Diogenes Gravemind stopped walking because a dead girl had hooked her fingers into the wire cage of his lamp. He could not see her. He had not seen anything since before he died. But he felt her weight tug the handle down, and he heard her breathing, which the dead should not do. He was blind in life too, and he had carried a lamp then, holding it up in daylight so honest men might notice they were being looked for. He never found one. Now he walked the Old Mist with the same lamp raised for the same reason, and he had been told, by something older than him, that when a truthful mortal finally stood in his light, the flame would go out and he could rest. Until then he walked. The girl was in his way. "Judge me," she said. "I can't go on till someone does." Diogenes set the lamp on the ground between them. He asked her what she had done. She said she had shot a thing in the shallows that had been pulling swimmers under for a year, and that the thing had worn a face she knew, and that she had fired anyway. She said her name had been Mary Contrary, and that afterward the tide took her too. She said a teacher of hers had guessed which old gods were waiting instead of hiding, and she had gone to finish what he started, and she was not sure now if she had murdered a god or a man. Something moved behind her voice. Diogenes heard three mouths breathing out of one throat, slow and patient, coiled around her ankles like a debt. The serpent had followed her down. It was waiting to see what he said. "You told it straight," Diogenes said. "You didn't shave the story to make yourself clean." He lifted the lamp again and held it toward her face. He waited for the flame to gutter, the way he had been promised it would when honesty finally stood in front of him. The flame did not move. It burned the same steady yellow it had burned for a hundred years. He lowered the lamp. She was truthful, but not truthful enough, or not the one, or truth alone was not the thing he needed. He told her to walk on. He told her the three-headed weight around her feet was her judgment and that she could carry it forward now. She went. The breathing went with her. Diogenes stood alone in the mist with a lamp that would not die and a road that would not end, and he understood, for the first time, that finding one honest mortal down here might not be enough. He would have to learn what else the light was asking for. Then he took a step.

Diogenes took his step and the mist did not close behind Mary Contrary the way it should have. Something stayed. He heard the three mouths again, closer than before, and this time they were not breathing around her ankles. They were breathing around his. The serpent had let the girl walk on and turned back for him. He felt one head lift near his knee. He felt another test the hem of his coat. The third pressed cold against the hand that held the lamp. "Judge yourself," a voice said, and it was not one voice. It came out of three throats at once, layered like water over water. "You weighed her. Now stand on the scale." Diogenes did not move. He had spent a life asking other people to be honest. He had never turned the lamp toward his own face. He thought about lying. He thought about saying he walked the Old Mist out of duty, or mercy, or love of the dead. None of that was true. He wet his mouth. "I carry the lamp because I want it to go out," he said. "I want to stop. I told myself I was looking for an honest man so others could be seen. That was half of it. The other half was that I wanted rest, and I dressed the wanting up as service so I could keep my pride." The heads went still. "I judged the girl quick," he said, "because I hoped she was the one and I could put the lamp down tonight. She wasn't, and I sent her off with her burden so I wouldn't have to sit with mine. That was cheap of me. Now you're here. Do what you do." The serpent did not drag him down. One head slid off his hand. Another uncoiled from his ankle. The third stayed a moment longer, tasting the air near his throat, then withdrew. The voice came once more, quieter. "You answered. Walk." The weight left him. The mist moved again. Diogenes lifted the lamp and felt the handle shake in his grip, which had not happened in a hundred years. The flame burned on. He had told the truth about himself and the light had not gone out for him either. So it was not only honesty the lamp wanted, and it was not only one honest mortal. It wanted something he had not yet named. He stood in the road and listened for the girl's footsteps ahead of him. He could still hear them, faint, going forward. He followed. He had been spared to keep looking, and now he knew the looking would cost him more than walking. It would cost him every comfortable story he had told himself about why he walked at all.