eccedentesiast (n.) someone who fakes a smile when all they want to do is cry, or disappear, or die.

"Our Warriors!"

There were crowds thronging the street, lining up along the avenues; every space was occupied by a body. They were waving and cheering and jumping to catch a glimpse of a Warrior; Hyacinth could only stare straight ahead at the road before them, and pray that she did not faint or vomit before they were out of sight. The journey was a relatively smooth one – they had been placed into one of the chancellor's carriages, which had more finely-wrought wheels than the carts used by the military and better suspension than the few trucks and automobiles that Hyacinth had experienced. She had her fingers wound tightly around the fabric of their seat, worrying at a spare thread, and hoping that the thousands of people that they passed could not tell how terrified she was. Her hands shook; her breath came in great heaves; there was a knot in her chest where once her heart had lain.

Beside her, Inanna Nirari was gazing out into the crowd as though in a daze; her eyes were glazed over with unshed tears, and her face was a still mask of grief. No one in the crowd seemed to have noticed – or maybe they thought she was crying from pride. This should have been an emotional moment – and it was, for reasons entirely separate from their initiation. On the seat opposite Hyacinth, Ilja was the only Warrior that seemed to have the sense of accomplishment the curses ought to carry, but even he was solemn. Beside him, from the way Azula was looking fixedly out at the crowd, it was clear that the youngest member of the group was searching for someone in particular.

What were they thinking, these civilians who had rushed to see their feted heroes? Hyacinth's prodigious intellect now failed her; she could not summon the imagination to picture the thoughts that must have been running through their minds. They were Irij mostly, these people – the same kinds of people that had worked Hyacinth's father into resentful rage, that had barred Mielikki's family from owning their own business, that had driven the Szymańska sisters into senseless sacrifice for some vain attempt at atonement. And yet here: they cheered. They saw the children, driven to desperation by their mistrust fed to dark magic for their salvation, and they cheered them as they might a saviour.

Hyacinth shut her eyes tightly. It was an unseasonably warm day: though the sky was slate gray and a wind ghosted through the avenues, she shook with heat. She was feverish – she felt as though she had swallowed embers, that they were burning her now from the inside out. Was this obvious to look at her? The Champions had given them new uniforms, the pale blue of Irij special units, their buttons and shoulders gauche with gold filigree. Though Hyacinth was still dogged by the unmistakeable scent of burning hair, she thought that they all probably looked much more polished than they felt. Certainly, Ina seemed to shine from within; some of the army lads manning barricades along the balustrades seemed almost as taken with her as all the boys at the training academy had been. That, Hyacinth thought ruefully, was very nearly a comfort. Some things always stayed the same.

In the carriage behind them, she knew that the other four surviving Warriors would be feeling similarly: Mielikki would be spacing out, lost in her own thoughts as she watched the crowds; Zoran would be focusing on this carriage, as though if he gazed with enough fervor he could see right through the structure; Khalore would be smiling, with the pride of someone who has finally proved wrong the world around her. Ghjuvan… Ghjuvan would probably be donning his usual inscrutable facade. He had recovered quickly from his experience with the thing that had been Kinga, but had seemed slightly more shaken by the fact his curse seemed to have manifested without any apparent connection to his tarot. He had been little comforted by Ilja pointing out that, in the sixth generation, the Death of Kur had been capable of accomplishing nearly anything imaginable as long as he offered in exchange the death of another.

"Maybe it was something like that," Ilja had said sardonically. "Some poor butcher just toppled over dead the next street over because you couldn't be bothered running a metre or two..."

Hyacinth thought it seemed like everyone's sense of humour had got much darker since yesterday. Pekka. Kinga. She was a quiet girl – she had not called either of them friends. But they had been constants. They had always been there. And now they were gone, gone with Myghal and the now-civilian others, and the Warriors were merely eight.

She wasn't sure anyone had slept the night before; certainly Inanna Nirari had turned silently on the ground, over and over again, before rising and slipping outside to cry without waking them, Zoran following her silently after a moment's hesitation. Azula had not had any such compunctions – her sobs had been silent and stifled, but audible against her pillow. Myghal had been grey-faced for the whole evening, until the chancellery guards had come to take him away for some civilian life – he had not resisted his Warrior life being ripped from him, and went with them easily. What had happened to Pekka and Kinga seemed to have constituted a long, hard look into the reality of being cursed for all of the Warriors. He had only embraced Khalore and Ghjuvan tightly before he had left; he had only told them all to come back alive.

"I'll be waiting for you," he said softly, all of his usual bluster and bravado abruptly stripped away. "I'll see you all when you come back."

They had spent that night in the sacellum, sleeping on the floor of the grey cell-like space as they might have done during one of their survival sessions in the woods. Hyacinth had always struggled with those expeditions – what hadn't she struggled with? – with the casual misery to which the others seemed willing to subject themselves if they thought there was a chance of advancing their rank a step or two. Hyacinth had always felt like she and her comrades were engaged in two very different competitions: they were running marathons and she – she was holding onto a cliff-edge with the very tips of her fingers, desperate to let go and yet terrified of falling.

And somehow she had come eleventh. How? Nez, Belle, Uriasz… they had been stronger than her. Stronger and smarter, when it came to Ragnar. Why was she sitting her, her bones burning up within her, and looking out at these cheering crowds? Why was this her right?

It wasn't.

She had never wanted it either. This thing within her was a slow-acting venom. It would kill her – that was inevitable. It was the fate of all who had gone before. It would kill all of them.

Hyacinth Estlebourgh was sixteen years old. She didn't even know how to conceptualise death. What was it – closing your eyes and sleeping forever? She liked to think she was smart, but the idea of cessation… nothing now and nothing forever…. Sleep was defined by waking up, she thought, and sleep was rarely preceded by one's whole body falling to bits. They had seen Decebal Nicolescu two days ago, hadn't they? All of him falling to literal dust, no longer able to harness the power of the Chariot to reform himself.

Hyacinth's predecessor as Sun, Voski Grigoryan, had not left even dust behind when she had died. It had been swift for her; that should have been some comfort for Hyacinth, and yet.

And yet.

The crowds were thinning now, the closer they came to the ports; no doubt they were being kept at bay until the Warriors were safely bundled onto the boat that would bring them to Illéa. As they drew nearer, and the jewel-toned sails of the junk boats bobbing gently in the harbour became visible, Inanna Nirari stifled a sound that might have been a sob; Ilja reached to touch his friend's hand, very gently. "Steady," he murmured. "It'll be okay."

He was lying, Hyacinth thought.

They were drawing up alongside the water; Orfeas Halkias was stepping out from the charioteer's box, and jumping to the cobbles, brushing off his hand and saying something a low, angry voice to the man waiting on the edge of the bay. Hyacinth had last seen Konrad Sauer thirty hours ago, but it may as well have been thirty years – he seemed somehow foreign now, a remnant of an old life to which none of them could now lay claim. He offered his former students a respectful nod as they began to jump down from the carriages, but made no move to speak to them; nor did Hyacinth see the point in trying to speak to him.

He had been their drill instructor; now, they were soldiers. He had tried to break them; they were broken. The transaction was done.

If he noticed Pekka and Kinga were missing, he did not say anything. He only weathered the edges of Halkias' anger, and turned to Zoran when he spotted him, saying, "is he gone, then?"

"Kloet?"

"Yes."

Zoran nodded. "Yes."

Commandant nodded. "It's all been set in motion, then."

Orfeas Halkias was looking at Commandant like… it was the expression Uriasz had sometimes worn when Mielikki mentioned she thought a certain action was really a terrible idea, and then did it anyway. Captured therein was some emotion between disbelief and irritation – Hyacinth did not have a precise term for it; she only knew it meant nothing good. But the chancellor's maven said nothing. He only waved to indicate that the Warriors should take up their packs from the pile being thrown out from the truck beside the quay, and board the boat waiting to bring them to Illéa.

Azula was saying, rather shyly, like she was afraid the Commandant respond with rage, "are the others okay? Belle and Nez and..."

Before she could finish naming those lost to civility, Instructor was chiding them along with that tone she usually reserved for Myghal and Uriasz – the tone that suggested she wasn't sure they were smart enough to understand plain words and that only the sharpness of her voice would get through to them. "If you are going to cross, you need to cross now."

Crossing. To Illéa. Now. After so many years… they had been given their curses two days ago. Hyacinth still didn't even know how hers manifested, how to use them. What were they hoping for?

Forget the curses. They would die within an hour. The druj would get them.

Ina was staring out at the water, looking more hollow than Hyacinth had ever seen someone look; Mielikki was already on the boat, looking intently at the rudder like she could read it; Ilja was helping Azula and Khalore onto the boat, the former looking tense and unsure, the latter moving with a brash bravado that might not have concealed anything – it was tough to read Khalore sometimes, but usually she saved you the bother by telling you exactly what was on her mind. There was an irrefutable air of denial, like if they kept forging forward, determinedly, heads down, then what had happened would not have happened.

Commandant had bowed his head near to Zoran's – he was saying something to him, softly. Reminding him that he was the leader now, their third ranked? Pekka's replacement, though Ghjuvan seemed determined to take that place by the way he was acting now, loading bags onto the boat with a sternly-set face. Zoran's face was pale, but he nodded, and patted his jacket, as he stepped back from their old commander.

"Sir," he said, and Commandant offered him a sardonic salute.

Ilja turned to Hyacinth – "ready?" – and she followed him onto the boat. Standing there on the stern, she saw that the crowds had been permitted to surge forth now; you might have thought it was their own children departing. Were her parents among them? She could not see Aleia or Riedman among them, but perhaps they were there, in the depths of the throng, watching – watching the daughter they had never as she sailed into a sea of monster towards an island full of demons.

Some part of her hoped they were there. Some part of her wanted them to watch. Some part of her wanted them to be as scared as she was.

They were retreating from Irij now; the water was churning beneath the boat, its wake spreading in broad arcs around them as they pulled away and out into the low-lying fog. Orfeas Halkias was standing on the bow, searching the horizon as though he could see Illéa already; and Ina was looking past the starboard gunwale as though she was considering jumping, Zoran standing just close enough to catch her if she tried. Hyacinth could not tear her eyes from home; with this strange cinder in her chest taking up the place where her heart had once been, she could only stare and stare and stare as the Warriors disappeared into the mist and left their home behind.