Howling Dark (Sun Eater #2)

by Christopher Ruocchio

True lessons require not only knowing, but that the student practices his knowledge again and again. Thus knowledge becomes us, and we become more than the animal and the machine. That is why the best teachers are students always, and the best students are never fully educated.

But the ugliness of the world does not fade, and fear and grief are not made less by time. We are only made stronger. We can only float together on their tides, as otters do, hand in hand.

It is hard to die. Far harder to live. And harder still to live a slave, and whatever else they were—me or a part of me or made only in my image . . . or not me at all—whatever horrors Calvert brought forth from that single dram of my blood would be his slaves, or slaves to the commandments writ in their own genomes.

Fear is death to reason. “And reason death to fear.”

“To what purpose?” I sensed the trap but not its shape, and so reined in the way an outrider might ahead of his column, the horse frightened by the stink of men lying in ambush. But the question was itself a game, and there was no danger in it. “To win.” Gibson slapped my leg with his cane, as though he were a grandmother and I an unruly boy. “Kwatz!” He scowled. “Winning. Nobody wins for long. You need something better.”

“You are what is left when all of that”—he gestured over his shoulder, as though all my names and the people who named me were smoke as well—“is gone. You are the part of you that survives these changes. The only part in his ship old Theseus could not replace.” “Was Theseus himself.”