Chapter Text
So, funny story: I wrote the entire ending from Palamedes’ POV, hated it, and realized it needed to be from Colum’s instead. Whoops! Sorry this took a million years, but at last, here is the ending, courtesy of Colum Asht.
15.12.2024: still making some minor edits!
Colum Asht sighed.
He had made it further out in the last round, nearly to the coat check, nearly to the door of the infernal Third House gathering which he seemed doomed to repeat over and over and over. But once again, he found himself facing a bar gleaming with bottles. He gazed at liquor he’d never allowed himself to touch in life and wondered how Naberius’ imagination might approximate the taste.
It was still Tern’s world, if the clothes were anything to go by. Colum’s relief in finding himself clothed in white once more had been replaced with bemusement when he realized he was in a Cohort uniform. Or an approximate Cohort uniform; it fit well and probably flattered his figure, which Tern claimed Cohort uniforms did not do. But everything Tern dressed them in was flattering, if slightly too tight around the ass.
His was the only Cohort uniform in the entire party, which might have been the norm or not. Colum had never been to a party in the Third kingdom. He had never visited the Third in his life at all. Silas had once called Ida a “glistening orifice of vice.” Learning this had brought Naberius to tears with delight.
And so he could not speak to the accuracy of the replica Tern had recalled or imagined or devised. Maybe the curtains on Ida really did hang in lush, even folds. Maybe the people really did look like they had just stepped out of paintings, their eyes a jewelled glister, like Tern’s own, that cut down and contradicted their smiles. Perhaps the lighting angled on everyone’s faces just so at all times, some Third House magic in constant motion.
But every world Naberius had composed for them had been so drawn, so lovely and complete in design. The Prince of The Procession, House of the Shining Dead, understood beauty and saw it in all things. Colum loved him for that. He wondered if, given time, Silas might also recognize it as a holy thing.
Tern himself had made no appearance yet, and that was all right. Colum had known the risk when he bade the Third farewell in that cabin. It wasn’t the first time he had hurt Naberius with his loyalty to Silas. If he had finally chosen to protect his own peace, then Colum wished him well.
Despite everything, he had thought Naberius understood his dues to Silas. He really had thought—hoped—that Tern’s sense of responsibility was not completely dead. That some part of him was still the heartbroken wreck Colum had discovered in the halls of Canaan House, all but literally self-flagellating for having failed both his adepts in one outing.
But to wish that was to wish Tern heartbroken. So Colum would abide.
He wished to abide somewhere with less people in it, however. Colum winced at the flow of not-conversations that rose and fell behind him. The words were always gibberish, the laughter was always incongruent. It was worse than the fake skeletons in the fake Canaan House, who had ambled by doors and windows always when pleasure hit its peak. It was worse than catching sight of the hem of a white cloak whipping around the corner, as if Silas had seen them in the throes of pleasure and retreated in disgust.
But after an age, another figure in white did appear. There at last, narrow-shouldered and slender in a Cohort uniform he’d sworn up and down he wouldn’t be caught dead in: Naberius Tern.
Colum eyed him curiously. Every time Tern came to him, he was a little altered: a memory gone, a detail missed. He was never quite the man Colum had met in Canaan House; there was much of himself but never all of it, led by parts of himself he would never have shared. And it had been so long that Colum doubted his own memory of what Naberius Tern had been. But this creature was both sly and sullen, self-possessed and suspicious, any possible amusement or enjoyment at the scene around him shuttered under a resentful glare. This was much closer to the original thing.
He did not appear to be in a partying mood. He eyed the shadowy figures around him distrustfully, glared at the coat check counter, and made his way, without really seeming to see where he was going, to the bar to stand next to Colum. No greeting, no look.
No Sixth, either. Colum was surprised at his own capacity for jealousy, the sheer hypocrisy of it after the number of times he had left Tern to look for Silas.
It was a moment pregnant with surprise, at himself and at Naberius. Colum had not been aware that the silent treatment was within Tern’s repertoire. He hazarded the first sally himself.
“All right. Are you punishing me?”
This weak stab shattered the glaze over Tern utterly. His face opened with surprise. His response was too slow, and then too fast. He gabbled—not even reaching the point of excuses but reiterating first words of aborted sentences. Something about a bed, an argument, a liar, swords. He rocked back on his heels, unsteady. His hands wrung.
Colum blanched, watching confusion swell into immeasurable hurt as Naberius tried to explain where he had been, what had just happened.
He caved immediately. “A joke. Naberius, I’m sorry. It was a joke. I’m not good at them. I won’t do it again.”
“Don’t say that!” Naberius wailed, even more distraught. “For all we know, you’re actually a very funny person!”
This made Colum laugh, but not Naberius. He tried again to explain himself and made himself even more upset.
This was more like him as he had become since death; Colum was partially comforted. Through the various dream worlds Tern had dragged them through, Colum had gained plenty of experience rerouting Tern’s energy, so he got to work. He picked Naberius up as lightly as he could and set him on the bar top. He was always on the lookout for stair steps, tables, and chairs on which to position Tern so they could speak on a more even level; Colum hated towering over him.
As ever, the intervention was a success. Naberius loved being picked up; he loved being handled. His tears sparkled forgotten in the corners of his eyes as he began to exclaim, loudly and enthusiastically, on the size of Colum’s hands and whether they had just fit all the way around his waist. He had many ideas for future applications of this discovery.
Colum let him work through the logistics of the sex Naberius seemed to anticipate them having right there on the bar as he inspected him. Something had changed since the cabin, yet it was not a new feature or detail. Everything about him felt part of the whole; perhaps the whole was more complete. Perhaps his attention did not scamper with the same bright levity as before; perhaps his mouth tugged down more seriously.
Colum finally interrupted to tell Tern that he really was pleased to see him. He allowed that he was a little surprised.
“Well, I don’t see why.” He was keeping his awful little drawl suspended, light; he was still hurt. “I said I’d find you anywhere. I said anywhere, in any form.”
“You did, and you have,” Colum assured him. “As you swore to me. You have done everything you promised.”
Naberius was distracted by this, pleased, but not for long. His eyes roved over the assembly behind Colum. “Every time. Every time we do one of these,” he gestured at the party. “As many times as… as we do one of these.”
Then he looked at Colum very hard and said, “Colum, we have to go.”
Colum returned his look steadily. They had had this conversation before. He didn’t mind having it again. “I see. Go where?”
“There are more worlds than this,” said Naberius. “Ianthe used to talk about it.”
“She is right. There is Hell. You want us to go to Hell?”
“There are worlds beyond Hell. Worlds like this one, but better. I mean—” Naberius flapped a hand absently at their surroundings, “—to be clear, this is a terrible party. This is not a real Third party. This is from the books—the author started running out of material later in the series and started including these flashbacks to when Tercero and Geryon were still on Ida. This was supposed to be some kind of Cohort party on the Third, and it’s not at all correct.”
His focus was wandering, but Colum had the method of holding Naberius’ attention down to a science. He raised one hand from Tern’s waist—the duellist’s own hand chased it absently, trying to pull it back down—and cupped his face instead. He set his thumb to work tracing back and forth across Naberius’ lower lip.
Naberius fought to maintain clarity. “T-the author read some gossip mags and wrote their best guess, but it killed some of the mystery. We thought maybe they were one of us, but they’re probably just some craftsman’s kid, some absolute peasant—”
“So are we Tercero and Geryon again? Is that why we’re in uniform? I thought you said Cohort uniforms look terrible.”
“They do, but I fixed them,” Naberius confirmed, tilting his chin further into Colum’s palm. “You look fantastic, by the way, you need to wear tight trousers more often. What was I saying? Oh! This is not a good party! This is not a good world. I-I’m doing my best, but I can only work with what I remember.”
“It is a good world,” Colum told him quietly. “You have made me many good worlds. We have had so many lovely, lovely things.”
Naberius’ brows drew together; he was stung, but Colum couldn’t see why. “I—yes. No. Listen to me. Ianthe told me about—I had no idea what she meant, but it’s made more sense lately, and I think I see the method.”
“Of going to Hell?”
“Of going past Hell.”
“Naberius…” Colum made himself smile. He did not like Ianthe Tridentarius. He did not like the way she hypothesized about the business of the soul from her academic little corner, having never touched the work herself. But he knew now Naberius’ love for her intellect, her excellence that matched his own. Colum would not have attacked Tern’s loyalty to his necromancer for the world.
So Colum countered from another angle. “I have made this journey many times. The soul descends to Hell, and the necromancer brings it back. There is nowhere further to go than Hell.”
“The soul alone goes to Hell. But with two! You could descend and ascend because you had a necromancer, an anchor, but—”
“I had Silas,” said Colum. “Say his name, please.”
“You don’t need… Silas anymore to do it,” said Naberius; Colum kissed his temple as a reward. “You need the anchor still. But it doesn’t have to be a necromancer. Necromancers don’t have any more power in these worlds than we do—did. We have more, possibly. The advantage is gone.” His eyes skittered again over Colum’s shoulder.
This again; some half-remembered rhetoric denouncing necromantic leadership, probably quoted from the exact same mystery series on which Tern’s current homage was based. Silas had decried the state of Third House publishing before. He called it a foaming beast dripping acidic ideas to the populace; trashy romance novels and mystery series planting seeds of dissent amongst the idle readers of the Third, penned by imaginative malcontents (or as Tern had put it, some craftsman’s kid, some peasant).
But that was not the point to raise for the moment. Instead, Colum gave him another very patient smile. Naberius flushed red and pressed on.
“Two souls could make their way into Hell, and through it. A wanderer and an anchor, taking turns. If one’s got a little more experience on the journey—and you do—then so much the better. No actual necromancy required! Colum, we could just go,” he finished desperately. “Please, we have to go. We have to get distance from it. Death is still too close to everything. We have to go further.”
Colum frowned. Tern’s urgency was different from the past iterations of this discussion; this was something Tern had brought with him into the room. He tilted Naberius’ chin up to try to better see it and understand it. Tern kissed his hand fervently and looked away again over Colum’s shoulder.
“Do you remember when I found you, that night in Canaan House? After your challenge to the Sixth.”
Naberius took a deep breath. “Please do not mention the Sixth to me at this particular moment in time, thank you.”
So that answered, slightly, the disappearance of the Sixth necromancer. “All right. But that night. Do you remember what I asked?”
“You asked me to forget about it,” Naberius said craftily.
“I did. But I remember. I asked if there was anything you wanted to confess.” Colum grimaced at the awkward memory. “I think… well, I know that you thought I meant something very different.”
Tern’s head ducked down before Colum could catch him. His forehead pressed to Colum’s chest; he was hiding, but he wasn’t pulling away.
“Once again, we stumble over a difference in our theologies,” Colum continued gently. “I say to you ‘confession’, and you think of crimes, or wrongdoing. I hurt you very badly when I asked you that. And at such a time, when you were already in such a bad way… I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Very small, Naberius said, “I know.”
“I meant… I was trying to ask if you wanted to talk. About anything. Any serious subject, any difficult thing. Which I know you hate. I’m sorry.”
And then he waited, knowing Naberius could not bear silence.
At last: “We’ve never really talked about our oaths.”
Colum blinked. “I think we have.”
“Only when it turns out they’re different.” Naberius’ head waggled from side to side, and he intoned, “ ‘Flesh and tangibles’, la-di-dah.”
Sarcasm aside, an attempt was being made. Colum petted the back of Naberius’ head in approval. “Yes. The letter of your vows.”
“And you the spirit. Or so you say. It’s the same words, though, isn’t it?”
“Roughly. Ours extends over a few sermons.”
“God, that is so typically Eighth!” But he was sitting, and he had not tried to squirm away or flip the world or escape. Colum was proud of him.
“The oath,” Colum prompted him.
“The oath.” Naberius took a deep breath and pushed himself upright. His lids were already low on his eyes with fatigue. “The oath. Okay.” He spread his fingers and indicated the first point with his thumb. “There’s the flesh, the body. So: sustenance, for the work. But beyond that, it’s presence. Presence at the necromancer’s side, presence in all their works. You have to physically be there for them, for them to partake or just to keep them company. Right? Fine.”
Colum raised his eyebrows. This was a far more direct breakdown of the oath than the extended parables and particulars of the Eighth; how typically Third to be so practical.
The Eighth did have a similar clause regarding the necromancer’s need to partake, though Silas and others considered the Third’s engagement with the flesh a gross misinterpretation. But Colum let that lie.
Naberius raised his index finger. “Then, service: the work. The training, the skills. Prestige from accomplishments to furnish the necromancer’s endeavours.” He shrugged. “Commendations or medals or rankings or what have you. Your accomplishments are theirs, and theirs yours, etc.”
This was slightly outside the Eighth’s texts, which promoted humility. But humility itself could be a kind of accomplishment—Eighth necromancers spoke of it in the highest degree, which seemed counterintuitive—so Colum allowed it.
“Then, the sword: risk. Impeding danger, meeting challenges, absorbing harm. Eventually, death, should it come to that.”
That was inarguable.
“So, body, service, death, in service of their works.”
“In service of God?” Colum queried.
“Works, which go to God. Although,” Naberius hesitated mid-amendment, “I mean all works, I guess, go back to God even if they go kind of a circular—Ianthe had some—technically, taking the long view, her work was in service. Just maybe not in ways that obviously seem like service, or that God would—but that doesn’t mean—”
Colum took mercy on him. “The necromancer makes the plan.”
“The necromancer makes the plan,” Naberius echoed gratefully. “Right, so we all understand that.”
“We do,” Colum assured him, but Naberius was already moving on with his thought. His eyes wandering as he tried to focus on one train of thought for the first time in an age:
“Undying service admittedly goes a bit beyond my original understanding of the remit, but I can see the logic. So, the body: Ianthe has that now. Or had it.” An ugly look crossed his face and then was gone. “Someone’s got my body, but I swore, so, fine. The skill: Ianthe has that now. Longer lease on that than anticipated, but again, I swore. Fine. The death… I think I can even see my way clear to that. If I, basically, took on risk, absorbed harm, ahead of time, so that the body and the service could continue, and Ianthe can use those for the plan, then all right, fine. We are still within contract. That’s still the oath. I did it all.”
And then, “And there’s nothing else. Right?”
Colum frowned. He should have known Naberius was building up to the usual argument: his pursuit of Silas, his service past death, beyond oath. He knew the moment he nodded, assented that Naberius’ understanding of the oath matched his own, Naberius would turn the logic back on him.
They would never find peace in each other, really. They would never agree. They would spend eternity sparring over these particulars, both too stubborn to ever relinquish ground, even in death.
But before he could admonish the Third, Naberius repeated, “I did it all. Didn’t I? I did the work. Did I miss something? What else did she want?”
This made Colum hesitate. The Lyctoral process was still a mystery to him; similar enough to Eighth practices to be misleading. “I can’t speak for Ianthe Tridentarius—”
“What? No. Corona.” His eyes were wild and wide and blue. “I’m talking about Coronabeth.”
Colum had never shared any great details about his own death. It was too much about himself and Silas, and he knew Tern would take any chance to discredit Silas. But he had mentioned, as mildly as he had been able, seeing Ianthe immediately after she had performed the Lyctoral work. He had admitted to knowing that Corona was not a necromancer.
He reminded Tern of this fact, that Corona was not a necromancer.
Naberius shook his head. “Irrelevant. We made the oath.”
Colum suggested that perhaps the oath was null if the other party was not a necromancer.
“There’s nothing in it that’s specific to necromancers, really. If we made the oath here to each other, it would mean just as much. It would be just as good, Colum.”
Colum marvelled, as he often did, at Tern’s ability to make utterly blasphemous ideas sound divine.
“The thing is, though.” Naberius blinked rapidly as he tried to collect his thoughts. “The thing is, I’m sure Ianthe understood everything I just said about the oath, right? Or mostly understood it, as far as necromancers can. And I know I understood it. And Ianthe has my body and my service and my death, and she is protecting Corona, which is what we both wanted, and all of that is within the oath. I have no objection. I don’t.” He made a banishing, dismissing gesture.
He continued, “What I’m not clear on is whether Corona understood any of that. When it happened—when she—when Corona—” His hand drifted and pressed over his middle, as if the memory was tangible. The tightness in his shoulders was going slack; he drooped, exhausted by the labor of sounding out the contradiction, of grappling with an unpleasant idea.
But he rallied, and said, “Ianthe looked so shocked. She looked so scared.” He laughed miserably. “I didn’t know she could do that. I know her. I know them both; they’re mine. We always—everything we did—but then, right at the end, Corona—acted—and Ianthe was surprised. She’s never surprised. So if Corona wasn’t in on—if Corona didn’t understand what Ianthe and I were doing for her, then why did she…? What else did she…?” He gestured, inarticulate. “What was I not doing? I did everything. What else was she trying to get from me? I look at her and I can’t see it!”
Looked at her when? Before Colum could ask, Naberius’ eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.
There wasn’t far to go; all he really did was slump forward into Colum’s arms, face pressed into his chest as it had been before. But every part of him was utterly limp. He did not respond to his name being called, his back being rubbed, or any part of him being kissed.
Colum was bewildered. Naberius had had to wake him up quite a few times in these dream worlds, but he had never seen Tern unconscious in one. It seemed to go against the nature of the whole thing.
“Ah, yes. I’m afraid that might happen a little more often now.”
Colum could not turn to find the source of the voice without dropping Naberius. The voice’s owner, obliging, stepped into view.
The Warden of the Sixth looked odd in white, though Tern had done his usual excellent work to make the cut and fit of the Cohort uniform work on Sextus’ angular frame. But he stood as if trying to shrink from the fabric around him, fingers twisting in a nervous clasp in front of him.
Palamedes shrugged a little helplessly. “Tercero goes to the party with a bad date, apparently, who he then abandons for more pleasant company. As he should, really.”
Colum stared at him.
Palamedes cleared his throat. “So, I had to make some alterations… Ianthe’s connection to him was strong enough that she could control the body by another route entirely, I expect. Some other memory still lodged in the amygdala to tap into. But I hardly know him, so I’m afraid my interference was much more blunt.”
Colum stared at him.
“He was speaking of anchors,” Palamedes continued. “God, I wish I could ask him more! An entire theorem cribbed off Tridentarius’ rejects. She thought the soul impermeable and indivisible. As Tern has discovered, the soul can certainly be split.” His teeth worried at his lip. “And as I’m sure he’s noticed, the soul is permeable. His link to Ianthe still pulls at him, and takes, and takes. Going further won’t fix that, I’m afraid…”
He trailed off, watching Colum nervously. Colum continued to stare at him.
“What I’ve done,” the Warden began again, “is reconstitute the memory he was holding apart—the anchor he made of his memories of Corona—to the whole.” He gestured at Naberius. “What’s left of the whole.” He gave Colum a doubtful look. “I’m sorry. I’m rambling. I’m sure you have no idea what I—”
“Every time he comes to me,” Colum said, “there is a little less of him.”
Palamedes blinked. “Yes. Quite. The soul is being absorbed… devoured. That is Lyctorhood.”
Colum thought about this. “But he was more complete this time.”
The long fingers flexed and crimped again. “That’s the memory I… restored. It won’t happen again. Unless there’s another construct he’s tucked away somewhere else, and if there is, I will eat my glasses.”
“What glasses?”
The long fingers flew up to the long face, questing, and then Palamedes sighed explosively.
Colum considered the unconscious duellist in his arms.
“I have to go,” said the Warden. “I already… well, I got… what I came for. I need to go use it.”
“His body?” Colum asked. “He gave you permission?”
“I did offer to bring him with me,” was Palamedes’ rather snippy reply, though it was not really a response to what Colum had asked him. “I was trying to do this the right way.” Then, a little more shrill, “You have no idea what’s going on out there.”
Colum thought about asking him what the right way would be. He figured the Warden probably had some very clever justification for what he was about to do. They always did, for every execrable tactic they utilized; it was very Sixth to be ready with explanations. Silas had always said you couldn’t get entangled in a debate with the Sixth. The Sixth thought they knew wrong and right, and through their own overcomplicated logic they always turned out to be right.
Palamedes appeared to lose patience—or nerve—before Colum reached his internal conclusion anyway. With one last narrow glance at Naberius Tern, he darted through the crowd and out of sight.
Something pale slipped after him.
Palamedes wondered if he’d finally figured out the trick to being sick in Naerius’ dream world. Everything around him was beginning to spin. Someone was calling for his attention—Colum, perhaps, if his brain had finally caught up with their conversation and he’d decided to be angry about what had been done to Naberius Tern. Between the fragmentation of the brain in life and the soul after death, who even knew how much the Eighth cav could—
“Hey!”
Someone wrapped their hand around his arm and pulled him up short. They pushed a tall champagne flute into his hand.
“Oh, go on, just a sip. Don’t be so Sixth.”
Palamedes stared at the figure pressed close to him in the crowd of shadows Naberius had conjured for his half-fictional Idan party. Ianthe—younger and scrawnier and somehow even more sneery than he’d ever seen her in life—shrugged back at him.
“It’s a party on Ida,” she said by way of explanation. “Of course we’re here.”
She indicated with her head to where a younger, frillier version of Corona was holding court with a half dozen attentive young people.
“She hasn’t got her drink yet. Bad form; that’s supposed to be his top priority!” Ianthe observed. She seemed unhurried by any awareness of a conflict between herself and Palamedes. Maybe she was more memory than Lyctor. Or maybe she was playing the gossipy host to unsettle him—maybe she and Naberius had always shared that trick. Or had begun to share that trick…
“We had a system for parties,” she continued as Palamedes scrutinized her. “He’s supposed to get the drinks and give her one before someone tries to roofie her or something. And then he’s supposed to come back to me. We’ll park over there,” she indicated a tidy dark corner with her chin, “sit back, keep an eye on Corona, and make fun of people together. Where is he?”
She glanced over Palamedes’ shoulder to the bar, where Naberius was very, very slowly regaining consciousness under Colum’s care. “Ah! As in life. God, he can’t resist the big ones. That sweet dumb slut.”
She rolled her eyes, but her smirk wasn’t entirely unkind. But then, what was it she had said before? “Don’t get me wrong; I was very fond of poor old Babs, and I like to think he was fond of me.”
She turned back to Palamedes as if to say more, but she was cut off by him smashing the champagne flute she had handed him in her face. He turned and finally escaped the party.
Palamedes had been trying, with very little luck, to figure out how to make the world lurch. He kept comforting himself with the idea that Naberius would naturally be more adept at the tricks and turns of his own brain. It was only right that he should struggle to get the hang of it.
But the lurch had seemed mainly a mechanism for skipping boring things in order to more easily access moments and objects of desire. The process of dragging the entirety of Naberius Tern’s wretched, sullen, betrayed soul to the fake party in his head had been dull indeed, but it had not triggered a lurch.
As Palamedes found himself forcefully propelled in short, sharp bursts down the golden halls of Ida—trying desperately to put distance between himself and Ianthe, to buy himself just a bit of time—he realized the lurch might have more to do with fear. Perhaps Naberius had clocked him for the threat he was from the very beginning…
But fear took him to his desire: the practice room in the Tridentarius apartments, replete with rapiers and off hands. He drew the nearest blade off the rack without thinking and fell, quite instinctually, into a basic stance that he knew without knowing was rather good though not quite excellent. Naberius Tern’s fighting instincts, by way of Corona. An approximate knowledge of Naberius’ work, which would be just enough to access the mechanism for working his body.
There was a kind of Lyctorhood in this, almost. He knew Naberius-via-Corona’s fighting instincts would defend this spot, this infinitesimal speck of Tern’s memory, from whatever force Ianthe would bring to try to reclaim the body of Naberius Tern. Palamedes could engage again with the waking world, do what he needed to do as the leader of his House, as someone who understood what was at stake, as a necromancer, while the cavalier…
“I don’t like this,” he said out loud, as if it changed somehow what he was doing, what he was about to do.
And then, he did it anyway.
“I always hated these parties,” Naberius said muzzily into Colum’s collar. “Such a headache. Trying to keep eyes on Corona; trying to keep Ianthe entertained. And they’d bring in these kids from the Cohort…”
“I thought you said the party was from the books?” Colum asked. He continued to brush his fingers up and down Tern’s spine. The touch was doing the Third duellist good, but his energy certainly wasn’t flooding back to him as it had in the past. Colum wondered if it ever would again.
“It’s based on the real thing. A lottery system, can you believe it? The grand prize was attending a party on Ida, to meet the elites. We’d have to go around, shaking hands with these kids who were all about to be sent out to whatever dissident planet… and of course they’re all going to die, of course none of it matters. They don't even bother to tailor the uniforms so they'll actually fit! That's how pointless everyone knows it is. But we’d have to greet them and pretend their noble sacrifice made such an impression, as if we weren’t going to hold the exact same party for even more dumb dead kids in bad clothes the next year.”
Colum knew better than to take this entirely at face value. He gestured at their own uniforms, at the blurred crowd around them. “Your favorite book series is about Cohort soldiers who live. Is that not an impression?"
Naberius gave a long-suffering sigh. “Colum, don’t pretend I’m nice.”
“No, no. Never.” Colum tilted Naberius’ chin up so he could kiss him.
After a while of this, Naberius pulled back and said, “They’re not real, you know. They’re not ghosts, or souls. I don’t think I can do that.”
“What about the Sixth?”
“Wretched anomaly. Not my doing. I don’t do ghosts, Col.” Naberius could not quite hold his eyes; he looked down at Colum’s mouth instead. “I don’t know what you saw, and I’m sorry, but I just don’t think that was Silas. I really don’t. I’m not just saying that.”
“I know.”
After a moment of silence between them, Naberius heaved another great, surrendering sigh. “But of course, we ought to make the rounds. Sorry it’s such a crowd in here. I can try to thin it out.” He made as if to hop off the bar, pressed his hands down on the countertop as if to lever himself off, but the movement was feeble.
Colum picked up his hands and pressed them together instead, over his heart. “You’ll help me look?”
Naberius seemed too tired to be indignant, but he made an attempt. “Yes, obviously! I promised I would!”
He’d promised to look, but not to find. Colum understood that now, and he’d forgiven him.
“Then we’ll look,” Colum agreed. “In a minute.” And he leaned down to kiss Naberius again.