Four or five dozen more people than usual took their seats when the chiefs took to the floor today, filling the room with a thrum of anticipation. Did their spirits seem high because they had not attended the previous meetings nor followed up on them by discussing various supplies and troops with their respective managers? Able turned his notebook and its depressing calculations over in his hands and sighed. Maybe they knew something he didn't.
Battlechief Wroughter stalked the ring below eyes darting from each hallway above the ring to the next. He nodded then rolled his burly shoulders back, perhaps satisfied that anyone who was coming was already here. "Right. Right, I called this meeting because Fiddler, Dawnwatch, and I all think we cannot tarry any more."
Wroughter looked to these two until they nodded for him to continue. "It's true we haven't yet heard from any of the Western townships, but if we wait any longer to decide to march or not, marching will be out of the question. We know we can barely scrape through the winter as it is, and like as not, the late reports will tell us the path is further washed out. Either we act or we lose good folk all winter long and stand starving when the Banders and their reinforcements march in the spring."
The chamber had fallen silent as he had been speaking and now seemed to hold its breath. Hawking nodded, a strangely reassuring motion coming from his composed posture, as he said, "I agree."
He began to pace the ring. He was a smaller man than Wroughter and Dawnwatch, but in the way he carried himself, he didn't look it. His greatest skill, fueled by an arsenal of subtle gestures, was putting people at ease. Right now he took in a face at a time to take the alarm out of his words. "It's unfortunate that we are not all accounted for, but we're running out of time. We do need to decide what we're going to do."
Dawnwatch, something of a field captain, had none of this grace. "I know you're tired of me saying this. But there's still a few thousand Banders sitting on a fair amount of arms and supplies in Aimsby, and we need the supplies but not the Banders. And I also know— " He held up his hand to stall Chief Provisioner Windfurrow before she could object and continued, "that we have little information as to the state of their garrison and defenses. But we won't be getting that, will we?" He flicked a challenging glare to Chessie.
She only stared back impassively. Why would anyone think they could win a staring contest with her?
"It bears considering," Windfurrow said with a scowl. "And if we march, we better make that effort."
"It's time to be done with 'if' we march," Wroughter insisted. "It was always we'll go to them or wait until they come to us. No one likes our chances if we go to them, but we will not survive if we wait for them to come to us."
"Fairbanks is not defensible," Chessie said. She pressed her fingers together before her mouth and stared somewhere far from here and now. The room held silent on the edge of her breath. "From the sea, least of all. Still, Reeve cannot afford to allow us to overrun his supply line and may weaken the defenses at Aimsby in response to any attacks we manage."
"Especially if we destroy the piers," Windburrow added and crossed her arms and jutted her chin at Dawnwatch. "That'll delay their landing operations regardless of any other outcomes. See? We have been thinking along these lines."
"So don't invent division where there isn't any," Chessie finished, her voice demure but her eyes boring holes into the older men.
The silence settled once again. Able turned to Lark, seated beside him. Her thoughts were bound up beneath her furrowed brow and her nerves reduced to chewing on her thumbnail. Had Chessie told her already she would suggest attacking Fairbanks? When no rider from the city had arrived with a report?
No one was speaking up. The crowd was full of bowed heads and tired stares. They'd been at this for years. Some their whole lives.
At last, Hawking noted, "I hear no objection to preparing to march."
That did prompt a timid murmuring and shuffling in the crowd. Some rubbed their eyes, others touched each others' arms, some even leaned back in relief.
Hawking cast his blue gaze up along the rows of faces and began to walk the parameter of the pit. "All of us have worried this day would come. Some of you are eager, needing to soothe anger or face fears with actions. Others are reluctant, with sorrows that pull at you or fears that instead beg caution. All of us have lost much—some more than others—but every one of us too much. We're not ready to lose more. But like our ancestors before us, beset again and again by invading forces, we still have one another. We have our land. Our sky."
His voice built upon the stillness of the chamber, built upon his own echoes, and the people in the seats leaned into the words. "When others, when outsiders come to take these things from us, take our hearts and souls from us, we cannot allow it. Not without a fight. Not without forcing them to face what they do not see or understand in us. So we will bring this fight, our fight to them. And when I look at all of you, I, for one, am not convinced they have what it takes."
When his last echo died, the small audience tried to revive it with cries of "We fight!" and "To war!" They finally reawakened the chamber with a chant of "Our land! Our sky!"
Able had seen enough. Somehow he found his feet and sidled past a pair of chanting Borealunders to the walkway. He stumbled through the torch-lit passages trying to out-pace his own thudding heart. He turned through the first dark doorway he spotted.
Perhaps he was still confused by the layout of the Burrows, as he had not meant in looking for a quiet place to collect himself to walk into the armory. Then again, perhaps his subconscious had.
The firelight behind him did little to illuminate the stone chamber. As his eyes adjusted, it was as though the rows of swords and spears and even rifles of different origins and eras appeared to materialize out of the darkness. One sword looked like it belonged on someone's ancestral wall, and another that would have been at home in an archaeological collection. Able slumped to the floor before the dinged up strip of bronze and set his forehead on his knees.
The Borealunders had been at this for centuries, maybe a millennium. They were not equipped, they were not organized, and they would not consider surrender. They had no chance of defeating an imperial army but would satisfy themselves with drawing the conflict out as long as possible, shedding as much blood as possible, and calling it virtuous. Because the alternative was becoming slaves with slave children.
"You all right?" Of course Lark had followed him. "I'll be annoyed with you if you say 'yes.'"
"I suppose I'm not."
"Well, that's evasive." She came over to crouch in front of him. "You're not going to tell me what's on your mind?" Her eyes seemed black in the lightless room, but Able could imagine the concern in them. The care. When this all had to be far more painful for her.
"I haven't—I need to sort it out first."
Lark grunted in dissatisfaction and rubbed her mouth a moment.
"I don't want to..." Able groaned. That wasn't right. Well, it was. He didn't want to tell her. He also didn't want to be unfair to her. "I mean, I don't have an answer you'll accept, do I?"
"No, I'll accept it." Lark shrugged harshly, clearly upset. "I can let you be. But I really wish you wouldn't be so shy of potential conflict that you won't participate in this relationship with me."
Able tensed but then took a breath. She wasn't attempting to bait him, no. She was only being pointedly honest. "...you're right. I am worried about...about making things worse. And I am also...used to sorting myself out before I have a say."
Lark sidled beside him, her legs out to the side as she shifted her skirt out of the way. She tilted her head gently toward him. "Will you let me get to know you?"
Where to start? "I'm disappointed in Hawking."
"I guessed!" She laughed softly. "What did he do wrong in there, do you think?"
"I was...I was hoping for a—a sounder strategy than getting people excited to ascend to your Gate in the Sky."
"What else can we do?" Lark shrugged and sighed with a deep-boned fatigue.
Able bit his lip and squeezed his eyes closed.
"—what else can we do?" this time the tone was direct. Always so perceptive.
Able swallowed, hoping to dreg up some courage. "I've been thinking."
"Yes?" Lark leaned forward eagerly but stilled when Able put his hand on her face and stroked her cheek.
But he stared at the ground to keep his composure. "When power is consolidated, how is it that we choose one person to wield it? What is it that gives us some assurance that our act of sacrificing what agency we have in service of something else will bring a greater good in the end?"
"Well..." Lark twitched a little beneath Able's palm but stayed where she was. "In Light's case, I think there's no question in any of our minds that he has our best interests at heart."
"He peddles in goodwill," Able agreed. "But sells poor strategies with low chances of success?"
"He surrounds himself with strategically capable people," she sounded indignant as she pulled away.
"People like Driver." Able closed his hand and set it in his lap. "Who peddle in results, as you said."
Lark groaned and rubbed her eyes. "What's your point?"
"N-no point." Able swallowed again but pushed on. "I am...wondering, and I haven't sorted myself out. How do we decide what the greater good is? And how do we measure success towards achieving it? And...do people even care?"
"Ah, this is one of your 'what is good and evil' questions?" Lark sounded more relaxed. Because that all was a smaller deal, eh?
"More one of my 'are people even worth it' questions. When they're irrational and impulsive and given over to self-defeating behavior, why do I still care?"
"Oh, Able!" Lark chuckled warmly then slid her arm around his shoulders. "Love, it's because you're irrational and impulsive and given over to self-defeating behavior! Sure, you're frustrated. We all are. But you get how difficult it is."
"...fair point."
Lark tightened her half-hug. "And I mean you really get it. I'm not trying to make light of you trying to find some equation to solve this ethical dilemma, okay? It's your right to be frustrated with everyone who doesn't try to be as rational and intentional and—and intent on finding the best choice as you are. You're just a better human, committed to being a better human. And that's also why you can't stop caring, yeah?" She pressed her nose bridge to his neck as she rubbed his back.
Able squeezed his eyes shut. Why did it have to be Lark? Why did it have to be the only person who saw him this way?
"Hm, you're really tense right now."
"Because I'm..." Able shuddered but forced the words out, "I'm contemplating the conceit of sacrificing one life to save others, a highly-regarded act that stems from a rationalization that if all lives are equal then losing one instead of two or more is preferable. But how can you be certain the act saved those lives? And if so, how can you be certain the other lives were, in fact, more than equal because they were greater in quantity?"
Lark blew air and pulled away to fold her arms. "...I already admitted I was arrogant. What more do you want?"
"I'm not criticizing—actually, I think I was inspired by what you did and what you said about it...got me down this line of-of thinking."
"...you want to assassinate someone?"
Able shuddered again and held his knees to his chest to keep from shaking. "In a manner of speaking."
"Back to being evasive?" This was gentle, not accusatory. Lark slid back a bit, giving Able more room. Even in the dim light, her eyes shone with all her force of life behind them.
Able reached out to touch her chin and ran his thumb along her lower lip. "Tell me, because I need to hear it—tell me, is it peace in this region that you want more than anything?"
Lark frowned. "You have to ask that?"
"I just need to hear it," because yes, he knew the answer, and it was killing him. "Peace, as in lack of war. Is that good enough for you?"
"If you have a way to get that..." She paused then took a long inhale, "Yes, tell me."
"You're not going to like it," he warned.
She held his gaze while she considered that. Her eyes widened and her lower lip trembled against Able's thumb as she took a breath. She swallowed and nodded solemnly. "So I won't like it."
"...we're going to need a lawyer."