The Answer in the Lamps

The tower’s lamps answered one by one.

Captain Sella Venn stood at the signal table with her sleeves rolled above the wrist. The first reply came from the western battery: two white flashes, a pause, then the same pair again. The northern post answered next. The farthest guns waited long enough that Aren had time to count the breaths between signals.

Then their lamps moved.

“Hold fire acknowledged,” Sella said. She set the shutter and sent the return code. “All three posts.”

Aren had been watching the distant lights through the narrow slit in the tower wall. One by one, they went dark. He did not know whether the gunners had lowered their weapons or only covered their lamps, but Sella watched the sequence and let out the breath she had been holding.

“They have the order,” she said. “No one fires on this tower tonight.”

A man on the nearest cot shifted beneath his blanket. His left leg was splinted, and his face had gone gray from pain and lost blood. He had been a soldier at Oris Gate; Aren had heard him give his name to Seraphine but had not kept it. His eyes were fixed on Vael, seated against the far wall with one wrist bound to a ring in the floor.

“Tonight,” the soldier said. “And tomorrow?”

Sella turned from the lamps. “Tomorrow is still ours to answer.”

The man’s gaze stayed on Vael. “He gave the orders that brought them here.”

Vael did not shift against the wall. “Some of them.”

“That is enough for me.”

Aren’s right hand hung against his thigh, heavy and useless. He flexed the fingers of his left hand instead, once, to keep from reaching for a sword that was not there. “He stays bound,” he said. “He stays guarded. The wounded stay here until they can be moved.”

The soldier looked at him. “You’re the Champion. Is that your judgment?”

Aren disliked the title most when it made people wait for him to give them an answer no one could safely make. He glanced at the bound wrist, then at the soldier’s splinted leg.

“It’s what I can stand behind tonight,” he said. “I saw him carry you up the stair.”

The soldier pulled the blanket higher over his chest. It did not settle anything between them, and Aren did not ask it to.

Seraphine crossed the room with a cup of water. She had been counting the wounded aloud whenever the movement of people made her lose track. Now she set the cup beside the soldier and checked the bandage at his knee. Vael watched her hands rather than the man’s face.