chpt 5

“They say if you kill yourself, you go to Hell.”
	Tannor nodded. “If you kill anything you go to Hell. That’s how it works. God hates a murderer.”
	“How do we know what God hates?”
	“That’s just what they always told me.” Tannor shrugged. He had never bothered to question anything the nobles had said to him. If they were wrong, what would he accomplish by pointing it out?
	“So how do armies convince their men to fight?”
	“They tell us that God excuses crimes done in the name of the Emperor.”
	“And the Emperor? Does he go to Hell for telling men to murder?”
	“A just war is not a murderous one.”
	“Yes, I guess, but –”
	Tannor interrupted her, nodding. “I know what you mean. The Emperor is the only man in the world who isn’t afraid of Hell, because he was given the throne by God himself.” That was what they told him, at least.
	Lynea nodded, understanding, or at least looking it. “That makes sense. Sometimes I find portraits or coins and they have the Emperors always wearing crowns of gold, but I found a page of the Book once that said only God and his Sons may wear a crown of gold.”
	“Right. The Emperor is always heralded as God’s only Son in the mortal world.”
	She nodded again, and if the moon was high it would have shone on her face. The sharpness of her cheekbone looked bright enough to summon a moon in a reversal, Tannor imagined, or perhaps he just was imagining fire again.
	“So,” she continued again, after a week, “What if the Emperor killed himself?”
	“He would rise to God, and his son would be filled with the spirit of the Earthly Son, and the son would be the next Emperor. A Son of God can never go to Hell.”
	“That doesn’t seem fair.”
	“Not much is.” Tannor’s teeth ached for a cigarette again. He shifted, hands scraping like oil, his skin melting down and freezing a degree below. “You are being very morbid tonight.”
	Every night was a tonight, in the constrains of his language – for what could you describe a world that only had night, darkness in the atmosphere and sunlight behind an adamant curtain of obsidian? He wondered how any crops grew here in the nation whose name he had already forgotten, without the sun. Not a single thing but the machines had died yet.
	“I’m sorry. I just can’t stop thinking about it.”
	“About your death?”
	“No. My mother’s.”
	Now his turn to say sorry, echoing.
	“No, don’t apologize, dear.” He always cringed when she referred to him affectionately. She seemed too young for those words, too inexperienced. He always called her those back but never meant it, and she never noticed. She was too young for the kisses too, but he did not argue. They made her happy.
	“Your mother,” he started, aware that he did not have the same respectful quality of silence that his lover did, “She killed herself?”
	She kept her own silence for a time. The mist and brightness behind clouds of a moon were visible but there was no moon in front of them. Besides that the night was as unbroken as a wall yet to be sieged and collapsed.
	“Have you ever thought of killing yourself?” she asked, as innocent as the kisses.
	Oh my god, he thought, his own mind exhaling in a sigh. I have thought of nothing else.
	He had not realized how hard he had been trying not to say it.
	I can never go back. I can never return. I cannot brave my way into a city or into Hell. I cannot join the others living or dead. Jonathan. AJ. Seven, Noel, Bean. I will never see or talk to them again or anyone the same again. Things are pretty or they are not until they are dead and it is permanent. Permanent. I want to be permanent. I want to see them again, or myself. I want so badly to be finished with being temporary and in search of things, but I cannot. I run from death even when I run into it. I don’t want to die or bleed like the others or even kill. I just want to not be. I want to sleep forever. Death is a sleeping. It was Seven that said that in my arms. Or it was Rachael. Or it was both. Or it was me. I want to sleep so badly. I cannot lay down, I cannot close my eyes, but I want to sleep.
	 Tannor knew he was shaking when he stilled. Lynea’s arms around him kept him from trembling anymore. He had been staring out into the night and felt something hard in his gut like a slug. It was a slug that broke through the wall of the city he fled, Tannor remembered, and a slug that blew apart Jonathan’s body until he was just a chest and intestines flowing out like the pasta he loved after the smoke cleared. He heard the hiccupping of Jonathan as he trembled and reached for his entrails, then he blinked and realized it was the gross hiccups of Lynea in her sobs. She must have seen it and the Empire in his eyes. He felt her tears soaking through his thin ragged shirt. Tannor frowned. This was annoying, and he had not cried yet, so why should she? With his hands around her shoulders he pushed her off him and stood.
	“It is getting late and we must rest. Come on, dear.”
	“I’m sorry for asking you that. I’m so sorry.”
	“It is alright. Come on.” It was. He did not feel anything anymore.
	She took his hand. “Will you kiss me again?”
	“It’s late. We’re tired.”
	“I’m sorry.”
	He kissed her again and brought her to rest and as he slept he saw God.