Dawn came again in the same bone-deep cold, though it was difficult to tell where night ended and morning began while the world remained submerged beneath the white gloom of the Ice Age. In weather like this, the senses dulled quickly, and Juliet trusted something older than sight to tell her the hour. Years of farm work had taught her body the rhythm of waking even when the sky no longer offered a proper sunrise.
She slipped quietly from beneath the thick animal-hide blanket, taking care not to disturb Edward or Remi. Her husband would soon be walking toward a place everyone around him described as a realm of death, while their son still slept with the deep exhaustion of a child who had spent too many winters fighting the cold. Juliet let both of them keep those few minutes of peace.
The stone room bit at her the instant she left the bed. Washing in the morning had become a small contest against the weather, because water meant heat, fuel, and the danger of standing damp in air cold enough to punish the smallest mistake. What had once been an ordinary habit now required the same care she gave to feeding a fire or preserving food.
A thick crust of ice covered the bucket in the corner. Juliet sighed, crossed to the hearth, and poured the little water left from the previous evening into a ceramic pot. She set it over the brick stove and brushed aside the ash until she uncovered several embers still glowing beneath it.
When a thin thread of steam began to rise, Juliet dipped a frayed cloth into the warm water and retreated behind the reed screen, where the draft from the door could not reach her as easily. She loosened several buttons on the heavy leather layers around her neck and upper chest, exposing pale skin that tightened almost immediately in the cold. Even after years in Marrakesh, her body never truly learned to welcome winter.
A shiver ran down her spine before the warm cloth touched her skin. The heat soothed the numbness for a moment, then vanished almost at once, leaving the remaining moisture colder than before. Juliet worked quickly across her face, neck, chest, and shoulders, then fastened every wooden and bone button again with fingers that had begun to tremble.
She cupped both hands over her mouth and breathed warmth into them until the worst of the shaking passed. Her cheeks felt dry and raw beneath her palms, but at least she was clean enough for another day. In this climate, even something as simple as washing could leave a person with the quiet satisfaction of having survived another small battle.
Juliet returned to the hearth and arranged several dry oak sticks so air could move between them. Once the flame caught, she placed the ceramic pot above it and added a few dried herbs with a pinch of sea salt, preparing something warm for Edward and Remi to drink when they woke. The thin herbal brew was hardly luxurious, but warmth did not need to be luxurious to matter.
While the water heated, she crossed to the wooden chest in the corner and began checking what they would carry. One by one, she lifted Edward's hand-knitted sweaters toward the firelight, examining seams for loose threads and holes left by insects. She brushed dried mud from the goatskin coat that offered him the best protection against snow, then tucked several cloves of dried garlic into the inner pockets, an old household remedy she had trusted on winter journeys since long before Marrakesh.
She was even more methodical with Remi's belongings. Juliet folded his goatskin socks into pairs, added several clean strips of coarse cloth in case he soaked his feet in snow, and checked every strap and fastening twice. Edward's old books and leather map were wrapped in oilcloth before she laid them carefully at the bottom of the chest, safe from damp and careless hands.
The work barely disturbed the room. Fabric rustled, the chest lid settled softly into place, and the fire clicked in the hearth while father and son continued sleeping. Their breath rose in faint mist above the bed, steady enough to reassure her every time she looked over.
When the indoor work was finished, Juliet prepared for town. She pulled on a heavy bear-hide cloak, wrapped a coarse scarf across the lower half of her face, lit a whale-oil storm lantern, and stepped outside after quietly latching the oak door behind her. The warmth of the room disappeared the moment the door closed.
A light blizzard struck her at once, driving snow against her face hard enough to sting through the scarf. Fog and windblown powder reduced Marrakesh to a gray-white blur, and the old Moorish domes that had once carried the warm color of terracotta now stood like pale shapes half erased by winter. The city had not lost its architecture, but the Ice Age had stripped much of its color from sight.
The streams descending from the Atlas Mountains, once the lifeblood of the oasis, had become rough lines trapped beneath ice. Withered branches pushed through the snow at crooked angles, and Juliet often recognized walls, trees, and abandoned carts only when she was nearly upon them. Her lantern revealed a few uncertain steps at a time before the rest of the city dissolved again into fog.
The wind that came north from the Sahara carried no memory of desert heat now. During her first winters she had fought every gust with panic, wasting strength against something too large to resist. Years of survival had taught her to walk differently, keeping a measured rhythm and letting the weight of the leather cloak become familiar armor rather than a burden.
By the time the low terracotta houses of the neighborhood emerged ahead, the blizzard had begun to weaken. Snow still fell, but the flakes drifted more softly, and the fog loosened enough for the narrow street to take shape. Juliet slowed before a sagging house whose red-lime walls had faded beneath years of snow and bitter wind.
She raised one gloved hand and knocked three times on the rotted wooden door. A moment later it creaked open, and a Berber man wrapped in a thick djellaba leaned out into the cold. Omar's deep-set eyes widened when he recognized her standing alone so early.
"Juliet, is that you? It is barely morning. What are you doing outside in weather like this?"
Juliet lowered her scarf enough to show him a tired smile.
"Good morning, Omar. Tomorrow at noon, my family is slaughtering several cattle from the pen. Edward and I would like you and your family to come over and share a warm meal with us."
Omar stared at her, his snow-covered beard quivering in astonishment. In an age when a single potato could become worth fighting over, slaughtering several cattle at once sounded less like hospitality than a story someone would tell about a vanished world. His eyes darted along the street as though he feared even the storm might overhear.
"Several cattle? Are you serious? In the middle of this winter?"
"I am serious. We are leaving Marrakesh soon. Your family and the others here have helped us survive for years, and this is the last kindness Edward and I can offer before we go."
Understanding replaced the surprise in Omar's face. He reached out and gave her shoulder a firm, careful pat, the gesture carrying the familiarity of neighbors who had survived too many winters side by side.
"My family will be there tomorrow at noon. Watch the road on your way back, Juliet. The southern wind is getting worse."
Juliet thanked him and continued toward the British refugee quarter. It was a cluster of tents, patched stone rooms, and improvised dwellings occupied by people who had crossed the sea with little more than what they could carry. The structures looked temporary even after years of use, as if everyone living there remained unwilling to admit that exile had become permanent.
She stopped first at the Thompson family's tent. Children's coughs came through the hide walls, and when Juliet lifted the flap, Martha Thompson looked up with the hollow eyes of someone who had not eaten enough in far too long. Juliet sat beside her on the cold floor and explained the feast, but the invitation became a farewell before she had finished speaking.
The two women eventually embraced without finding much else to say. They had left the same ruined country, crossed the same sea, and learned to survive beneath the same foreign snow. Parting from one another felt like losing another small piece of England that neither woman had realized she was still carrying.
Juliet continued from door to door, visiting friends from the evacuation ship and families who had once shared crumbs of dry bread with her at sea. Each doorway revealed another exhausted face, another weak smile, and another hand that held hers a little longer after hearing that the Spencers were leaving. Every farewell made Marrakesh feel less like a refuge and more like another home already slipping away.
The Mariabell house was different. Juliet knocked, waited, called their names, then knocked again more softly. The door remained locked and no sound came from within.
She did not try a third time. The silence told her enough, and some part of her already understood what she would later hear confirmed. She wanted to cry, but even grief demanded caution in this weather, and she had learned how quickly tears could freeze painfully against the skin.
Juliet eventually found a relatively dry stone bench beneath an overhang and sat long enough to restore feeling to her fingers. The blizzard weakened further, and the cloud cover brightened with a pale diffuse glow that touched the snow without offering any real warmth. There was still no sun, only the dim suggestion of day behind the clouds.
Marrakesh seemed to wake beneath that weak light. People began clearing snow from doorways, carts creaked along uneven streets, and familiar scents of cinnamon, nutmeg, smoke, and treated leather drifted through the air. The city still lived, stubbornly and imperfectly, and that stubbornness made Juliet's chest ache more than desolation would have.
For a moment she simply watched people work. Then another city rose uninvited in her memory.
London had once looked beautiful beneath snow as well. Westminster had stood above the Thames like something too permanent to disappear, and Juliet remembered believing that beauty meant safety. Only later had she learned how closely beauty could resemble the stillness before death.
Portuguese gunboats entered the memory next. Market voices became screams, the groan of carts became timber breaking under cannon fire, and white streets turned red beneath smoke and falling brick. Blood, snow, and masonry merged until the old city existed in her mind as a single wound.
A spice merchant called to a passerby somewhere nearby, and the ordinary voice pulled Juliet back to Marrakesh. She blinked, clenched her calloused hands until her nails pressed into her palms, then forced herself to look at the market in front of her rather than the city that no longer existed.
"I should not keep feeding those memories. Edward has enough to carry without watching me drown in them too."
She rose from the bench, adjusted her lantern, and followed the gathering crowd toward the market. The thought did not erase London, but it gave her something practical to do with the next few minutes.
The Marrakesh market had become a meeting place for displaced lives. Moorish merchants and farmers in thick djellabas traded beside British refugees and Castilian families, while narrow wooden stalls offered turnips, dried salted meat, coarse silk, preserved fruit, leather goods, and spices brought north from settlements that still maintained contact with the desert routes. Bargaining, carts, and shouted greetings filled the covered lanes with the stubborn rhythm of ordinary life.
More importantly, the market was warmer than the streets outside. Part of that came from the press of bodies, but most of it came from low-grade Vestigium lamps suspended from the roof beams at regular intervals. The small devices had become as necessary to the city's civic life as wells or paved roads.
Each lamp was scarcely larger than a fist, yet it cast a steady golden-orange light and enough heat to warm the air beneath it. In practical use, the lamps could provide roughly ten times the warmth of the red lime blocks Edward used around the cattle barn, but they cost about five times as much. The Marrakesh administration continued paying that price because the market was treated as civic infrastructure, not decoration. A market where people could still gather, trade, and eat was more than a place of commerce; it was proof that the city's heartbeat had not yet surrendered to winter.
Juliet stopped at a spice stall run by an elderly Moorish farmer. She rolled several peppercorns between her fingers, inspected the cinnamon beside them, and narrowed her eyes at the seller with the flat expression Edward had long ago learned not to interrupt during bargaining.
"How much for the pepper and cinnamon?"
The old man named a price that made Juliet's mouth tighten.
"That pepper has been sitting here since last season, and half the cinnamon is crushed. Five coins is too much. Three and a half, and I will take the lot."
The merchant complained about transport costs, winter losses, and the price of keeping a stall open. Juliet did not move. She had enough money to pay him, but years of farming had taught her that having coin was not the same as having coin to waste.
Eventually the old man surrendered with a muttered complaint and wrapped the spices in dried leaves. Juliet checked the bundle before tucking it securely inside her coat, then turned back toward home with the satisfaction of someone who had won a small but entirely necessary battle.
The return journey felt less hostile than the walk into town. The storm had thinned, and diffuse daylight filtered through the cloud cover, turning the snowfields silver without revealing the sun that had been absent for years. Marrakesh looked almost peaceful from a distance, which Juliet knew better than to trust.
Edward was waiting near the house when she arrived. He wore a thick fur coat and leather gloves, and when Juliet came within reach, he took the basket from her hands before leaning down to kiss her cold lips.
He brushed his thumb over her flushed cheek.
"You were up before me again, handling everything alone. You could have left some of the heavy work for your husband."
Juliet laughed and rubbed warmth back into his gloved hands.
"You have a much longer road ahead of you than I do today. Let me handle the small things while I still can."
They shared a quiet smile. Juliet pushed his shoulder, reminded him of several things that still needed to be done for the feast, and disappeared into the warmth of the house. Edward watched the door close before adjusting his collar and turning toward the city center, where a different kind of work waited for him.
Governor Victoria Valdes was close to Edward in age, with golden hair that seemed almost like a remnant of summer trapped in the colorless winter and deep blue eyes as sharp as a frozen lake. She had been shaped by the Royal Military Academy, where an instinct for logistics, negotiation, and psychological pressure had become a professional weapon. Years of governing Marrakesh had only made those talents more dangerous.
The Valdes family had served Castilian rule in the region for more than a century and a half, maintaining order through soldiers when necessary and persuasion whenever possible. Their name had become woven into the administration of Marrakesh long before Victoria inherited its burdens. She carried that lineage with pride, but she was not merely a representative of it. To Edward, she was also the young woman who had once walked London streets beside him before either of them understood how completely war would rearrange their lives.
When he entered her office, the Governor's formal expression softened into a small smile.
"Edward, you still dress as badly as you did when you skipped tactical lectures at the Academy."
Victoria pushed back her chair and crossed to the fireplace. She poured two glasses of red wine herself, handed one to Edward, and let the first silence between them settle with the warmth.
Their last meeting under similarly desperate circumstances had been four years earlier, when Edward arrived in Marrakesh with Juliet and Remi after the fall of England. He had brought little besides exhaustion, smoke-stained clothes, and a family that needed shelter. Victoria had sponsored them without hesitation, securing a stone house on the outskirts of the city and several breeding cattle so Edward could build a livelihood instead of surviving on temporary charity.
Edward lowered his glass and looked at her with the gratitude of someone who had never forgotten the debt.
"Thank you again for those cattle, Vic. Without them, Juliet, Remi, and I might not have survived our first winter here. You were my greatest benefactor then, just as you were one of my best friends at the Academy."
Victoria took a sip of wine, amusement returning to her eyes.
"You become strangely formal whenever you are grateful. It does not suit the same young man who once stood in the rain for two hours trying to convince me to have dinner with him."
Edward's ears reddened slightly. Victoria noticed at once and continued before he could defend himself.
"You also spent half a term inventing reasons to lurk around the women's changing rooms just to steal a look at me, and somehow still found the courage to criticize how I dressed."
Edward laughed despite himself.
"You are still merciless, Victoria. I thought you had forgotten how often I was punished for skipping class because I was busy trying to impress you."
Victoria rested her glass near the fireplace. The teasing softened, leaving something older and more affectionate behind it.
"I remember more than you think. I remember the late walks, the holidays in London, and the times you somehow convinced yourself that holding my hand was part of military education."
For a moment neither of them spoke. The memory was not painful exactly, but it belonged to a country that no longer existed and to two people who had once assumed there would always be more time.
Then the Governor returned to Victoria's expression.
"But enough nostalgia. You did not come here just to drink my wine and remind me how badly behaved you were."
Edward rolled the glass once between his fingers before answering.
"The day after tomorrow, I will return the entire herd to the city government. About forty head, both cows and calves."
Victoria did not look surprised. Instead, she studied his face with the patient confidence of someone who had known his habits for too many years.
"You still swirl the glass when you are about to say something unpleasant, and you still blink too slowly when you are trying to hide a decision. I learned your tells fifteen years ago. Whatever mystery you imagine yourself to be, Edward, I finished reading that book a long time ago."
Her expression grew more serious.
"Isabella visited your house yesterday, did she not? The Queen does not cross half of Morocco for a social call. What did she ask of you? If the request is unreasonable, or if you need supplies, intelligence, or a safe route out of Marrakesh, tell me before your pride carries you into another grave."
A familiar voice answered from the doorway before Edward could.
"To be precise, Edward has never been very good at escaping that little sister of his."
Marco entered while removing the thick bear-fur collar from his shoulders. Edward turned toward him in surprise.
"I thought you and Romeo were escorting Isabella all the way back to Barcelona."
"The Queen only needed us as far as Tangier. She intends to reestablish the Tangier-Ceuta defense line herself, and she has other Royal Guards with her now."
Romeo came in behind Marco and reached for Victoria's wine without waiting to be invited. He filled two empty glasses, passed one to Marco, and kept the other.
"The plan changed, Ed. Barcelona is full of ministers trying to tell Isabella what she cannot do, so naturally she decided the front line was more pleasant. After Tangier, Marco is taking a Castilian company south to Fes to prepare for the Romans."
Romeo drank and made a face.
"I am the unlucky one. Victoria and I get to coordinate grain, steel, recruits, and transport between Marrakesh and Casablanca. Nothing but paperwork, wagons, and people shouting that they need twice as much as we can give them."
Victoria leaned against the edge of her desk and raised her glass toward the newcomers.
"You two still enter rooms without knocking. Becoming Royal Guards has done nothing for your manners."
Marco laughed and slapped Edward on the shoulder.
"Why bother with ceremony when we are among family? So, Admiral, how badly has our Governor already interrogated you? You meet one old flame and immediately let her turn the conversation into psychological warfare."
Romeo nudged Edward in the ribs.
"Leave him alone. Isabella served him a three-course menu of impossible missions yesterday, and now Victoria wants the full report. Look at his face. The man is probably trying to calculate which road gets him killed without anyone calling him a traitor first."
Their laughter warmed the room for several seconds, but Victoria's amusement faded as she looked back at Edward.
"Three choices? What exactly did Isabella put in front of you, and which one are you planning to take? If you need help getting out of that mess, you know you only have to ask."
Edward explained the Queen's three missions and the decision he had reached during the night. He described the naval command against Portugal, the operation against the Ravenna Crown, and the northern route through England with the Reliquiarios. By the time he finished, Victoria was staring at him as though he had announced that he intended to walk into the Atlantic.
"You chose England? You actually chose England? What makes you want to return to that dead land?"
Edward watched steam curl faintly above the wine before he answered.
"First, dead or not, it is still our homeland. I ran from it ten years ago, and I do not want Remi to know England only through stories told beside a hearth."
He lifted his gaze to the other three.
"Second, the last reports I received during the evacuation said the Irish and Scottish regions had not collapsed as completely as London. The Portuguese Vestigium disaster and the unstable climate devastated them, but communities were still holding out in the highlands and northern marshes. If those survivors can be contacted and brought into an alliance, the British Isles may not be beyond recovery."
Edward took a small sip and let the bitterness sit on his tongue before continuing.
"Finally, every mission Isabella offered is close to suicide. At least in England I know the coast, the harbors, and the currents. If I am going to gamble my life, I would rather do it on ground I understand."
The room quieted. Romeo drank without comment, Marco studied the fire, and Victoria watched Edward with the calculating stillness of someone testing every weakness in his argument.
"If you have decided, I will not waste time trying to stop you."
Edward gave her a grateful smile, then looked around at his former classmates.
"What is the government's plan here? How are you supposed to hold Morocco when our Ottoman allies barely have anything left to contribute?"
Marco moved to the oak map table and pressed a calloused thumb against northeastern Morocco.
"According to the latest orders, Isabella has withdrawn every Castilian formation from Algiers. She is done overextending the line. The available forces are concentrating at Taza, the gateway to the Taza-Fez corridor."
He traced the route west with one finger.
"Roughly twenty thousand Castilian troops, reinforced by local Moorish units, will hold Taza. The railway from Fes and the cities behind it will run day and night with food and ammunition. My job is to keep the Taza-Fez corridor open at any cost. If Taza falls, Fes becomes the final barrier. If Fes falls, northern Morocco is effectively exposed to Western Rome."
Romeo set down his glass and picked up the explanation.
"My part is manpower and movement. We need the British refugee communities across Morocco organized, trained, and armed, and that means our beloved Governor is about to become very popular with every quartermaster in the country."
He glanced at Victoria, then pointed toward the Atlas Mountains on the map.
"I also have to review every pass and hidden route through the Atlas. Moving troops across those mountains in this weather borders on suicide, but Roman commanders have never been famous for respecting sane limits."
Romeo's expression hardened before he added the figure that had clearly been bothering him.
"Isabella wants at least eighty thousand combat-ready British and Moorish troops across Morocco within two months, before we even count the Castilian regulars already committed to the theater."
Victoria did not answer immediately. She crossed to her dark oak desk, opened a wooden box, and removed a folded message whose red wax seal had already been broken. She tossed it onto the table in front of the others.
"I have no elegant operational plan to show you. I received only this from Barcelona a few days ago."
Edward unfolded the small piece of goatskin parchment. A single sentence had been written in sharp black script above Isabella Testarossa's unmistakable signature.
"Marrakesh must not fall. Ten thousand Castilian troops are coming as reinforcements."
Romeo clicked his tongue and stared at the message.
"Ten thousand regulars? She is pulling that many troops away from the mainland while France is hammering the Pyrenees?"
Victoria crossed her arms.
"Then Marrakesh is no longer being treated as a rear settlement or merely a production center. Isabella intends to make it the strategic base of Castilian North Africa. Taza and Fes can serve as the shield, but Marrakesh is the heart that feeds everything behind them. If this city stops functioning, the entire defense collapses."
She looked toward the fire, her voice losing some of its sharpness.
"That is why she is willing to spend troops she can barely spare. She will do almost anything to keep this place alive."
Silence settled over the four officers as each followed a different chain of problems across the same map. They could offer advice to one another, but every solution demanded soldiers, food, transport, or time that none of them truly possessed. Their old friendship had survived an empire, but friendship could not manufacture another army.
A piece of oak cracked in the fireplace and sent a brief shower of sparks upward. Victoria looked at the fire, then at Edward, and the corner of her mouth lifted.
"I heard your family is slaughtering cattle tomorrow and feeding half the neighborhood."
Edward frowned at her.
"How did you hear that already? Juliet only started inviting people this morning."
Victoria took another sip of wine with unmistakable satisfaction.
"Edward, this is Marrakesh. Very little happens here without eventually reaching the Governor's desk."
Marco and Romeo forgot the map almost instantly. Both men turned toward Edward with the delighted expressions of soldiers who had spent too long eating preserved rations.
"You are really serving fresh beef tomorrow? I have spent the last year chewing dried meat hard enough to repair a wall."
Edward laughed at Marco's sudden enthusiasm.
"Mostly beef, yes. Stewed beef with herbs, grilled cuts, bone soup, whatever Juliet decides she can make from it. She is organizing the food."
Romeo rubbed his chin, already treating the matter like a military operation.
"Then the two of you are not doing it alone. Marco and I will come over tonight for drinks, and tomorrow morning we will help with the slaughter and preparation."
Edward slapped Romeo's shoulder and nodded.
"That would make Juliet's life considerably easier. Bring whatever wine you can spare, but do not arrive empty-handed and call it logistics."
Marco started arguing with Romeo about which bottle would survive the cold best. Their discussion grew loud enough that Victoria cleared her throat with deliberate force.
All three men stopped and looked toward her. She stood with her arms crossed and one eyebrow raised, and Edward realized a little too late that he had invited both Royal Guards without extending the same courtesy to the Governor whose office they were currently occupying.
Edward scratched the back of his neck.
"Vic, if you are free tomorrow at noon, perhaps you could join us."
Victoria raised one finger before he could continue.
"Try again, Admiral Spencer. That is not how a British gentleman invites a lady to dinner."
Marco and Romeo immediately stepped aside with the solemn expressions of men preparing to enjoy someone else's humiliation. Edward looked from them to Victoria, saw the challenge in her smile, and surrendered.
He straightened his fur coat, stepped back, and gave Victoria the formal bow once expected at the British royal court. The old movement returned to him with embarrassing ease.
"Governor Valdes, I would be honored if you joined my family and our neighbors for a small feast tomorrow at noon. Your presence would mean a great deal to us."
The performance caught Victoria off guard more effectively than any argument had. Color reached her cheeks before she recovered and turned her face slightly away.
"That is considerably better. Since you finally remembered proper etiquette, I will arrange to attend."
Marco burst into laughter, and Romeo joined him at once. Victoria's glare failed to silence either man, while Edward decided that accepting the humiliation was cheaper than trying to defend himself.
When the laughter finally weakened, Edward looked at the empty glass in his hand and set it down.
"I should go. Juliet is waiting, and we still have too much to prepare before tomorrow."
Victoria lifted a hand.
"Wait a moment. There is something you should take with you."
She placed Isabella's letter back in its box and disappeared through the door leading to her private quarters. The room quieted again, though Marco and Romeo were still exchanging amused looks behind Edward's back.
A short while later Victoria returned carrying a saber in a polished black leather scabbard decorated with restrained silver work. She stopped in front of Edward and held the weapon horizontally in both hands.
"Four years ago, when you arrived in Marrakesh exhausted and half convinced you were finished with war forever, you gave me this sword. You said a farmer had no need for sharpened steel."
She looked down at the scabbard and then back at him.
"You are no longer preparing for a farmer's road. Victoria Valdes is returning this weapon to Admiral Edward Spencer."
Edward did not answer at once. His work-worn hands closed around the familiar scabbard, and he drew the blade only a few centimeters. Clean steel caught the firelight without revealing a trace of rust, still bright enough to make the years since he last carried it feel strangely unreal.
Romeo rested a hand on Edward's shoulder and watched his expression.
"Do you still remember the old ritual?"
Edward's mouth curved into a restrained smile.
"How could I forget it?"
Edward drew the saber fully, and the steel rang softly as it cleared the scabbard. Marco and Romeo drew their matching weapons, while Victoria unsheathed the fourth saber from beside her desk. The four blades shared the same elegant curve and the same restrained ornamentation, relics of a time when all four officers had belonged to the same country.
They raised the sabers until their tips met above the center of the room. A warm golden light stirred through the steel at the point of contact, spreading across each blade before brightening enough to push back the gray winter light around them. For an instant, the Governor's office looked less like a room in Marrakesh and more like a fragment of the Academy they had lost.
Together they recited the oath they had learned as cadets.
"The Queen illuminates us. Glory to the Empire Upon Which the Sun Never Sets!"
The four sabers were not ordinary weapons. Each was a Miracle-grade Vestigium forged from surviving fragments associated with Excalibur and shaped by the finest metallurgists of the Royal Military Academy. Miracle-grade stood only one tier below Legendary, and under the right conditions, the difference in destructive potential could become surprisingly small.
The complete sword of King Arthur had never been recovered. Enough remnants had survived, however, for the Academy's smiths to combine those fragments with the most advanced metallurgy available to the old British military and forge four linked blades. Each carried a trace of the mythical weapon from which it had been derived.
They had been awarded to the four highest-ranked graduates of that class. Years later, the same four people now stood together in a foreign Governor's office, holding weapons forged by an empire that no longer existed.
The golden light receded as they lowered their sabers. Edward sheathed his weapon and let the familiar weight settle against his hip. The sensation was oddly reassuring, as though one piece of the man he had tried to bury had returned without asking permission.
"Thank you, Vic. Marco, Romeo, I will see you at my house tonight. Do not be late."
Edward pulled his heavy cloak around his shoulders and left the Governor's residence. Outside, pale daylight filtered across the snow of Marrakesh as he walked home with the sword of his former life at his side, carrying one more piece of the past toward whatever waited beyond the ice.