“Where did you come from?” Raef whispered as he half-carried, half-walked a groggy Kinos out of the tomb.
His other questions were more direct but he feared the answers, that they’d extinguish the light in his chest, this strange feeling that felt suspiciously like hope.
Why were you in that box? he thought. What do you have to do with the moon?
Raef choked them down.
Kinos couldn’t be from Versinae. No one from the port city smelled that clean, so free of coal and brine, not even if they’d just bathed.
Zale remained sprawled on the crypt’s floor. Raef considered pausing to drag the unconscious knight inside the tomb to hide him but wasn’t certain he could, not with the weight of Zale’s armor.
“Come on,” he told Kinos, hurrying them along.
They had to make it out by sunset before the temple doors closed and the other knights discovered the unconscious man.
Wincing with each jarring step, certain they’d be caught, Raef steered them up the stairs.
Maurin would tell him to cut his losses, to leave Kinos behind, but the questions swam in Raef’s guts as the haunted look lingered on Kinos’s face.
Incense pricked Raef’s nose as they surfaced behind Hyperion’s altar, a grand circle of crimson marble capped in gold. Rich offerings of precious candles covered its surface. The oculus above glowed with the last of the day’s light.
They still had time.
“Thank you, Lady,” Raef whispered.
Chapels, each a scene writ in gilt and marble, ringed the dome. Many were dedicated to saints and heroes of Hyperion, golden knights and kindly priests cast in bronze. Raef smiled to see the rich scene marred by the city’s derelicts.
Dressed in tattered clothes, sprawled in the chapels, they prayed to the sun, begged him for food and shelter. Raef could not hate them for it.
Like him, their former lives had died with the moon, leaving them without purpose or livelihood. His heart ached from a similar hurt, one the world shared.
The number of old sailors and fisherfolk thinned every year. They’d soon be gone, but for now they reeked of rum and emitted a sweaty warmth that eased Kinos’s shivering as Raef helped him toward the temple doors.
Kinos collapsed, putting his full weight onto Raef. He swallowed a groan as his ribs pulled.
“What’s wrong?” Raef asked.
“Still frozen. Need to rest.”
Eyes watering, Raef settled them against a column of purple marble. They slumped to the floor together. Raef palmed his side and winced. His ribs had to be cracked.
“They’ll catch us if we stay here.”
“I’m so cold,” Kinos said with a puff of icy breath.
Raef rubbed Kinos’s hands between his, trying to impart some warmth. Kinos gave a happy exhale. His smile lit a very different warmth in Raef’s gut, but now certainly wasn’t the time for that.
“We have to go,” Raef said. “It’s not safe here.”
The light from the oculus had faded. The priests would soon shoo out the derelicts. His plan was to leave with them, blend in with the crowd. He had to get Kinos moving. He was too much of a mystery to leave unsolved.
Even then, Raef knew he could not abandon Kinos to the knights.
“Your brother?” a young priest asked, pulling Raef from his thoughts. “Did he drink too much?”
Some of Phoebe’s priests had been kinder than others, always good for an extra cookie or a little slack when Raef bent the rules, which had happened almost nightly.
If the tower hadn’t burned, Raef might be like Seth, or this man, fresh to the order and eager to serve his god.
It would be a shame to stab him, but if he recognized Kinos or tried to sound the alarm, Raef would risk drawing blood and hope the temple’s main floor was as safe from the Grief as the crypt below.
He slid his free hand into the pocket where he hid his knife.
“He’s sick, Father,” Raef said, pitching his voice just a little higher. “I brought him for a blessing.”
The priest’s lips pursed with sympathy.
“He’s been this way since we lost our dad,” Raef said. “He went too far out.”
The priest nodded in understanding. Without the tides, many fishermen sailed beyond the point of safety. Their beaten craft returned, pushed back to port by the shallow waves, the salted corpses of their crew sprawled within. The prince had the boats burned lest the shades of their sailors came ashore and added to the city’s ghosts.
“Since then, well, Mother—” Raef nodded to a tottering wretch. She chose that moment to hike her filthy skirts and scratch her backside. “She drinks. I care for them the best I can, but there’s no work these days.”
The priest gaped at the woman and pressed a pair of coppers into Raef’s palm.
“Use this for bread. Do not give it to your mother.”
“I won’t,” Raef said, nodding eagerly.
“If you need work, come around to the kitchens,” the priest said. “It’s hard, but honest.”
“I will,” Raef said, fighting off a grin as the priest went to berate the drunk woman.
“Your mother?” Kinos asked, voice still raspy.
“No,” Raef said. “No parents.”
“Orphan?” Kinos asked.
He had a little drool at the corner of his mouth.
“Not exactly,” Raef said.
This wasn’t the time to explain that he’d been an oblate, the extra child of a noble family given to a temple, and he couldn’t imagine a more dangerous place to explain which temple his family had given him to.
Raef wanted more than anything to know if Kinos was the same, but instead he asked, “Can you walk yet?”
Kinos smiled and offered Raef his hands.
Raef helped Kinos to his feet with another wince and steered them out the temple doors.
They reached the bottom of the steps as the priests sang their sunset prayers.
The golden dome reflected the last of the sunlight as the Grief began to rise. A mix of ghosts and briny sea fog, it already coated the lower city in gloom.
The fires in Boat Town sparked to life, little islands in the mist. Always safer by dark, Raef exhaled and let the salt air scrub the incense from the back of his throat.
They reached the nearest alley. His questions wouldn’t wait any longer.
“Who are you? Why were you in that box?”
The temple bells pealed an alarm.
Kinos stiffened.
“Knights,” he hissed.
“Don’t run,” Raef said, trying to sound calm. He couldn’t have anyway. His ribs burned as they staggered deeper into the alley.
He did not know what would happen if the knights caught them. Would Kinos go back into the box?
They may not burn Raef right away, but if Zale woke and told them what he was, what he’d done—Raef couldn’t imagine he’d survive for long.
He pressed Kinos against a wall, counting on his darker clothes and the whorls of Grief to hide them. Kinos gripped the front of Raef’s shirt, pulling him close. His breath was hot on Raef’s neck as he turned to glance behind them.
The younger knight, Seth, burst from the temple, accompanied by a female knight Raef had neither seen nor stabbed.
Standing chest to chest, Raef couldn’t help but notice how Kinos, a little shorter than him, fit against him. Kinos’s heartbeat kept time with his as the flickering swords bobbed nearer, their light bouncing off the alley’s entrance.