Chapter 575: What Rurik Doesn’t Deny

Crossing into Rurik’s half of Meridine took longer than the distance should have required.

The checkpoint itself was simple.

Four guards.

A narrow opening in the barricade.

A stretch of road barely wide enough for two people to pass comfortably.

Yet every one of them was watched.

The guards studied the party as they approached, eyes following who stepped first, who lingered, who looked toward the other side, who looked back.

Mara noticed.

Of course she did.

She counted the guards.

Then counted them again on the return journey.

Nobody asked what she was doing.

It was simply another one of those habits that had survived every world they’d crossed.

Rurik’s half looked almost identical at first.

The same low houses.

The same worn streets.

The same careful industry of people who had learned how to keep living even when life kept giving them reasons not to.

The differences emerged slowly.

Fewer elderly faces.

More weapons within reach.

More scars visible on people’s hands, faces, and arms.

People here watched strangers differently.

Maren’s people had watched them like strangers who might become threats.

Rurik’s people watched them like strangers who might become allies.

Or enemies.

Or both, depending on what happened next.

Vane understood immediately why Maren had found them difficult to categorize.

Rurik was waiting in an open yard behind what had once been a smithy.

He was younger than Maren by at least a decade, broad-shouldered, scarred across both forearms, built like a man who had spent his life working with metal and stone rather than sitting behind a desk telling other people what to do.

Nothing about him looked performed.

He simply watched them.

"You carried Dessa’s medicine."

It wasn’t a question.

Isole nodded.

"We did."

"I heard before you finished crossing the second checkpoint."

Rurik glanced toward the wall dividing the town.

"News travels quickly here."

His mouth twisted.

"That’s about the only thing that still works reliably on both sides."

Vane almost smiled.

Rurik noticed.

"You think that’s funny?"

"No."

"Good."

A beat.

"I was hoping you understood the absurdity."

"A basket of medicine shouldn’t need six strangers."

Rurik’s tone had changed.

Less guarded.

More tired.

"Dessa’s sister was sick. You saw that. You saw the wall."

He gestured toward the barricade.

"And you probably noticed neither side wanted to let her through."

Valerica nodded.

"We did."

Rurik looked at her.

"So you already know something."

"What?"

"That the wall isn’t protecting us from outsiders."

His gaze moved across the yard.

"It’s protecting us from ourselves."

Nobody interrupted.

Rurik continued.

"That’s the part Maren won’t tell you."

Vane thought of the granary.

Maren’s voice.

Fifteen years.

Informants.

Burials.

"Then tell us yours," Isole said.

Rurik’s expression hardened slightly.

"Mine?"

"The version you think she gets wrong."

He considered her.

Then nodded.

"Fair."

He took a breath.

"I was Imperial."

The words came simply.

No hesitation.

No attempt to soften them.

"Five years."

Ashe’s eyes narrowed.

"Extraction."

Rurik nodded.

"Extraction crew."

His gaze dropped briefly to his hands.

"I told myself it was work."

He looked up.

"I told myself everyone did what they had to do."

A pause.

"I stopped asking what the work actually meant."

Nobody spoke.

"I saw things."

His jaw tightened.

"Things I won’t describe to strangers the first day I meet them."

He didn’t look away.

"I stayed anyway."

Valerica studied him.

"Why leave?"

Rurik was silent for several seconds.

"Because eventually there was a moment when I understood I could keep living comfortably as a coward."

His voice went flat.

"Or I could stop."

He shrugged once.

"So I stopped."

"And joined the resistance," Ashe said.

"Yes."

"Just like that?"

"No."

Rurik’s expression sharpened.

"Nothing is just like that."

He looked toward the wall.

"I had to prove I wasn’t still working for them."

"To Maren?"

"To everyone."

His gaze dropped again.

"Especially to people who had already buried someone because of an informant."

"Maren told us there were informants among the people who crossed to your side."

"She was right."

The answer came instantly.

Rurik didn’t even hesitate.

"Some people came over claiming they’d changed."

His jaw tightened.

"Some had."

"Some hadn’t."

He looked toward the ground.

"We caught two."

Isole’s expression shifted.

"What happened?"

"I killed them."

No justification followed.

No excuse.

No attempt to make the sentence easier to hear.

"I did it myself."

Rurik looked directly at them.

"If I’m asking people to trust what I built here, I don’t get to hide the price of proving it."

Vane held his gaze.

"Were they still feeding information?"

"Yes."

"How did you know?"

"Evidence."

Rurik shook his head.

"Enough that I couldn’t pretend otherwise."

Valerica was quiet.

"You understand why Maren still doesn’t trust you."

Rurik gave a humorless smile.

"I understand perfectly."

"She thinks the people who changed sides might still be lying."

"Sometimes they are."

That answer surprised Vane.

Rurik continued.

"That’s what makes this difficult."

He gestured toward the wall.

"Maren is not stupid."

"She isn’t."

"She knows perfectly well that not every person who wore an Imperial uniform remains loyal to the Empire."

His voice softened.

"She also knows that some do."

A pause.

"She lost people to that difference."

Rurik looked away.

"So did I."

Isole studied him.

"You don’t think the wall is necessary."

"I think it was necessary once."

"And now?"

Rurik looked toward the checkpoint.

"Now it’s become something else."

"What?"

"A punishment nobody remembers deciding to continue."

The yard fell quiet.

"For fifteen years, we’ve had reasons."

Rurik counted them off on his fingers.

"Someone betrayed someone."

"Someone lied."

"Someone’s brother worked for the Empire."

"Someone’s father informed on a patrol."

"Someone’s wife was seen talking to the wrong person."

He lowered his hand.

"Every reason was real."

"That doesn’t make the wall right," Valerica said.

"No."

Rurik looked at her.

"It doesn’t make it meaningless either."

He leaned against the edge of the old forge.

"That’s the trap."

"You keep thinking the question is whether Maren is right or whether I’m right."

His eyes moved across the six of them.

"It’s not."

"The question is what we’re supposed to do with two people who built their beliefs from things that actually happened to them."

Nobody answered.

Rurik smiled faintly.

"That’s what I can’t solve."

"What do you want from us?" Ashe asked.

Rurik answered immediately.

"The same thing Maren wants."

He looked toward the wall.

"An honest answer."

"To which side?"

"To neither."

His gaze returned to them.

"Don’t trust me because I spoke first."

"Don’t trust Maren because she spoke first."

"Watch."

"Listen."

"Then decide what you believe."

Ashe’s expression tightened.

"You’re asking six strangers to walk into fifteen years of history and decide who’s right."

"No."

Rurik shook his head.

"I’m asking you not to decide they’re wrong because neither side makes you comfortable."

That landed.

Vane looked at Isole.

She was listening carefully.

Not building a case.

Not yet.

Just listening.

Rurik continued.

"You carried Dessa’s medicine."

"That doesn’t make you our friends."

"It doesn’t."

"It just means that today you did one thing nobody on either side wanted to do."

He nodded toward Vane’s hands.

"You carried something across a line simply because someone needed it."

His voice softened.

"That matters here."

Vane looked toward the wall again.

"Go back to Maren."

"Tell her what you heard."

Isole nodded.

"And tell her I said the same thing I’d tell her myself if she’d sit through it."

"What?"

Rurik gave a tired, crooked smile.

"I’m not asking her to forget what happened."

He looked toward the barricade.

"I’m asking her to stop making fifteen years ago responsible for every person standing in front of her today."

No one answered.

Rurik breathed out slowly.

"I know that’s difficult."

A pause.

"I’ve spent fifteen years trying to convince her of it."

They left him in the smithy’s yard.

Rurik didn’t stop them.

Neither did anyone else.

The walk back toward the checkpoint felt longer than the walk in.

Not because the distance had changed.

Because the six of them were carrying two versions of the same history now.

Maren had given them betrayal.

Rurik had admitted it.

Maren had given them grief.

Rurik had admitted that too.

She had told them why she couldn’t trust him.

He had told them why he understood that distrust and still believed it had gone too far.

Neither had denied the other’s pain.

Neither had offered a clean version of the past.

That was what unsettled Vane most.

There was no villain waiting for them at the end of this argument.

There were only two people who had survived the same war from opposite sides of it and come away carrying different conclusions.

Isole looked down at the basket they had returned.

"That’s the problem."

Vane glanced at her.

"What?"

She looked back toward the wall.

"They’re both telling the truth."

Nobody corrected her.

And as they approached the checkpoint, Vane understood that Meridine had handed them something harder than a simple enemy.

It had handed them two honest people.

Now they had to decide what honesty was worth when it pointed in opposite directions.