Advance and Retreat

"Leave this palace. This city, this kingdom." Mors added a joke at the end. "But not this planet."

Peturabo forced himself to stay calm. "Are you threatening me?"

"With what? My departure? Could that possibly be a threat to you?"

"That... it cannot!"

"Then how have I coerced you? Am I going to harm your body or soul? Am I going to take from you something you cannot give? Or do you have some other reason?"

Mors knowingly twisted Peturabo's true meaning. Every reaction from the boy fell within the scope of his predictions.

Peturabo turned his face away. He looked less angry than dazed.

He was not hopelessly slow-witted. In fact, thanks to his genius creator, Peturabo understood and analyzed things faster than nearly every living person in the entire human race.

The only thing holding him back was the particularly childish part of his own character.

"Mors, you are trying to hurt me. You clearly do not intend to leave. You brought your stone carvings, your tools. You are preparing to settle down in Lokos."

He said it, then painfully swallowed the rest: the question of what outcome Mors was waiting for.

"Come here, Peturabo." Mors spoke without his usual casualness, carrying instead a peculiar solemnity and gravity. It did not make him seem unapproachable; rather, it made him seem especially gentle.

Peturabo's feet seemed glued to the floor, but then that inseparable state dissolved. He stepped forward with a resolve and concession that even the most exquisite machine could not imitate.

Good, Mors thought. Then I will stay.

In Peturabo's reflected eyes, he saw a smiling man.

"I am hurting you. I am looking for every flaw in your mind. You and I both know it."

Mors stopped all his work and held out his right hand, palm up, within Peturabo's reach. As though enchanted, the boy placed his hand on it. Mors knew he had used no supernatural means—and that was precisely what fascinated him.

"But not this time. Not entirely. I truly had planned to leave Lokos. You should be able to see that everything Lokos can offer is worthless to me. Even if Dameks walked into this room now, knelt down, and said he wished to yield his position to someone more worthy, I would not feel the slightest joy."

Peturabo left for ten seconds, dragged over his chair, and sought something equal through equal height.

The boy sat opposite him, his back still straight. Mors waited for him a moment, then continued.

Mors spoke frankly. "I am a man of exceptional talent, but my wisdom and knowledge do not surpass humanity's finest age. Yet amid the waves of an age in retreat, merely standing still has already put me ahead of the masses."

"I do not deny my abilities, nor do I deny yours. You should understand: when you stand higher than everyone else, and far higher, the pleas and expectations of others cease to be merely recognition and trust. They become responsibility, even a burden."

"If you wish to weep for them, you must descend from your mountaintop. Throughout humanity's boundless history, there has never been a shortage of tragic examples."

Some sharp, hollow words drifted from his lips. Peturabo's eyes flickered slightly. Mors knew the boy had taken them in and was thinking.

That was good. Even if Peturabo was willing to listen to him for now, it was only because Mors was stronger, more complete, more mysterious, creating an illusion in Peturabo's mind that submitting to him was not unacceptable.

One day, when Peturabo's supreme creator arrived, Mors dared say he would immediately become the only one Peturabo would serve with all his heart. The boy of today, the man of tomorrow, would swiftly forget this "shameful" past, perhaps even erase it in retaliation.

But he was listening now.

Mors needed nothing else.

"Are you one of those examples?" Peturabo asked.

"Never. I have always been nameless and obscure, merely an insignificant pawn, forever unimportant."

The example he had given was actually his speculation about another person, and there was no need to mention that. He was no longer connected to that person, and Peturabo presumably had little to do with him as well—or so Mors told himself.

Peturabo fell silent, filled with doubts. Then he shook his head, casting the stray thoughts from his mind.

"Is my change what made you stay?" His voice lowered, and that shift made him sound somewhat like an adult.

"You made me speak openly, save time, and put everything into words. Yet now, the one laying layer upon layer of fog in his words is you."

Saying this made him terribly uneasy. Peturabo realized he was stepping into an entirely new domain. Again and again, Mors had forced him to reflect on himself, using his cold power to compel him back into the depths of his heart, to examine everything outside himself and the shell of his own thoughts. And now, at last, he saw a flaw—a sign.

He felt that something was wrong, wrong in a way that required no knowledge to recognize. It seemed part of common sense, something that, after escaping the blindfold of knowledge and identity, still stood as part of the foundation of human reason, like innate knowledge. He had ignored it for far too long.

He glanced out the window. The Maelstrom of Stars had vanished without a trace.

Only now did he realize that the source of his fear had disappeared from the very beginning. Mors had helped him so profoundly—only now did he dare admit how terrified he had been of those eyes in the stars.

"You are the first person I have met since I can remember." Peturabo did not know what he was saying. He was merely letting out some words, some feelings. He almost felt that speaking this way made him strange, incomprehensible.

He looked directly at Mors, staring at his calm, cruel exterior as though at a mirror of steel. He spoke to Mors, but also to himself.

Mors waited patiently for him.

He felt nervous, afraid. Then every film of emotion was torn open with holes that let in the wind, and something clean flowed fiercely and continuously from the spring of his heart, filling those holes and washing away his panic. He searched for the right word and thought it might be called reassurance.

"From the beginning, you spoke to me of fairness and transactions. Every gain and gift had to be laid out in the open. I put forth my stakes, you brought the goods, and everything was given a price. We calculated the cost clearly, as though you could not understand me otherwise, nor I you."

"But the truth is far from that. At the very least, you can already manipulate my mind with ease. This is not normal. You and I both know humanity cannot endure if people rely solely on transactions."

"What exactly do you want to gain from me, Mors? Your attitude sometimes leaves me confused by your tolerance, and at other times makes me think you hate me."

Peturabo admitted everything he had no choice but to admit. These words bristled with thorns; every word made his throat and mouth ache as though bleeding. Yet before a steel mirror that was forever cold, his pain was easily frozen and soothed.

He did not imagine whether he could speak this way if someone else were here. Dameks? Mityad? Some unknown courtier or priest?

He made no assumptions, because the person here was Mors.

Under his gaze, he could not see even the slightest wavering. Mors was as unfathomable as he was at every other moment, perhaps even more inscrutable. And Peturabo had already bared so much. Gritting his teeth, he pressed on. "Do you hate me?"

Mors lowered his eyes. "Do you remember what I told you before?"

Then a faint smile appeared on his face. "'Your creator did not finish his work. Peturabo, you are not a qualified tool. And how should a qualified craftsman handle steel that failed in forging? I choose to melt it back into molten iron, quench it, hammer it, cool it, and repeat the cycle.'"

"Of course I do not hate you. I am merely taking over your creator's work. I cannot bear to see such excellent material gather dust, Peturabo. I am merely reforging you. That is also why I decided to stay. I saw that my presence could shape you better."

"So I am a tool," Peturabo said. "That is why we speak of transactions. That is why we never draw close."

Mors smiled faintly. "Have you prepared yourself to establish a closer relationship?" He shook his head. "At least, I have not."