Then who? You?”

And at that she only laughs. A carefree cipher, hair shimmering like fiery silk. The red fox is a trickier one than her companion, he thinks. It will be a relief to leave after all.

The rest of the night is a series of fragments that will fade into the river of memory: lamplight and tobacco smoke, the clink of ice in class, the taste of absinthe. The views of the city he keeps drinking in, because when will he be able to see it again? Her words flow over him as ambiguous as water. A few times he thinks she is about to seduce him, but she makes no such attempt. Which is just as well. Considerations for his personal safety aside, he cannot just say, Thanks but no thanks, I’ve got someone else on my mind tonight—

And then she might ask, Why, who’s the lucky lady?

Well—

Lucky lad, then? Does he know?

(No.)

Later that night: he takes the long way home, half drunk and dizzy with the promise of if not freedom, then at least of flight. The illusion that he can put all this behind him. That a future where he will be so much closer to that one person is something tangible at last.

He nearly runs into the figure just out of the glow of the streetlamps, and in later years he will always tell this to himself as a ghost story.

“Boris,” the shadow says to him with strange familiarity, “could you be so lost?”

His body tenses, ready for anything: an old acquaintance, a con, a mugging. The stranger takes a step towards him, and the readiness to fight in his body dissolves into a softer shock, a piteous wonder. It’s a small fellow, someone he’d worry about being alone in the city so late. So young, so fragile, so innocent of countenance—but with an unnatural beauty piercing that innocence like an icy shiver.  Hair like fractals of pale moonlight. Eyes like eclipses. “But never mind,” the stranger says. “I’ve found you, haven’t I?”

“Who are you?”

“You don’t know?”

The smile on that face is gentle with irony, the pity of a martyred saint in some ancient painting for the sinners standing just beyond the frame. “You’re running to him thinking you can actually help—and you don’t even know?”

“Know you? Who do you think you are?”

“Know the very bones of what you are and where you came from, Boris.”

He shivers, the warmth of the alcohol leaving his body. “What do you want?”

“Dominique asked you to stay loyal. I won’t be so crass. Go do whatever your greedy little heart desires, Boris. Go give him all the guidance fit for him to hear.”

“By him, you mean—”

The stranger holds up a hand to shush him. “And when you come back. Be it in a few months or years or half a lifetime. You’ll realize you did our bidding after all. That your fate was predestined from the start. That you have never left.”

A madman, he tells himself. A drugged-up weirdo wandering the streets. The simple explanation drowns out his growing unease. He turns and walks away quick, the sound of his footsteps keeping time with his heart. He will not ask himself why he was afraid to look back.

September, 797 UC. Boris Konev arrived on Heinessen as an intelligence operative and assistant to the Phezzanese Commissioner. What followed would become the last uneventful months of his life.

Chapter Text

“Flowers. Ah, roses. Something congratulatory. If everyone is giving the guest of honor a bouquet, I want mine to stand out, y’know? Cost is not an issue. I want it to be obnoxious. Make him sneeze if he has allergies. …Okay, wow. That’s perfect. Thank you.”

Boris takes the garish bouquet from the florist. It has outpaced even his feverish imagination: blossoms of impossible size, a maelstrom of colors that only genetic engineering could create, and an overpowering fragrance that would bring tears to a lesser man’s eyes. The young woman gives him a knowing look, an ever-so-slightly judgmental smile. He considers ignoring it, decides to wink and tip his hat instead.

“Good luck,” she calls out as he leaves, the flimsy glass door of the shop swinging behind him with the tinkle of little bells. He is going to need all the good luck he can get. After all, it’s not every day that you crash your old friend’s wedding.

No one will ever ask him, later, though he asked himself many times:

Why, in your nearly two years on Heinessen at the Commissioner’s office, did you not try to meet with Yang Wen-li even once?

It had been a matter of logistics at first. Yang was stationed on Iserlohn, Boris was fully tied up with his work on the ground, and a foreigner trying to gain entrance to the Alliance’s most valuable military fortification would have looked suspicious at best. After just a few days observing the corruption and inefficiencies of the FPA government, he had no doubt any request to meet with Yang would be denied.

Then there was the matter of his personal allegiance. Give him all the guidance fit for him to hear. Did he dare? If Yang Wen-li sat in front of him, Boris would surely tell him everything: how he was hand-picked by Rubinsky to spy on the Alliance. How that opportunistic man hoped to take advantage of both factions so that the parasitic vine of Phezzan could thrive. There was plenty he overheard at the Commissioner’s office that could be used to Yang’s advantage too.

But where would that lead? Leave before you do something rash, Dominique Saint-Pierre had warned him. It was not a stretch to think that the careers and perhaps even the lives of Marinesk and the rest of his crew would be imperiled by his own selfish impulses.

So for the first time in his life Boris Konev practiced restraint. He did his job with a mixture of lethargy and contempt, wore his suit like a prison uniform, looked to the sky with longing whenever he could. He wasn’t a goddamned mushroom made for staying rooted to the ground.

At the turn of the New Year, he sent Yang a greeting, and no more than that. Hey, I’m here, let’s catch up sometime, words to that effect. Yang never did reply, but Boris assumed the message never got through, or he was just too busy to see it. Just like the time he’d written to Yang after the latter became the hero of El Facil. Look what little Wen-li has made of himself, huh? Call me up sometime. But at that point Yang was probably too buried in fanmail to notice yet another letter.

Really, some things never changed. Some things never change.

Okay, to make things clear: he hadn’t been stalking his first crush for the better part of two decades. He was merely keeping up with the doings of an old friend, especially because that old friend happened to be incredibly accomplished and famous. It was all part of maintaining a professional network, exactly what any self-respecting Phezzanese citizen would do. Boris Konev may have had nothing but contempt for the current government of Phezzan, but the ethos of his home planet, the resourcefulness and self-reliance, that was in his blood. He was just being himself.

And really…he owed so much of that current self to Yang, didn’t he? It was strange to think about. How some kid he met on his travels, when he was equally young, ended up being the most interesting person he’d ever known. In those few months they journeyed together while their fathers were business partners, they had talked about every topic in the universe. Government and philosophy, history and religion—things that sounded too deep for a couple of kids of twelve or thirteen, and yet he could still remember the things Yang said about them. Even now, through the lens of years of maturity, they were wise words not tinged with the naivete of childhood or hubris of adolescence.

Now that he had time to think about it, how much did Yang read? He didn’t have a normal upbringing, did he? Was it possible for a kid like that to grow up well-adjusted and happy?

They were happy back then, though. Sprawled on the floor of the cabin amidst Yang’s books, listening to him tell a story of bygone times and interrupting with a thousand questions. Boris’s attention could only be held for so long by even the most captivating tales, and they would soon set off on another little adventure. Somehow—and he wasn’t going to contest the fairness of this, but just throwing it out there—somehow he was the one who got nicknamed Boris the Troublemaker, when it really should have been Wen-li the Mastermind and his Fearless Number-One Henchman.

A prime example of this had happened when their ships landed on a planet at the end of winter, gleaming with silver snow. It was no frozen wasteland but a popular destination for travelers wanting a taste of the alpine life, rife with ski lodges and cabins nestled at the edge of drowsy woods that looked right out of a fairytale. Their fathers were there to deliver cargo for the lodges, and in the meantime the kids were permitted to run free.

Yang gave Boris a little history lesson on the planet, including how much of it was terraformed and that most ecological tourism these days was a sham, and Boris maintained that maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with that. The trees looked happy and the people here were making a good living, weren’t they?

The discussion was promptly forgotten when a snowball hit him in the face. A kid in a puffy jacket ran past, laughing, and Boris quickly paid him back in kind. Pretty soon every child at the resort was involved in a snowball fight, or perhaps more accurately an all-out snowball war. The snow was deep and soft, not yet melting under the newly blue skies, and the excitement of the scene was nearly unbearable. The air was filled with laughter and shouts, the giddy chaos just about enough to shake the snow from the trees.

Boris soon noticed that Yang was not much for throwing snowballs, or for avoiding them. “You uh, you good?”

“We need to—” Yang went down like a sack of potatoes as another snowball struck him. “We need to change formation. We need to have a formation!” He sat up and tried to shake the snow off himself, looking like a clumsy bear cub dusted in flour.

“Okay, listen up!” Boris cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the kids who were nominally on their side. “We need to protect my friend.”

“Why? He looks like a loser,” a tall girl with pigtails remarked.

Boris reminded himself that a proper Phezzanese must not resort to name-calling. “Because,” he said with dramatic flourish and his father’s salesman voice, “he’ll lead us to victory. He’s a genius! Guaranteed. Or your money back.”

Yang scratched his snowy head. “I wish you wouldn’t say that…”

Somehow he managed to rally enough of their little allies to cover Yang while they fled up a hill, where, under Yang’s direction, they built a short wall of snow and crouched down behind it. Boris directed the other children to make an arsenal of snowballs, while Yang went off on a tangent about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia that mostly went over his head. “We’ll make them come to us exposed and uphill,” Yang said. “It’ll be easy! But…is this fun? Are we having fun, Boris? Wouldn’t you rather be inside with a nice hot cup of tea?”

“Tea is gross. I mean, that’s cool too!” he added quickly, hoping he hadn’t hurt Yang’s feelings. “We’ll go warm up later. You can have tea, and I’ll have hot chocolate.”

“Okay,” Yang said dubiously, still lost in thought about something abstract. “But here they come.”

The group chasing after them with the biggest, meanest snowballs were led by the lanky Craig brothers, who for the past few days had been the terror of the resort. Timmy Craig led the charge with a shrieking yell, and the older kids scrambling up the hill looked intimidating for a moment—until they were met with a volley of snowballs soaring from above. With no way to hit their concealed opponents or take cover, the wave broke and the assailants ran, cowered on the ground, or simply rolled down the hill.

Cheers went up behind the little snowy fortification. The children whooped and patted Yang on the back, while he looked unsure what to do with the attention. Even the pigtails girl admitted he was pretty cool. In the midst of the commotion, Boris the original instigator was forgotten. He didn’t really mind, though. It was nice seeing his friend get credit for his schemes, knowing that Yang was usually too shy to claim it.

He wandered off a few steps, to where the snow was still pristine and untouched by their hijinks. Didn’t it look like a great big sheet of paper? Boris picked up a twig, began drawing shapes in it idly. Without quite realizing what he was doing, he wrote Yang’s initials, and then his own.

Satisfied, he took a step back and looked at his work. Just an ephemeral signature. Ephemeral—that was another word he had learned from Yang recently. There was something pretty and also sad about it. Sometimes tourists carved their names into trees or rocks. Names written in snow wouldn’t last nearly as long, but it was the thought that counted. What else did people do, when they carved their names? They’d draw an arrow, or a heart—oh no, that was only for when you were in love—

A warm flush of embarrassment swept over his face.

“Hey, what are you drawing?” Yang’s voice asked behind him.

And before he could stop to think about it—before his friend could see what he had done—Boris grabbed a handful of snow and threw it in Yang’s face.

When did he know?

It hardly mattered now. When did he realize what he felt for his friend was not just admiration but a budding crush? They hadn’t seen each other in years, by that point. He thought of Yang often, but not like that, not any longer. He’d had his share of relationships in the years that followed, though chance and circumstance and his inability to stay in one place meant none of them worked out.

But really—this Boris told himself, was ready to tell any other future date who asked. He didn’t think about Yang like that. Not until chance and circumstance made him stay in one place and put Yang front and center in his mind again. And then—oh, it came back with a vengeance. He would never tell anyone that last part.

What more could be said about the rest of his stay on Heinessen? He’d bitten his nails down to nubs, hearing that Yang had been summoned back to the planet for a covert inquiry meant to accuse him of some crime. Boris understood his own abilities; in spite of how assiduously he expanded his network on Heinessen, he could not find out where Yang was being detained. And even if he did, what was he going to do, burst in there with rocket launchers? He could only hope Yang’s own wits were enough to preserve him—and that perhaps, this experience would finally disabuse him of his democratic illusions.

Just when he was on the verge of praying to the god-he-didn’t-believe-in, news came of Yang being released unscathed. And soon another miraculous victory was added to his name. After the destruction of Gaiesburg, every bar on Heinessen was filled with cheers and drinks in honor of Miracle Yang, and Boris was right in the midst of it. He was going to give Yang an earful about that nickname the next time they met. And the Magician? Really? The Magician and the Troublemaker was too stupid a combination. Made him sound like a court jester or something. Provided, of course, anyone would speak of them in the same breath. It wasn’t like he was the Kircheis to Yang’s Reinhard or anything. He was far too cynical to be a Kircheis, but if they had grown up together, then just maybe—

The hangover after that celebratory night was, predictably, the worst of his life.

In the days that followed, the news offered no reassurance. The Alliance was far too weak after its previous lapses in judgment, the leadership too corrupt and indecisive. Reinhard von Lohengramm’s star continued to rise unobstructed. Boris saw the shape of things sooner than many others around him, the tipping of the balance that would swallow this side of the universe and even his homeland. At times he felt like an observer above history itself; at other times he cursed at being caught in its currents.

Late spring, and the universe once again hovered in a state of suspense as the curtains rose on the Battle of Vermillion. An electric current ran under every surface, charged the words and gestures of every person he met. The winds were changing, and he vowed that this time nothing would catch him off guard.

All of Heinessen was a void of anxious static, a collective moment of suspense. Then the news began to trickle in like the release of a held breath—just as the shape of two fleets darkened the sky.

What Boris Konev learned over the next few days would change the trajectory of his life forever, each piece of news a greater shock than the last:

The Free Planets Alliance had surrendered to the Empire. He was now a man without a job.

Phezzan had likewise fallen without a single shot fired. He was now a man without a country.

Marinesk and his crew were safe, but—in what his administrative officer described as a “clever, and entirely necessary” ploy by Yang’s protégé, beautiful, dear Beryozka had been blown up. He was now a man without a home.

And, last of all: Yang Wen-li was getting married.

Which brings him to the here and now. Flowers in hand, alcohol in his blood, on his merry way to what might be the worst decision of his life. He has nothing to lose. It’s a beautiful day.

The moment Boris bid the Commissioner’s office farewell, he had ripped off his suit and donned more comfortable garb. He never did feel at ease without an obscene number of pockets, and the hat that had earned him the consternation of more than one Alliance stuffed shirt—and hey, all the more likely that Yang will recognize him.

Now, with the landcar nearing the wedding venue, he finds his spirits rising. Heinessen has been a swirl of mixed emotions the past few days. The humiliation of defeat and the fear of an uncertain future had grappled with the relief of peace at long last. Today it feels as if the more joyful feelings have won out. Boris observes smiling people on the sidewalks, faces as bright as the early-summer flowers on the trees. Perhaps they are all happy for their hero and his long-deserved domestic bliss—or that is what he would write, if he were a damned propagandist.

The car stops and he gets out, marches resolutely across the lawn. Some kind of advanced confetti machine is blowing countless rose petals in the air. Smiling faces he does not recognize, a sea of soft colors converging on a splash of sunlit white. The world is without sound. Yang Wen-li’s bride really is beautiful, and, from what he has heard, the kind of clever and devoted partner he deserves. Yang himself looks ridiculous, just as awkward as he expected or maybe worse—but he cannot look for too long.

The snow of nearly twenty years ago has long melted without a trace.

(Put on your best face, will you?)

“Wen-li!” he shouts, thrusting the bouquet at his old friend. “You sure did marry a beauty, huh? Congratulations. Come here and give your buddy a hug.”

All eyes are on him. Some curious, some shocked by this breach of decorum, one imperial-looking fellow ready to skin him alive, many others amused.

And Yang, a gentle look of confusion on his face, turns to him and asks—

“Who are you again?”

This is the precise moment when Boris remembers that the Imperial admiral Oskar von Reuenthal, one of those who recently besieged Heinessen, had also infamously crashed his friend’s wedding. He has a mind to run from this place and challenge Reuenthal to a duel immediately, if only because, at this point, crawling into a hole and dying is not dramatic enough for either of them.

Yang’s eyes narrow as they study him, a spark of mischief in the darkest void. Boris won’t go so far as say his friend has an evil smile, but it’s pretty damn close. “Why, if it isn’t Boris the Troublemaker,” Yang says. “I was just messing with you. About time you showed up, isn’t it?”

Then there are introductions, pleasantries, a rose-colored haze. No one is offended by his sudden appearance; Mrs. Greenhill-Yang is delighted to make his acquaintance. “And I’ll know who to blame for teaching him bad habits,” she adds with a wink. Julian Mintz, who heard a good deal about Boris from Marinesk, has been holding in laughter the whole time. “Of course Admiral Yang recognized you,” the young man says. “But when I first mentioned I had news of his old friend, he asked if it wasn’t a pretty girl.” Even the fellow who had been staring him down, who he soon learns is the leader of the Rosen-Ritters, warms up enough to shake his hand. Only Dusty Attenborough turns out to be allergic to the flowers.

For a while he is caught in the crowd, Yang’s friends and compatriots wanting to know tales of hilarity from his childhood, of which he has plenty. Then Yang is in front of him again, hair disarmingly unkempt, wedding cake on his face from some incident he did not observe. “Actually, I need to speak with you privately. In two hours at my house, if you could.”

“On your wedding day?”

“Ehh…” Yang’s hand goes to his hair. “Is that improper? Frederica won’t mind…neither of us know much about etiquette, to be honest. You’ll be our first guest.”

“It’s that important?”

“It’s that important.”

“Anything for my old friend,” Boris says. In a little under a year’s time, he will wish a satellite had fallen from orbit and hit his head before he said yes.

Boris finds Yang’s new house pleasant, orderly, and clean—but only because Yang hasn’t inhabited it for long. The residence is patrolled by Imperial soldiers; even in his retirement, Yang must seem like the most dangerous man in the universe. “How can you stand it?” Boris whispers as they enter the house, and Yang just shrugs.

Is his friend resigned to clipping his wings? He supposes time will tell. They sit down to tea while an extremely fluffy cat swats at a vacuuming robot on the floor. “First of all, thank you for conveying Julian safely from Phezzan,” Yang says.

“That was all Marinesk. I’ve got to thank you too—for teaching Julian well. Marinesk says the crew would never have made it back safely without him.” Boris likes the way they have dropped straight into conversation without pleasantries, no how many years has it been or anything like that. Enough to create an illusion of unbreakable familiarity, to pretend that it hasn’t been that long. “But I’m sure you know, that was my ship they blew up. With both Phezzan and the Alliance gone bottom-up, it’s not like I can just ask for another.”

“All business, aren’t you? You haven’t changed.” Yang regards him with the same sleepy amusement as the cat lazily batting at the vacuum. “But don’t worry about it. We’ll get it taken care of.”

“You’re getting me another ship?”

“I’ll pull one out of a hat.”

“I thought you’d hate being called a magician.”

“And I thought you’d enjoy it too much if I did.”

There is that glint of mischief again, and Boris finds that he cannot look for too long. “What did you want to see me about?”

“I have a favor to ask you. You know your way around the entire galaxy, right?”

“You flatter me. I’m worried already. But yes.”

“Well…” Yang scratches his hair, as if aware he is about to make an unreasonable request. “Julian has been meaning to travel to Terra. Both to further his understanding of humanity’s origin, and because—well, I think he has his own reasons for wanting to be away from home for a while.”

“He’s that age, huh?”

“It’s the right time for him to spread his wings,” Yang says, not without a subtle degree of concern. “It isn’t any ordinary journey, though. Marinesk might have told you that Julian discovered some political dealings by the Church connected to recent events. He’s hoping to find out more, and you’re had plenty of experience taking pilgrims to those parts, if I remember right.”

“Wen-li, you swindler, you’re asking me to take your son on an espionage mission?”

“I’m trusting you with the safety of someone who means more than family to me,” Yang says with perfect sincerity. Boris takes a particularly big sip of tea.

“It’s true the merchants of Phezzan were granted rights to continue traveling for business, but—won’t the ward of Yang Wen-li be forbidden from leaving town, much less the planet?”

“That’s why he won’t be the ward of Yang Wen-li. You’ll give him a new name and new identity as one of your crew. Don’t worry, he’s had plenty of experience pretending to be a merchant already.”

“I can’t believe it. Your audacity has tripled, no, quadrupled since I last saw you.”

“You’ll do it, then?”

“On my nice, new, hypothetical ship? I’d love nothing better.”

“Whew,” Yang says, with a relief that Boris thinks must be exaggerated for his benefit. “So now I can tell you about the really illegal part.”

Boris finds himself grinning. What does it say about himself that he is enjoying this so much? The thrill, the danger, the promise of getting away with a grander scheme than their younger selves could ever have dreamed. Perhaps unassuming, sleepy little Wen-li is a natural leader after all; he knows exactly how to reel him in, at least.

The details of the really illegal part do not surprise him, but part of it does disappoint. “Do you really think it’s worth keeping the flame of democracy alive?” Boris asks, unable to keep the derision out of his voice. “Or that you should be the one to do it? You’ve made it, Yang. You survived, you have your life ahead of you, you hate effort—”

“Boris, I know you, I have about as much a chance of selling you on democracy as you have of selling me a condo on Phezzan. But I think even you can see that the alternative is worse. Should such a thing need to be done, who else would you have do it?”

Yang has a way of being vague sometimes, when he is uncertain or just unwilling to reveal his certainty. “You’re too much of a pushover,” Boris says. “Just because everyone has their expectations for you, all this hopes and dreams stuff—but look, you don’t have to be great. You don’t have to keep writing history.”

You could leave it all behind if it ever gets too hot for you, and at the rate you’re going it will. You could finally learn what real freedom feels like, with me. But how can he ever say that? “You’re just too damn nice,” he manages.

“I’d hardly say that about someone who has caused millions of deaths,” Yang says, eyes briefly downcast. Boris feels an instant of remorse, but not enough to stop himself.

“Then you should have gone all in. If holding your fire at Vermillion wasn’t being too nice, I don’t know what is.”

Now Yang studies him with an intent look, the hurt of a few moments ago thankfully gone. In this state he is unreadable; all Boris can tell is that he is thinking, that he has already come up with a retort. “You are also one of those who think I should have opened fire on Reinhard von Lohengramm?”

“The chance was yours. If you did it the Alliance would still be free. Phezzan would still be free. I’m not saying I blame you, Wen-li. I know you had your reasons. But I don’t think another soul alive would back down from that kind of temptation.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard of my other reasons. The news analysts have been talking it over for days.”

“That it would be improper for the military to supersede the government. That you’d end up taking power if Mittermeyer and Reuenthal took out Trunicht and that lot. That you hate the idea of being an autocrat so much that you’d throw away your greatest victory to protect those democratic vermin. It sounds just like you, my friend, even if it doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Maybe it shouldn’t. Not to you.”

He has always been captivated by how dark Yang’s eyes can be. Like what he imagines black holes without light must look like, but not empty, not frightening. An inexorable gravitational force drawing him in.

“While I had the Brunhild in my sights, Boris, where were you?” Yang Wen-li asks, soft as the lightest touch.

“I was…at work.”

“At the Commissioner’s office, in the city center, right in middle of all the government buildings. What do you think would have happened, my friend? Have you never considered that? Mittermeyer and Reuenthal attacking Heinessen was a bluff, but it would not have remained one if I had killed Lohengramm. And even if, in the passion of their vengeance, they were conscientious enough to avoid killing civilians, do you think their ships have the precision to miss your office when they blow our politicians to smithereens?"

This time he has nothing to say in response.

“If I had fired on the Brunhild that day,” Yang continues, “the Empire would be in shambles. The Free Planets would stand, but no longer as a democracy, not even in name only. I would be the dictator of a sham nation with a smoking crater at its heart. And you would be dead.”

“You…knew I was here,” Boris finally manages. “On Heinessen.”

“I knew.”

“You got my letter?”

“I didn’t get any letters. Who knows what they do at the post office. An ailing postal system is a symptom of an ailing state. But of course I knew.” The serious look on Yang’s face has dissipated as if nothing but an illusion, the transit of a cloud across the sun. What remains is merely a genial mischief as warm as a fresh-brewed cup of tea. “Didn’t you think I’d keep tabs on my old friend?”

“I. Well.” He cannot possibly be speechless. Not him. Not in a million years could he have prepared for this situation. He wants to laugh, or cry, and he can’t remember what he did with the damn flowers. Something at the back of his mind flickers, tremulous and unbearable like the faintest of hope.

If even this is possible—if even this is possible, and of course it is, the whole world’s overturned and the future is a blank slate, and he’s never forgotten about you—

“Thank you,” he finally says.

“Now, you’re not going to argue with me anymore, are you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Good. So, what are you going to name your ship?”

June, 799 UC. The newly baptized Undutiness set off on a long and circuitous voyage to the cradle of mankind. When asked about the name of his ship, Boris Konev would say it was his way of life. Yang had informed him that the word “undutiness” was not originally part of the English language, but with the evolution of the lexicon over thousands of years, it was no longer regarded as a spelling error. A blunder that became the truth through sheer stubbornness and luck—wasn't that him? Or rather: couldn't it be?

Chapter Text

“So you’re the Konev who didn’t die.”

“Since I’m responsible for the lives of everyone on this ship, you’d better hope it stays that way.”

Halfway through his voyage to Earth, Boris Konev realizes he has picked up his most troublesome passenger yet.

The first part of the journey had gone smoothly. As expected of Yang Wen-li’s ward, Julian was polite, inquisitive, and wise for his years, although Boris privately remarked that the boy could use a rebellious streak. Accompanying him was Ensign Louis Machungo, who soon proved himself as reliable a friend and compatriot as any. Boris was pleased to be once again traveling with his crew, of whom not one had deserted during his long absence. “We kept morale high by talking about you behind your back,” Marinesk informed him, and he realized he actually missed this insubordination.

They passed several routine inspections by Imperial ships without incident, thanks to Boris’s charm and professional demeanor (so he would like to think) and the flawless aliases he had created for his illicit passengers. He’d always had a salesman’s instincts, and the last few years on Heinessen had honed them into an art. If only he’d gotten good at the game sooner, he wouldn’t have been in debt in the first place. But his debts had gotten blown up along with his beloved Beryozka, so you win some and lose some.

At the abandoned supply base of Dayan Khan, the Undutiness made a stop, and the second part of their journey began. This was what Yang had termed the “really illegal part”, as Wilibald Joachim von Merkatz was waiting there with his fleet to receive instructions. By Yang’s estimate it would be five or six years before this hidden fleet would be drawn into another conflict, but until then they would maintain—and grow—their forces in secret.

Boris thought this venture had little chance of success, but all the same he was happy to help the Imperial defector, another stateless wanderer like himself, slip through the cracks of a world that never looked too closely at them. He found it dangerous for Merkatz to exchange one form of loyalty for another, but kept those thoughts to himself. Because after all, who was he to speak?

Any chance of further self-reflection was utterly destroyed when a lanky fellow stepped in front of him and said, “I’m coming with you, you know.”

Shockingly orange hair. Undeservedly green eyes. Two centimeters taller than himself. One Alliance standard-issue scarf that had never been tied properly in his life. And a grin that reminded Boris of an incident—or two—in his younger days when he had punched someone out in a bar fight. Such was his first look at Olivier Poplin. “Yang didn’t mention you,” he said.

“He’s uh…he’s fine. He can come along,” Julian said. “Admiral Merkatz will probably thank us…”

Mentally reminding himself to ask Yang for compensation, Boris permitted Poplin to board the Undutiness. As far as mistakes in his life went, this would turn out to be a fairly small one.

…And now? Not two hours have passed since they left Dayan Khan behind, and Poplin is hanging around the bridge, studying him like some kind of insect, and calling him the Konev that didn’t die.

“You’d better hope it stays that way,” he says. If not for all the delicate instrument panels and the scolding he would get from Marinesk, he really could pick a fight right here.

“Hmph. As if I’d believe a word out of you.”

 “So you knew my cousin, I take it,” Boris says, taking a more reconciliatory tone.

“Better than you ever did.”

“I never met Ivan.” It’s a shame that he never had the chance, given how fondly his cousin was spoken of by everyone at Yang’s wedding. He’d felt a faint pang of guilt that day, knowing he could not grieve properly for a relative he’d never met. At the same time, he had felt the chill of consequence breathing down his neck. Someone close to him—even if only in name—had been taken by this era, and this time would likely not be the last. “I don’t know what sort of person he was,” he admits now. “If he ever offended you, I apologize on behalf of the Konev name, but it’s also literally, you know, none of my business.”

“Oh, he offended me all right.” Poplin sits on one of the consoles, centimeters away from some thankfully locked controls. “Just up and dying like that without warning.”

“So you were friends. I’m sorry for your loss-”

“I wouldn’t say that much. You don’t look like him, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t get smart with me. I’m calling it a night, Captain. Think I’m allergic.”

“To me?”

By way of answer, Poplin waves a dismissive hand behind his head as he turns to go. “Got any ladies on this ship?” he calls out, and this time Boris does not dignify it with a response.

The sight of the Earth looming into view is a relief. No matter what dangers await them, it will be a welcome change from being cooped up with some ginger devil who claims to be allergic to all Konevs. Boris has always found the sight of the planet perplexing in the greenness of its land, the blue of its seas. Is it not supposed to be a polluted wasteland, largely unsuited for human inhabitation? Though he supposes that does not mean it is devoid of other life.

“Liking the scenery, huh?” Poplin says behind him as he studies the approaching planet.

“I’m just figuring out the best place to land.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve done it half a dozen times before. Even a cynic can appreciate nature, you know. It’s not the end of the world for a big manly-man like you to admit it.”

“Want to know something cool? I don’t have the contract in front of me, but I think I’m not liable if circumstances force me to eject a passenger off my ship. In mid-flight. Shall we find out?”

Their landing near Lake Namtso proceeds without event. They spend a few days there acclimating to the altitude, which Boris admits is more of an ordeal the older he gets. And he’s only thirty—an age he considers, unlike some others, to still be young and sprightly. Nonetheless, all the hassle is for a worthwhile cause. Something useful will come of it for Yang, who is in all likelihood not thinking about his old friend on his honeymoon.

Give yourself more credit. He changed the trajectory of history for you, even if you were just one percent of that calculation. The fate of every person in this galaxy was altered at Vermillion because of the weight of a feather on his heart.

He really can’t keep thinking like this. If he gets too giddy, his crew will suspect him of altitude sickness and drag him into the medic tent.

After a few days, their group splits into two. Marinesk and the rest of the crew will return to the Undutiness, to be on standby in case they need to make a quick escape. Boris and his crewman Hotteterre will accompany Julian, Machungo, and (regrettably) Poplin into the Church itself, in the guise of pilgrims.

“Do we have to wear these?” Poplin complains, pulling the black cloak over his head.

“You won’t die if the ladies can’t see that orange mop you call your hair,” Boris replies, not even looking at him.

“You’re putting the hood over your hat? You’re seriously putting it over your hat.”

“You just don’t understand style.”

“I think—” Julian is barely suppressing a smile. “I think it won’t convince anyone if you wear it like that, Captain Konev.”

“I’ll take it off when we get there, okay? Now help me pack the car.”

It is a drive of twelve hours and an overnight at a campsite before they arrive. At Julian’s request, the journey is punctuated by stories of Boris the Troublemaker and his little magician sidekick, though it really should be the other way around. During monotonous parts of the drive, Poplin breaks into song. The man’s knowledge of obscure music from humanity’s pre-spacefaring days really is a cause for concern. At other times Boris tells the group what he knows of the history of the region. By the light of their campfire, he concludes the bloody tale of the fall of the Global Government to the Anti-Earth Front, here in these very mountains silhouetted in black. His gifts as a historical storyteller, Julian says, remind him of Yang.

“Well,” Boris says, a little self-conscious. “I did learn from the best.”

“A man cannot escape the influence of his past,” Machungo says, “as much as the destiny held by the future.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Boris says. “What’s the point of living if you don’t try to rise above the past, and the future that others expect of you? There is no destiny if there are no gods, and we aren’t just poured into molds when we’re born.”

“You were poured into the mold called Konev,” Poplin adds.

“And your mold didn’t pass quality control. Will you let me finish? When the underground headquarters of the Global Government were flooded, fewer than a hundred people out of thousands escaped. So much for their invincible fortress. And that—is where we’re headed tomorrow. One would think it’s a cursed location that no one would repurpose, but hubris always repeats itself.”

“Idiots,” Poplin says. “The moment you think your fortress is impregnable, you’re bound to make a mistake. Admiral Yang knew how to take advantage of that when he took Iserlohn.”

An admiration of Yang, Boris thinks, might be the only thing they agree on. “That must have been quite the spectacle.”

“I was there. Jealous? Well, you’d probably be useless in battle. Put shame on the Konev name. Hey, pop quiz. If you were besieged, cornered, and the enemy is coming at any moment. What would you do?”

“Me?” Boris meets Poplin’s gaze head-on, slowly tips his hat with the most shameless smile. “I’d surrender,” he says with not a moment’s hesitation.

The following day, they arrive at the Church of Terra headquarters at the foot of Mount Kangchenjunga. No one gives them a second glance as they mingle with the rest of the pilgrims, and Boris thinks it a shame that so many people from all walks of life have come here to lap up the sham hope they had been so freely given. Of course, that has been his attitude towards religion since time immemorial, when Yang Wen-li first put those ideas into his head. If he had never met Yang, would he be one of the true believers here instead? Even if he doesn’t like the idea of destiny, he likes the idea of such random chance even less.

To facilitate their infiltration, the group pretends they do not know each other. Over the next few days, they will meet and befriend each other for the first time, a scheme that plays right into his sense of mischief. Quite inconveniently, they are assigned separate rooms, to be shared with dozens of other strangers. Only Machungo and Hotteterre end up in the same room, which Boris supposes good enough based on the luck of the draw. Before they go their separate ways, he squeezes Poplin’s arm. “Don’t be a loose cannon,” he says, and slips into the crowd before he can hear the retort.

What follows is a true test of his patience.

Boris has made the journey to Earth many times before, but never as one of the faithful. For a faithless man to don that disguise is harder than he expects. Between the routine of rising early, being assigned to cleaning, and the deadening sermons and hours of prayer and meditation, he really is starting to believe in the existence of the soul—because he can feel it leaving his body. He finds little opportunity to converse with his group of like-minded infiltrators, and progress on their mission remains slow. At least Poplin is wilting even faster than himself due to the lack of attractive women (or at least, any that would give his sinful propositions the time of day).

Such are his thoughts as he languishes in the congregation hall. Today it is not one of the indistinguishable old men giving the sermon but someone with a more youthful, articulate voice. As usual, Boris distracts himself and pays little heed to the words. If he keeps his head down and looks devout, no one will know the difference.

But there is something about the cadence of the preacher’s voice that demands attention. It might all be nonsense, but Boris admits that the man can talk. One bullshitter can always identify another, he tells himself cynically. The voice is musical, almost hypnotic—and isn’t there something familiar about it?

He looks up, and the Archbishop meets his eyes with an unblinking stare, face set in a halo of delicate curls. It is the same young man who accosted him the night before he left Phezzan.

Boris turns away at once, starts pushing through the crowd toward the exit. It cannot be a good thing to be recognized under these circumstances, but his escape is slower than he likes. Behind him, he hears the Archbishop end the sermon early with a nonchalant excuse. The crowd surges around him like a sluggish sea. Only the barest attempt at decorum is keeping Boris from swearing and shoving people to the floor.

Then the crowd parts, and the Archbishop is right in front of him. There’s no doubt it’s the same man, and the black vestments of the Church cannot conceal that terrible radiance like coldness itself made flesh. “You,” the young priest says with a brilliant smile. “In the confessionary. Fifteen minutes. Don’t be late.”

He considers running.  Abort the mission and just take off—but how will he even do that? Does he have the means to collect his passengers and crew? And how can he let Yang down?

Fifteen minutes later, Boris Konev is seated in the dim blue light of the confessional booth, a cover story already spun up in his head.

There is an occlusion of light through the latticed panel as the Archbishop sits on the other side. “Have something you want to tell me, Boris?”

So the game is up. “The fuck were you doing on Phezzan?”

The voice seeping across the panel is delighted, as crisp as the ringing of silver bells. “Please. Begin your confession in the proper manner, my child.”

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Boris says through gritted teeth.

“Wrong denomination.”

“Look! Enough fooling around. Why do you know me? The fuck were you trying to do on Phezzan?”

“Shouldn’t you tell me what you’re doing here first? I hardly took you to be a pious man. Deceiving the clergy on holy ground is a heavy sin indeed, Boris.”

“There’s no rule that says I have to be a believer to be here, is there?” Now the story he rehearsed the last few minutes is ready for the stage. “Okay, I get why you might be surprised. If you know me, which apparently you do, and you have a lot of stalking to answer for, Father. But I’ve been bringing pilgrims to Earth for years. It’s part of my business, and I’m sure you don’t have a problem with that. So this time, one of my clients, he’s paranoid, right? He’s never been so far from home. He just wanted a familiar face near him while he paid respects to your holy whatever here. And I wasn’t going to say no to a client who paid so well. So I attired myself like a pilgrim. Is that a sin? I’m attending services, paying my dues, and keeping my client company—so what if I’m not a true believer? You do see where I’m coming from.”

“Of course. All are welcome here,” the Archbishop says. “Many unbelievers have visited and come away converted. So I have no reason to take issue with your stay—if what you say is the truth.”

“I’m telling you, that’s the whole truth. Nothing more to it.”

The Archbishop slides open the panel to scrutinize him. “Swear it upon the holy ground you stand on.”

“You need to explain that whole stalking business first.”

“It’s simple, really. I took an interest in your career because I’d meant to hire you for another job, but Rubinsky got to you first. On an impulse, I approached you hoping to sow some doubt about your assignment from him. It was unbecoming of me to meddle, and I apologize. Is that enough to satisfy your curiosity?”

“What kind of job would an Archbishop of the Church want me for? Doesn’t sound like pious behavior to me.”

“That is no longer relevant. So? Will you swear it, Boris Konev? That what you have told me is nothing but the whole truth? That you come with good intentions, and not to deceive or abuse our hospitality.”

“Sure. Yeah.”

“There will be consequences if you lie.”

“Like what? Divine retribution?”

“There are far worse things in the universe than that.” The Archbishop extends his hand, and Boris realizes he is meant to shake it. He is unsure whether it will burn him, the way that ice burns. “Archbishop Dorian de Villiers. Pleased to make your formal acquaintance at last, Boris.”

“Right,” Boris says, and gets up and goes.

The days begin to bleed together after that. The light takes on the quality of dusk and of being filtered through water, being perceived through a dream. He is bored out of his mind. He is fine with this, because everything is so damn beautiful. The air is so lovely that he can almost see it. He will never give the least thought to religion, but there is something sacred in nature—isn’t that an acceptable compromise? Occasionally, glimpses of the snowy peaks outside make him want to cry. He wants to bring Yang here. Yang will probably die of altitude sickness before he even reaches this place. Okay, so scratch that. He wants to write Yang Wen-li in huge letters, ten meters tall at least, on the side of the mountain. In Chinese.

He will realize, some time later, that he was on a lot of drugs.

There are only a few disjointed memories he has of the next few days. He is outside, has made his way up a trail cut into the side of the mountain. Not high enough to be dangerous, but just enough for a sublime view as the sunset tints the snow. He sits next to Poplin on a boulder, says he wants a smoke.

The air is too thin, Poplin says. Don’t poison your lungs further. Or do you want to be the Konev who dies too?

Shut up, he says. Did you know that for a short while, Kangchenjunga was the tallest mountain on Earth? They ever teach you that in school?

They don’t teach you anything about Earth in school, dumbass.

There used to be two that were taller, but then came that volcanic explosion almost a thousand years ago. That lifted up the whole of the Himalayas, but unevenly, you know? And then the bombings—so yeah, for a couple of days, Kangchenjunga was the tallest. For just one brief glorious moment.

And then?

And then the Anti-Earth Front bombed it to hell.

Nothing ever lasts, huh?

Nothing ever lasts.

I’ll drink to that.

You didn’t bring a drink.

But you did.

Hey, let go of that! Get your damn hand out of my jacket—

He seizes Poplin’s hand by the wrist, and something about the transfixed look in those green eyes makes him let go. The realization, dim as it is through his impaired senses, that Poplin wants this and whatever is to follow. A second-rate bandage over a wound that can never heal. A puzzle piece that doesn’t fit. (If he closes his eyes, you won’t have to be you.)

What makes him stop, then? I can’t be that to you. I can’t do that to someone. Or:

I’ll never become like that, myself. I’ll never allow myself to fall to that place.

But remember, Boris. Nothing ever lasts.

He is in front of a reflecting pond deep in the chambers of the earth, the water still and black. Find what you’re looking for yet? De Villiers asks.

He digs deep inside himself and finds the lie he was meant to keep telling. I wasn’t looking for anything, he says.

When are you going to tell me the truth?

I swear. I triple-fucking-swear. When are you going to trust me?

When you earn it.

What do you suspect me of anyway, huh? Just out and say it. Kick me out. Excommunicate me.

You have to—the pretty bastard winces and touches his forehead as if Boris has actually given him a headache. You have to be of the Church to be excommunicated first. But here’s the thing. I don’t know. I have my suspicions, but I don’t know.

That’s because there’s nothing to know, Boris says, tries to skip a stone on the pond. It sinks without bouncing even once, dark ripples wiping out both their reflections.

I hate to see you like this, Boris.

Like what?

For some people, it’s as hard going back to sea level as it is coming up.

That’s nonsense. I’ve never felt like that.

The air is too rich down there. You’ll take it for granted. And then when you miss it it will be too late.

What?

Better tell me soon.

In his bunk he sleeps deeply and well. He dreams of Beryozka going up like fireworks, his homeland turning into a beautiful woman with hair the color of a polluted sunset who clasps him in chains. He dreams of a man without a voice telling him to run. Of the technicolor bouquet he had bought on Heinessen wilting in his hand. In this dream he is the best man at the wedding, dressed in a white suit that doesn’t flatter him at all. He is trying to give a speech but none of the words come out right, and his voice hitches, the June sunshine in his eyes. For no reason he thinks he is going to cry. He doesn’t see Yang.

Thirteen days after his arrival on Earth, Poplin passes him in the hallway, hisses in his ear. “Stop eating their food.” And then at least things begin to make sense.

Thyoxine in the food supply. The opiate of the masses has been supplemented with a real opiate (or technically, a fungi-derived substance). Boris is hardly surprised that the Church of Terra would resort to such measures, but he is furious that he has fallen for it himself.

Now the course of action is clear. They have to bail. Maybe Yang will be disappointed, but he isn’t coming back with a complete lack of intel; the knowledge about the drug will be juicy enough. Poplin tells him that they need a day and night to detox before any attempt at escape. They had not been permitted to bring their electronic devices inside the compound, but he had buried a phone half a mile away from the entrance to call Marinesk in case of emergency. Sneaking out and running for it might get him shot, but walking out with head held high and a perfectly good reason to do so will be safer. He will make up some legitimate-sounding excuse to leave: my client is done here, I’m taking him back home, words to that effect.

The day is uneventful, the evening poor, the night much worse.

He is so sick with withdrawal that he cannot stay in his bed another moment. He grabs his hat, leaps out of his bunk, paces the halls like a madman. If some night watchman asks what he is doing he will say he is suffering from diarrhea and does not dare to venture far from the toilets. Actually, that is where he should hide. He needs to splash some cold water on his face, then sit under the sink and hate his life for a few hours.

It is at this point that he starts to hear the explosions.

At first he thinks he must be hallucinating, but the booms and crackles that might be gunfire do not stop, only get more frequent and closer. Belatedly his instincts kick in. If some shit is going down, then appearances be damned, he needs to gather his charges and get out. God-who-doesn’t-exist forbid, if something happens to Julian, he’ll never be able to—

He can’t finish that thought. One hallway looks much like another. Damn it, he’s studied the maps, he’s an expert navigator, why are his skills failing him now? A group of Church staff runs past him, all carrying guns. “Hey!” he says. “What’s going on?” No one pays him any heed. He has no idea where he is.

A door opens in front of him, and a pale hand pulls him in.

It doesn’t burn, after all.

“You—"

The door clicks shut behind him, and Boris’s first instinct is to punch the Archbishop in the face. To his satisfaction the copper mirror on his headdress flies off, clatters on the floor amidst scattered beads. “You drugged me! You son of a bitch!”

“I enlightened you,” de Villiers says as if nothing has happened, even with blood running down his face. “But never mind. Take this, quick.” He offers a small box of pills, which Boris throws across the room.

“I’m not taking any damn thing you give me!”

“It’ll make the withdrawal go easier.”

“Why?” Boris says with a mirthless laugh. “You drug me, and now you want me to be sober?”

“Because we need you, Boris. Even if you betrayed us. We need you alive. And you need to run.”

“Wait—what?” An explosion shakes the room, not too far above them. “The hell is going on? I betrayed you how?”

“In case you don’t know, the Wahlen fleet is attacking us right now. A disaster, to be sure, but you can get out if you’re quick. But even those men are just acting on orders from their deluded Kaiser. Even that—even fire raining from above—is less deliberate a sin as what you have done, Boris.”

“I don’t care what you believe.”

“I figured it out a little too late. You were working for him, huh? Of course you were. After all that he did for you. If he’d let you die along with the Kaiser, we wouldn’t be in this fix right now. Little Boris Konev, the face that stopped ten thousand ships.”

“I—” that’s fucking embarrassing is not the most menacing thing he can shout in this situation, so he says nothing.

“The surveillance footage told me everything. My men were attacked in the infirmary by people who arrived on the same day that you did. I didn’t recognize the boy’s face until now. But it looks like they will find nothing. A marvelous deception, though, you’ve played on me. For a son of Phezzan to come to Terra to lie and cheat and steal is disappointing indeed. But there will be retribution. Your debt will be paid. And then you can return to us unburdened and cleansed of sin. You will come to light.”

After some hesitation, Boris picks up the box on the floor. “You’re deluded. And I’m leaving now.”

“I won’t stop you.”

“And you? Are you going down with the ship, so to speak?”

Another explosion shakes the building, the mountain, the very foundations of the earth. The Archbishop looks at him, unblinking, clear-eyed, fragile or the facsimile thereof. When he speaks it is without flourish, as if he is giving his last will and testament after all. “If you’re lucky, you’ll never see me again.”

“I’m…sorry?”

The other steps closer, and the façade shatters, evaporates like mist. “But are you a lucky man, Boris?” Dorian de Villiers speaks into his ear, a whisper with the barest hint of a smile. “I don’t think so.”

Everything after that happens too fast, or all too slow.

Hotteterre is the one who finds him. His own faculties return enough for the underground labyrinth to once again become navigable, and by the time they find Julian and the others, Boris already has a pretty good idea where the data room is. “Look who didn’t die,” Poplin says, with disdain that might just contain one percent of relief. “Who would’ve thought.”

They back up all the information they can find in the data room onto an optical disc, quickly and without incident. By this point he is feeling like himself again, positively buoyant at how easily they had pulled it off. Terrible information security in this joint, honestly. He’d rub it in that bastard’s face and laugh, although he’s probably dead by now. As they leave the data room Julian is explaining how he’d negotiated with Wahlen, presented themselves as innocent Phezzanese merchants just trying to get home, and Boris is positively proud of him. All that’s left to do is for them to get a good distance away from the mayhem, and then—

A shadow lunges out at them when they turn a corner. Too fast for him to think, except he doesn’t have to. Hotteterre goes down in front of him with a knife in his chest.

There is no sound. He doesn’t know what happens to the assailant. There is no sound, not for a long time, not until he can finally hear himself saying over and over, get up, get up, Napoleon Antoinne, you’ve been with me for seven years, don’t you know an order when you hear one? Get up, can’t you just, please, get up—

It’s too bright, even underground, too bright like the day of the wedding, when he had first felt the net tightening around him. When he heard the first name recognizable to him who had died in the flames of war.

Did he ever imagine that he was exempt, somehow? That the next one wouldn’t hit closer to home?

(How many more?)

Later, though not by much. They are standing outside, the wind cold on his face. The fighting and the explosions have died down. Wahlen has met with him and confirmed his story without doubting a single word. So much of the mountainside has crumbled that he doesn’t know where Hotteterre is buried, supposes no one ever will. Against all his expectations, everything he wants to feel and believe in that moment, the landscape is still beautiful.

All he has left are words. “To a religious cult, nothing’s cheaper than the lives of its followers. It’s the same with leaders and their citizens, tacticians and their soldiers. Worth getting angry over, maybe, but not being surprised about.”

Julian looks at him, stunned for a moment but then understanding, maybe sympathetic. “You’d say that Admiral Yang is different.”

“It’s fine to like Yang as a human being. I do, too. It’s only natural to respect him as a tactician as well. But the tactician leads a cursed existence. I’m sure Yang himself knows this too.”

For the first time he is overcome with the sheer breadth of just how keenly his friend must have felt that curse. He himself had nearly crumbled after the death of one man under his watch. How many thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of times has Yang known the same? How many names and faces can Yang put to the numbers, how much worse does it feel when he knows that he can’t?

What can he even say, what can he do for a man living under such a burden?

It is more than I can bear, more than I can truly understand. I do not know what I can do for you.

Or maybe: Because of that, I will do everything for you.

Or else: I can make it so that you don’t have to keep doing this. Let me take you away from this curse.

That last part must be the drugs talking. He does not feel entirely good yet, but he has not taken the pills he was given. He takes the box out now, shakes out a blister pack of translucent red capsules that catch the fading light. A malediction, prayer beads for a dead god, a handful of pomegranate seeds.

Boris throws the box away from himself as hard as he can, watches it tumble down the cliffside and spits for good measure. “The hell with all that,” he says. “We’re going home.”

August, 799 UC. The Undutiness left the Earth with one fewer aboard her than had arrived. The ship may have been home to Boris, but it would be a long and circuitous journey before the rest of her passengers could rest easy. They did not yet know how much the rest of the galaxy had already changed.

Chapter Text

“Aren’t you curious about what’s on the disc?”

“I’ll leave that to Admiral Yang’s discretion.”

It’s not that Boris wants to be a bad influence on his dear friend’s protégé. If you ask him, Julian is surrounded by questionable influences already. Poplin and Machungo might as well be the devil and angel on his shoulders, one pouring drinks and the other taking them away with equal enthusiasm. It’s up to him to be the sane man. The balanced, nuanced one who considers every side of the story.

“You have immense trust in his decisions. I get that. I would trust Yang with my life. But don’t you think you’d do him a favor by reading the disc yourself? You’ll be more prepared to discuss it with him when you get back. And if something should happen to the disc, then the information would still be safe in your head.”

Julian looks conflicted, but shakes his head. “I know you’ve braved incredible dangers to get us this far, Captain. But I’m not sure I’m equipped to interpret it anyway. It wouldn’t hurt to wait.”

For all the gentle kindness that Julian shares with Yang, they can be equally stubborn. Neither little Wen-li nor Yang the Magician can be persuaded of something against his convictions, once his heart is set. No, some things never change.

They are two days away from landing on Odin. Visiting the Empire’s capital planet had been Julian’s idea, and Boris has no objections to broadening the youth’s horizons. And besides, no one can find fault with a group of ordinary, law-abiding Phezzanese merchants wanting to travel under the protection of the Wahlen fleet after such a harrowing escape.

The greatest danger is having their cover blown, but so far all have played their parts to perfection, though Poplin is only on his best behavior because there are no women in the fleet. Wahlen himself, capable though he is, does not seem to have the slightest clue about his guests’ true identities. Boris cannot get a read on the Imperial admiral. A steadfast man, yes, one who hardly blinked after his own arm was amputated, who treated his guests with unprompted, unprejudiced generosity. Yet also a man who oversaw the deaths of countless civilians on the planet they had left behind.

Boris himself had pushed the issue a little too far. It was the memory of his drugged delirium, the knowledge that there were many—too many—like himself at Kangchenjunga who didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to be there, or wouldn’t have if only they’d known. Wahlen himself had seemed pained when questioned. “We did not trigger the explosions. I gave out explicit orders not to harm non-combatants.”

“And your men will say they only encountered combatants. How many of them were scared civilians just trying to get out? How many were drugged out of their minds? How many were your own people?”

“How many were from Phezzan, is that what you want to ask?” One of Wahlen’s officers gave him a sharp look. “You feel sympathy for Terra because it had enjoyed a special status, just like your home planet. But neither does now. No one can play-pretend that they are not part of the Empire any longer.”

To his credit, Wahlen had disciplined the man, and Boris let the matter drop. Yet there was a truth to those venomous words. He was, he is still trying to wrap his head around the knowledge that his homeland had fallen, even if he had seen it coming. Phezzan was never so simple as to be defined by its government. Good riddance to that whole lot, honestly. But the Phezzanese spirit of independence and resourcefulness, the daring to go wherever one pleased, would that slowly be lost? Or, instead of eroding over the years, would it too go up in a spectacular conflagration?

Earth had felt like a warning. He had asked Wahlen later whether his men had encountered a young clergyman of striking appearance, but no one had seen such a person. After his arguments for the people of Earth, Boris couldn’t very well say he hoped the little bastard had eaten a bullet or been crushed by a rock. But if he should encounter him again, god-who-doesn’t-exist forbid, he might just ask:

What the hell happens next, for people from the places that we are from? What could even be next? Is there a place to go from here?

“You know, Captain, there were times when I was afraid I’d never see you again.”

“That’s downright sentimental, Marinesk. You sure you want to be caught saying something so uncool?” Nonetheless, it warms Boris’s heart that his officer had thought of him.

“No, what you should say next time is, and those were the best days of my life,” Poplin adds, and the warm fuzzy feeling evaporates in an instant.

They are drinking in their hotel, a day after their arrival on Odin. The hour is late, and Julian has already dutifully gone to his room. Poplin would have liked to hit the bars and go home with some charming stranger, but Boris had talked him out of the indiscretion. Now Poplin is holding a half-empty beer bottle precariously between his index and middle fingers. “Did Julian really go to bed? A shame he didn’t join us. When I was his age, I’d just be getting started at this hour.”

“And it’s no wonder you turned out the way you did,” Machungo says with a smile.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Seriously, I’ve got to get him away from all you sticks-in-the-mud. He’ll be a real heartbreaker once I teach him right.”

“A man cannot escape his—”

“Destiny?”

“Responsibility.”

“Ah. A word I like even less.”

Boris does not point out that in spite of his bravado, Poplin had been the picture of responsibility while on Earth. Staring at the bubbles rising in his bottle, he feels more somber and abstract topics take hold. “I’d been meaning to ask you, Ensign Machungo. What do you mean by destiny? Do we each have a destiny written out for us?”

Machungo ponders a moment before answering. “It is a figure of speech. Destiny is not literal, at least not in a way that can be easily defined. If anyone tells you that they know your destiny, they are probably trying to sell you something.”

“And we’d seen plenty of that, of late. However,” Boris says. “There is a however, right?”

“However, yes. There is such a thing as destiny, but the kind known only to yourself. A calling you have, a compulsion. Something that you know you must do. A person whose life is intertwined with yours, whether it is out of responsibility or closeness or—love. Something that surpasses reason and easy explanation. That is what destiny is.”

“Heh, that’s too deep for me,” Poplin says. “Might work as a pickup line though. Maybe I should take notes…”

Boris shushes him with a wave of the hand. In spite of his distaste for the metaphysical, that is a definition of destiny he can live with. A person whose life is intertwined with yours. Even if you have seen each other only a handful of times across twenty years. Against all reason, against the random unfeeling nature of the universe. A secular little vision of fate all his own.

He does not know what compels him to say the next part. “If there is such a thing as destiny, is there also such a thing as a curse?”

A chill seems to enter the room, though perhaps it’s just the air conditioning working to offset the late summer heat. “How unlike you to ask that,” Marinesk says.

He has wondered if he hadn’t been cursed, leaving those mountains capped in eternal snow. Poor Hotteterre had never gotten a proper burial, and no one will ever know where he lies. Boris knows he is just looking for a way to blame himself. How can another person be cursed by your own failings? But then again, how many times must Yang have asked himself the same question?

“Know what I think?” Poplin says. “Curses are real. ‘Course, our Captain Konev won’t believe in the kind that witches cast on you. A real-life curse is just something you can’t shake off, no magic needed. There’s two kinds. The first kind is something you didn’t choose, like if you’re so ugly your own mother couldn’t love you, or if you were born with the name of Konev. The second kind of curse? That’s worse. It’s something you can’t help but want, or someone. Something you feel so strongly about, you don’t even want to change. And that’s no different than the destiny we were talking about, is it?”

Two sides of the same coin. He decides he doesn’t like that. “You’re one to talk,” he says, taking a drink. “Is skirt-chasing your destiny or curse? Hey, why don’t you get us a newspaper from the lobby.”

“You can’t order me around! Go get it yourself.”

“You’re nominally a member of my crew, so I sure can.”

Marinesk finally restores the peace by getting the newspaper. Boris is eager to check on the state of the world, especially as transmissions were limited during their voyage. The Empire’s attachment to print media is charming in its own way. Perhaps if Phezzan can warm up to the idea, it will be another business opportunity…

Two minutes after the newspaper is brought into the hotel suite, the entire group has fallen silent.

Yang had been apprehended by the acting government on Heinessen, then somehow escaped. “Not by his own powers, surely,” Boris says, nonchalant enough to conceal a thrill of relief. Yang—or his followers—had managed to kidnap the Imperial High Commissioner in the process, who has now turned up dead. The whereabouts of Yang himself remain unknown.

“A right Houdini, our Magician Yang,” Poplin says, whistling in appreciation. “You don’t know who that is, do you? No one ever knows. I’m a walking encyclopedia, I tell ya.”

“Who’s going to break it to Julian?” Boris finds himself scratching his head, just like his troublesome old friend. “And more importantly, where are we headed from here?”

Julian takes the news calmly, though he is too young to conceal the worry clouding his face. “Even if we do not know where to find Admiral Yang, I am sure we will have a good idea soon enough,” he says.

The group decides to spend a few more days on Odin; rushing off will only incur suspicion. “In fact,” Boris tells them, “we should try to act as carefree as possible. Do the whole tourist thing.” For himself, that means networking with contacts old and new. It is his good fortune that he can go about under his own identity. Perhaps one day the name Boris Konev will become that of a wanted criminal, but for the moment he remains two steps ahead of the law, of destiny and curses, of history herself.

Julian and Machungo quickly adapt to their roles as tourists, and the youth busies himself with learning about the seat of the Empire. Boris finds that Julian speaks of the Kaiser Reinhard with objective respect and admiration, balanced with the subjective fieriness reserved for an opponent. As for Poplin—the less Boris knows about his activities, the better.

A few days into their impromptu holiday, they return from an afternoon excursion to find Julian’s hotel room ransacked. Suitcases flung open, clothes strewn all over the place. Worse yet, the disc they retrieved from Terra is gone.

“At least they should have gone after my suite,” Boris says with pretend levity, patting Julian on the back. “Best one in the house.”

Julian’s shoulders shake slightly, but his voice does not crack. “Aren’t you going to admonish me? For not reading the disc. Aren’t you going to say I told you so?”

The thought had crossed his mind, but how can he blame the boy at a time like this? “We’re going to get it back, and then you can make your own decision about that.”

Soon they determine that the intruder had taken some cash, a wristwatch Yang had gifted Julian for his most recent birthday, and a pair of designer sunglasses Poplin had just bought for a date who never showed up. It was a case of petty theft. No one had targeted them, no one had seen through their disguise. Boris releases the breath he does now know he was holding, feels the ice in his stomach dissolve by just a little.

No one knows what you did. This is not the retribution you were promised. That day will never come.

Now there is only the practical matter of getting the disc back. To go back empty-handed after all that they’d endured and lost is unthinkable. Yang would say their safe return is good enough. But a true Phezzanese never stops at merely good enough.

The matter cannot be reported to the police in the heart of enemy territory. So Julian and Machungo hit the pavement looking for anyone suspicious, while Boris dives into the seedier side of his network with renewed fervor. People who’d helped him get past customs with undeclared goods, who traded in things of suspicious provenance, who knew when and where the shipping routes were patrolled and inspected, that sort of thing. It was always his belief that an honest merchant of Phezzan led a more morally pure life than a politician, but that wasn’t setting the bar very high…

“On the very night that I got the disc back for us, you show up like this? Do I want to know?”

“It’s not my fault the husband came back early! Bastard was in uniform, too. Terrible shot. I’ll take him out if we ever meet on the battlefield.” For someone utterly winded, ragged, and carrying his pants over his shoulder, Poplin is in undefeatable high spirits.

“Olivier,” Boris says, “are you saying it wasn’t your fault you seduced the wife of an Imperial officer?”

“Tried to seduce.”

“So you do admit to your failures.”

“Hey, you were the one who told us to relax.”

“If you pull this kind of thing on Phezzan, you won’t be half as lucky. Were you followed? No? Good. Put your pants back on.”

It is only after Poplin is properly attired that Boris calls in the rest of the group to share his triumph. He had hired a private detective for the retrieval of the disc, a disgraced former MP named Armentraut who had been dismissed as part of Reinhard’s housecleaning on Odin. Whatever else may be said about the man’s character, he had the experience to finish the job. Armentraut had donned his old uniform to get surveillance footage of the hotel, and the two burglars were soon identified and tracked down. As expected, they did not know the disc’s worth, and had returned it in a state of terror when confronted.

“That’s not exactly above board, heh,” Poplin says. “I’m not surprised, though. You really are a Phezzanese to the core.”

“Were those people harmed?” Julian wants to know.

“No, they gave up the disc under threat of arrest, not knowing my guy had no authority to arrest them. Here’s your watch, too.” Boris gives the keepsake to Julian, who takes it with bright eyes. The boy really is too kind, he thinks, not for the first time. Armentraut had roughed up the culprits before they gave up the stolen goods, but that detail he sees fit to omit.

“And my sunglasses?” Poplin asks.

“He didn’t find any damn sunglasses.”

“That you hired someone like that…” Julian thinks over how to phrase it. “I believe the Kaiser would not dismiss anyone without reason. Your detective was someone who took bribes at best, and maybe far worse than that.”

“Well, it would be nice enough to say I shouldn’t have hired him. But we can’t afford that luxury, can we? Just as a tactician cannot afford to be too kind in war. And besides, I’m someone on the sidelines. I’m not sworn to any faction, and certainly not to uphold the law and order of the Empire.”

Julian appears to accept this with some hesitation, but Poplin pipes up again. “Then there’s nothing keeping you loyal to Yang either, is there? Mister I’d-surrender-in-a-heartbeat.”

Perhaps it was a joke, but Boris’s response is anything but. “Nothing except that I want to. Take it or leave it.”

“Alright,” Poplin says, throwing up his hands. “I get it.”

“And…thank you, Captain Konev,” Julian says. “I am sure it must not have been easy or inexpensive. We would have been utterly at a loss without you.”

“See, someone understands gratitude.” Boris pats the youth on the shoulder. He will not hassle Julian any further about reading the disc. Sometimes one has to let the younger generation figure things out for themselves; he is sure Yang came to that conclusion many times too.

“You know, Captain,” Marinesk says, “I remember you’d once said no Konev has ever been a criminal or a politician in two hundred years…”

“What could you possibly mean by that, Marinesk? I’ll never be a politician.” Boris takes a pair of suspiciously familiar sunglasses out of his shirt pocket, slowly, and props them up on his hat. This is turning out to be a good night after all. It takes the rest of the group to hold Poplin back.

“It’s quiet onboard, isn’t it?”

It is three in the morning by the ship’s clock. They are nearly a week into their journey from Odin to Phezzan. Having learned that El Facil has recently declared independence, they have decided that it will be their best chance of finding Yang, and Phezzan remains the safest route to El Facil.

Boris rarely finds himself beset by insomnia, but tonight his mind is racing with all too many thoughts. The silence outside his cabin is as inviting as a cool still pool of water. It is a perfect time to prowl around the Undutiness, checking the instruments and looking out at the endless expanse of stars.

Tonight there is another restless soul sharing his wakefulness. Julian looks a little sheepish at being caught out of bed, a cup of mint tea in hand. “It’s hard to get used to. It’s much quieter than the city, even if you can hear the engines hum. And quieter than Iserlohn,” he adds.

“Missing home?” Boris asks, the two of them sitting down on the couches in the lounge area.

Julian looks hesitant to agree, so Boris quickly adds, “It’s not childish to be homesick. Hell, I missed home every day that I was on Heinessen. And the home I thought I was going back to ended up being blown into space dust.”

“Um, sorry about that.” Julian pulls an awkward face like a mischievous cat sticking its tongue out.

“Hah! It’s all good, kid. Sometimes home isn’t a specific place but a feeling, a set of circumstances. A set of people.” Because of that, the Undutiness is every bit as much his home as Beryozka had been, but he knows Julian isn’t as fortunate. Most of his own people remain innumerable lightyears away. “I miss Yang too,” he says after a while, watches the steam rise off the cup of tea.

“I wonder how he’s getting on,” Julian says. “I’m sure Lieutenant Greenhill—ah, Mrs. Greenhill-Yang will make sure he doesn’t drink too much. But if he misses my Irish stew there’s not much anyone can do. Ah…I’m sure that they’re safe, but with everything that’s happened, is Admiral Yang sleeping on time? Sometimes I still wake up at the exact time I used to set an alarm to get him out of bed. It takes three tries, usually.” His demeanor relaxes as he speaks, and there is a fond, distant look in his eyes, as if the scenes of the past are playing out before him. “I hope they remembered to take the cat before leaving, too.”

“Just like Wen-li, huh, to have other people looking after him. Thank you for taking care of him all this time. I guess he really does have a magnetic draw towards friends more responsible than himself. I don’t count myself in that number, of course,” he says, not entirely serious.

“I’d say you’re responsible, Captain Konev,” Julian says, with just enough mischief that he thinks it might be followed by a quip.

But then a momentary silence. There is something he wants to ask. Things he heard in passing, things he looked up in the short time between the wedding and setting off. “Forgive me for bringing this up, Julian. I understand that Yang lost two of his closest friends at the start of the war.”

Julian’s eyes turn briefly downwards. “Yes. Miss Jessica was a good friend to me, too.”

“I’m sorry, Julian. If I may ask, is Yang…okay? I didn’t want to mention it to him if it would open old wounds. But if he is still grieving, perhaps he’d feel better if he had someone to talk to, the next time we meet again. It may feel like a million things have happened since then, but it wasn’t all that long ago.”

“Well…it’s strange. Admiral Yang wore sunglasses the day he heard the news. But he doesn’t show his sadness easily to other people. In some ways, he’s as expressive with his emotions as a child. The ways he insults Trunicht should be recorded for posterity.” Julian smiles a little at the thought. “But not sadness. I don’t know if I have the right to analyze him, but I think there’s too much weighing on him to show it. He’s responsible for too many lives to openly mourn those closest to him.”

“Poor Wen-li,” Boris says. “He really has it too hard.” Is that not the very essence of the tactician’s curse? With a historian’s eyes, Yang Wen-li has taken on an unimaginably solemn burden, an immeasurably wide view. He will never mourn a friend—or even a lover—the way that Reinhard von Lohengramm mourned Kircheis. But neither will he be thus broken.

If you had been the one to die, even you who have known him longer than anyone else—

But no, you were never so close to him as the ones he actually lost. You know that.

Yang had never spoken about Jean-Robert Lappe or Jessica Edwards to him. Boris is sure that, had their fates been reversed, Yang would not mention him to those who survived either. The only eulogy he’d get would be a preeminently rude and ironic one from Poplin. The thought doesn’t make him resent Yang so much as want to shake him. To tell him, you are allowed to grieve, you are allowed to not be a great man, you are allowed to feel the small and personal.

But hadn’t the personal tipped the scales at Vermillion, moved the invisible dial of history? Perhaps Yang had finally said no more and chose to be selfish for one instant. Or perhaps that was just a tale he told Boris to make him feel better. In either case, knowing what he knows now, it is something he can never tell anyone. The face that stopped ten thousand ships is not a title of honor. The universe is not a better place. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Well, I’ll make sure not to die, so neither you nor Yang need to worry about me. I’m going to get a drink. You want any of the good stuff in your tea? Just a spoonful. I’ll never tell.”

“I’m good,” Julian says. “When we meet up with everyone, I’m going to tell them there’s one more thirty-year-old delinquent in their midst…”

By the time they arrive on Phezzan it is autumn. Boris admits that this is a homecoming of sorts; even though he claims his true home is aboard his ship, this is the planet that formed him. The crisp aridity of the air, the glittering city, the mirage-like vision of the space elevator in the distance are all more welcoming than he expected. It feels like much less than two years have passed since he last left this place, but an eternity at the same time.

For every familiar sight there is an unrecognizable one. His favorite bars are still open, but the café he would always visit upon landing has closed. The little apartment he maintains is still his, and the rent has actually fallen, but his housesitting friends have replaced all his plants with cacti. Old acquaintances clap him on the back and buy him a drink when they meet again, but when they open their mouths, the first thing they say is invariably a complaint about the new order of things, the Empire, the Kaiser. Did you know, Boris, that he’s planning to come here himself? He wants to move the capital here. The capital! Of the Empire! You’re lucky you weren’t here when all this was going down. What’s going to happen now?

The news of the capital moving feels like a particular affront. As little as he claims to care about politics, Boris has a deep instinctual feeling that Phezzan was never supposed to become the center of the universe. Wasn’t it a wonderful thing to thrive on the sidelines, away from all the contention and foolishness? But you could never be truly neutral, especially if you sought to gain from the situation. In this way the planet’s fate had mirrored his own. They had both wanted too much, wanted to be involved yet uninvolved, and both had been pulled in. Except Boris had been pulled in willingly, and whether he could escape unscathed was still an open question.

“This is the second time I’ve been on Phezzan,” Julian says to him while they have lunch at a sidewalk café.

“I heard you made quite the splash here,” Boris says.

“He was a pleasure to work with. No trouble at all, unlike some others I won’t name,” Marinesk remarks.

Julian looks a little shy at the compliment. “Truth be told, I was not entirely fair the last time I was here. I may have said some things in haste. I saw many people here who enriched themselves upon the bloodshed of war, and I could not keep my calm.”

“Well—that’s nothing to apologize for,” Boris says. “Phezzan engaged in profiteering in all its two hundred years of existence. It was a dirty business. I don’t claim to have been much different. But everything has changed now.”

It is too much to explain on a beautiful day like this, when everyone is in good spirits. Has he really changed? Is it more noble to commit questionable acts for personal affection than for profit, when the deeds themselves are the same?

Boris orders more coffee and wine for the table. He really is a product of his upbringing, he thinks without irony. No self-respecting merchant of Phezzan will ever refrain from wanting more, ever resign himself to believing that his heart’s desire is out of reach.

But getting there is a different matter. He will need a legitimate reason to leave Phezzan in a manner that will take him to El Facil: a good cover story, a real transport mission with obfuscating stops along the way, and then a mad dash or a long silent voyage to avoid the Imperial patrols that trawled the routes to that rogue planet. With the Kaiser’s impending arrival, security has tightened, and every step of his plan has become more difficult.

So it takes a long time, longer than he would like, for them to leave Phezzan. Boris tells Julian and the others to treat it as another extended holiday. To his credit, Poplin has no more incidents, or perhaps he just got better at covering them up.

In the meantime Boris revisits his old haunts and finds his own reputation has soared in the years that he was absent. The name of Boris Konev is something of a legend among the merchant class now. He has become the man who knows everyone, the indispensable confidante of Yang Wen-li, and a legendary escape artist to boot. The story has become distorted in the retelling. In this version of events, Boris had escaped Phezzan the night prior to occupation, Heinessen right when the Imperial fleet invaded, and Terra as it was being bombarded. If only he had tried to visit the Kaiser on Odin too, the universe might be a very different place. “I don’t know if it’s good luck or bad luck to have you here,” an old friend tells him at the bar.

Boris decides to play along. “Good luck for me,” he says, “but I’m not so sure about you. Of course, if you decide to do business with me, some of that good luck will apply to you too…”

Much as he enjoys his newfound fame and connections, he hardly wants to be seen as a harbinger of ill omen. It is just a joke, a tall tale. There is no such a thing as a curse—or at least, not the kind that can be the stuff of horror stories. The sort of curse that Poplin had prescribed for him he cannot help but keep.

When autumn begins to fade into an early winter, the detective he hired on Odin contacts him. Boris is surprised to learn that the man has arrived on Phezzan. In an apparent panic, demanding to meet with him. There is no sense in alienating a potentially useful contact, so he meets Armentraut at a diner far from any location that could be connected to his companions.

The older man had rarely been rattled in the few times Boris worked with him. He looks it now. “Listen. Those guys who stole your stuff on Odin? They’re dead now. Looked real bad. Worst thing I’ve seen in at least ten years. I felt like I was being followed for days. And it turned out I was.”

“And you came here?” Boris feels the return of that icy dread he had felt months ago. “You were being followed, and you came to me?” He stands up, but Armentraut waves for him to sit down again.

“They followed me because I was seen with you. Asked where you’d been before Odin. What you were looking for in such a hurry.”

“And you told them?”

“They threatened to expose me. For impersonating an officer—it would’ve been all over. Ruined everything. My wife, my granddaughter…”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

“I don’t know anything that could hurt you, alright? I didn’t say anything. They said I wouldn’t be implicated if I brought this message to you.”

“Who did?”

“A woman.”

That throws him for a loop. He had already envisioned a different nightmare, ice instead of flame. “Red hair?”

“Hell if I know.” Armentraut pushes a portable data drive across the table at him, stands up and turns to go. “I don’t know what you’re all mixed up in, but never contact me again.”

Boris views the drive much later, in the dark of his room, away from all prying eyes. That is just wishful thinking; every surface in Phezzan has eyes. There are only two files on the drive. The first is a video: the two thieves in a dingy room, the scene distorted by low light and static. Being questioned, being tortured. The face and voice of the inquisitor are both obscured.

Did you try to read the disc?

No! No! I swear to god!

Did you tell anyone? Show anyone?

No! Screams and sobs. Sounds he does not care to interpret.

Did you try to sell it?

Please, just let us go! Please-

The screen goes dark, although it takes longer for the sound to cut out. He gets up and paces around, feels sick, feels better. The second file on the drive is a text document, a letter:

Captain Konev:

I apologize for the necessary crudeness of this message. I speak for myself and not the one I am with. If you are still a son of Phezzan, return the item to me and we may yet have leverage against a common foe. If you wish to have nothing further to do with all this, destroy it. I will not blame you. But if you let the item in question pass before other eyes, then both you and they will become the common foe, and I cannot protect you any longer.

You recall, of course, what I said before.

You may reach me at the number below. I trust you with this knowledge. If that other one yet lives, do not let him find out.

Yours in defiance,

La Renarde

He memorizes the phone number at the end of the message and does not call it. Thinks of a different cold night on this planet, a woman who had invited him to drinks and words he did not care to understand. After a few minutes he ejects the disc drive and pries it apart with a pocketknife, disassembles it into little clattering pieces. The next day he flushes them down a public toilet.

It does not ever snow on Phezzan. The transition from autumn to winter is seamless, indefinable. The air becomes colder, drier, the sunsets more glorious in their intensity. As if the colors of the desert have willed themselves into the sky. At night a halo forms around the frigid disc of the moon. How poetic, how rare and lonesome these days, for a planet to only have one moon.

So on a night like this he wanders alone, away from any company that might attempt to assure him or probe at his thoughts. The moon watches him with an eye gentle yet severe, distant but close enough to touch. He thinks of how long it has been since he last saw Yang. How all their encounters add up to so few days, a string of pearls stretched along a vast dark expanse of time and space.

What will the future of that picture look like? What sort of face will Yang greet him with at El Facil? Is Yang safe there, can he remain safe for long when his inexplicable attachment to an ideal will surely push him into another war?

And you, Boris—in the face of all that, how can you stand before him and force him to carry the weight of your own willful curse?

He has imagined it before. How he will tell Yang, between drinks and laughter, or in some vulnerable midnight silence, that he regards him as more than a friend. But what will that accomplish, except to add to the burden that Yang is already carrying? Another distraction, a thumb on the scale of history. Another question Yang will have to answer with his stumbling yet terribly eloquent words. And a shameful thing to do to a married man on top of that.

No, he can’t bear it. Not now, not like this. Not when he has proof that people have watched him, followed him and left a trail of fear and destruction. The ungodly mess of his homeland and all her two centuries of being too clever and wanting too much. His own invincible pride that had driven him to take too many risks, talk to people he should never have talked to. Yang does not deserve to be entangled in any of that. Perhaps that curse will not follow him to El Facil. But that is a risk he cannot afford to take when he is rushing headlong into the torrents of history.

No—not when it might endanger him. And not when you think there is little chance he will ever say yes.

So he is no true son of Phezzan after all. He will not reach for the thing he wants most, even when it will soon be right in front of him. The irony of that deepens a bitter smile on his face. “That’s it, then,” Boris says. “No more. I won’t say a thing.”

The moon set in its ring of frost is his only witness. He does not know, staring at its impassive face, how long he will be able to keep his word.

December, 799 UC. The Undutiness arrived on El Facil after a journey of nearly half a year. Though Boris would not admit it, the relief he felt at finally reaching his destination was immeasurable. For the moment, it was as though the troubles of the past were behind him. Only another half-year remained before he would change his mind.

Chapter Text

“Oh, a lot happened. Enough for two novels and a movie. It was nothing, really.”

El Facil is an unremarkable little planet, and the only thing in its favor is the balmy weather in the middle of December. Had Boris been visiting on business, he would never have ventured beyond the spaceport and his hotel. But instead here he is having a cup of tea with the hero of the people, the last great hope against the Empire, or public enemy number one in the entire galaxy, depending on who you ask. The tea has brandy in it this time.

“Julian says you got everyone out of no shortage of trouble.” Yang regards him across the table with a familiar, fond sheepishness. He has missed it more than he realized. “I really can’t thank you enough. For the intel you’ve brought us, too.”

“It was the least I could do. For a moment I thought you were going to say something uncool like, the most valuable thing you brought is yourself, safe and sound.”

“But you just said it, didn’t you?”

They laugh, and for a heartbeat it feels like the inside of this room is the only thing that hasn’t changed in the universe. Six months have transported them across countless lightyears, redrawn the map of the galaxy, planted the seeds of new hopes and newer fears. But as long as he can return to this point—a cup of tea with Yang, the conspiratorial warmth between old friends—then they can remain impervious to the world. He knows that is an illusion, holds fast to it for as long as he can.

“I heard that you were nearly caught by the Black Lancers, just a few days from here,” Yang says.

“That was the closest call I’ve had in my life,” Boris says. “Damn that Bittenfeld...I just know he’ll live long and prosper, too.”

“At least you didn’t have to outrun the Gale Wolf.”

“Hey, give me some credit. I’ve become the greatest escape artist in the universe, didn’t you hear. And as for you, Yang? If I’d known the trouble you got yourself into, my hair would’ve turned white.”

“Ah…they just can’t let a man retire in peace.” Yang scratches his head ruefully.

If only you’d known the trouble I got myself into, too—that much Boris will not say. With everything on his plate already, it feels unfair to trouble Yang with the horrors he had encountered on his journey. And besides, Terra is a thing of the past. The former rulers of Phezzan might still try to manipulate him, but he will do his damnedest to keep their tentacles away from Yang. With all his improbable maneuvers on the way to El Facil, even if anyone had been tailing him, they would have lost his scent long ago.

There are many other things he wants to ask Yang, now that they are together again. What is it like for you, really? What do you want at the end of all this? What does it feel like, now that you are as stateless as I am—or will you claim that it matters little, because you belong to an idea? Do you miss your old friends, did you miss me?

He does not know how to begin. The future is long, he supposes. “So, what’s next? For you, for El Facil, for everything.”

“Well…” the shift in Yang’s expression is subtle as he focuses on something greater, distant yet concrete. “We will need to retake Iserlohn to have any chance of success. To force Lohengramm to the table to negotiate, or even take him down in a decisive victory.”

Boris whistles. “Think you can make lightning strike twice?”

“There were preparations put in place long ago. I just hoped this day wouldn’t come so soon.”

“Heh, I wouldn’t put it past you, Wen-li. But seriously. Stop and think for a moment here, okay?” Boris finds himself growing animated with the scandal of what he is about to say. “Why are you telling me this? I mean, this is top-top-top secret information, right? I don’t have clearance for shit. I’m not even affiliated with your fleet. How do you know I haven’t changed since we were kids? Maybe I’d sell you out for the right price.”

He doesn’t mean it in seriousness, but something about putting these notions to the test thrills him. Putting Yang on the spot, and then anticipating that moment when he says, of course I trust you, because you’re you.

Yang appears unwilling to give him the full satisfaction. “Well, I’d say you proved yourself well enough, getting Julian back from Terra.”

“But how did you know to trust me with even that much?”

“I didn’t,” Yang says, with an infuriating note of mischief. “But I figured that even if you had chosen to be undutiful, Julian would have taken care of it.”

“Oh, come on! He’d take me out? Is that what you’re saying?”

“You’re the one who started indulging in speculation first.” Yang gives him a lazy smile matching that of the contented cat—which someone had remembered to bring from Heinessen after all. “Now, if you’ve had enough of that, there is something you could help me with…”

Yang had ended up asking him for help securing financial support from Phezzan for the El Facil revolutionary government. Boris thought it a bad idea for Yang to owe Phezzan anything, but his friend seemed to know what he was getting into. At any rate, he would be borrowing from Boris’s merchant contacts, who were far more trustworthy than the government of Phezzan had been.

In the space of a few minutes, Boris had contested every one of Yang’s ideas: the plan itself, the necessity of going up against the Kaiser, and whether Julian should be more rebellious if he was to ever surpass his teacher. Even if he was trying Yang’s patience, Yang listened to his contentious remarks, aware of the value of a second opinion. That had made Boris feel useful, oddly satisfied even though he went along with Yang’s plans anyway.

By now it is the end of the year. The headquarters on El Facil have become a frenzy of activity in preparation for the retaking of Iserlohn. Julian will be part of the assault unit, the thought of which worries Boris to no end. He knows Yang has endured that worry and fear many times himself, sending Julian out on various missions. And really, how had he managed to trust Boris with him?

“Hey, I don’t see you worrying about me,” Poplin says to him. Poplin himself will be an indispensable part of the plan, and it is the day before he is to set off.

“You’ve got nine lives, don’t you?” Boris retorts. “It’s a shame you won’t be on-world during the New Year. We’ll drink up the best champagne without you.”

“And whatever liquor I find on Iserlohn will taste twice as sweet when I don’t have to see your face. Hey, want to give me something for luck? Most of my girlfriends have given me a token already.”

“There are at least three things wrong with what you’ve just said.”

“At least give me back my damn sunglasses, you cheap bastard.”

“Why would I give you my sunglasses?”

“I bought them for a girl! They won’t look good on you!”

“I’ll have you know they look great on me.” Some insane flux of sentimentality makes him say the next part. “So you’d better live to come back, huh? I’d feel like an idiot holding onto them for you forever.”

Poplin looks surprised, then gives him an all-too-practiced wink. “That touches my heart,” he says, and it would be almost sweet if not for the facetious tone. Boris thumps him on the back as hard as he can and tells him to get out.

Then it is night, and he is having a drink at the nearest bar which, in characteristic slapdash El Facil fashion, has been doubling as a makeshift officer’s club. He thinks that Yang might show up, but Walter von Schönkopf is the first to arrive instead. Schönkopf orders his drink and sits down next to Boris at the otherwise empty bar. Why, I didn’t know we were such good friends, Boris wants to quip, but decides not to try it on someone who can throw him across the room with one hand.

“You’re Yang’s friend,” Schönkopf says.

“I’ve been called that, yes.”

Schönkopf studies him with a look that—would he call it amused? Confident, certainly. With an air of superiority that, as rumor has it, has oft been proven in love as well as war. “He collects odd cases, doesn’t he? From every corner of the universe.”

Boris understands what he means; Schönkopf is an Imperial defector, while he himself is as Phezzan as it gets. And Mrs. Greenhill-Yang is from this very planet they stand on. “Wen-li is democratic about who he associates with,” he says. “You wouldn’t see Reinhard von Lohengramm hiring from outside the Empire, as magnanimous as he claims to be.”

Schönkopf’s handsome brow furrows, and Boris imagines a split-second of jealousy that he and Yang are on a given-name basis. “Not quite true. He tried to recruit Yang, did you know that?”

“I imagine our friend refused with every fiber of his being.”

“Of course he did. You’ve known him for long enough—is there a way to convince Yang to do something? Say, something he’s cut out for, but is reluctant about doing?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Boris says. “When he was small enough, you could just drag him by the hand. I doubt that’s the answer you’re looking for.”

Schönkopf appears to imagine himself dragging Yang by the hand, about which Boris does not comment. “Back during the coup I’d told him something, and I still stand by it. No one else is such a pile of contradictions. No one else was so suited for taking power, at that moment, yet less willing to do so.”

“Dictator Yang? If we’d known each other back then, maybe we could have put our heads together and convinced him. But I’d rather he quit everything and go into business with me. I’d get him a new identity and everything. That would be the life for him. An easier sell too, I think.”

“Hah! Don’t kid yourself. Yang would never consider it, and even if he did? He’d lose every penny he had, and yours too.”

“Agree to disagree,” Boris says. They clink their glasses and drink. “At any rate, it’s too late now. El Facil and those fools on Heinessen did drag him into this, whether he likes it or not.”

“Then he’ll be glad he has us to see it through,” Schönkopf says. “And you’d better not do anything less than your best, either.”

“What, you don’t trust the foreigner? Maybe you’re projecting a little.” Boris realizes he has drank too much and is in danger of talking himself into a fight. But Schönkopf does not take it as a provocation.

“Yang is one of the few people who did not see the Rosen-Ritter as some Imperial menace one heartbeat away from defection. I’ll always owe him for that. I’m sure you have a similar story.”

“It was…easier than I imagined,” he admits. Supposes that he has it much easier than Schönkopf after all. Unlike the other man, he has not sworn off his birthplace, can return any time he likes. Has not been adopted then rejected by another country and rejected it in turn. Schönkopf has nothing compelling his loyalty in this universe except for Yang, and because of that he cannot leave even if he wants to, cannot ever want to. Boris has more options available to himself, more ambiguity. Does that make him the lucky one?

“Let’s drink to Yang Wen-li,” he says. And on that Schönkopf agrees.

The New Year passes quietly on El Facil. Boris is busy sending encoded communications to his contacts on Phezzan on Yang’s behalf, and Yang is equally busy with the scheme to take Iserlohn. It is with relief that Boris realizes Yang will never emulate Lohengramm and go to the front lines unless there is a real need to do so. When the clock strikes midnight, they raise their glasses of champagne at a party smaller than he would have liked. In the darkness of the plaza, lit by intermittent fireworks, he turns away as Frederica Greenhill-Yang throws her arms around her husband. Tries to see the stars between the slow explosions in the night sky, finds nothing but the trailing blooms of the fireworks, fading until only afterimages are burned onto his eyes.

He'll go to Phezzan, he says. That might be better. Except: Yang wants him to stay here, at least until Iserlohn is a sure thing. A miraculous victory will lend weight to his in-person negotiations. So he stays, and is glad about it, is unsure whether he should be glad about anything at all.

They have tea sometimes, talk about the past or future but not the present. Boris doesn’t bring up the topics he had not been able to broach before. The future is long. He thinks of the promise he made to himself, under the winter moon on Phezzan. The future is very long.

When the news of the successful capture of Iserlohn Fortress reaches El Facil, the planet is lit by fireworks for the second time in two weeks, louder and brighter than the ones on New Year’s Eve. The celebration shakes him out of a stupor he did not know he was feeling. This time, at the party, he is close enough to seize Yang by the hands. “Wen-li! You really did it. I guess there is something to the name of Miracle Yang, after all.”

Yang looks a little embarrassed. “If even you’re going to start calling me that…”

“I kid, I kid. I hear Julian and the others are safe, too. That’s really great.”

“Yeah.” The illuminated night, reflected in Yang’s eyes, is a touch softer than its original image. “You’ll accompany us to Iserlohn, of course? It’ll impress your friends on Phezzan all the more if you can describe what it looks like.”

“What a terribly businesslike invitation, my friend. You sure it’s not my influence getting to you?”

“Business aside, we’d love to have you as a guest too.” Yang smiles at him and slips into the crowd, a sea of congratulations that engulfs his rather unwilling silhouette. Boris knows better than to pull him back.

On January 22, Boris sets foot on Iserlohn for the first time. The fortress is an impressive piece of engineering and a decent attempt at interstellar city-building. Boris finds that he likes it better than half the planets he has been on. Being on Iserlohn isn’t exactly like standing on solid ground, and that offers a peculiar sense of comfort for someone used to the shipbound life.

There is a flurry of joyous reunions, but the mood is dampened by the news of the deaths of Alexandre Bewcock and João Lebello. Once again, Boris does not see Yang in his most private moments of grief, does not know what he could have offered if he did. A few days later Yang emerges in high spirits again, a bandage around his hand. He doesn’t ask. The image of bookish little Wen-li punching a wall until he bled is too absurd to consider.

Then things settle into a more normal pace, if still slightly surreal. Boris realizes he is truly at the forefront of the war now. There is a giddiness in the atmosphere because of their victory but also the precariousness of their position, the recency of loss. He has a mind to ask Poplin or Schönkopf how they dealt with living like that, every day of their lives. He doesn’t think he can ask Yang.

On a slow afternoon, Yang calls him to his office, and not for casual conversation. Yang’s inner circle is in the room: Frederica, Julian, Schönkopf and the rest. Poplin and Machungo, being those who had been on Earth with him, are also present. Boris himself is the only one who has never held military rank or pledged his loyalty to either the former Alliance or the Yang Fleet. On the table is the disc he brought back from Kangchenjunga.

“You sure you want me to be here for this?” Boris asks.

“If not for you, there wouldn’t be anything to examine,” Yang says. “It’s only fair, don’t you think?”

He has no argument, and it looks like no one aside from Poplin is miffed about his special treatment, so they proceed. They pop the disc into a computer and crowd around the screen rather non-ergonomically. At first the findings, which he had risked life and limb to bring back from Earth, hardly surprise him. The financial dealings of the Church of Terra are vastly underreported, but in his mind no religious organization has ever been transparent about its finances anyway. Then there is some nonsense about mycelial bioremediation that makes his eyes glaze over. Even a nefarious organization might have some gardening side project, he supposes. There are records of thyoxine manufacture and trafficking, which, though incriminating, is nothing they did not know before.

There is also a file, made with conscientious detail by some novice historian who would probably regret their choices if they knew, of the relationship between Phezzan and Terra. Boris blinks several times before it sinks in. The alliance is deep and mutual, and has existed for as long as Phezzan has been a political entity.

Poplin’s voice breaks the silence. “Have something you want to tell us, Captain? Your home planet and that lot of fanatics are two sides of the same coin.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he says. Indignant, but the gears in his head are turning. The two sides did seem to know too much about each other’s dealings; now he understands that both Saint-Pierre and De Villiers had hinted at such. “If I had been working for the Church, why would I hand over this information? You would never have made it off the planet.”

“Why, you little—"

Yang looks up, confounded by the verbal sparring erupting in his office. “Boris. No one here would think seriously of accusing you.”

“I know. I got carried away.” The split-second of eye contact is enough to convince him that Yang’s trust hasn’t faltered. Or that is just another story he is telling himself.

Earn it. Come back and be someone worth it for him to talk to.

“Send me to Phezzan,” he says. “I still need to do what you asked there. And I’ll see if I can dig up any dirt on Rubinsky while I’m at it.”

It is easy as that, to pledge himself wholly to what he still sees as a relatively hopeless cause. The greater the odds, the better the victory—that sounds like something he’d said himself, long ago. The greater the thrill. One irrational emotion is almost substitute enough for another.

And yet you did not mention the red fox of Phezzan, when all would have listened. Why is that?

In truth, the Phezzan-Terra connection makes more sense the more he thinks about it. His distaste for religion aside, it is simply good business for two planets on the fringe, disenfranchised and without military strength, to join forces and influence things from the sidelines. Not that he agrees with any of their methods. But better to be free and reviled than to bend under the iron fist of the Empire, right? And if anyone runs afoul of you in the process, well, any self-respecting Phezzanese would say that’s just collateral.

The very bones of what you are where you came from, Boris.

How different his life would have been if he hadn’t met Yang first.

How fortunate he is now, he supposes.

Everyone else has left the office, but Yang has called him back after a few minutes. As if relieved to no longer be the center of attention, Yang lets out a long breath, shuts his laptop, and immediately stretches out on the couch. Boris is not sure whether to join him, ends up taking a chair instead. The sudden quiet of the room, the comfortable calm, the closed door, Yang’s languid smile at him—everything combines to strike a useless pang into his heart.

“I don’t need to tell you, but be careful,” Yang says. “Helping with my initial request will be good enough. We don’t know where Rubinsky is or what resources he has at his disposal. It would be reckless for you to play detective.”

“I know that,” Boris says. “Maybe he isn’t doing anything. Maybe he holds no power any longer.” The number that Dominique Saint-Pierre left him burns in his memory like a lit cigarette.

“But one can never assume. Just as you did not assume the leadership of the Church was wiped out.”

“I guess.” He wonders how much Yang has guessed of his experiences on Terra, how haunted he might have looked. No, he cannot add to the already astronomical number of things Yang has to worry about. “I’ll come back in one piece, Wen-li. You have my word. Whether or not I look trustworthy, a contract is sacred, right? And I can handle myself better than you in a fight, if it comes to that.”

“That’s…” Yang smiles up at him. “That’s really not saying much. You’re not a killer, Boris. Don’t get yourself in a situation where you might need to be one.”

He has never considered it. The thought feels like a shock of ice water. Under Kangchenjunga he had been prepared to shoot his way out, but if he’d actually killed anyone, would he have come back the same man? And yet the man in front of him has made that decision countless times. Boris feels something between absurdity and pity for Yang, none of it enough to drown out a painful twinge of affection. How did he ever think he could take Yang away from this curse, before he realized he carried one of his own?

He stands up, sits back down. Thinks of the eye of the winter moon, passing judgment on him from half a galaxy away. You told yourself what you would not do. What you would not say to him. Your word is your bond.

Is it?

Yang is watching him with a perplexed look. “If you have somewhere to be, I won’t keep you.”

“No.” He stands up again. Now Yang has stood up too, looks at him with concern. Oh god-who-doesn’t-exist, what is he doing? What has he been doing all the past month? “Don’t worry about me, Wen-li, nothing’s going to happen. But what about you? When are you going to challenge Lohengramm?” Boris is running his mouth now, giving voice to all his anxieties except the one he cannot name.

“He’ll come to the Iserlohn Corridor sooner or later. Within the next few months, I would say.”

“Do you really think you can win? Who knows where in the galaxy I’ll be when that happens.”

“I will never engage in a battle without a path to victory. After all, one has to be alive to enjoy a good cup of tea. And I’d prefer for you to not be in the crossfire, so you shouldn’t try to hurry back for my sake.”

Boris knows that is meant in kindness, but it stings a little. “And if you win? You negotiate, and end up the governor of some autonomous zone, and work hard all your life. Or you kill Lohengramm and try to make the dead flames of democracy spark back to life. I don’t even want to imagine what your days will be like then.” He is talking too fast, the slight furrow on Yang’s brow deepening, but it is too late to stop himself. “When will you stop doing what you think you should, Wen-li? What you think you owe other people? You never even talk about your wife. Did you marry her out of nothing more than gratitude and obligation too?”

Yang looks like he has just been slapped in the face. “Frederica is home to me. What would you know about that, Boris?” His words are soft, with no anger behind them, which makes it worse. Makes it sound true.

Boris takes a sharp breath, an involuntary step back. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice half-strangled, unfamiliar to his own ears. “I didn’t mean it.”

“I won’t hold it against you.”

Yang does not meet his eyes, and Boris cannot find it in himself to say anything to bring his gaze back. “I’m sorry,” he says again, quieter. Puts on his hat and leaves the room.

He is packing up his things with furious energy. Well, he’s done it this time. He’s fucked it up. He’ll never be able to show his face in front of Yang again. No, he will, that’s the thing—in a few months’ time, when he has carried out his mission and the dust has settled and whatever. They’ll shake on it, talk like old friends. But Yang will always know that small and ugly side of him now, that single freeze-frame. Maybe in twenty years he’ll forget. Maybe he should take a longer trip, not come back until he’s an old man. He is being absurd. He needs someone to slap him and tell him he is being absurd. He—

“You’d better not be another Konev who leaves and doesn’t come back.”

Boris looks up to see Poplin standing in the doorframe. “Great,” he says. “One more insult before I go.” But for some reason he is smiling. It is a relief to see Poplin and take his mind off other matters.

“It’s not an insult. Whatever you end up doing, whatever you are—I’d like to see you again.” The way Poplin says it without the faintest hint of flippancy shocks him in its plainness. Its rawness. Jolts his memory to that time on the mountainside, his hand around Poplin’s wrist, an unmitigated longing in the other’s eyes. He hadn’t hallucinated it after all.

But it’s all wrong. Under other circumstances he might have been pleased. Now, though? It’s just another wrinkle, another complication. Another thing he fucked up just by virtue of letting it happen.

The moment goes on a little too long. “Thank you,” he says. “I’d better go.”

For all the dramatics that preceded it, Boris’s trip to Phezzan is among the least eventful in his life. His financial work for Yang goes reasonably well, though for every contact he convinces to support El Facil, another asks him why he’s wasting his talent on a revolution sure to fail. Yet he sees enough to convince himself that the spirit of defiance against Imperial rule will never die.

He looks over his shoulder often, sees shadows out of the corner of his eye. But nothing concrete, no trace of the black fox or the red. The presence of Lohengramm’s admiralty has changed the atmosphere on Phezzan. Perhaps under that scouring light all shadows have fled. Perhaps no one is looking for him, and there is no longer anything for him to find.

Boris turns the number over in his mind and does not call it. Feels a dizziness like standing on the edge of a precipice, hand on a door that can never be shut again.

Not yet, he tells himself. Maybe not ever, if he is lucky. (But are you a lucky man, Boris?)

Late winter dissolves into spring, and there is talk of a campaign against Iserlohn soon. Before that happens he has to go back. To report on his work, to finalize the contracts he has secured. Some mundane reason like that. He has to go back. To take one more look through the Corridor before it is torn asunder by a storm of fire. To make sure he hasn’t ruined everything. Before everything changes again, regardless of what he did or didn’t do. He has to go back.

“You’re taking this assignment from Yang pretty seriously, Captain,” Marinesk tells him, once they have set off with uncharacteristic haste.

“Whatever you’re thinking of saying next, don’t say it.”

“I was just going to offer you coffee,” Marinesk says with a mild yet knowing look. “That’s a no, then? Oh, it must be good to be young…”

“What does that mean? I’m only four years younger than you!”

In spite a million reasons to the contrary, Iserlohn Fortress is a welcome sight when it finally appears in view. Boris realizes he has missed the place, the company of not only Yang but everyone else there he has met over the course of the last year. It is unlike him to be so sentimental. He does not question it too deeply.

It is mid-April by the time he sets foot on Iserlohn again. The once-faded memory of the harsh words between himself and Yang returns to set his heart pounding. Surely Yang has forgiven and forgotten. Surely they are both better than that.

After disembarking, he goes directly to Yang’s office. Yang is not in his office, which makes his nerves even worse. “It’s anyone’s guess where he is,” Julian tells him. “Though if it were me, I’d look for him on a park bench. It’s a nice afternoon.”

Which park bench, and where the hell one might find a park inside the artificial confines of Iserlohn, are questions he has no time to consider. With a mix of trial and error and the navigational ability he has always thought of as a sixth sense, Boris finds his way into the public park set in the heart of the floating city. The dome overhead is an acceptable facsimile of a blue sky, the artificial sunlight pleasant and warm. Evocative of spring. There are white blossoms on the trees, clovers peeking out through the grass. There is, finally, a park bench.

Yang Wen-li has stretched himself over the bench like a very large and graceless cat. A book clutched loosely at his chest, sleeping without a care in the world. Boris stands and stares until a small flower makes its lazy descent from the branches above, meanders through the honeyed air until it finally lands in Yang’s hair.

He sits down. There is just room enough on the bench next to Yang for him to sit. There are no thoughts in his head, not even an awareness of the absence of thoughts. His anxious heartbeat has slowed. Carefully, driven as much by idle whim as the inexorable gravitational force of the universe, he picks the flower away. Fingers lingering on Yang’s hair, enmeshed in a soft warmth he has never dared imagine.

Yang’s hand rises and settles on his own.

“…Are you awake?”

“I am now.”

That did it. It’s all over. He’s dead. He does not know who he is. Yang looks up at him, blinking away sleep. “I’m glad you’ve made it back, Boris.”

“I…yeah.” Good god, god-who-might-exist-just-to-torment-him, what does he think he is doing? Belatedly he realizes Yang’s hand is still on top of his own. His hand is still buried too far in Yang’s messy hair to be there by accident. “I’m sorry! About this. About before. I have some papers you need to sign before the loans can be finalized. It went great. Yep. No problems there.” He extricates his hand, trying to make it look casual the whole time, rubs his eyes to avoid meeting Yang’s gaze.

“Boris.” He hears Yang getting up, can feel Yang looking at him. “I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you properly before. For everything you’d done for me, everything I did and didn’t know about. It seems, ah…there was a lot I didn’t know about, wasn’t there?”

He uncovers his eyes to see Yang sheepishly picking up his beret from the grass. The embarrassment on his dear friend’s face might just be the mirror image of his own. “Wen-li, I’m serious, I didn’t mean anything by it. I don’t want you to think that—”

“I, well.” Now Yang is twirling his beret on the end of one finger, which he knows is a nervous tic. “It won’t be safe in the Corridor for much longer.”

“I should leave. I know.”

“But when you come back…” Yang looks away for a moment, smile half rueful and all sincere. “We’ll have a lot to talk about, won’t we?”

Boris starts to speak, but Yang holds up a hand to cut him off, which is a good thing because he doesn’t know what he would have said next. “I can’t promise you anything,” Yang says. “It seems I’ll have a lot to think about. But I will consider what you’ve told me, and we’ll talk when we meet again. Over the finest liquor on Iserlohn,” he adds, with just a hint of that old mischief.

“But I haven’t told you anything?”

“Not…how should I say this? Not with your words.”

What can he do to preserve this moment, this small sunlit silence that might dissolve with the lightest breath? He fights the instinct to flee, to say something idiotic, to embrace Yang right here in view of all and sundry. “Julian has the paperwork in your office,” he says, which is probably only the third-worst option in this situation.

Yang nods, their awkwardness appearing to infect each other back and forth a thousandfold. “Right.”

A kiss for luck? Can he ever bring himself to say something like that? A breeze rustles the leaves overhead, runs through his hair. Remarkable, how Iserlohn has even reproduced the exact sensation of a spring breeze. In this day and age anything really is possible.

“Take care, Wen-li,” Boris finally says. “Keep yourself safe. And win.”

Some dreams linger even after you have woken. Some dreams are enough to keep you afloat for days, weeks on end.

On the precipice between spring and summer, the Battle of the Corridor breaks out. Boris is nowhere near the action when it begins, spending his days crisscrossing former Alliance territory to gather more information and support for Yang. By now even Marinesk calls him “the most dedicated member of the Yang fleet to never be decorated”. But it’s different when you’re doing it for yourself, he argues back. It isn’t duty. Just compulsion.

Trying to get any news of the battle through the chaos, rumors, and deliberately jammed communications is a nightmare. He feels familiar fears return, reminds himself that Yang Wen-li has never fought a losing battle. For all the grandeur and terror with which this battle is already being spoken, perhaps it will pass as easily as the retaking of Iserlohn, or turn out as anticlimactic as his own “dangerous” trip to Phezzan. He tells himself these things and does not believe them.

We’ll talk when you get back.

You told him too much already—you who had promised to tell him nothing. But how did you think there was anything you could hide from your oldest and most discerning friend?

He expects nothing of their reunion. Dares to expect nothing except that Yang is alive and well. That is what he should say. He rehearses it countless times, revises the script in his head until he thinks he can be an advice columnist.

News of a ceasefire in the Corridor finally comes near the end of May. The Imperial fleet has withdrawn. There will be talks. Yang has survived. No news about anyone else yet, but Boris wills himself to believe that Yang has protected them. With a nearly surreal sense of relief—almost a sin, for wanting to celebrate too early—he sets the course of the Undutiness toward the Iserlohn Corridor once more.

On what should have been an uneventful day, he stops at a depot he has frequented many times for supplies and fuel. It’s a place that doesn’t check the legality of their customers’ doings, which is how he likes it. The mechanic he knows isn’t there, which is a shame; he had been looking forward to trading gossip with her. But nothing stops his loquacious nature, and soon he is talking with the new guy at the counter like an old friend.

Hey, any news about the peace talks?

Not really, but the craziest thing happened the other day. This guy comes in here, right—

Boris hears the rest of the story with a stony expression. When he tries to pay for the fuel his hands are shaking. When the credits do not go through—network error, the new guy says, apologetic—he slams down cash on the counter probably twice the amount he owes. Makes for the door without an explanation, without another word.

“Captain—” Marinesk begins when he boards, and he doesn’t even turn to look at him.

“Iserlohn. Full speed. Now.”

Andrew Fork has escaped. That is a name that, under normal circumstances, he would never have had to learn. A grasping, jealous young man whose poor judgment had, in all likelihood, cost the Alliance its future. A narcissist who blames Yang for all his failures professional and personal. It is almost laughable, if not for his known willingness to kill. And he has only one target now.

Boris would have dismissed it as a rumor if the story had ended there. But the worker at the depot had seen a man of Fork’s description come in a few days ago to supply his ship. A merchant ship equipped with illegal weaponry, probably stolen or bought on the black market. Inoperable by one person, but the man—haunted though he looked—appeared to have hired a ragtag crew. I’m going to kill him, the man had said with a grin that made the depot worker too afraid to deny his requests. I’m going to kill him for real this time, and then my troubles will be at an end.

He could be anywhere in the Corridor by now. Yang could be anywhere. The implications of that are too much for Boris to even imagine. He pushes the Undutiness to the limits of her engines, consumes a steady diet of bad coffee long after it has gone cold. Hours feel like days, and days feel like years. He asks Marinesk and his astrogator Wilock incessantly whether they are within communication range of Iserlohn. And when the answer is finally yes he wastes no time in making the call.

“Is Yang still alive? I need to see him right now!”

The face that greets him on the screen first is Poplin, and the knowledge that he had survived the previous battle is a relief, but a small one. “You’ve never been much of a comedian, but this material’s your worst yet,” Poplin says. The gravity of the situation shuts him up soon enough.

What Yang’s compatriots tell him offers little reassurance. Yang has already set off on the Leda II to meet with the Kaiser. Iserlohn will send a small fleet after him at once for his protection. As for Boris himself, given his location and the uncertain legality of his presence, it is better for him to return to Iserlohn than to chase after Yang.

He accepts this grudgingly. Boris ends the call with Iserlohn, stares out into the impassive darkness of the Corridor for a long minute. “Send out a communication in the direction that Yang is headed,” he finally says.

“Captain, I have to advise against it,” Wilock tells him. “The estimated distance is too long for a reliable connection without established FTL. With the cosmic topography inherent to the Corridor, plus the signal-jamming devices strewn here during the battle, there’s no telling if any message will get through.”

“So you’re saying it’s not impossible.”

“Yes, but any Imperial patrols remaining might pick it up. We’ll be right screwed then.”

“There’s been a ceasefire, hasn’t there?”

“There may be peace between the Kaiser and Iserlohn, but we aren’t part of that equation. For all the Empire knows, an unaffiliated ship showing up right now is a space pirate, a criminal who’s been running the blockades. We’ve been radio silent in the Corridor for a good reason.”

“Then let them come. Send the message.”

He holds his breath until it hurts. Thinks of the futility of this act, a stone thrown into the void, a name written in the snow. But he has to try. He has to try.

A few minutes later, Wilock’s eyes light up, incredulous yet pleased. “Contact established.”

Yang’s face, when it shows up through the static on the screen, is unguarded, half-awake, vulnerable in a way that leaves Boris stricken. The days of battle have clearly worn on him, but the surprise at seeing his old friend—the unpremeditated joy of it—is real. “Boris. It must be important, huh?”

“Wen-li! Listen to what I say carefully. Andrew Fork is coming to kill you. He’ll be on a modified merchant vessel, an ugly bastard of a ship. Kind of this blue-green color, same size as the Undutiness. Do not let him near you. Help is coming. Do you understand?” The distortion on the call is so severe that he is afraid his words won’t be heard. But Yang nods.

“Thank you…Boris…if you…” words almost unintelligible through static now.

“Get some rest, you hear me?”

Yang makes an awkward face at him, half playful, half self-conscious. The signal cuts out entirely. Boris exhales and puts his face in his hands. His message has gotten through. The rest is in the hands of a god he doesn’t believe in.

Much later. They are a few hours away from Iserlohn. Marinesk has made him take a fifteen-minute nap in a tankbed. The universe around them is unbearably still and quiet. His own heartbeat unbearably loud.

One of the screens on the bridge lights up. A transmission is coming in.

A shiver runs through his body as he gets up to answer it. Except it isn’t a call he has been anticipating, hoping for, or even dreading. It is from some origin he does not recognize at all.

There is no distortion, no static. The signal is crystal-clear, as if it is coming from someplace very close. Something unknowable passing him silently, cloaked in the dark.

The image is simply that of an empty room, lit too bright. No movement, no human figures, no sound. “Hello?” Boris says, stomach suddenly clenched in knots. “This isn’t funny. Identify yourself.”

The image on the screen cuts out, but the call has not ended. On a backdrop of pure black, a blinking cursor. Two words.

Well done.

Boris lets out a strangled noise, somewhere between a scream and a laugh. The wrongness of what he has just seen sends a crawling sickness down his spine. The transmission has ended. “Trace it,” he says to Wilock.

“I can’t—”

“Call Yang! Call Yang right now!”

“I can’t! We’re out of range!”

“Is there even anything you can do?” A pause, the shock on the face of his longtime friend and employee like a blow to the stomach. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Call Iserlohn. No, scratch that. Don’t call them…oh, god.”

He sinks down in his chair. Now Marinesk is behind him, hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Let’s just get to Iserlohn as fast as we can.”

Time becomes terribly slow, after that.

There will be retribution.

Everything he has tried to forget. Everything that he has never told a soul. What if he has played right into their hands? What if it isn’t about Fork, but someone else? It had been too neat. He should have seen through it. The depot that he is known to frequent. The person he usually talks to there gone, replaced by someone who told him a convenient story to set off all his alarms.

What if it is already too late?

Your debt will be paid.

For the sin of knowing. For the sin of not knowing. For betraying his homeland without even realizing it. The hell with that whole idea, right? Yang had said there was nothing so useless as faith in one’s nation. But also: he has been a son of Phezzan all along. If he hadn’t met Yang he would be drinking to the Empire and Alliance digging each other’s graves. The knowledge that he is Phezzanese to the core still brings him more joy than discomfort. He had almost wept at the scenery on Earth. He had made his promise to his planet’s moon in winter, like the only prayer he would ever speak.

Yang had said, Frederica is my home. And he, rootless by choice, stateless by a technicality, had wanted to retort: my home is wherever you are.

How was he ever so arrogant as to presume? It was never up to him, what his home was. What he was. That would never change, even with a thousand planets left behind, a hundred loves dead and forgotten. How absurd to think that his very self, his soul and his blood, could belong to something so small and breakable as another human being.

(You were always one step away from coming home, to your real home.

But because you would never take that step—someone had to make you do it, didn’t they?)

You will come to light.

He doesn’t know what kind of face he is wearing when he finally arrives on Iserlohn. It is terribly quiet. There are shouts and the sound of running footsteps, but it is quiet, so quiet as if he has been encased in glass, shut out from this world forever. Everyone is staring at him, and from their faces he already knows. He realizes that his vision has blurred with tears. That he is saying, please, please don’t tell me.

Please don’t tell me that it was my fault.

He has to bite down on his lip to not say that part. His hat falls off and he realizes he has fallen to his knees in some featureless hallway. The lights overhead are a bright impassive white. He stares and stares at the trail of blood on the floor—small, halting, not quite dried—as if pleading with his friend and only love to give him one more word.

June 1, 800 UC. The magician did not return.

A few hours later. A few days later. It’s funny how irrelevant the passage of time has become. It isn’t funny at all.

The Undutiness remains docked on Iserlohn. Boris has been sleeping on his ship, when he is able to sleep. The doors of Iserlohn remain open to him, he knows that. His quarters there are waiting for him, his neat little room, his neat little bed. He cannot bear to go near it. They had offered words of sympathy, touched him on the arm, looked at him or looked away. Julian, Cazerne, Attenborough, Schönkopf, all the rest. Only Poplin is worse off than he is, or so he hears, and Boris is in no state to check on him. Everyone else had tried in some way to assuage his grief as a distraction from their own. None of them know, none of them have made the connection to what he had done.

If I hadn’t sent the message to Yang. If I hadn’t told him that Fork was the one he should be worried about, focused his attention on that one false lead when he was already exhausted and frayed. If I hadn’t fallen right into their damned trap.

If they hadn’t known that I would do it even if it killed me. If they hadn’t known me.

Can he ever tell anyone, can he look any of them in the eye again?

He is drinking a sensible amount, little enough that Marinesk won’t have grounds to scold him. Sitting in the ship’s lounge with all the lights on, wearing the sunglasses he stole from Poplin. Hadn’t Yang worn sunglasses while he was sad? He doesn’t remember when he heard that story. Doesn’t remember how to cry, now. Even when he bid farewell to Yang when they were children, he had tried to keep the tears from his eyes. He must have succeeded then, too.

“Captain,” Marinesk says from somewhere behind him, voice hesitant with concern.

“I’m fine.”

A dim light, a vibration. An encrypted message has come through his private console. An unidentifiable number, a countdown for auto-deletion.

He sits up a little straighter, leans in to read it. Heartbeat suddenly fast, mind blank.

When you are ready to leave sea level again, come find me.

Boris laughs. He doesn’t realize he is laughing until Marinesk clears his throat, evidently concerned for his mental state. “Are you sure, Captain? Do you want anything? Maybe some water…some fresh air? I’ll take a walk with you. How about we go down to the gym and you punch some of those punching bag things? Or maybe we can talk it out. I’ll even make you another drink if you want to talk.”

Boris turns off the console with a click. Takes a few slow, even breaths, and takes off his sunglasses. When he turns to face Marinesk it is with a level demeanor, a pleasant voice and more pleasant smile.

“No, Marinesk,” Boris says, as calm as if he is describing the weather. “I don’t want any of that. I want revenge.”

END ACT I

Chapter Text

Chapter 6

What does it mean, to seek a Phezzanese revenge?

You must never play a losing hand. If you’re going to do it right, you have to come out on top. Even if you spill the blood of the person who wronged you, if your own life becomes worse, then what was the point? You can’t get caught, or jailed, or dead. You can’t trust anyone else to do it for you. You have to win, and not just by a technicality. You have to get more than even.

Sometime during the long and terrible summer of 800 UC, Boris Konev calls the number that Dominique Saint-Pierre left him.

But first, before that. Or after. It doesn’t really matter now.

He ends up in Poplin’s room, in Poplin’s bed. An encounter as much spontaneous as it is inevitable. Ever since that day on the mountain, or that time Poplin said to him without the slightest trace of cynicism, I want to see you again. All it took was for them to lose everything else first.

Boris had heard that Poplin spent the first few days of June locked in his room, in the depths of an alcoholic despair. He doesn’t doubt it, barely beats himself up for not having been there for him. Because what could he have done? He’d had fewer drinks than Poplin during those days, but that was about it. In the end Julian had been the one to shake Poplin out of it. So Boris hears in the hushed tones of rumor, not malicious because nothing in Iserlohn can be, but still whispered with the implication of Don’t spread this around, okay? Don’t make things harder for him than they have to be.

That night he doesn’t drink, because he doesn’t know if Poplin has sworn off alcohol entirely. As it turns out he hasn’t, but at any rate neither of them can blame what happens next on intoxication. It starts as an argument. Iserlohn is still deep in mourning, but people are starting to make the best of it, to hesitantly chit-chat and laugh as if trying on new clothes that don’t fit. They are at the bar drinking ginger ale, and Boris thinks that he hates ginger ale. “I’m impressed,” Poplin says to him. “You haven’t jumped ship yet.”

“The hell makes you think that? If anyone left I’d have thought it’d be you.”

“Some of us care about things bigger than ourselves, Captain Konev.”

“Easy for you to say. How could you even—” he stops before he can say something worse. How could you presume to mourn so deeply for someone you barely knew? When I knew him so much better, and even that meant nothing. He would have ordered you to die if need be, while he had compelled me to live instead. And even that meant nothing.

That would have been too much, too cruel. Boris mutters some incoherent apology and orders another ginger ale for Poplin, who doesn’t touch it. Instead of another insult, Poplin pats him on the back, which makes him wonder just how depressed he looks. The touch lingers and he lets it. “I have something I want to show you,” Poplin says, sliding off the barstool and nodding towards the hallway.

“Has that pickup line ever worked?”

“Do you do crosswords?”

“No. Change your mind yet?”

Poplin’s quarters are spotlessly clean, the way only the room of someone who has recently been trying to prove himself functional can be. Boris says something forgettable and stupid, like, how much of me did you want to see? and then they are fumbling at each other. He tries to hit the light switch and misses. Remembers Poplin saying, you don’t look like him. Remembers the color of sunset on snow, the shape of words written in snow. Remembers that he is from a city where every flake of snow that has ever fallen melted before it touched the ground.

He had wanted to be—comforting, he supposes. Nice about it. God-who-doesn’t-exist forbid. Instead he bends Poplin over the bed and fucks him with a furor that he is glad no one else is there to psychoanalyze. Even when Poplin cries out in ecstatic debasement he doesn’t turn his head to look at him. Look at me, Boris says, increasingly furious, sickeningly enthralled. Look at me, damn you, who do you think you are?

(Who do you think I am?)

Later he thinks he should apologize for his outburst, except Poplin isn’t offended. Seems refreshed, if anything, younger and cleaner of conscience. Then Boris thinks he gets it. Poplin’s infamous promiscuity isn’t so much a vice as a philosophy of irreverence. Not something born of shame or loneliness but merely his way of living in the moment, removing the gravity from a moment that should carry weight, just like his life-to-death duels on the battlefield. It is beyond his own understanding, makes him jealous without reason.

“That wasn’t half bad, was it, Captain Konev?”

“Don’t say anything that’ll piss me off again,” he says, sitting on the bed. “And would it kill you to call me by my first name?”

“Sure, Boris. You look better with your hat on.”

So really he cannot recommend the experience, does not think it should happen again. When it does happen again he thinks that he is in danger of forming a habit. They are a little nicer to each other the second time, which at least counts for something.

After the third time, when he has actually committed to staying the night, he asks. “What does it feel like to kill someone?”

Poplin gives him a sidelong glare. “I’ve heard some pretty bad pillow talk in my time, but yours has got to be the worst.”

He doesn’t know why he asked. He does know. Wants to picture it, wants enough information to construct the impossible and as-yet blank mental image of himself doing it. Wants to be talked out of it. Wants the person next to him to know, however cruelly, just how much he has stared into the abyss.

“I’m just curious,” Boris says. “You’ve had more than a hundred confirmed kills, right?”

“What, now you’re scared of me? It’s a bit late for that.”

“Of course not. I just want to know you better,” he says, rather cheaply. “Does it feel impersonal when it’s in the name of duty? When you’re in a dogfight, you never even see the other guy's face."

"No, but you know them.” There is a rare note of seriousness in Poplin’s voice. “You know who they are, what they’re thinking, just from the way they maneuver. A real ace knows that his opponent is someone who’s in the game, just like himself. Someone who has wagered it all to the goddess of fate.”

“Does it keep you up at night?”

“No.”

A brief silence, which he’d call comfortable if he doesn’t know better. He thinks that he wants to smoke, wonders if Poplin will be annoyed if he does. Decides he doesn’t care. Decides not to do it anyway.

“Have someone you want to kill?” Poplin asks.

“Don’t we all?”

“You rarely ever get a real vengeance on the battlefield,” Poplin says after a long moment. Not looking at him, eyes locked on the ceiling as if trying to look past it at absent stars. “You know what you’ve lost. You know who has taken it from you, but only in an abstract sense. You learn not to expect more.”

“What if I have a name and a face? Or at least a pretty good idea of one.”

“A civilian like you shouldn’t play around with weapons. But then again. Your cousin was a lot more soft-hearted and patient than you. And yet he was the most unflinching killer I knew when he had to be. Who knows what that says about you?”

When he makes the call he is alone in the dark, and it almost doesn’t feel like something he cannot take back. The Undutiness is hovering above Phezzan airspace, the lights below distant enough that he cannot make out the veins and capillaries of his beloved city. He wonders when he had started thinking about it like that.

The apparition of Dominique Saint-Pierre appears before him, a hologram in red and black. “I was wondering when you’d get in touch,” she says. “Wayward little parasitic wasp.”

There is something more confident about her demeanor, though he cannot put his finger on it. “You are on Phezzan,” Boris says. “This call wouldn’t have gone through otherwise.”

“Don’t underestimate the ability of technology to spoof one’s location. Or are you planning on selling my whereabouts to someone?”

“That depends on if you’re guilty.”

The smile on her face is faint, and faintly derisive. “Of what? All this time I have been trying to protect our mutual interests, Captain Konev. Do you mean to accuse me of plotting the death of the Magician Yang Wen-li?”

He flinches to hear it put in such unsparing terms. She is someone who prefers to fight with words and influence, and he thinks that it cannot be her. But then again he remembers the two men tortured to death on Odin, her letter that had accompanied the news. “You may not have given the orders, but you must know who did. I will regard you as equally guilty if you stay silent.”

“Poor Boris. I did tell you not to make it personal. So many years ago, already. You’d have been much happier if only you’d listened."

“Tell me!”

“I do not have absolute proof, but I have a strong suspicion, and it may be the same as yours. There was someone you met in the Church both willing and capable of such a deed. I see by your face you know exactly who I mean. Our Dorian Gray without a portrait. It’s such a shame that he lived.”

He’d known, of course he’d known, but even now he’d hoped it wasn’t so. Because that would also make it personal. That it was someone who knew him as Yang’s weakness. That he really had been the weapon in another’s hands. “Tell me where to find him,” he says.

“We are both merchants of Phezzan. Ours should be a fair exchange, don’t you think? I need your assurance on a few matters, Captain Konev. That you will not sell me out. That the data you so foolishly retrieved from Terra does not find its way to the Empire. And that you will bring me intel in return.”

He can tell her mostly useless information from Iserlohn, mix it in with the truth for the veneer of authenticity. Feels guilty about it already, as if he has signed away part of the soul he doesn’t believe in. “I can see about doing that.”

“Don’t misunderstand,” Dominique says. “What Iserlohn does is not of great interest to me. I want intel from the Empire. What they are thinking, what they are doing. Whether the net is closing in on Adrian. Whether they know about me.”

“That’s absurd. I can’t possibly know anything about that.”

“You will. Figure it out.”

He responds with a single syllable of mirthless laughter. “What do you want, Miss Saint-Pierre? After all the conspiracy, the secrets, the hiding in the dark. I can’t imagine that you’re content to be an accessory to our former Landesherr.”

“When have I ever said that I was? We come from the same roots, and we both know that the deepest desire of our people is to determine our own path. I want Phezzan to be free of three things. The influence of Terra, the oppression of Lohengramm, and those who want to return things to exactly how they were before. There are more sorts of liberation than Adrian and his ilk can imagine. Sometimes freedom is change.”

He considers that, thinks that perhaps he agrees. It is fortunate that he does not have to make an enemy of her. “If we were in the same room I’d drink to it,” he says. “Now tell me about Dorian de Villiers.”

“You may use this against him,” Dominique says. “He was the architect of the plan to assassinate Lohengramm on Odin, using the hand of Heinrich von Kümmel. The failure of that plot, and his indiscretion in covering his tracks, led to the utter destruction of the Church’s headquarters on Terra. Few can say they made a mistake so catastrophic as to ruin something that took nine hundred years to build.” Her voice remains cold and reserved, but there is a trace of satisfaction in the contemptuous curve of her mouth. “A man like that may act confident, but he will be desperate for any success.”

“Is that why…” he cannot say it. “Never mind. I need a location.”

“Start by looking on Heinessen.”

“Good timing. I was already thinking of going there.”

“Then I wish you luck. Don’t take too many risks. It’d be a shame if you died before you could fulfill your end of the bargain.”

“I have one more question for you. Is Adrian Rubinsky even alive?”

“Good night, Boris.”

Later, or maybe before. It is no longer in his best interests for anyone to know exactly where he has been and when. If anyone ever decodes his notebooks they will get a hazy watercolor impression of a life lived on the fringes, too many things unsaid.

He is sitting in front of a desk. Behind the desk is Julian Mintz. On the younger man’s face the shock has worn off, the grief and weariness now cloaked in responsibility. Too much responsibility and too soon, Boris thinks. He had wanted Julian to become more independent, but not like this.

Early on Boris had thought of offering a word of sympathy—he hadn’t wanted to inherit his father’s business at twenty-two, either—but that had seemed too cheap. The loss of the elder Konev after a long illness, as much as it had pained him, had been the kind of grief he could prepare himself for, and Julian did not have that privilege. The responsibility he hadn’t wanted became something he grew into, an indispensable part of himself. Julian would come to know that feeling too, but rushing it now might only make him resent it. No, hands-off was best. Yang would agree.

“I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for us, Captain Konev. If you would like to leave with Vice Admiral Murai, I would have no objection.” Julian is trying to look both professional and good-natured, but Boris thinks he cannot conceal his desire to hear no in response.

“Of course I wouldn’t desert Iserlohn. Yang wasn’t my only friend here, you know.”

“…Thank you.” Julian nods. This must be the first bit of good news he has had in a while, and he looks embarrassed to show joy. “We’ve been no end of trouble to you. But could I ask you for one more favor?”

“Depends on what it is. Who am I kidding, I’ll probably say yes.”

“I’m going to ask you to leave Iserlohn, Captain.”

Boris catches a glint of mischief in Julian’s eyes. The kid really does have a lot in common with his mentor, he thinks with relief. “You’re asking me to pretend to defect,” he says.

“Precisely. Right now, the Imperial Governate on Heinessen will have to accept people who have worked on Iserlohn as a show of goodwill. It’ll be a perfect opportunity for you to become our eyes and ears there. If you’re willing, that is.”

“Of course I’m willing,” Boris says. “This is right up my alley, you know? If that rascal Reuenthal makes a move, you’ll be the first to know.” He feels energized now, given a purpose beyond bloody vengeance. The promise of trickery and subterfuge makes him feel a nostalgic wave of warmth. Yang would approve, surely. Yang would have come up with this scheme himself.

“Thank you,” Julian says. Bright-eyed, voice a little shaky, as if he has read his thoughts. “And…I am sorry for what people might say about you for choosing this course.”

“That I’m a deserter? A fair-weather friend? I’ve heard worse. If that old stick-in-the-mud Murai can handle it, then so can I.”

“I really can’t thank you enough.”

“I don’t need thanks. Just make good on your debts someday,” Boris says with a wink so that it doesn’t come off as a threat. With the collapse of the El Facil Revolutionary Government, the loans he had secured are in question, and the thought of Iserlohn paying him in the near future is optimistic at best. He supposes he will have to start doing legitimate business on the side again. “But if you’re low on any supplies, let me know,” he says, digging the hole further.

“Iserlohn is designed to be self-sustaining. But certain things we cannot manufacture ourselves…pharmaceuticals, quality-of-life items. We have a decent stockpile, but if it starts running low…no, I can’t ask that of you.”

“Then ask someone to ask me. I’ll be doing a lot of back-and-forth anyway. You can get away with a lot when you look like a legitimate businessman.”

“Seriously, be careful, Captain Konev,” Julian says, and presses his hand. And the promise of that gesture—that he will have a place to return to, that his friend’s friends, his equals in sorrow as well as triumph, will have something like a future—is enough to keep his spirits buoyed as he prepares for the voyage. It is not until Iserlohn is receding behind him, a dark pearl suspended in the void of space, that he remembers to feel the ache in his chest.

Late summer. The city he had never wanted to live in, four years and half an eternity ago, welcomes him with exhausted indifference. Boris Konev and the crew of the Undutiness have returned to Heinessen as part of the exodus from Iserlohn. Seceders, the Imperials call them. Those who crawled back with their tails between their legs because they had no faith in the leadership of Frederica Greenhill-Yang and Julian Mintz. It is another badge of shame for his growing collection, but an easy one to live with. At least this one he knows isn’t real.

Heinessen is haunted by Yang’s image. Posters, book covers, political graffiti sprouting like wildflowers after flame. Yang’s awkward smile graces electronic billboards over busy street crossings. Sometimes Boris avoids looking up at what he knows is there. Sometimes he cannot help himself. A flicker, the pixels rearranging themselves, and then the ghost of his old friend is gone and he stands waiting in the intersection until someone honks at him to move.

Even the new Governor-General, Reuenthal himself, has been putting up posters of Yang for some official memorial service. The gesture strikes Boris as conniving and distasteful. “Does he really think this will endear him to anyone?” he says to Marinesk and Wilock, who are out surveying the city with him.

Before he can cook up further insults, a movement catches his eye. A group of four men, most of them in drab civilian clothing. The young man at the forefront of the group appears to be a student in a hooded university sweatshirt. Just enough of that person’s hair is visible for Boris to recognize a shock of ice, a fractal maze of curls as heavy as the blooms of jade vine.

The world momentarily goes dark, closes and opens like an old-fashioned camera lens. He thinks he is going to be sick. His blood has frozen in his veins. He has never felt more clear-headed in his life.

She was right. Found you, you bastard.

“Captain?”

He breathes in, tries to play it cool. “You were on that worthless rock Terra with me last year, weren’t you? I saw one of those men in that creepy underground temple. They called him the bishop or archbishop or something.” Suddenly he is reluctant to speak a name, give off any impression of familiarity. As if that too is something that can be undone. “We’ll follow them.”

Marinesk and Wilock oblige him as they follow the group through convoluted residential streets. “Captain,” Wilock says after a while, “don’t do anything rash. We haven’t confirmed anything, and it’d be a shame if you ruined your perfect absence of a criminal record…”

“I know that!”

It is twenty minutes before he sees the group vanish inside a stately residence belonging to Job Trunicht, newly made High Counselor to Governor-General Reuenthal. The neatness of this solution strikes him as darkly comedic. “Well, what do we have here?” Boris says.

“The most self-serving sorts always end up drawn together,” Marinesk observes. “Even if they have plenty of reason to despise each other.”

“Maybe we can use that against them. But for now let’s just report it to Julian later. Wouldn’t do to hang around too long.”

An hour later, having dispatched Marinesk and Wilock on some irrelevant errand, crouching behind the beautifully-maintained hedges near Trunicht’s house, Boris asks himself just how much of a reckless, hypocritical idiot he can be.

Of course he can’t just let it go. Of course not. This is dangerous and pointless and he’ll probably get caught and escorted off the premises at best, accused of terrorism at worst. As he watches, three of the men leave the building, but not the one he is lying in wait for. The minutes tick by, and he begins to feel foolish in his impatience. His joints are getting stiff. What are they doing in there, exchanging sexual favors? He mutters this under his breath.

“Please don’t say that again,” Dorian de Villiers says from behind him.

Boris leaps to his feet, whirls around, stops himself from doing anything else. Not here and now. He can’t attack his opponent, beat a confession out of him, can’t even raise his voice like his pounding blood is begging him to do. “Admit it,” he says in a low hiss. “Admit what you’ve done.”

De Villiers regards him with satisfaction, looking absurd but somehow threatening and wrong in that goddamned college kid getup. The front of his sweater reads HMU, which Boris finds vaguely offensive even knowing it stands for Heinessen Memorial University. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t give me that shit!”

“Gentlemen, is there a problem?”

Boris turns to see Trunicht standing at the doorstep, smug and utterly at ease in the world’s worst smoking jacket. “No,” Boris says between his teeth. “There isn’t a problem.”

“Mr. Sancerre, if this man is bothering you, I’ll have security take care of him.”

“No need,” de Villiers says, answering to the fake name with an angelic air of contempt. “If I may borrow one of your vehicles, High Counselor Trunicht. My friend and I will go for a drive.”

“What?”

De Villiers leans in and speaks in a lower voice. “You evidently want to talk. I think you want to kill me. And you probably think I want to kill you. If we borrow Trunicht’s property, it will be a liability to him if anything happens to either of us, so we’re all in the same boat and will have to resolve it peacefully, huh?”

“You’re out of your damn mind.”

“Get in the car.”

Trunicht agrees to the request with the demeanor of a man watching his least favorite neighbor’s house catch on fire. Boris gets in the admittedly luxurious landcar, so indignant that he doesn’t even question why he is in the passenger seat. They peel out of the driveway with a screech of tires, and he hopes that Trunicht is at least getting an ulcer over it.

“Did you take the pills I gave you, Boris?” de Villiers asks in a dreamy, unconcerned tone. “You didn’t, did you? That’s a shame. There’s not much I can do about the spores now.”

“What the fuck?”

“Just messing with you. You aren’t going to kill me, Boris. Trunicht is fond of faux-vintage vehicles, so this car doesn’t have any self-driving functions. Do anything to me and you’ll become part of a burning wreckage on the Heinessen Interstate Freeway One-Ten.”

“Whether I kill you after you get out of the car depends on what you tell me next.”

“Hmm…nice to see you too?”

Boris thinks that, local laws and regulations be damned, he is going to start carrying a gun. “Will you cut the shit! Admit it. Did you murder Yang Wen-li?” Saying it empties him out, and for a moment he doesn’t even want an answer.

De Villiers looks at him with clear eyes. Unreadable even as he tries to read evil into them. “I didn’t.”

“You’re lying.”

“You really think, you really believe that I did it? I thought you were a clever man. You…” His opponent’s eyes widen in surprise, narrow in realization. “Don’t tell me that you fell for it. From him, of all people?”

“Look at the damn road!”

They narrowly avoid swerving into oncoming traffic, at which de Villiers laughs and Boris furtively takes off his hat to wipe his brow. “What did you mean by that?” he asks, after his heartbeat has returned to a nearly normal pace. “What sort of shitty cover story do you have this time?”

“Shouldn’t it be obvious, even to you? I was framed by Paul von Oberstein.”

“As if I’m going to believe that.”

“Don’t you see how perfect it would be for him to make us his scapegoat? I’m sure you know the bait-and-switch that took place. It’s just like Oberstein to obfuscate and turn what looks like a backup plan into the main plan. He wanted Yang gone, you know that. He would resort to any measures for the sake of his heretic’s Empire. There were rumors, and perhaps you’d heard them. He was going to ask the Kaiser to kill Yang at their meeting place, was willing to exchange his own life for it. But then he realized he could kill two birds with one stone and live to enjoy it, if he could be said to enjoy anything.”

“And you would say anything to save yourself. Why should I believe a word?” But he is considering the possibility, realizing that he knows too little. “It doesn’t explain the shitty messages you sent me,” he adds.

“I asked you to reach out to me because I figured you were feeling lost. I did always believe you would see the light of your heritage, find it compatible with your way of life.”

“Then what about…right after?” His chest tightens at the memory. “The anonymous message that just said well done.”

“That wasn’t me. Do you really think me so melodramatic?”

“Archbishop—”

“Just Dorian. Please. If I get arrested because of how you address me in public, I’m taking you down with me.”

“If I find out you’ve lied about any of this, your god will not be able to save you.”

“Why, I’ve never counted on salvation from something that isn’t real.” With the filter of the drugs and the mystique of the mountains gone, Dorian’s manner is decidedly more worldly, if no less infuriating.

“So you’re a fraud on top of everything else. Just fantastic. Let me out of the car.”

“We are going one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. But if you ask again I might consider it.”

Boris lets out a little laugh. At himself, he supposes. The tension is leaving his body. He cannot remain wound up for that long, and even if he doesn’t exactly believe this story, it is a relief that this day does not have to end in the sort of violence that will alter his own life forever. He will wait and see. Gather more information, try to find out what Oberstein is thinking, just as Dominique Saint-Pierre had asked of him. That seems simple enough. That holds a promise, however faint, of learning that it wasn’t his own fault, that it had nothing to do with him at all.

“I have one more question,” he says, “and then you can turn this car around. What did you want with me, back at the beginning? When I was on Phezzan in ‘97. You never told me last time.”

“Oh. That. You won’t like the answer.”

“I haven’t liked a single word out of you yet, so go right ahead.”

“You were…” Dorian pauses. “You were going to be the Alliance’s answer to Heinrich von Kümmel. I don’t know if you’ve heard about him.”

“You—” there is an instant of incandescent rage, but then it is all so absurd that he scoffs. “You wanted to turn me against Yang? That would never have worked. Not in a million years.”

“Not necessarily against him, no. But you were close, Boris. We wanted to influence you so that you could influence him, become a voice in his ear. It isn’t such an evil deed as you might imagine. We wouldn’t have needed to drug or torture you—probably. It would have been something beautiful, don’t you think, if you and your friend could have worked together to shape history in favor of your homeland. Both of them.”

“It would have been built on manipulation and deceit.”

“But you would have been true to yourself. It would have been the most honest thing you’d ever done.”

He wants to reject everything this person is telling him, but he cannot help imagining it for just a heartbeat. Himself standing behind Yang, as Kircheis must have stood behind Lohengramm. Phezzan never subjugated, never broken. The universe their canvas.

“It was always impossible,” he says, softer. “Just a dream and nothing more.”

“It would have been your destiny, if it hadn’t been stolen from you.”

“Because Rubinsky hired me? I’ll find more reasons to despise that chrome dome yet.”

“Not only him. Do you think Dominique truly opposed your assignment to Heinessen? She liked our vision even less. Do not believe everything you hear from her.”

“Who says I’ve heard anything from her?” Damned if he was going to let all these schemers play him off each other. The worst of it was that they’d each said something that made sense.

“If you do, let me know. And any other relevant information…I won’t demand anything specific, but I would appreciate your alliance, Boris. I am in a very difficult position, as you might imagine.”

“And how much of that is your own fault? You were Kümmel’s handler. That was your fuckup. Terraism is verboten in the Empire because of you. Your headquarters were destroyed and your companions killed because of you. You ruined nearly a thousand years of hope and dreams.” He doesn’t know why he is pressing the point enough to be cruel. Is it not excessive when he isn’t sure the person in front of him is guilty? Or maybe he just wants to imprint a different sort of guilt on his face. You know what it feels like, don’t you? You, too, have made a mistake you can never take back.

The way Dorian is looking at him—expression frozen, eyes very large—he has no idea whether those words have landed. Whether he really has prodded where it hurt. “Everything you touch dies,” Boris adds, because he has gone too far to stop now.

Dorian reaches over and pats him on the leg. “Then you’d better hope that’s changed,” he says with a sunny smile.

“Both hands on the wheel! Damn it.”

It isn’t until they are on the way back that Dorian says, looking at the road for once, “Everything that happened with Kümmel, and after, happened because Job Trunicht informed on us. Cast your blame correctly if you are to do it at all.”

“So you’d blame anyone but yourself.”

To this there is no reply.

“You seem friendly enough with Trunicht,” Boris continues. “Are you working the long con with him? Biding your time for revenge?”

“Isn’t that what you think you’re doing with me?”

“Oh, come on. Would you work with me if you really believed that?” Now his salesmanship is back on, the car dealer who has been personally wounded like a kicked puppy at the mere suggestion he has raised prices. “I thought we worked out any misunderstanding—”

“Save your energy, Boris. Whether I trust you doesn’t matter, although it can be earned. For now, get me information when you have it, and I’ll get you closer to your target.”

“And what if the target is you?”

“Then you’ll be close anyway.”

“You sure love playing with fire, huh? Too bad it hasn’t worked out even once.”

For a split-second Boris thinks: this is when he’s going to slip. He’ll argue that at least one of his schemes has succeeded, and I’ll know. Except that moment never comes. They pull into the driveway of Trunicht’s house. Trunicht waves at them from the window, and Boris has half a mind to run upstairs and punch him in the teeth for Yang’s sake.

“Tell me something useful before you go, won’t you?” Dorian looks at him with shameless anticipation.

“Dominique Saint-Pierre knows you’re here. She is going behind Rubinsky’s back, if he is even alive.”

“Very good. And what I will tell you in return is this. Perhaps soon you won’t need to go to the other end of the galaxy to meet Oberstein.”

Boris gets out of the car, grateful to be in the fresh air. For a moment the ground sways as if he is seasick, a sensation that he has never felt in nearly three decades of spacefaring. “No promises on whether there’ll be a next time,” he says.

Dorian rolls down the window and gives him a slip of paper. “In case you change your mind. But if you sell this to the Imperials, they’ll raid an empty warehouse and you’ll never hear from me again. Even if we can’t really sign on it, to a Phezzanese, a contract is always sacred. Or so the saying goes, right?”

“I don’t think that applies to you.”

“Heh. By the way. I bought my driver’s license on the black market and have had it for all of three months. One does not exactly have ample opportunity or infrastructure to learn to drive back home. Count your lucky stars we didn’t die together today, little Boris.”

Boris stalks off muttering a stream of curses, and later, when Marinesk and Wilock ask him where he’s been, he says that Trunicht had detained him with useless questioning and ultimately let him go. A needless lie, covering up some crime he has not yet committed. He looks up at the fading light of the sky, trying to make out the shapes of artificial satellites.

“Once is a miracle,” he says to Poplin. “Twice, you’re lucky. Three times, you’re good at it.”

“You’re out of your goddamned mind,” Poplin says.

Boris has started running the blockade set up by the Imperial Navy in the Corridor. To fulfill his promise to Julian, to bring supplies and news of the outside world, to remind himself in frantic adrenaline-filled moments that he is still capable of doing the right thing. Poplin is rifling through a box that has just been carted off the Undutiness. “You could have died, you know? Every time you go through the Corridor, you could die. For, I don’t know, these fucking entertainment rags? Who reads these things?”

“Attenborough says he likes them. People go stir-crazy without fresh reading material, right? I’ve brought lifesaving medicine too. If you care.”

“You’re just a thrill-seeker. Plain and simple.”

“Funny that someone with your career choices would say that.”

“That’s different,” Poplin says as if offended. And when they fall into bed again it isn’t great, it isn’t something he plans on doing again, except the same could be said of penetrating the Corridor (“I’ll penetrate your corridor,” Poplin says the next time he uses that phase), and really his decision-making abilities are no example to anyone.

—And if he pretends hard enough that’s all he is. The thrill-seeker, the dashing renegade, the folk hero of the resistance. Not someone who hasn’t cut ties with his homeland in all its dirt and glory. Who has dealings even now with someone who might have killed the love of his life, if only for the chance to be close enough to pull the trigger on the right culprit. It’s not a lie if it’s by omission.

“If,” he begins, pacing in Julian’s office, “while I’m on these missions, I had some personal matters to settle, with those from Phezzan with whom I have a history…”

“That’s your private business, Captain Konev,” Julian says. “I would never pry into it.”

For a moment he thinks: the Julian who refused to read the disc isn’t really gone. The too-good, too-trusting little boy hasn’t been beaten and bled out of him by all the cruelties of life.

You might regret it, he thinks to say, swallows the words. Why did you trust me? He had asked Yang, but doesn’t think he can ask Julian. Behind those bright eyes the gears might turn just enough for the young man to arrive at the conclusion of I shouldn’t.

—He has called a crew meeting. “I understand that my recent actions have put you in substantial danger,” he says. “Every time we traverse the Corridor, we risk being apprehended or even killed by Imperial forces. Even when we are on the ground, our activities might be discovered, and we’d all become wanted men. There might be worse to come, things you don’t know about yet. I won’t fault any of you if you choose to leave.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Captain,” Wilock says. “This is closer to what I signed up for than what we were doing originally.”

Boris is equal parts touched and offended. “What does that mean? If you had complaints before and didn’t tell me—”

“I think, Captain,” Marinesk says with an indulgent smile, “you’ve forgotten too quickly the years you spent in debt, transporting pilgrims and rocks and toilet tissue.”

“The world would grind to a halt without toilet tissue! And we’re still in debt. Any second thoughts yet?”

In the end not one of his crew leaves him. He feels unworthy, overcome, giddy with something like fraternal love. Supposes that he understands Yang better now, in becoming a chosen leader without ever choosing to lead. That is something they could have laughed about over a drink in a better universe. But no, no benevolent universe would have put Yang in such a position in the first place. So when the melancholy catches him at a midnight hour he does not watch his words. “Yang didn’t even die in the right way,” he says to Marinesk. “If he’d fallen in battle with the kaiser, that’d be one thing, but…”

Marinesk pats him lightly on the arm. “You don’t really mean that.”

“No,” he says after a moment. “I didn’t.”

“It’s no good if even you start glorifying a death in battle, Captain. You’ve always been level-headed about these things.”

“You’re right. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

He’d said long ago there was nothing more hypocritical than a culture that encouraged its people to burn themselves up in a pointless war. Yang should have died an old man after a long peaceful life, and Boris himself—

Is a death pointless if it ends a war?

(Lohengramm burning up at Vermillion. Himself burning on Heinessen. The universe set right.)

No.

He cannot allow himself to think too far down that line, and not just because it sounds like something that came from a bizarre version of Oberstein. Boris cannot, on a visceral level, hate Oberstein quite yet; there is something too inorganic about the man. If he is indeed guilty, then it’s like Yang was taken out by an asteroid collision. Nor can he imagine going after Oberstein personally. Wouldn’t that be nice: the whole thing will be taken out of your hands because a little nobody like you has no hope of assassinating the Minister of Military Affairs. You won’t have to worry about your revenge anymore. You can sleep at night. He almost prefers that to the alternative.

—And sometimes, still, he stops in his tracks in a certain hallway in Iserlohn, searches the spotless floor for traces of blood.

“What happens if a man loses his destiny?”

“I’m really not an expert on such matters,” Louis Machungo says with gentle exasperation. “It’s a figure of speech, like I said.”

“I mean the way we talked about it before. What if a man loses his calling, the thing that compels him?”

“Well, people change careers all the time. You’re still young, you have plenty of time. Although I hope you won’t be leaving us any time soon, Captain.”

“No, nothing like that.” He wonders how obvious he is being. Machungo looks at him with sympathy, but discreetly. “If you truly care about something, it is never lost,” the other man finally says.

—You can lose everything but that. You can lose yourself first.

“Rubinsky called me,” Dorian says, indolently swirling a glass of wine. “The revolution is dead, long live the revolution.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Boris replies, though at least that confirms some things.

“Get me a chance to speak with Dominique, alone. I want to clear up some misconceptions. If we’re to get this thing done it’d be easier if she doesn’t hate me.”

“I can’t guarantee that.”

“Sure you don’t want a paper-pusher job with Reuenthal before it goes down? That would be fun. He even took Trunicht, you’ll have no problem getting in.”

“I’m going to get hives just thinking about it. You know why I can’t stand you?” Boris says after a moment’s thought. “Because for all that holier-than-thou bullshit, you’re nothing but a goddamned salesman.”

“Just like you,” Dorian says with a faultless grin.

—Little parasitic wasp, Dominque says. Of course, Phezzan itself is a parasite, by the definition of some. So what do we call those who parasitize a parasite?

“I wish you wouldn’t speak in metaphors,” Boris says. He has remembered to remove his hat this time.

She rises from her seat, moves across the room like smoke on water. “You must think me very wicked.”

“I don’t presume anything at all.”

“A long time ago I was naïve enough to think I could change the world by mere proximity to power. But now I am tired of nations and men who eat their young.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing now?”

“Him? He’s too self-aware to be a victim.” She looks out the window for a moment at snow-capped trees, a frozen dreamscape temporarily free of consequence. “This will be a first step. It may not lead to the intended consequences, because I do not trust the judgment of the men at the helm, and neither should you. But it will happen.”

“Can I—”

She turns her head to smile at him. “You have my blessing.”

October, 800 UC. Boris Konev breaks the news of Reuenthal’s rebellion to Iserlohn. If anyone had bothered to make a meticulous calculation involving travel times and the exact sequence of events, they would have realized he knew about it at least a day before it officially happened.