CHAPTER TWELVE WHAT LOSS TAUGHT ME
SHAARR
Rowan did not ask about Kael again. This made silence difficult. I had expected questions. Humans prized questions almost as much as machines. Instead, Rowan gave me the information I had requested from him days earlier. Space.
It felt less like relief than I wanted. We traveled aboveground because the deep passages remained unstable. My leg improved as we moved. Rowan said nothing when I stopped limping. He noticed.
Of course he noticed. The western ridge opened ahead, revealing the oldest nesting valley. Three massive trees leaned over a collapsed root system. No young remained.
The evacuation had succeeded. The place was still wounded. Rowan sat at the platform edge. I remained standing.
"You can sit," he said.
"I am not tired."
"Your leg disagrees."
"It has no authority."
"That's very consistent with your politics."
I looked at him. He smiled faintly. The receptor warmed. I ignored it.
Below us, small prey animals moved through the wet growth. Normal movement. Comforting. For several minutes we listened. Then I said:
"Kael wanted to complete the bond before the next migration season."
Rowan's head turned. I had not intended to speak. Apparently intention had become unreliable around him.
"What did you want?"
"Time."
"For what?"
"A stable western appointment."
His expression remained neutral.
"Kael wanted central?"
"He wanted neither."
"Hunter."
"Yes."
"He didn't want fixed territory."
"No."
"And you did."
"Yes."
Rowan looked toward the valley.
"So completion meant someone would have to change."
"Possibly."
"Reasonable thing to discuss."
"The elders called it hesitation."
"Of course they did."
"You dislike elders."
"I dislike people who convert tradition into a shortcut around consent."
Kael would have liked him. The thought arrived without pain. Then pain followed.
"He said something similar."
"Kael?"
"During a council argument."
"What happened?"
"He told an elder that duty could make him defend a nursery."
Rowan waited. I almost stopped there. Then finished.
"But duty could not make him love me."
Rowan's face changed.
"He sounds like he knew exactly what he wanted."
"He did."
"And you?"
"I knew what I wanted."
"Then why wait?"
There it was. The question I had asked myself for twenty-six rotations. Because I was cautious. Because territory mattered.
Because we disagreed. Because I feared losing independence. Because three days did not seem important. All true.
None sufficient.
"I believed there would be another chance."
Rowan's humor disappeared.
"Before Kael left for central, we argued."
"About the bond?"
"Yes."
"He wanted to complete when he returned."
"And you?"
"I told him we would discuss it."
Rowan winced. Small. Human.
"I see."
"The last thing I said was not love."
"What was it?"
I had heard the words in dreams so many times they no longer sounded like language.
"Stop deciding for both of us."
Rowan was quiet.
"He laughed."
"At you?"
"Yes."
"Did he know you loved him?"
"Probably."
"That's not the same as hearing it."
"No."
Good. I did not want comfort that rewrote the past. Rowan gave none.
"The receptor opened after his death because completion had not occurred?"
"We do not know."
"Did you think completing beforehand would have changed what happened?"
"Yes."
"Still?"
"Sometimes."
He leaned forward.
"How?"
"I might have sensed danger earlier."
"Maybe."
"The bond might have led me to him."
"Maybe."
"I could have reached central before—"
"Maybe."
I looked at him sharply. He did not retreat.
"You keep building a version where one different decision saves him."
My claws flexed.
"Do not reduce this."
"I'm not."
"Then stop."
"No."
The word surprised both of us. Rowan stood.
"You don't get to use uncertainty as evidence only when it hurts you."
Anger rose.
"Explain."
"You don't know completion would have saved Kael."
"I don't know that it would not."
"Exactly."
He came closer. Still beyond contact.
"So you're punishing yourself with the version you can never disprove."
My receptor hammered. Not because of proximity. Because he had found the wound.
"Humans do this?" I asked.
"Constantly."
"Why?"
"Because guilt feels like control."
The sentence stopped me. Rowan looked toward the damaged valley.
"If it's your fault, then the universe makes sense."
I said nothing.
"If everything could have been prevented by one better choice, then terrible things don't just happen."
"That is an ugly belief."
"Yes."
"Do you hold it?"
His jaw tightened. There. His armor. His weapon.
Me.
"Sometimes."
We stood together above the ruined nursery. Two men carrying different versions of the same lie. A tremor moved through the valley. Weak.
Distant. The Rootmaws were still traveling. Rowan checked the probe. Work returned.
Good. I preferred monsters to truths that sounded like my own voice.