Ashes of Man (Sun Eater, #5)

by Christopher Ruocchio

“Do you know, Imrah, that you live on a truly beautiful world?” I asked, turning to take in the whole of that island of the dead before looking back at her. She was smiling then, and Valka smiled behind her. “I do,” the Keeper replied. “I have always struggled,” I said, “to stand still long enough to see it. All my life. All my life I’ve spent chasing my dream. That was what Siran betrayed, what Switch—my other friend—betrayed. I could not bear that they had dreams all their own.”

But I was not—had not been—ready to face the world of men and play the great game of empire and thrones.

With the glass of the armored window between them and me, I might have been at a menagerie, though I dared not guess which of us was the audience, and which the caged beast.

We have need of heroes, however broken, however terrible, however insufficient they may be. And we have need of more than one hero, for heroes do break, you know.

My dead outnumbered my living—as becomes true for each of us in time.

White contrails hit the sky, without the flash of friction fires or the thunder of supersonic sound. It was imperative that its cargo should descend gently. The buildings were not meant to fly.

Rome was not built in a day, or so the ancients said. But we are not Rome.

“I read,” I said, and shrugged. “People always accuse me of wasting my time, but they don’t complain when I have their answers.”

“The world’s changed,” I allowed, and glanced back to where Prince Rafael Hatim sat with Garan Peake and the others. “But men have not. Nor will.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “We keep making the same choices. The same mistakes. So the same wisdom will ever serve us.”

I marked signs of recent abandonment: a paper cup on the counter, a half-eaten lunch on one of the little tables in the sitting area. So close to the medical horrors upstairs, these little touches of humanity seemed all the more obscene.

Have I not said that atrocity is writ in just such quiet rooms as that room, by just such bloodless men as these? Men who do not fear death—not because their art has rendered them immorbid—but because they never face the sword, the shot, or the cannon blast.

Time does not stop. Not ever. Not even once. The future comes, whatever it may hold. Alone of all the things and forces in the universe, Time will never end, and will remain—ticking on—after even Death has died and the universe lies dark and cold.