Godslayers

The rain was starting to fall in earnest now. The streets were cramped, especially with the island’s denizens scurrying about trying to find shelter before the storm hit. We wove skillfully through the chaos. As I kept pace with the team, I smiled so much my face hurt.

Markus was ahead of us, leading the way, but the commander got ahead of him and somehow that turned into all of us trying to race each other. I twirled between a pair of Parmedi women, laughing as Markus cut in front of Val and got tripped for his trouble. The commander moved lithely, taking openings with measured perfection and somehow getting ahead of all of us anyway.

A local pickpocket lurched “accidentally” for me, which would have looked innocent enough if my reflexes hadn’t taken me out of the clean collision he wanted. I snatched his wrist and caught his shoulder with my other arm.

“Hi!” I said brightly, and headbutted him.

I ran to catch up as he collapsed. The streets grew mazelike, cobblestones hastily plopped down wherever was left open after the anarchic diversity of architecture had claimed the rest of the space. I caught sight of countless flashes of civilian life as we passed—figures in leather shawls, huddled around shelter; people laughing and chatting inside open-walled taverns; doors opening to reveal snapshots of cramped, dimly lit houses as people reached their destination.

We godslayers danced gracefully through the crowds, mostly against the flow, heading for the street food vendor Markus had promised. On some level we knew he’d probably gone home with everyone else in these streets, but that didn’t really matter. It was about the joy of the moment, claiming these mundane streets and making them into a silly little game. Win or lose wasn’t really important.

I was fucking going to win, of course.

Markus and Val weren’t the main challenge—not that they weren’t fast, but their little squabble had escalated and now Markus had Val in a headlock, laughing like a madman—but the commander was way ahead of us now. I saw him take a turn and made a gamble. I darted right, following an alley none of the others had taken. The commander’s comm was on, so I fixed on his position and took the turn that looked like it would take me in the right direction.

People stepped hastily aside as they saw me pelting through the narrow space, hakmir flapping behind me in the rain. I took a few sharp turns, nearly bowling over an older man who cursed at me with words lost in the rain as I dashed around him. One more turn, and now I was cursing—I’d hit a dead end.

I didn’t slow down. Instead I gathered my strength and leapt—for the wall. My augmented legs took me high into the air, slamming into the decrepit brick surface before I used the momentum to jump again.

Jumping off the walls like some kind of fucking video game character, I gripped the edge of a roof and hauled myself up, rolling onto my back to take a few deep breaths. Rain splattered all over my face, nice and refreshing.

“Hey,” a voice said from out of my field of view. “Do you mind?”

I groaned and hauled myself up, turning around. A girl about my age was sitting on the edge of the rooftop, looking down over the streets. She had a leather cloak drawn around her shoulders, and underneath the hood, territorial green eyes peered suspiciously at me.

“I was here first,” she continued. “It’s my roof.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Chill out.”

“Go get your own roof,” the girl insisted.

I sighted my target coming down the street.

“There we go. Look, kid, go back to brooding or whatever you’re doing and I’ll be out of your hair in, like, two seconds.”

I didn’t wait for her to respond. I dashed for the edge of the roof, launching myself into space. I twisted around in mid-air so I could flip Cloak Girl the double birds—god, the look on her face was fucking priceless—before arcing back around to face my objective. There was a rope stretched out across the street, and as I dove toward the unforgiving cobblestones, my hands snagged a grip.

My arms threatened to rip out of my sockets, but I managed to buffer the momentum enough to turn my descent into an eyes-blurring spin around the rope. The world did a loop-de-loop as my speed told gravity to fuck itself, and then I released my grip. I probably should have anticipated the rope burns.

I sailed into the open air, whooping in excitement and terror, catching just a glimpse of the commander’s resigned expression before I slammed into him and took us both to the ground.

“You little shit,” he chuckled with a hint of pain. “I’m absolutely writing you up for this.”

I snickered. “No, no, tell them you heroically caught me. Make yourself look good.”

“Operative engaged in assault of a commanding officer,” he said in a mock-serious tone. “Attempt appears to have been premeditated out of jealously for said officer’s performance in the field.”

“Fuck off,” I laughed. “I saw you turn back to catch me.”

“You knew I didn’t have a choice, you walking discipline violation.”

“Love you too,” I said cheerfully, throwing an arm around his shoulder.

Val and Markus staggered down the street toward us, their apparel soaked in mud that the rain was only partially rinsing away. Val had what appeared to be a genuinely unguarded smile on his face, though as usual I couldn’t get an etheric signal off him. Markus’s loud guffaws could be heard even from here.

Aulof and I looked at each other and broke out into matching grins. Look at those two goons.

Together we limped toward the the market square where Markus insisted the food would be. Winded, sore, and with stinging hands, I was really looking forward to the food, but even from here we could see that most of the stalls were in the process of packing up before the storm arrived.

But we got lucky. Markus let out a wordless noise of greeting and bounded toward one of three vendors in the square who didn’t seem like they were going anywhere. The rest of us approached at a more sedate pace.

“Markus won, didn’t he,” I asked Val without preamble.

“Is it truly a victory if overriding vengeance swiftly follows?” he mused.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “What vengeance?”

“That is for me to know and him to discover,” Val replied with a smirk.

I shook my head. “My lips are sealed.”

The commander hit us with an amused glance.

The stall itself was covered by an oiled leather awning, on which rain was drumming loudly enough to drown out Markus’s conversation with the vendor. Between them was a cart. Thin slices of meat and vegetables were sizzling on a metal plate that took up most of the cart’s surface.

The vendor was wearing a light green shawl and an abbreviated wrap that bared their midriff and a skirt that barely reached their knees. The shawl had little knives embroidered all over it. They were wearing a cape of all things over top of everything.

They were somewhat lanky, with feminine facial features and short, messy hair, but the vibe was off somehow. I checked for breasts, but that didn’t really resolve the ambiguity either. And everyone wore skirts in this culture, so that cue was useless to me!

“And this is Danou,” Markus was saying. “Danou—Tijal.”

“Godsmile,” I said on autopilot. I tried using my comm to resolve the gender, but the scan stalled out—an effect I’d only seen on Veles, the one time I’d met Maxwell and his wife was wearing a baffler.

She had quickly become my favorite person because she kept making fun of Val and he was just getting more and more annoyed. Maxwell kept trying to like redirect her. It was hilarious.

Anyway, the thing my scan did get back was that this guy(?) was a demigod, if a weak one. And maybe it was a coincidence, but they chose that moment to do a mischievous raise of their eyebrows at me. Somehow they’d noticed the scan.

“Forgive her for staring,” Markus said cheerfully. “We’ve been in Coalition territory. No one openly goes unfettered in there.”

Oh. That was a Dancer thing; the unfettered were the third gender, kind of. Less a third gender and more mixing and matching from the usual two.

“Stare all you like, darling,” Tijal said, leering playfully at me. “Beauty should be shared, but I suppose you’d know that.”

I froze up for a moment. Tijal must have seen seen something distasteful in my expression, because something like exhaustion passed over their features before they snapped back into a friendly smile. The strictly platonic kind of friendly.

“That’s what I keep telling her!” Markus said, grabbing me by the shoulder. “It’s always ‘Berades, put some damn clothes on!’”

“That chest was simply made to be free,” Tijal said to Markus, leaning over the cart to poke him in the pecs. “Now are you going to stop scaring my customers away and buy some food?”

“Surely the storm bears no fault here,” Aulof said ironically. Tijal had set out a handful of extremely rudimentary tables and stools. The commander relaxed into one of these, which jarred me because I wasn’t used to him sitting with his legs so far apart. Val silently took a seat next to him, simply observing the conversation.

“Look at him!” Tijal said, pointing at Markus with mock exasperation. “Are you not shamed by such a physique?”

“What about the women, though?” Markus retorted. “I should get a discount for advertising.”

“Women, you say,” Tijal said in a tone that communicated they’d seen through some deception of Markus’s. Damn, they were almost Velean. “Well, I can’t deny you’ve brought me one. I’ll make you a deal.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Markus said.

“She can pay for your food.”

“Don’t look at me,” I said, raising my hands. “Dead broke.”

Tijal turned to Markus with a wounded expression, splaying a delicate hand across their chest. “Berades! You’ve betrayed me!”

“I’ll pay for them both,” Aulof said, already counting coins out of a purse I hadn’t seen him take out.

“Thanks, mom,” I said before I could stop myself. Aulof whipped a drobol at my face and Tijal burst out laughing.

Tijal served up the sliced meat and vegetables on thick slabs of flatbread, and I realized this was basically the Therian equivalent of gyros. Not lamb meat, though; it might have been goat. I’d never had goat meat before coming here, and to be honest I wasn’t going to miss it. But the alt-gyros were incredible, full of spice-laden grease that soaked into the bread and just made the whole thing pop on your taste buds. The warm bread agitated the rope burns on my hands, but it was a small price to pay.

We laughed and chatted with Tijal while we ate, the storm intensifying all the while. The furious drumbeat of rain on the makeshift roof above us made it difficult to hear unless you shouted, and the relentless assault of the water droplets all around us made it difficult to stay dry.

Eventually Tijal locked up their cooking implements inside the cart. We stayed to help them take down the rain cover and secure everything before the wind blew it away. I wanted seconds, but I was full already.

The commander handed Tijal a handful of extra drobol.

“I’ve heard there’s a temple to Horcutio around here!” Aulof shouted over the wind.

My head snapped toward him. There what?”

“You’ll have to take the sea tunnels!” Tijal shouted back. “I don’t recommend it!”

Aulof gestured at the general chaos of the storm. “Seems like a good idea, don’t you think?”

“I’ll take you there, but you’ll change your minds!”

We followed Tijal through the mazelike streets of the city, which were now abandoned by all but the most unfortunate of Ethelios. The lack of easy channels baffled the sound of the wind, which was accompanied by the drumroll of rain and the clattering of loose shutters. Thunder rolled every so often. After an effortful journey, we wound up at a gap in the buildings.

In the middle of the gap, waves lashed angrily at the stone walls of what seemed to be an interior lake in the middle of the city.

“It’s down there!” Tijal shouted. “Sometimes the hippocampi will take people down, but otherwise you need to hold your breath! It’s suicide otherwise! A handful drown every year! Just toss your drobol in the lake like the rest of us!”

“That’s too bad!” Aulof said. “Well, thank you anyway! Keep the gift!”

“I don’t know why you’d think I’d be giving it back!” Tijal replied with a rain-splattered grin. They bowed to us and stepped away, heading back into the city.

“Well,” the commander subvocalized, cutting through the noise of the rain. “That was fun.”

“Tijal’s great,” Markus said. “And those wraps!”

“They’re a demigod,” I said. “You guys got that, right?”

“The blessing is personal in nature,” Val said. “Did you try to scan them?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“I suspected as much. They reacted the same way to my equipment. It appears the only thing their blessing does is obscure perception of their gender. They seem to have an intuitive sense of when the blessing is active.”

“So not a threat.”

“Not quite.” Val stepped forward to the edge of the lake, staring down at the water. “Any demigod carries the potential threat of becoming a godseed, of course. But tactically speaking, no, Tijal is just a Dancer with a diminished need to rely on the usual techniques for altering gender presentation.”

“That’s good,” I said. “So what are we doing here?”

“That should be obvious,” said the commander, handing me a rebreather. “We’re going to blow it up.”