She ran after him. He was easy to find, too tall to move quickly through the low branches, his skin silver-blue in the muted air. A branch snagged the loose fabric of his tunic, and it ripped with a sound like the rattle some Drifter musicians used. He swore again—then a third time, as Noirin caught up to him.
“Why did you run away?” she asked.
He glared at her. His eyes were as deep a black as her own, oddly reassuring. “You’re the one who’s been hunting me.”
What did she expect? She was a one-blood, as distinctive as he was among the Drifters; no one in this part of the Shreds had skin as dark as hers. She had moved to a new area before trying to hire him, but he was clever enough to make the connection on sight.
Noirin freed the torn edge of his tunic from the branch and wished any of the pidgins had the inflections of her native tongue; she couldn’t express supplication well enough. “No. The rumor I spread was true; I want to hire you. To help my people.”
He pulled away from her in disgust and fury. If the trees had let him, he likely would have walked away again, but there was no graceful exit to be had. “I can’t save your gods-damned world.”
A sound of startlement escaped her. “I didn’t think you could.”
Now she had his attention. He considered her, while he tucked the trailing flap of his tunic into his sash. “Then what did you want me for?”
Noirin wished they stood in sunlight, rather than the oppressive dark of the trees, but feared that asking him to move elsewhere would exhaust the small patience she’d won. “Are you the man known as Last?” The meaning stayed the same, no matter the tongue; she named him in the language of her home.
He went still at the sound of it; she could almost see the rapid dance of his thoughts, recognizing the language, trying to identify it. “Surnyao,” he said at last, and a small sun of joy burned beneath Noirin’s ribs. “The place of light.”
“It used to be. And that is why I’ve searched you out.”
“I can’t put it back the way it was, either,” he said, with a surprisingly bitter cast to the words.
She shook her head. Now was the time to ask; the bitterness wasn’t directed at her. “Could we go somewhere . . . more comfortable?”
After a heartbeat, a grin broke through the twist of his face. “Either you’re propositioning me, or you want sunlight.”
Another startled sound. “No! You—you aren’t—”
“Asurnya?”
“A woman,” Noirin said. “At least you don’t appear to be.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes. “That’s right; your people have rules about that sort of thing. So you’re how old—third sun?”
Both the heat of embarrassment and the light of joy faded a little. “Nearly fourth,” Noirin said. This time she was glad for the pidgin, so she didn’t have to decide whether to inflect for shame or not. “Maybe fourth, by now; I’m not sure how long I’ve been gone.”
“I’m not arrogant enough to think you’d hunt me out for breeding, anyway. So you want sunlight, and to ask me about something else entirely.” His next words were addressed to the trees. “All right, I’m listening to her. Will you let me go now?”
The branches, without seeming to move, opened up around them. Last grinned again at Noirin’s wide eyes and said, “Little-known secret. The people of this Shred never vanished; it was only ever inhabited by trees. You’ve been waiting tables inside their king. Come on.”
She absorbed that in wonderment, then stretched with relief as they came into the open air. The sun in this next Shred was weak, leaving her cold all the time, but it was better than nothing. Last led her between two buildings and into a courtyard she didn’t know existed, where the ground gave way to a shallow bowl of beaten copper ten paces across. It caught the sun’s weak light and gave back gentle warmth, and Noirin almost wept with sudden homesickness.
He gave her time to compose herself, then said, “So what do you want me for?”
At his nod, she seated herself gingerly on the copper, pressing her hands against the sun-heated metal. “We still have stories of you,” she told him, faintly embarrassed to admit it. “They say you were in the place of fire, and the first outsider to set foot in Surnyao.”
“Place of fire. . . .” His eyes went distant, and then he snapped his fingers. “E Si Ge Tchi. I think. They were trying to negotiate a treaty with another world, for protection against that firestorm. Yes, I remember.”
Radiant light, within and without. He remembered. Noirin said, “You are the only one who does.”
“I thought you said your people told stories about it.”
“About you. And a little about Surnyao, what it was like then. But the truth is that we’ve forgotten most of it. We talk about Absent Light and the vanished suns, but it’s empty words, fragments without meaning. Nobody understands well enough to explain.”
He turned his head away. She took the opportunity to study his profile: the folds of his eyelids, the sharp slope of his jaw, the copper light giving his skin a violet cast. So unlike an Asurnya man. And old—how old? He must come from a very longlived race indeed, to have been there when Surnyao was new to Driftwood, and still be here now. But he had seen it with his own eyes, not filtered through generations of broken chants, memories warped by pain and loss.
Last said, almost too quiet for her to hear, “That’s the nature of Driftwood. Fragments.”
The pain in his voice made it hard for Noirin to speak. “And it’s in the nature of those who come to Driftwood to fight against it. You remember. You can tell me how Surnyao was. And then I can go home, and tell my people, and we will take that light with us into the darkness.”
It would come regardless. She knew that much. The last suns would burn out, and Surnyao would go into the Crush, as countless worlds had gone before them. But they could go as Asurnya, with the strength of all they had forgotten. They could make their own light.
He let out a breathless laugh. “Tell you? An entire world. Or most of one, anyway. I lived there for some time—no doubt your stories tell you that—from mid-sun to Absent Light. I could talk from now until your last sun dies and not tell you everything I saw, and you’d forget half of it before I was done.”
She felt the pulse of her heart in her tongue. “You could come to Surnyao—”
He was on his feet before she saw him move, retreating to the center of the shallow copper bowl. “And see the wreckage of a place I once loved? No. I won’t be your new Chant Leader, won’t bind myself to—”
And then he stopped, before Noirin could find a response, and in the warm glow she saw speculation dawn on his face. “Though perhaps,” he said, and stopped again.
She dug her fingers into the unyielding copper. “What?”
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “You’d have to do something for me in return.”
“I always intended to,” she said. “Nothing in Driftwood is free. What do you want?”
Last said, “To forget.”
The sign above the archway was unintelligible to Noirin, but Last told her it read Quinendeniua. The Court of Memory.
Walls of packed and polished mud surrounded the courtyard, and fragrant trees bloomed along the walls, breathing forth their scent in the light of flickering torches. In one corner, a creature of amorphous shadow served drinks to patrons, and in another, four musicians provided a melody to the dancers who swayed across the paving-stones.
And that was all. Quinendeniua was the only remnant of its world; beyond its earthen walls, other Shreds went about their business. But the sound did not carry across the threshold, as if this were a sacred space.
Last felt it, too, for he spoke in a quiet tone that went no farther than Noirin’s ears. “There are two ways to do this. But if you chased me down to find the memory of Surnyao’s past, I doubt you want to begin with blasphemy. You haven’t been presented to the fourth sun yet.”
In the warm darkness, she could scarcely feel the heat
ing of her own cheeks, and she managed a light response. “Even if I were—you’re not arrogant enough to expect that.”
His teeth glinted silver when he grinned. “Right. Well, for this to work, we have to match each other; we have to move as one. So, like most people who come here, we dance.”
“Are—” She stared at the figures moving in the torchlight. “Are they all here for memory?”
“One way or another. It’s the magic of this place. Some people want to remember someone else’s memories—for education, or just for escape. Others want to forget. Memories can be shared, or given away.” His eyes vanished into the darkness beneath his brows when he looked down at her. “How do you want to begin?”
The memory he wished to lose was not Surnyao; he’d refused to tell her what it was. What could be so bad that this man would want to erase it from his mind? It was at least partly morbid curiosity that made Noirin say, “My payment is that you will forget. Let that be done first.”
“So I don’t have to worry you’ll skip out on the bill,” he said, and managed a hint of amusement. “I appreciate it. But no—I’ll give you what you came for, first.”
His fingers curled around hers, and he pulled her forward before she could protest.
The music was foreign but lovely, a slow beat from skin-covered drums and some kind of rattle, stringed instruments like leudani weaving melody and harmony around it. Noirin could not understand the singer’s words, but the sense of them reached her anyway: memory and forgetfulness, the foundations and chains of the past. She didn’t know whether the connection of minds came about through the music, or if Quinendeniua did it to all who came within, but she believed what Last had told her was true.
Here, she could see what he had seen, more completely than words could ever convey.
Here, she would remember Surnyao.
The dances of her home were long forgotten. She had seen others in her travels, some frantic, some like the slow movement of statues. This was neither. We have to move as one, Last had said; he drew her close, wrapped one arm about her waist. They were closer in height than she had thought, and could lay their heads upon each other’s shoulders. She felt the tremor of his laughter. “I know it’s strange. Just relax. In a moment, you won’t notice this at all.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. But he began to move, in slow, easy steps, and she moved with them; she couldn’t not, as close as they were. His free hand held hers lightly, like a bird. Despite the darkness, the air was warm, and a pleasant sweat beaded her skin. Noirin closed her eyes, gave Last her trust, felt him give the same to her. There was nothing but the darkness and the music, the scented breeze, the firmness of the paving-stones beneath their feet, and memory. . . .
Seven suns, blazing their glory across the sky, a brightness and a heat that gave life to everything below.
Chants, always chants, not just at certain times but continually, their steady pace the means by which the Asurnya measured their days. I will meet you at the Hyacinth Canto. You haven’t come to see me in a hundred cycles. Fry the meat for one stanza.
Tall towers that cast no shadow, lit from every side by the suns. In the catacombs beneath them, warriors with spears of black iron, the priesthood of Absent Light. Figures of terror, to small children—behave, or I’ll apprentice you to the Harbingers of the Dark.
Markets that sold a thousand spices, each one distinct on the tongue. Aromatic flowers that danced in the gentle air, their seeds spreading in the ceaseless light. Serpents dozing in the warmth, sold as pets, as sacrifices, as food. Vast fields, kept damp by intricate irrigation, regulated by a caste called the saerapavas.
A young man. Tall and slender, black as obsidian, with a merry grin. In his third sun, he was too young for breeding, and so he dallied with his male friends until that time came. Even with a silver-pale outsider, horrifying the Chant Leader, who insisted that contact with someone from beyond the edges of the world would be an abomination, regardless of age.
Last loved Chahaya, and mourned when he reached his median light, moving into the world of women and family.
Grief threatened to suffocate Noirin—hers and Last’s. This was the world they had lost, in all of its wondrous complexity, from the heartbreaking perfection of the ancient chants to the shameful poverty of the beggars in the streets. Good and bad, grand and humble, all the different aspects of Surnyao, and the suns watching it all in their slow march across the sky.
Absent Light.
Wails throughout the city, the terrified shrieks of children. She could not feel the terror herself: to Last, it was simply night, a common enough occurrence in most worlds. And now it came too often for her to comprehend its full horror. But she witnessed the paralysis of the Asurnya, the Harbingers walking the streets with their black iron spears, and heard the silence where the chants had been.
Then dawn, the First Sun, blessing the world with its light.
And Surnyao came to life once more.
The shoulder of Last’s shirt was wet with tears when Noirin lifted her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and tried ineffectually to brush it dry.
He stopped her with one hand. “It’s all right.” Grief shadowed his eyes, too; he had remembered Surnyao with her. So much lost! She thanked light he’d left when he did; she did not want to remember the moment after his departure, when the Glorious Sun burned to cinders on the horizon. That horror lived on well enough in tales.
He let her pull free. Noirin retreated out of the way of their fellow dancers, going to stand beneath one of the trees. Tiny pink petals drifted down, reminding her of similar trees that had once bloomed in the gardens of the chantries.
When she had composed herself once more, she turned and found Last waiting at a discreet distance. Torchlight flickered behind his head, but his face was in shadow. “What do you want to forget?” she asked him. “What is so terrible, the very memory of it must be torn from your mind?”
He didn’t answer at first. This was not part of their agreement, that she should ask questions. But finally he said, “Not terrible. Just—” A ragged breath, and for the first time it occurred to her that he might have chosen his position deliberately, to hide his expression in darkness. She understood him better now, and she knew the ways in which honesty was hard for this man.
“Just painful,” he finished.
Noirin left him his distance, but not his reticence. “You bear so much grief. Why is this pain worse than all the others? Last . . . what are you trying to forget?”
And she knew, fleetingly, as she said it, that she had used the wrong name; he was not always called Last. But she didn’t know what his real name was.
He answered her anyway. “My world.”
The weight of it was there, in her memory. Rarely at the forefront of his mind, but always present. He was old, far older than she had realized; old when Surnyao came to Driftwood, and far older than he should ever have been.
Last of his race. Last of his world, which had long since gone into the Crush. Living on, with no idea why, ages after he should have been dead. And something had happened to him, a recent pain, which made him want to forget where he had come from, forget there was one world he would grieve for beyond all others, now and forever, with no end in sight.
She didn’t know what that recent pain was, how it had driven him to this desperate point. But she knew why he’d chosen to share Surnyao with her first: to postpone the moment when he would give up the memory of his own home. And she could guess the reason for that, too.
“You’re the only one who remembers,” Noirin said. His world, and countless others that had come and gone. “If you forget . . . then they’re dead, even if you live.”
“Maybe I want that,” he said harshly, cutting across the steady rise and fall of the music.
“For now. But not forever. There will come a time when you regret the loss of those memories. And who will remember them for you then?”
Last dropped his c
hin. Staring at the paving stones, he said, “This is not what we agreed.”
No, it wasn’t. And Noirin could not deny the curiosity burning within her. To know the origin of this man—his name, the name of his world, the path that had led to his immortality, even if he didn’t understand it himself. She would know what he knew, what no one else in Driftwood did.
But she would be stealing his very self from him. If he forgot those things, he wouldn’t be Last anymore. It was a form of suicide.
She had agreed. Noirin struggled with her conscience, then snatched at the hope of compromise. “If we do this . . . that memory becomes mine, in its entirety.”
“Yes.”
“Then I could keep it for you. And when you ask, we’ll come back here, and I’ll return it to you.”
His head came up in a swift arc. Small shifts in his posture told Noirin he almost spoke several times, pulling the words back just before they reached his lips. Finally a broken half-laugh escaped him, and he said, “I should have known better than to think Quinendeniua would be so simple. Letting you in my head like that . . . you understand me too well now, don’t you?”
She had no idea what he meant by that, but kept her silence.
“You could walk out that archway and be mugged in the streets of Vaiciai, or a dozen other Shreds between here and your home. You could die of old age or disease before I come find you. We could return and find Quinendeniua gone, just a crumbled chunk of wall dissolving in the Crush, and no world left that can do what this place does. A hundred and one ways for that memory to be lost. And without it . . .”
Another long pause. This time, Noirin completed the sentence for him, because he’d said enough that she did indeed understand him now. “Without it, you might die.”
“I don’t know why I haven’t,” he said. “For all I know, forgetting might make it happen.”
“Then the question is: are you prepared to destroy the last piece of your world?”
She didn’t want to ask it. If he said yes, then she would have to do as she promised, taking his memory, destroying him in spirit, and maybe in body, too. But that was his choice, not hers.
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