Sam

  They picked out their own house inside the village, away from Mongrel and the boys, to spend the night. They settled for a small, one-room place that would keep the heat in better with just one fireplace—besides, being a little snug just made it cozier. They put their bedrolls out in front of the fire, wriggled up together.

  But any notion Sam had had to make most of their time was quickly obliterated. With Will's skill fatigue and her… everything, doing more than vaguely leaning their bodies together proved physiologically impossible.

  They lay there for a good while, staring into each other's faces in the firelight, occasionally closing their eyes in ostensible sleep only to quickly open them again, before it became clear that neither of them would be getting much rest that night.

  "Can't sleep?" Will asked, his one eye searching her face.

  Sam shook her head. "You?"

  He echoed the movement. "No luck."

  "What do we do?"

  "I have a remedy that—"

  She put her hand over his mouth. "No!"

  His eye narrowed, and he waited until she released him to speak. "Why?"

  "Don't you want to spend time with me when we have the chance? I'm not going to see you for ages after this."

  "A month is not that long, Sam."

  "No, a month is an eternity. Luckily we'll only be apart for two weeks, which is still ages."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Are you saying you won't miss me?"

  "Of course I will. But it's important that you're rested when you start out tomorrow. The Iron Road will test you, and I want to give you every chance to make it through all right."

  "Excuses!"

  Will shut his good eye for a moment, and his sad eye twitched. "You need sleep, Sam. Stop acting like a child—you're not going to whine your way out of this one."

  [Five and a half minutes of whining later…]

  With neither one able to sleep, they went outside to lay under the stars instead. Two of the chimps were posted at the edges of the town to look out for anything untoward, but Will still brought that new sword of his just in case.

  Anathema. Sam didn't know what that word meant, but it sounded scary. And even though Will had left it propped against the well some ten feet off, she could still feel it burning against her somehow, like a splinter caught under the skin of her consciousness.

  She didn't like the sword. Not one bit. But Will had Soulbound it to himself, and apparently there were no take-backsies for that sort of thing, so she figured she had better get used to it.

  "The bugs went away," Sam noted, outstretched beside Will with a blanket beneath them, a legion of tiny lights studding the night. "Do you think they took the hint?"

  "No," Will replied, stifling a yawn against the back of his hand. "I've set a continuous cast of Repel in an area around us to keep the critters off our backs for a while."

  "That's kinda smart!"

  Will threw her an annoyed glance, brow furrowed. "Why do you sound so surprised?"

  "I'm not!" Sam hid a grin with a yawn of her own, jaws creaking. "I realized how much there is to all this skill business while I was fighting in the tournament. I don't think I could keep track of it if you put a gun to my head, but you're pretty good at it, huh?"

  "I'd say so."

  "You always were a nerd."

  "And by that of course you mean that I took life seriously, unlike some."

  "Are you saying I'm stupid?"

  "Yes, I am. Luckily you're moderately attractive, so that sort of makes up for it."

  "You're horrible!"

  Will chuckled, but didn't argue the point.

  They watched the stars for a minute and held hands, time sliding over them in a pleasant haze. She studied the scattering of lights, tried to find patterns in them.

  "The constellations aren't the same here," Sam noted. "I mean, of course they aren't. I just hadn't thought about it before."

  "Mmhmm," Will replied, free arm propped behind his head.

  "Do you know any of them? Like, have people come up with new ones?"

  "I didn't know you were interested in that sort of thing."

  "I meannn… I'm not really. But I wouldn't mind hearing you talk about them for a while."

  Will laughed. "Ah. I see what you're fishing for now. There was probably some lifer with too much time on his hands before the Deicide who came up with some, but I never considered that sort of thing essential knowledge, so I can't say I've looked into it."

  "Huh. Bummer." Then, after a minute, she said: "The moon's not quite the same either. It looks bigger, doesn't it? And sort of… bluish."

  "Yeah. Apparently Era spent centuries terraforming and reshaping this planet and its satellites to make it resemble Earth as much as possible, but there have to be limits, even for a goddess."

  "Do you think she liked us?"

  "I'd imagine she did, right up to the point where Crow the Godkiller went and earned his moniker."

  "Yeah…" She wriggled closer to him, pressed their bodies more firmly together, ignored her body's countless hurts making themselves known. "What do you think about her?"

  "You're just trying to get a bedtime monologue out of me," Will said with a snort.

  "Nooo. I just figure you must have… strong opinions about it."

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  "This is blatant exploitation, and I won't stand for it."

  "So, do you think she's really dead?"

  "No comment."

  "I think she's still alive."

  Will knuckled at his sad eye. "And what makes you think that, exactly?"

  "I dunno. It just feels that way. Like she'll pop out at some point like Santa and save everyone."

  "You sound like a resurrectionist."

  "You give me a better theory, then!"

  "Well…" He blew out his lips. "If you really need to know, I actually have a fair bit of respect for Era. Some people think she was an idiot for herding all the worst humans imaginable into one place and expecting them to behave, but I see a subtle genius in it.

  "The Concord was never meant to serve as a childproof toy for the lifers of the Frontier to toddle around with. It's clear that the system can adapt itself to the whims of its users—for example, the ability to shorten 'Amplify' to 'Amp' in skill syntax is a fairly recent development. Despite this plasticity, the Concord has made no effort to remove any of the various exploits that allow people to use the system with deadly intent. I doubt it could ever be completely successful, of course, but it could at least get rid of the worst offenders, like Amp being usable on itself, for instance.

  "But it hasn't done that. The Concord Ghost, or whoever is in charge, has not made a single attempt to prevent its misuse. Which, to me, means one thing. The Concord is meant to be a statement of intent; it's a choice."

  Sam yawned triumphantly and let her eyes fall shut as she inched her head onto Will's shoulder, slowly as to not break him out of his expository trance. "A choice," she echoed to make it sound like she was paying attention. "Hmm, I see…"

  He went on without missing a beat. "Era created this world and gave humanity the choice of making it either a paradise or a hellscape. She clearly would have preferred the former, but we chose the latter. It's a perfect punishment—one we knowingly brought upon ourselves, even after we were shown the alternative.

  "Era died for our sins—not to absolve us of them, but to brand us with them for eternity. No matter what we do from here on out, we'll know we have no one but ourselves to blame for the blood and the mud we're wallowing in.

  "Sure, Crow is the one who fired the first shot, but no one forced the world to go to war against itself in the wake of her death. No one forced us to accept the company of demons, or to enslave our fellow lifers the moment they wash up, or to scheme and betray and murder.

  "We had the perfect fresh start, and we threw it away. Crow was the original sinner, and in a way we are all his children, taking after his example and following in his footsteps. I can't imagine a punishment more fitting than that. Whether this was a choice Era knowingly presented or simply a product of her shortsightedness is anyone's guess, but I like to think everything that's happened was by her design. After all, the alternative of inhabiting a world created by an idiot is not one I personally fancy."

  "I dunno," Sam murmured, her body growing heavy and sort of fuzzy at the edges. "I prefer my version."

  "The Santa theory?"

  "Yep."

  Will chuckled. "If we're lucky, we'll see who's right in the end."

  He started off on another tangent, and Sam promptly fell asleep.

  * * *

  In the morning, Sam found herself back in the house, Will having tucked her under a blanket that she'd twisted about herself in her sleep until she was nearly choking herself with it.

  Getting up, she prodded at her body a while and found that she was in much less agony than she had been the day before. What luck! Her head was still quite tender, especially the soft spot at the base of her skull where Will had drilled out and plugged back in a section of her cranium. But all in all, she'd felt worse.

  Except she was ravenously hungry.

  She was relieved to enter out into the village and found that Will had set up an outdoor kitchen of sorts, cooking something that smelled like meat in a pan over the fire while numerous chimps ran about fetching him this or that, and he was giving them orders as though they were his familiars, and not Mongrel's.

  The man himself was not present—Sam assumed that he was still in bed.

  "Good morning," Will said as she approached without looking up. "I'm just preparing some travel provisions for you and Mongrel. Make sure to pace yourself with it, all right? I'll do what I can, but you'll probably need to ration yourself a bit."

  Sam looked over at a rack that had four rabbits and two pheasants dangling from it. "Someone's been busy," she said.

  "I've got good eyes, and Number One's a good shot," Will replied.

  "Gotcha. So…" She bit her lip, her hunger steadily rising as she was forced to breathe in the pleasant aroma of frying fat. "Any of that going to be for breakfast?"

  "Over there." Will pointed off to the side, where a pair of tables had been hauled out of one house or another and laden with tin containers. "It's not Prepared, I'm afraid—I'm saving that for the travel rations, so they'll last longer and be more filling—but I hope it'll be good enough regardless."

  Sam was quite happy to judge that for herself. She seated herself at the table, where a light stew made from rabbit meat and indiscernible root vegetables had been laid out. Number Five was the only other one at the table, having gotten out of his duties by virtue of little-brother-privilege.

  The stew was a little on the bland side, considering that Will didn't have much in the way of seasonings to work with, but it was warm and filling and pleasant, so she considered it a great culinary success.

  Mongrel soon reported in, eating mechanically even though he looked more than half-asleep, his thinning hair standing in a crazy shock. He was followed by the chimps arriving in a slow trickle. Will himself was last to arrive after packing the travel rations away in waterproof oil-paper wrappings.

  Pleasant conversation passed between them while they ate, but the breakfast had a strange air of finality to it that spoiled Sam's appetite somewhat—she had to force herself to finish her third portion, and felt somewhat sick afterward.

  After eating they packed their things away, most of it going on Zero's saddlebags, and then, altogether too soon, they were standing on the overgrown path leading east, and it was time to say goodbye. They stood facing each other; only five feet apart, but that small space felt like an unbridgeable chasm. There was a strange, awkward formality between them, like two vaguely acquainted coworkers riding the same elevator and not quite sure what to say to each other.

  Producing a fat paper envelope, Will counted out half the colorful paper money inside and took it out. He ignored Mongrel's waiting hand, instead taking Sam's hand and placed the stack on her palm with a firm nod.

  "This is about five thousand glories," he said. "It should last you the whole round trip. Don't let Mongrel gamble any of it."

  "Hey!" the old man protested, but settled into silent stewing after receiving a hard glare.

  "You'll want to pick up an Explorer from the flesh market in Timbryhall," Will continued. "You won't need one as long as you stick to the main route, but if you end up off-road for any reason, you'll be glad to have one. All clear?"

  Sam nodded, chewing on her lip, holding back tears with a great effort of will. "Promise me you won't take on too much," she said, looking into Will's face, all hard angles and cold pallor.

  He cracked a smile that didn't make him look any less miserable. "Only if you promise the same."

  "Touché."

  His smile took on a slightly warmer curve, and he cut the distance between them in one step, leaning in to kiss her with a hand on the back of her neck. His stubble was tickly, and his lips were cold. "I love you, Sam," he said as he came away.

  The tears started coming, then, and she threw her arms around him. "I love you too, stupid," she whispered into his coat, and took several deep, deep breaths of his smell, trying to commit it perfectly to memory.

  The hilt of his sword dug into her stomach, buzzing uncomfortably, but she ignored it.

  She held the hug as long as he let her, which was not long enough. When he pried them apart, she was still fighting sobs, not very successfully.

  "See you in fourteen days," she said, wiping her eyes dry. "No matter what."

  "Sam, you have no idea of guaranteeing how long it will take."

  "Fourteen days," Sam repeated, more firmly this time.

  "All right," Will replied with a chuckle, sounding doubtful. "See you in fourteen days."

  "No. Matter. What."

  He nodded.

  "Catch you later, kid," Mongrel said. "I'll do this thing for you, but after that we are even. I'm not doing any more favors for you, got it?"

  "Goodbye, old man," Will said with a little smirk, hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

  Will backed away a few steps, but Sam couldn't quite bring herself to turn away and start walking, her mouth working silently in an effort to come up with something more to say, some kind of argument to make him come with her.

  She felt a leathery hand in hers, and looked down to see Number One's aged face. He nodded toward the way ahead, toward Mongrel and the mule and the other chimps already heading down it, wading through hip-high weeds.

  Sam let herself be dragged along, reluctantly turning to face the path as the bad feeling in her stomach swelled.

  When she looked back at Will, he was already gone, only the broken remains of an abandoned village standing there.

  Fourteen days, she told herself. No matter what.