were heroes. Sure, they had barely any jurisdiction, but they operated under a strict code of honor passed down for centuries.”
“I think the technical term for that is vigilante. Vigilante with fancy sponsorship.”
“Okay, well, these ‘vigilantes’ were total badasses. Arceley Vitto once took a C-27 cannon burst to the chest, got up, and kept fighting. Lamar plan-Rana tore the engines off a skipship and rode it through an atmospheric burn. I even heard a rumor that one time Ala Rutger split a fighter clear down the middle with her vibrosword.”
Wen lets out a sharp giggle. “There’s no way that’s true.”
I grin. “That was the point of the suited knights. Yeah, they were ordinary people. Some of them had bloodrights, others didn’t—but they were all united by the drive to serve their empire and the wild bravery it’d take to wear one of those suits. They could do anything.” And then I picture Rafe’s empty powersuit, and the grin falters as I remember where this line of conversation is supposed to go. “So Iva emp-Umber coordinated thirty simultaneous strikes across the Archon Empire to kill them all and launch her war.”
There isn’t much more left to say after that. With the story wrung out of my head, I stare at the runway, watching another featherlight fighter dip down, skim it with its landing gear, and then go howling back into the summer sky.
“Gal doesn’t understand it, does he?” Wen asks after the jet’s faded to a shimmering speck.
“Understand what?” I don’t try to hide the wary edge in my tone. Increasingly, I’m finding it difficult to hide anything from this girl.
“What it took out of you. He doesn’t see you with a before and after. He just sees what’s left.”
I think about her own before and after. Before, when she was destined for glory. After, a place filled with dirt and burns and uncertainty. I flop back, folding my hands behind my head, and a second later, Wen joins me.
“There’s not…much left,” I admit to the broadness of the sky. “I don’t understand how there’s so much of you left.”
I expect her to fire off some sort of snappy quip, and I’m surprised when she doesn’t. Wen stares up contemplatively at the distant contrails left by transports far above us. “I lost my mother,” she says at last. “You lost an entire empire.”
“I lost my mother too,” I whisper, and my heart seizes in my chest. It’s a truth that’s always been wrapped up in the larger tragedy. A truth so obvious that I’ve never said it out loud like this.
If I said it to Gal, he’d follow with a question, or with sympathy that would only double the sensation of a weight crushing my ribs. But Wen just nods and says, “I had to fight for what I kept. I had to keep thinking about it, keep the hurt fresh. And…I don’t think I like what it’s done to me. Part of me wants to know what I’d be without this revenge quest eating up my spare time.”
And I want to know what I’d be if I kept my fire the way she has.
“I don’t know,” she says and sighs, twisting her heels against the dirt. “It’s so much to live up to. But for you, it’s good to be here, right? To find out that you lost less than you thought? To know so many are fighting to restore it?”
I can’t bring myself to lie to Wen directly, and so it startles me when I admit, “Yeah, a little. More than a little.” After a moment, I add, “But we’re just trying to get back home.”
“To Gal’s home.”
I nod, my jaw tightening. “I go where Gal goes.”
“Even if the resistance retakes Rana?”
“I go where Gal goes,” I repeat.
“Fair enough,” Wen says, but nothing in her sounds convinced. Which is fair, because what I said wasn’t exactly convincing. I haven’t allowed myself to consider what I’d do if our plan falls through and Archon actually regains territory. My thoughts flick to my velvet bag, to what I owe my