Chapter 249: What Are You Carrying

Ryuken’s individual session with Lancelot was on the fourth day.

He came to the inner sanctum in the morning and found Lancelot already there, which he had expected. Lancelot arrived at every space before the scheduled time with the specific quality of someone who does not experience early arrival as effort. He was standing in the center of the sanctum with his hands at his sides and the flat red eyes looking at the wall opposite.

Ryuken sat down.

This was not how he normally began sessions. He had stood for every session with Vane. He had stood for Ashe. He sat down now and looked at Lancelot and said nothing.

Lancelot looked at him.

“Run everything,” Ryuken said. “Full output. Everything you have.”

Lancelot ran it.

Forty minutes. The sanctum floor took damage in the first three minutes from the instant strikes running at unrestrained output, the stone darkening along the impact lines the force traveled into the ground. Ryuken watched from his seated position without moving. The Iron Heaven was at full perceptual output, reading everything, the complete system as it existed in this body at this rank.

When Lancelot came back to neutral Ryuken sat in silence for a long time.

“Sit down,” he said.

Lancelot sat.

The sanctum was quiet. The morning light was coming through the high window and the damaged floor was still settling, small sounds of stone contracting back toward equilibrium.

Ryuken looked at him. “What are you carrying.”

Lancelot: “I don’t understand the question.”

“Yes you do.”

Silence.

Ryuken waited. He had spent forty years learning that silence was a tool the same as any other, that it applied pressure of a specific kind that questions did not, and that what people said after long enough silence was usually more accurate than what they said in response to direct questions.

Lancelot looked at the damaged floor. He looked at the window. He looked at the wall.

“The Empire’s training,” he said finally. Not an answer to the question. A deflection shaped like an answer.

Ryuken: “I can see the Empire’s training. I could see it from the gate the first morning.” He paused. “That is not what I am asking about.”

Lancelot said nothing.

“The undivided body requires unification of everything you are,” Ryuken said. “Not emptiness. The Empire trained you toward emptiness because an empty vessel is controllable. An empty vessel does what it is directed to do.” He looked at Lancelot with the full attention of the Iron Heaven. “You are not empty. I can see that. What I cannot see is whether you can.”

Lancelot: “I function.”

“I know you function. You function extraordinarily.” Ryuken’s voice did not change. “I am not asking about function. I am asking what is underneath the function.”

A long silence. The mountain outside was still.

Lancelot’s expression did not change. It never changed. But the Iron Heaven read the body underneath the expression and what it found there was not nothing, which was what everyone who looked at the flat red eyes concluded. It was something that had been managed for a very long time with a thoroughness that was itself a kind of achievement.

“Before the Empire found you,” Ryuken said. “There was something. It is still there. It runs under everything they built. This is what I saw in the training ring at Villa 2 when you moved between me and the Princess.” He paused. “That motion was not Imperial training. Imperial training produces protection of an asset. That motion was something else.”

Lancelot was very still.

“What was there before they found you,” Ryuken said.

The silence that followed was the longest of the session. Lancelot looked at the floor for it, which was the most interior-facing thing Vane had seen him do in eight months of proximity. Not at a wall, not at a neutral middle distance. At the floor directly in front of him.

“A world,” he said.

Ryuken waited.

“There was a world,” Lancelot said. “And a person in it.” He stopped.

Ryuken did not push.

After a moment: “They took the world. They took most of the person.” He looked up. His expression was the same. “Not all of it.”

“No,” Ryuken agreed. “Not all of it.” He looked at the damaged floor. “The Empire built very specific things in you. Things that feel like your own because they have been there long enough. The difference between what you came with and what they added is not always clear from the inside.” He paused. “But the motion in the training ring was yours. Not theirs. I want you to understand that distinction.”

Lancelot said nothing.

“There is a Phantom Dagger resonance in your right leg,” Ryuken said. “It has been there since the fourth practical evaluation. Fourteen weeks.” He looked at him. “You have not told anyone.”

Lancelot: “It does not affect output.”

“I know it does not affect output.” Ryuken’s voice was the same as it always was, even and unhurried. “I am telling you because the reason you have not mentioned it is that you were trained to treat damage to yourself as irrelevant unless it compromises mission function.” He paused. “That is one of theirs. Not yours.”

The sanctum was very still.

“How do you know,” Lancelot said.

“Because the person in the world before the Empire found you would have told someone.” He did not elaborate on how he knew this. He stood. “The resonance will dissolve on its own. Another two weeks.” He walked toward the sanctum door. “The undivided body cannot be built on the Empire’s foundation. It can only be built on yours. The Empire’s parts will carry you to a point. Past that point you will need what was there before.” He stopped at the door. “I am not asking you to find it now. I am telling you it exists so that when you need it you know where to look.”

Lancelot sat on the sanctum floor and looked at the damaged stone.

Ryuken: “Come back when you have decided.”

“Decided what.”

“Which river you are.” He walked out.

The door did not close loudly. It closed with the specific quiet of a heavy door in a well-made frame, the sound of something that had been built to last.

Lancelot sat in the inner sanctum alone.

The morning light moved across the damaged floor in the way morning light moved, slowly, without interest in what it passed over. He looked at his right leg. He could feel the resonance if he attended to it, a low-frequency vibration in the tissue where the Phantom Dagger’s feedback had embedded itself fourteen weeks ago. He had noted it in the evaluation courtyard and filed it under non-critical and had not thought about it since.

He thought about it now.

He thought about the world. About the person in the world. About what the Empire had taken and what it had replaced the taken things with and how long those replacements had been in place and whether long enough was the same as permanent.

He did not arrive at a conclusion. He was not certain the question had a conclusion available to it yet.

He stood. He looked at the damaged floor, at the strike patterns in the stone, at the geometry of what forty minutes of full output produced in a space built for high-output training.

He went to the eastern wall and looked at the mountains.

He stood there for a long time, which was not unusual. The mountains were the same mountains they had been every other morning. The sky above them was clear and cold and did not have an opinion about two rivers or what was decided or what was not.

He stood there anyway.

Vane passed the eastern wall on his way back from the sanctum an hour later and saw Lancelot there and did not stop. He went to the outer ring and worked the hip and did not say anything.

The compound was quiet. The mountain was still.

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