Godslayers

The break in the clouds widened naturally, as if we’d just imagined it shining directly on Ell. That didn’t mean anything. Like, objectively—we could check.

“Listen carefully, both of you,” said the commander. “Kives’s ‘help’ has been too chaotic to engender trust, and we will proceed as though Ell’s presence is an enemy plot. Val, give me a counter-indoctrination strategy.”

I bit my lip. The commander should know every counter-indoctrination strategy by heart.

“I’m the target,” Val said. “Ell is either a goodwill gesture or a honeypot designed to look like one. She’ll be useful in the short term in either case. We need to suborn her as quickly as possible to prevent her from sharing any details,”—his words were blank, but was that a slight moment of hesitation?—“but be prepared to kill her if the situation changes.”

“Thank you,” said Aulof, and I knew immediately that he’d been testing Val’s loyalty.

“Maybe we should just pull out,” I subvocalized.

“I am on the very brink of pulling the trigger,” the commander said, shifting so as to draw our eyes to his pistol. I looked back at Ell, who hadn’t asked to get involved in any of this, and frowned.

“If there are still other teams active on this planet, they cannot learn about this,” the commander continued. “We are ridiculously out of bounds. The correct move would be to shoot us all and sort out the mess afterward. So far as the Face Sponge or anyone else is concerned, Ell is one of our auxiliaries and nothing more. Val, co-opt her.”

We both pinged affirmative.

The rain had stopped. The storm wall surrounding the island was coming down too. Without the divine effect translating disruption into a mini-hurricane, the wind lost quickly momentum, Choppy seas and violent fog visibly settled before our eyes.

“May Horcutio turn his gaze away,” Ell murmured.

“Lilith,” said the commander. “You’re up. Take point.”

I shot him a questioning glance, pinged affirmative, and limped forward.

“He probably wouldn’t like what he sees,” I said. “So. You killed it?”

“I—I just played a note,” Ell said, shrinking toward Val. “Laoces said there was an emergency, so we carried these sculptures here, and then he told me to play a note, but it—”

“Musical waveforms are a stock signifier of making order out of chaos,” said Val. “I had to override the local associations for it, but that was trivial given the mix of cultures in the region.”

“You told me you don’t know how to read,” she said, narrowing her eyes and stepping back to evaluate him. Then she whipped around to give me a second look. “Wait. I know you.”

“Yo,” I said, waving at her. It took a second to figure out why it wasn’t working. I grimaced at my stump of a shoulder and waved with my remaining arm. “Ell, right? I was there when you and Laoces met.”

“Right,” she said slowly, looking between me and Val. “What happened to your arm?”

“I decided to give the angel a handicap,” I said, mentally kicking myself when I saw all of them wince at the pun.

“What was that?” Ell said, holding a hand to her ear.

“A secret,” the commander said, standing up. “I’m sorry, Ell, but you’ve gotten involved in something larger than you know.”

“I knew that,” she said, regarding Aulof with exasperation. “I’m not stupid enough to believe that was actually a sculpture. And she somehow lost an arm without bleeding to death!”

Ell’s accusing finger found me.

“That could have happened any time before we met,” I said.

“I’m sure the mess of bloodstains sprouting from the stump are sheer coincidence,” Ell shot back. “All due respect to a fellow lady, but do you habitually lie to Oathkeepers, or are you delirious from blood loss?”

“Seriously?” I asked Val. This was his soulmate?

Val met my stare with a blank expression and said nothing.

“Start talking,” Ell said to me, putting a hand on her hip. “You’re not Silence, you don’t have a proscription against it.”

“What, and that means we owe you our life stories?” I asked. “Pass.”

“You owe me,” she said, crossing her arms. “You alleged that I killed the North Wind. Is that who ripped off your arm?”

“Allegedly,” I said, crossing my arms. Well, attempting to. It didn’t really work with one arm.

“Then I saved your life,” said Ell. “By Eponaos Tablet three, paragraph six, life debts are dischargeable under any of three conditions, which subpoint three specifies—”

The commander drew his pistol and fired at a nearby puddle of mud. The crack of the gunshot startled Ell, who let out a high-pitched “eep!” and jumped in Val’s general direction. He caught her in one arm, trapping her with a solid grip on her shoulder. She looked up at him with wide eyes.

“Miss Ell,” he said, relieving her of her instrument with his other hand, “I’m afraid you’ll find your laws do not apply to us.”

I shrugged apologetically. “I’ll be happy to tell you everything in time. For now, we’re standing on a battlefield, and we need to get out of here before the Magistrate’s guards come after us.”

“We can go back to the library,” Ell suggested. “Your friend is still watching my inks.”

I exchanged a glance with the commander.

“He’s dead,” I said. Ell’s face paled, and I waved a hand. Well, my only hand. “It’s okay. He’ll get better. Perks of the job.”

“Then—my inks?” she said uncertainly.

“He took his secrets to the grave,” I told her solemnly. “Fine, let’s all head over there.”

Val and I took flanking positions on either side of Ell, the commander moving naturally to cover my missing arm.

“Decommission the amplifiers,” he ordered Val.

Val nodded once. Ell furrowed her brow. “What does that—”

She screamed as three sharp explosions bloomed within moments of each other, their echoes warping and mingling in the twisted alleys of Ethelios.

I forced myself not to look around for the explosions. Cool girls don’t look at explosions.

“Do you happen to know the situation in the Magistrate’s court?” Val asked Ell, rubbing her shoulder to calm her down.

“Ever since she showed up, the Estheni Coalition’s been on the outs,” Ell pouted. “The Parmedi admirals have been swarming in, trying to get the Magistrate to give them favorable docking privileges. And I’m pretty sure all this Calamity business has hit the rumor networks, because some of the proposals they’ve been making were of a distinctly military bent.”

“How so?” I asked.

“It’s mostly the proposals from their prince, Dal Kalim Zelekhir. He’s been pushing the Magistrate to raise the number of military docks allotted to the Parmedi, as well as unlimited access to the western strait. They’re preparing for the Estheni to tear themselves apart.”

The rest of us exchanged glances at that.

“That’s going to interfere with Luchenko,” the commander said.

“And with the storm gone, both fleets will be able to move again,” Val said.

“Who’s Luchenko?” Ell asked.

“Philosopher,” I told her. It was close enough. “So what, they’re going to war?”

“Unlikely,” Val said. “Typically in this situation, the opportunistic power will move to secure underdefended targets around the perimeter of the beleaguered power without formally going to war. It’s problematic from an optics perspective, though. We need the Varasite factions projecting strength while they eliminate the Horcutians.”

“Actually,” Ell said, “the Parmedi don’t worship Varas. They have another god who they call Oru.”

“That’s cute,” I said. “Actually, she’s got a good point. Could we get them working together?”

Ell seemingly couldn’t decide whether to be confused or affronted.

“We’d need access to the decision makers on both sides,” said Val.

“It’s best if we embed an operative in both power structures,” Aulof said. “The window’s tight, though. Lilith, we might need you in a Parmedi body.”

“I just got this one,” I whined. “Make Markus do it. He’s already dead.”

Ell looked between the two of us in consternation and alarm, then made questioning eye contact with Val. He smiled uncommunicatively.

“You’re all insane,” Ell muttered.

“But you haven’t left yet,” Aulof said with a teasing smile. “The library’s just up here, isn’t it?”

It was.

Markus had been the only one of us carrying money, which was a little inconvenient now that his body was cooling underneath the wreckage of the battlefield. There was a cleric of Lorana sitting behind the counter when we entered. She looked up from some kind of transcription process but otherwise ignored us. The guards from last night seemed to take our arrival as their cue to end their shift, because they started packing up the moment they saw us. I nodded to one of them, and he nodded stiffly back.

What followed was a lengthy process of the commander trying to cajole the cleric into allowing us back inside while the cleric recycled the same four arguments about how she wouldn’t allow any disrespect to the goddess. The fact that the commander and I were both incredibly beat up probably had something to do with that.

Ell finally broke through to her, asking if she could go check for the bag herself. Only after hearing Ell’s exhaustive description of the bag’s contents did the cleric relent and head back inside.

“See, you’re already a valuable addition to the team,” I said, attempting to pat her on the back of the shoulder before realizing the arm I needed to do that was lying somewhere half a mile from here.

Ell perked up regardless, smiling and trying to make eye contact with Val. He ignored her, staring blankly into space.

“No one said anything about me joining the team, of course,” she said, turning away from him.

“Possible contact,” he said. “I can’t hear any activity on the street.”

The commander’s eyes flicked to the empty guard table, then to the door where the cleric had vanished into the archives. We were alone in the foyer.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Ell said. “The design of the building keeps most of the noise out.”

I snickered, eliciting a glare and a sotto voce “what?”

“Ell,” said the commander, “it might be best if you stay in here. If there’s a problem, we can deal with it.”

“There’s no cause to be paranoid,” she argued.

“Hey, I’ve got a plan,” I said. “What if we just get them to take us to the Magistrate? We can get everyone in the same room and sic them on the pirates.”

“Jointly?” the commander mused.

“We could have them race for it. Competition feels pretty Varas-y,” I said.

The commander sent a questioning ping at Val, who hummed contemplatively.

“It’s conceivable,” he said. “Always check the math before acting on a hunch like that. But I confess right now I’m mostly curious about whether Kives set things up so that the hunch works, and which behaviors that’s meant to reinforce.”

“And now you’re talking about Kives,” Ell said. “You’re all jumping way ahead of yourselves. We don’t even know if there’s anyone out there!”

“Bet you fifty drobol they are,” I said, striding for the exit. “Commander, I didn’t hear a no.”

“Glory in victory,” the commander said. “Do you need a weapon?”

“I’ll take one of theirs,” I said with a laugh.

I passed into the airlock and then out into the street. The sun was shining, the air was clean, and there were ten-ish guys with swords surrounding the entrance to the library.

One of them strode forward, raising his sword threateningly. “On the order of the Magistrate—”

I stepped past his guard and wrapped my hand around his throat. An order to my sequestered medical translator put his body in stasis, cutting him off and freezing him in place. An undercurrent of alarm rippled through his buddies.

I moved my feet farther apart to take the weight, then I lifted him off the ground by his throat. I silently met each of their gazes, and then ordered the medical translator to replenish its supplies. It asked for confirmation twice, but after the second time it got to work.

The thug screamed. His flesh melted off his bones in places, others simply dissolving into etherspace. My other opponents stepped back in horror; two of them cut and ran, and another vomited.

My right arm began to grow out from the stump, carbon-laced bones threading out before vanishing under woven muscle fibers. It even remembered my tan. I dropped the disintegrating skeleton of the man who’d come to threaten us and scooped up his sword.

“I would love to have a conversation with the Magistrate,” I said to the remaining soldiers. “I’ll come tonight at dusk with a message for both fleets. The Calamity is here, and the ocean is ripe for inheritance.”

At my feet, the last shreds of the man I’d consumed evaporated like dust.

One of the men I was facing visibly gathered his courage. “Al—Alce—”

“No,” I said, and threw my stolen sword. It plunged right between his teeth and punched through the back of his head, severing his brain stem. He fell backward.

“No more tricks,” I said to the survivors. “Go. Tell her. We don’t have to fight, but I swear to you that if it comes to that I will fucking end you all.”

They broke and ran. I watched them go, then headed back inside.

“Hey everyone,” I said, waving. “I got my arm back!”

Ell screamed.