Kio was annoyed. He was deeply annoyed, as the man walked past him and to the centre of the light, but he couldn’t manage any more than that. Nor could Grim pull the trigger, or his boys do any more than stand around, looking confused.

“Again,” the aman said as he came to a stop. “Stop hurting each other. Just go your separate ways.”

“No one invited you, weirdo,” Grim said, looking irate.

The gun rested loosely in his hand.

“I invited myself,” the man replied. “I go where I feel I should.”

“Hn.”

A silence followed the giant’s little snort. Kio didn’t know what to say or do. All the rage from seconds before was reduced to an idea; a feeling that he should be angry. His fighting instincts called out for taking advantage of all this; rushing Grim while the giant was neutralised and cracking his head with the butt of that gun. But it was all smothered under the weight of an alien calm Kio knew damn well wasn’t his own.

After a few seconds of that, the blue-clad man took action. He walked over to Dunn and put a hand on him. Dunn’s ragged, agonised breathing evened out significantly. Next Kendrel approached the big man with the shoulder wound, who was being propped up by one of his comrades. The trickle of blood slowed down. His third patient was one of the two late arrivals, and after that he stood up and looked at everyone.

“These two need a hospital,” he said, indicating the man at his feet, and Dunn. “If you care for them at all.”

He gave everyone another look, Kio included.

“You do not need to do this; to harm one another, and prey on your fellow citizens. I know it may feel that way, but-”

“But you better watch that your little club doesn’t get burned down, priest,” Grim said.

Kio hadn’t noticed him getting up. The gun was holstered.

“No such thing will happen with me present,” Kendrel told the giant, as calm and confident as ever. “There are more ways to power and strength than you realise. And if I am wrong, then prove it by striking me down.”

Grim sneered, but he couldn’t bypass the man’s strange sorcery any more than Kio could.

“Freak,” he said, with affected disinterest. “Let’s leave this until later, boys.”

Grim turned his eyes on Kio. They weren’t blasing, as they had been. But the man still managed anger.

“You have twenty-five hours, Kio. I’m putting the word out. Twenty-five hours to show up at the Ten-Ten, apologise with all your might and swear yourself to the Rock Dogs… or I’m putting a mark on you. There won’t be a single place for you to hide, and your buddy here won’t be able to watch you all day every day.”

He patted the gun.

“I have a whole arsenal, all at the Ten-Ten. These streets are going to change, and you can fall in line, or get run over.”

The Dogs started drifting away, most of them unsteady on their feet. Grim was the last to leave.

“Twenty-five hours, Kio.”

They vanished, and took the light drone with them. Aman Kendrel took a little ball out of his robe, gave it a squeeze to set off illumination, and dropped it on the ground.

“What do you want?” Kio asked stiffly.

“I want to talk, Kio.”

“You’ve tried that before.”

“And you absolutely refused to hear a word I was saying. You seem… calmer, now.”

Kio turned and started walking, but he didn’t move quickly. The power was gone from his veins, and the fight was collecting its dues. The aman simply started walking with him.

“I am glad you are alive, Kio. Truly. All I knew was that the Warden was after your mentor, and then I heard nothing more for weeks, until tales started drifting back from Ciinto Res. Tales of things these corewards people have no explanation for.”

“The mentor is dead,” Kio said stiffly. “I… I, uh, sort of felt it happen. His power, it… disappeared. That, and he stopped destroying the incoming fleet.”

“And the others?”

“The Warden’s alive, as far as I know.”

“That is not what I meant, Kio.”

Kio came to a sudden stop.

“It’s just me. They’re all dead. Just… just me left.”

He didn’t look at the aman, but he heard the man mutter something under his breath, in a tongue Kio didn’t understand. He took it to be a prayer, or some equivalent.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

It was no mere platitude. Somehow Kio could just sense it. This children’s book character really was offering some of that overflowing kindness of his.

“What do you want, man?” Kio asked.

“I want to help, Kio,” Kendrel said. “It really is as simple as that.”

“The Warden. Did you send her?”

“No. I only met her after her first encounter with you, here at this site. We spoke at my shelter. I thought perhaps you might be more willing to listen to a warrior than to me.”

Kio stood stock still. He didn’t speak for a few breaths.

“She mentioned that. The second time we fought.”

He didn’t like to think about that moment. In the Tanga. But he did. Incessantly. All the dead bodies…

His only escape was to get angry, but it remained a stunted thing.

“What do you want?”

“I want to listen to you, Kio,” Kendrel said. “I think there has been precious little of that in your life. And I am hoping, Kio, that you will in turn listen to me.”

Kio laughed. It was a desperate, joyless sound.

“Do you realise how pretentious you sound??”

“Look at me, Kio, and tell me if you see insincerity.”

Kio knew he’d trapped himself. Because of course this unbearably open-hearted man meant everything he said, and now he himself looked like an ass no matter what.

Out of his available options, Kio opted to indeed turn to face him. Yes, there it was: Naked concern, combined with an odd sort of steely strength.

“No. Fine. You mean it.”

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“Now be sincere yourself: Do you wish to speak about your dead comrades?”

“Comrades…” Kio repeated under his breath.

He looked away again, at nothing, and suddenly found himself talking.

“We weren’t friends,” he said in a dull tone. “We sparred and sparred and sparred, and when we weren’t sparring we were listening to the mentor. That was it. He discouraged idle talk, and he got more strict about it over time. We were gathered for a purpose, and he always made it perfectly clear that not all of us would make the cut. He came to me once, privately, and told me that I needed to keep an eye on the others. To guard against weakness and corruption within his gathering.”

Kio swallowed.

“I realise… I think I always realised, really, that he probably approached the others with the same line. Everyone was always on guard, always on edge.”

He shook his head. The man’s cruelty had always been on full display, and yet he’d somehow come to accept it as normal.

“So they were more competitors than anything else?” Kendrel said.

“Y… yeah. I…”

Kio scratched as his birthmark.

“Manda,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Manda,” Kio said more forcefully. “The girl who… who guarded the old house.”

He turned and pointed.

“Me and the Warden, we fought the first time because she’d wrecked the place, and dragged Manda out with a busted leg. I got in between them, and I managed to Tunnel both of us out. Back to the mentor.”

That tight throat was back, and his body felt like it was failing him. He was dimly aware of the aman taking his arm, and somehow he stayed on his feet.

“He did not take kindly to such a failure, did he?” Kendrel said sadly.

“No,” Kio breathed. Damn, this hurt. “It’s just me left, like I said.”

“I am sorry, Kio.”

And he meant it. Damn him, of course he meant it.

Kio inhaled.

“Well, that doesn’t help me, does it?”

He stepped away, and out of the man’s grip. He didn’t want to look at him.

“Kindness has failed in your life so far, Kio,” the aman said at his back. “And that has made you distrust it. But it is a part of humanity, just as cruelty is. More so, in fact, because society could not survive without it. You have dipped into the power the Exiles of Vartana offer. You have tasted it, and still do. I felt as much in the tail end of that brawl. You have found it to be a bitter fruit. You-”

“Drowning.”

“What?”

Kio looked down at his blackened hand.

“It felt like drowning, now that I look back. All of it. My time with him. Like… sinking, everything crushing in, going dark.”

He squeezed the fingers into an unfeeling fist.

“But… you saw what it let me do to Grim. A Nihunian, and not a weak one by their standards either. You saw the faces of his boys. Huh. Kio the Spot, commanding some damn fear and respect.”

“Love is a better balm, Kio.”

Kio sneered. An obstinate mood had hit him. It sure felt better than all the pain.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“If you are going to tell me that you have never been shown any kindness and affection at all, Kio, please look me in the eyes while you do it.”

Kio turned with a quick jerk. His temper was flaring up again. But the words wouldn’t come out. He looked for some sign of triumph on the man’s face, but found none, and he hated it.

“Kio, please tell me why you came back from Ciinto Res. Was it your only available option?”

“No,” he admitted. “There were a few options, once the free transports started going. I came because… b… look, I don’t know!”

“And are you planning to stay?”

“I don’t… really have a plan,” Kio admitted. “I have no money, and nothing I would call connections. Just my clothes, and my fists.”

Kio rubbed his face, as the dead bodies appeared before him again.

“I don’t think I can stay. I killed people, for the mentor. I don’t think it’s safe for me here.”

“That Tanga,” Kendrel said.

Kio needed to summon his courage to look at the man now, and look for judgement. He found none.

“It’s like some… nightmare or something,” he heard himself say. “Like when you don’t even understand what you’re doing. It was the mentor doing some favour to his allies, or something. I didn’t even know why I was doing it. But me and Unda and Keler, we went, because he told us to. And we slaughtered the whole place. We killed fifty people, because the mentor told us to. The Warden showed up just as we were finishing, and… that’s when Unda and Keler died.”

He thought he might actually throw up, but the words kept coming, after weeks of preying on his mind.

“The Tanga warriors, they were armed, they could fight. Of course they could. But we slaughtered them. It was barely even a fight. And they’re dead. And… and I don’t even know why. Is… is this what evil is? Just… ignorance and blindness and…”

He put his hands over his face.

“Stupidity?!”

He spent a few seconds breathing too hard. Nothing changed, nothing improved. So he just had to say the next part in spite of it.

“I’m evil.”

The aman reached up, slowly, and put his hands on Kio’s shoulders.

“Evil comes in many forms,” he said gently.

Kio felt the man’s power at work, soothing his injuries, physical and mental.

“Kio. We human beings shy away from accepting this, but the frightening fact is that the mind can be twisted and moulded by outside forces. Circumstances and deliberate manipulation, done carefully and with patience, can draw normal people into monstrous acts. This goes doubly when we are young and unhardened.”

“I can’t claim to have grown up soft,” Kio countered.

“You grew up hard, but wounded. Fear became normal to you. And then you met a man who claimed he could make you strong, give you direction and purpose. A man who could make you special. It would be a rare individual who would endure your exact circumstances and not be vulnerable to such a thing.”

Kendrel gave him a few seconds to mull his words over.

“As for worldly consequences, from what I understand there is next to nothing understood about what actually happened in that building. There was no footage, and no witnesses. It has generally been blamed on the Purist mobs.”

“And you’re just going to let that stay?” Kio asked.

“My people have little faith in punishment. Our only concern is the present, and the future, and harm reduction in both. I see no reason to let the local law have you, if you have no intention of doing such a thing again. And in any case, they wouldn’t be able to hold you if you fall back on the tricks the Exile taught you.”

That was true. He hadn’t attempted Tunnelling since the tower. He had felt neither strong enough, nor motivated to seek the strength. But that thing with Grim had proved that he still could.

“I…”

Kio sniffed.

“Still, I think I should leave. I don’t know where, but I might have a way to get some travelling money. I could see if I end up somewhere… well, somewhere.”

“Come to my shelter,” Kendrel said. “You can do good, Kio. That can be your direction and purpose. That can be your price for the things you have done.”

Kio snorted.

“And how many food deliveries, donation runs, music circles and wellness checks make up for fifty dead? I don’t know anything useful. No one ever taught me.”

“You are only seventeen years old, Kio. You have ample time to learn new things. All it takes is the will. My shelter collects the broken, the ill, the elderly, the addicts and the outcasts. You would be far from the only one there with sins to their name. They are all just people, looking for ways to be better.”

“Hm. My mother is there, isn’t she? Kio asked. “Is this the part where you ask me again to talk to her?”

“It is your decision, Kio,” Kendrel told him. “But let me advise you: There can be tremendous healing in forgiveness and reconciliation. Resentment is a form of tension, and the fewer of those one carries through life, the better. And… to speak in a more down-to-world fashion…”

Kendrel let a short silence hang, as he looked deep into Kio’s eyes with that awful sincerity.

“Brenna is a very sad woman. She knows her failures as a mother, and I know that she would give anything to be able to perform the role again, and to do it better. She has learned what matters in life. She has told me, more than once, that if she cannot have you as a regular part of her life, she at least wants to keep you in heart. She wants to make amends. She thirsts for some sort of reconciliation. Kio, if you have any love for that woman at all, then please… Kio, please… let her know it.”

Kio shook his head. As with so much else about himself, he didn’t know what it actually meant.

“You are in deep darkness right now,” Kendrel told him. “You are face-to-face with your weaknesses, your mistakes, your own evil. If you have the strength to endure what you see, to continue moving… then you can exit out the other end as a better person.”

Kio was silent for a good long while. He thought of the aimless confusion he’d experienced ever since walking away from the mentor, and the vicious joy he’d experienced while turning the tables on Grim. He thought of the fear and shock it had caused in the others, and his sudden ambition to call the shots.

Boss Kio. Demanding respect.

“I… don’t think I’m that person,” he said slowly. “I don’t think I can live peacefully.”

He separated from the aman, and finally the man did not follow him.

“Where are you going?”

“To… think.”

“Do think, Kio,” Kendrel said to him. “But consider this: What you did under the Exile’s guidance was surrender, just as he did. Good does not come from ignoring evil and remaining assured of one’s own rightness. It is a daily task of living and learning, and it takes courage and strength.”

“Oh shut up,” Kio muttered under his breath.

He left the circle of light, and found himself again alone on the darkened street.