Eventually, the guard chuckled nervously. “I, uh… there’s not exactly a line or anything, but I said you could go…” He glanced to his right. Aleks looked over his shoulder, out the back window of the car. The falling birds and insects were a mere blur from this distance, one most wouldn’t have recognized, but to Aleks they seemed to be getting closer.

Erick, knuckles white on the steering wheel, shouted in frustration and slammed his fist into the dashboard. “Get in the damn car if you want to live!” he shouted, and Aleks jumped in surprise.

“Erick, what are you –“

“This entire city might be dead in an hour for all we know! We don’t understand how this works!” Erick said. “You –“ and he thrust his finger at the guard – “just happen to be on our path out. So get in, and let’s go somewhere safe.”

“Assuming somewhere safe exists,” Aleks said, his voice a bitter growl. He sighed and unlocked the passenger-side door. “Go on, get in.” The guard, still perhaps a bit too stunned and off-guard to argue with anything Aleks or Erick said, climbed in.

“So what’s your name?” Aleks said as he did so.

“Gordon Zelenko,” replied the guard, holding out a shaking hand.

“Raz Shvets,” Aleks said, taking it as firmly as he could manage and scowling. “Let’s get out of here.”

***

Marga: I left you a little something to take to Stepan and the kids – check under the table when you get the chance. I would have given it to you directly but I’ll probably forget about it by the time you come to relieve me. It gets tiring out here, you know – one can begin almost to lose their mind. There’s hardly anyone to talk to but Parshir, and well, he’s… Parshir. Anyway, tell Stepan I said hello and that we should get together and chat sometime. He seemed to like the roast turkey I brought last time, almost as much as your kids did…

-From the letters of Kalai, dated 243 YT, Autumn.

Eksha: Nothing much happening out here. It’s boring going, but I’ll be alright. No need to worry yourself.

-From the letters of Parshir, dated 243 YT, Autumn.

243 YT, Autumn. Two days before the death of Marga Zelenko.

The flame-light, bright and orange but sputtering, cast heat over Kalai’s face. A Gaurl cigar, wrapped in his Valer fingers, ignited to embers by the clicking spark of a Settan-manufactured lighter. He smiled contentedly as he stared out at the marshy wilderness beyond Etyslund’s edge. Among the trees there, the shifting shadows, the thin willowy branches in the breeze, they resolved. His senses sharpened when the drug hit him, and he relaxed a little. The branches were only branches. The shadows were only shadows. No one stood, watching, raising their rifle, ready to kill and kill.

That would wait – a few days, or – Kalai hoped – a few months or years. Or forever. Wouldn’t it be better just to stand here with his friend, watching the darkness, knowing somehow that it would never be anything but darkness? There was safety in the thought.

The unwitting man in his last week of life turned to his fellow and spoke a few words, which he forgot as soon as they left his lips. “This is what those soldiers smoke, you know, before they go into battle.”

Parshir grunted. “And here you are, taking the same drug they do, letting the same poison fill your veins. Do you think that will help you?”

Kalai smiled up warmly at Parshir, and gestured for him to sit. Parshir did not sit, but leaned against the rickety table instead. Kalai sighed after a moment. “You know, I hear they mix it into the soldiers’ rations too. Sharpens the senses, keeps them calm… that’s how they’re able to keep their cool when they fight. It’s an impressive strategy, isn’t it? Drugging your entire army to make them better fighters.”

Parshir rolled his eyes, and Kalai saw that even in the dark. “It makes them better killers,” Parshir said. “Are you sure you want to partake of that? It’s bad enough that you’re smoking the Gaurl’s drug, but you’re talking as if you admire them for their…” he reached, clutched at the cool night air. “Monstrousness.”

“I don’t admire them,” Kalai said, not a hint of defensiveness in his voice. He was calm, almost detached from the conversation, and Parshir’s pointed words could not offend him. “I am fascinated by them. They interest me. Don’t they interest you as well?”

“I am interested in killing them if they come near us,” Parshir said, and nothing more. That was always his way when they were together – he spoke shortly, plainly, and when he asked questions they were not real questions. “Are you not the same?”

“I have no love for Invictus, Parshir,” Kalai replied. “Don’t be silly.”

Parshir sighed and crossed his arms.

With the Gaurl cigar between two fingers of his left hand, Kalai took his right and drummed against his knee. He sang quietly to himself, an old mourning song from the time of the Desert.

I remember freshly each day

Till the week I become lost

I will go and you will stay

Ends, beginnings, fire and frost

Kalai sang high in his throat, his voice light and soft, like a strand of spider’s silk torn away from the weaver, floating in rhythm on a cold wind that will not let it dissolve. The voice was strong and fleeting, forgetting not a single cadence in the melody. It was, Kalai had always said, the same melody that was sung three hundred years ago, at the height of the Aether War. He did not know if it was true. It did not matter to him if it was true.

Parshir joined, deep and rumbling, his voice down in his stomach. When caught in his own head Kalai could almost miss Parshir’s voice for part of the background noise of the night, but every time he stopped to take a breath the steady rumble filled his ears.

Ends, beginnings, fire and frost

Nations rise and nations fall

Truly, none and all are lost

For voice we heed forever’s call

“You know the words,” Kalai said, taking another pull from the Gaurl cigar. He was almost disbelieving – almost.

“I’m not ignorant of history, Kalai,” Parshir said.

Kalai laughed. With faux-harshness he said: “But you want nothing to do with the outside world, Parshir.”

Parshir, of course, knew Kalai was only fooling with him. He wasn’t truly angry. But he still ripped the Gaurl cigar from Kalai’s fingers, and sat down next to him, and took a drag, and said: “That’s because I’m not ignorant. That’s why I want nothing to do with it.” He handed the cigar back.

“I brought a deck of cards,” Kalai said, listening to the crickets and the owls and the squelching of walking things in the marsh. The melody echoed in his head, and he allowed his neck to twist and bob a little to its silent rhythm. “We could play something.”

“Why not,” Parshir said. “Sure, let’s play.”

Parshir won their game, of course, even though he couldn’t appear to stay focused. He kept glancing into the woods, reaching over to take the Gaurl cigar from Kalai and enjoy another pull. The smoke settled around them as they played, like the mist of death.

They had five days. Had they known, they might have passed their time with song instead of cards. Or perhaps they would have stared into the woods all the more intently, fearing the end but unable to prevent it.