Surit had done this for him, so Tennal had some desperate idea of what to do. He had to know Surit, but he did, better than anyone. Tennal started out with the pieces he knew best, yanking them from the void: Surit’s steadfastness, his ironclad sense of right and wrong, his quiet kindness, the lists and responsibilities and traces of guilt that tangled his every movement. Surit’s feeling that he could never be good enough, which was much less inexplicable once you knew how much Marit Yeni’s death had screwed up his thinking. Tennal picked them out of the stars. And the other parts: Surit’s pigheadedness, his recalcitrant, by-the-book stubbornness when anyone tried to cross him. His hidden satisfaction when things went his way; his dogged optimism when they didn’t. His pride in his unit. The horrible tea he liked. The quirk of his mouth when he was trying not to laugh.

“Don’t you dare do a Marit Yeni on me, Surit, do you hear?” Tennal said grimly as he worked. His aunt had believed the next generation would be better, and Lights knew if that was true, but if Tennal had anything to do with it, then it was at least going to be different. “No heroic deaths. Don’t you dare.”

He felt Surit’s mind echo, like a faint signal from an occluded satellite. He was nearly there. Something was missing. Something important, or that had been important to Surit when he fell apart.

“Guidance fucking lose us,” Tennal said, realizing. You love me too.

Tennal’s whole mind hurt as he put it in words, like someone had exploded a sparkler in the back of his head. But now that he recognized it, the final major piece that came trailing everything else, he could pick it out of the currents of the void and shove it back into Surit’s mind. He was losing his grip on Surit—they weren’t synced anymore; their presence had fallen apart in the fight. “Wake up,” he said. “Wake up, boss. Lieutenant Yeni. Surit.”

In the hushed, still air of the legislator’s study, in the warm, mild evening, with birds singing outside despite the faint sounds of fighting, Surit Yeni sat up, dry-retched, doubled over on himself, and said, “What happened?”

“Watch it, Lights, fuck,” Tennal said, pressing his hand on Surit’s back. He didn’t have the faintest idea how to do first aid. “Breathe! Do you need a doctor? I take that back—I don’t think any doctor is going to know what to do with you. You’re back.”

Surit took three long breaths. “I didn’t know you knew me,” he said quietly, wonderingly. “Not like that.”

Tennal sat back on his heels. “Didn’t they tell you, Lieutenant Yeni? If you stare into the void long enough,” he said, and laughed until his lungs hurt.

Surit winced, and grinned, and tried to breathe.