Godslayers

The world cracked.

Cades had seen a broken pane of glass once. The craftworkers of Vitareas were ingenious and thorough; the glass had been coated in translucent lacquer to prevent total fragmentation. It was like a spiderweb, but the clean lines of the world became jagged and disjointed in its cracks, and if it met your skin, you bled.

The weight of his sins had driven him to his knees. He stared up at his Empress, who had withstood the spiritual pressure without flinching. Her eyes had glazed over and her expression was one of horror.

Cades felt that same horror inside of him. There had been a warmth inside his heart, so familiar he’d never noticed it until it was gone, replaced by shattered glass.

The truth, his truth, still echoed in the Course of Honor. Whatever great power had seized it and seeded it upon the wind had been so mighty that the great arena itself had cracked. Some had perished, but Cades couldn’t bring himself to think of that. Not now.

He had finally thrown away the mask. And the price had been—everything.

“You.” Empress Kovaliel was trembling, staring at him with hatred and disgust. “What have you done?”

“I’m the one you want,” a gentle voice said.

Thala, like the Empress, had not been crushed by that baleful weight. His demeanor wasn’t proud as he faced the Empress, but neither was it humble. He looked her in the eyes, and somehow it was clear that there wasn’t any lust behind it. It was a challenge.

“Kill them both,” Kovaliel ordered, and strode away.

All around them, the Empress’s guards were recovering—those who had survived the doom. Cades picked up a sword from a fallen man and edged toward Thala, who didn’t even have a weapon. Thala looked wearily at the enemies surrounding them.

“Together to the end,” Cades murmured to him. “I’ll meet you in the shadowlands, my love.”

Thala didn’t answer him. Cades knew that meant his lover disagreed.

“You never speak of the gods,” Cades said. “Are you faithless?”

Thala breathed a sigh of relief.

“Everything will be fine, my little soldier,” Thala said. “Let’s talk about that later, okay?”

His lover’s sweet lies washed over him as the royal guards charged.

*

“Please, commander.”

The commander idly twirled her spear, considering the situation. A godslayer must never forget that her spear aims for heaven.

Markus stood implacable among foes, begging for his lover’s life. His earnesty bothered her, but even Veleans struggled with proper dissemblance in the face of romantic entanglements. She’d forgotten the phenomenology of it—her last was over four hundred years ago—but the patterns were carved into her like a river through sandstone.

A hundred calculations fired through her mind—impact on morale, the demands of honor, the ever-present shadow of the oracle who was their ultimate enemy. It was too early in the campaign to gamble on far-reaching decisions.

“We have no use for auxiliaries at this stage,” the commander said in the tone reserved for deflection.

“He’s eligible for the Red Dagger,” Markus said, ignoring her move. “He’s performed greater service than most of Eifni.”

The haft of her spear met her palm with a pleasant smack, and Abby allowed herself a micromoment of savor before tossing it back to the other hand.

The trouble with Markus, in the final accounting of things, was that his general disinterest in Velean social propriety belied a cutting instinct for manipulation. He always knew where to strike her, sometimes even better than Val. If she allowed the manipulation, her decision became a forced choice, and Kives would certainly gain a foothold of some kind.

Abby cleared her mind with an old meditation technique. She looked down at the spear in her hand.

They had slain a god today. Blood ought be honored with blood.

“Hold position,” she told him calmly.

Markus sighed with relief. “Thank you.”

Abby engaged her exoskeleton and launched herself into the air.

She slammed into the dias that Markus and Cades were standing on. Cades swung wildly on reflex, a blow she effortlessly parried.

The Empress’s guards paused their attack, sizing up the new arrival who had seemingly fallen from the sky.

The commander spun her spear once, reading victory from the battlefield like it was a book. She determined with satisfaction that she had time for the full-length Challenge.

“Hail to you. I am a warrior of the Old Ways,” she announced, setting her hand amplifier to battle-pride. “I walk the road of spears, battle-song on my lips. Hear my challenge: by blade-lore and bloodshed, I am wolf-friend, I am death-friend. I am war, and war is my companion.”

She settled into seventh form, meeting the eyes of her enemies.

“I give you this chance to surrender the field. There will not be another.”

Behind her, Markus shifted.

“Go,” she ordered him. “Safehouse three is civilian-proofed.”

She didn’t spare him a second thought. Thirty armored men charged at her position.

*

The world cracked.

Bofa paused mid-massage. Kuril made a small disappointed noise, then a more inquisitive one as Bofa sat down heavily on the bed.

When a response did not seem to be forthcoming, she rolled over to take a look at him. His expression was clouded, almost pained.

“What’s wrong?” she asked gently.

Bofa stared at his hands. “I’m not sure.”

Kuril extracted herself from the sheets, pressing herself up against his back. The warmth of his skin was pleasant. Very pleasant. She wrapped her arms around him to get more of the sensation.

“You are such a pillar for this family,” she murmured in his ear.

That was evidently the wrong thing to say, because he shifted away from her. She let her arms drop as he scooted to more of a conversational distance.

“I confess, I have felt… burdened,” he said. “Between you and Roel and—well, for you two, things have been difficult.”

Kuril had a decent guess which name he’d avoided speaking, but made no acknowledgement. Ajarel was never coming back, no matter what she’d told Kuril’s overly trusting consort.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “I will call for a priest of Gamal. I can also select another suitor or two if you’d like to split your household duties. Roel’s invention has generated enough budget that the expenditure would be painless.”

“Kuril, I don’t need an immediate solution—”

“Why not? Problems should be solved before they worsen—”

“I don’t want to be solved,” Bofa said.

Kuril’s brow furrowed and she blinked once or twice. “I don’t understand men.”

“Neither do I,” Bofa said. “I’m sorry, Kuril. Maybe you should send for the priest.”

“You are forgiven,” Kuril said. “We are grateful, you know. There’s just something about you that makes it hard to remember that things can bother you too.”

Bofa looked up at her. “That was why I sat down.”

“Hm?”

“I call it my hearth,” said Bofa. “It’s what warms me when I act as I should. But just now, it felt like something broke. I can’t feel my hearth right now.”

Kuril stared at him with concern. Then she crawled over the blankets, snuggling into his lap. She wrapped her arms around him, scritching the back of his neck the way he liked. He was very warm.

“I’m sorry about your hearth. Everything will be okay,” she told him. “The priest will make it better.”

He squeezed her tight. His arms were warm too, which made her happy. Her brow furrowed.

“Am I warm to you?” she asked

“Very much so,” Bofa said contently.

“That doesn’t make sense, given what philosophy says of heat exchange. Do you think our senses are deceiving us?”

“You sound like you want to do the math.”

“...Yes,” Kuril admitted. “But the desk is over there.”

“Do you want me to let you go?” Bofa asked with a chuckle.

Kuril considered. “No.”

She snuggled into him further. He could nearly hear the gears churning in her head.

“However, if you could pull the desk over here—”

*

The world cracked.

The man in servant’s robes paused elegantly as Councilman Laoh shot to his feet.

“Do you hear thunder?” asked the Councilman.

“The Councilman has strong ears.”

“I think it’s coming closer,” the Councilman said, shortly before the ground began shaking. “Earthquake!”

The Councilman’s teapot fell off the table, shattering on the tiles. The man in servant’s robes gave it a frustrated glance. Smuggling the poison past palace security had been effortful.

The Councilman looked up with concern. “Heaven’s grace, man, the Tomb!”

“The Heavens will most certainly secure your ancestor’s tomb,” said the man in servant’s robes, moments before the distant sound of snapping wood heralded an absolute cacophony of collapsing stone and soil.

It seemed the Heavens had not, in fact, secured the Councilman’s ancestor’s tomb. He stared into the middle distance with a philosophical sort of air.

“Godfire!” he shouted.

“What a strange expr—” was all the Councilman was able to get out before the other man brushed a hand past his neck. The Councilman blinked experimentally, then his head fell off. The rest of him collapsed in the same instant, blood mingling with poison tea on the ground.

“The mission’s a bust,” said the man, who was stripping out of the servant’s robes as fast as possible. “Is Aldr okay?”

“Banu Mi timed the earthquake too well,” said a voice on the other end. “They were crushed instantly. We can pull them out of the crypt once we exfiltrate you.”

Something wasn’t adding up here.

“Kriamin,” the man said. “Can you confirm that was a pantheon-level kill?”

“Confirmed,” said Dr. Kriamin. “They killed Bunsin.”

“Bunsin?” The man froze. “Bunsin?! What moronic throwback okayed a first strike on Bunsin? He’s the most useless god they have! We had Eishi in the godflaming crosshairs and they fucked us for Bunsin!”

“If I had to guess, Banu Mi’s playing games with them too. Rade, you’re standing around at the scene of a murder. Let’s move. We can have the Skolfr at one of the pickup spots in three minutes once you generate the random selection.”

Rade sighed. “Just a second. Something really isn’t adding up.” He looked around the room. From his inner robes, he retrieved a small case with a spinner, activating the etheric scrubber with a flick of his thumb.

“You can do math problems on the ship. Get out of there.”

“Got it. It’s the poison tea.” Rade nudged a pottery shard with his foot. “I killed this sucker a minute after I served him the tea. Following?”

“Against my better judgment.”

“Charmer. So there shouldn’t be any dyadic entanglements on the tea. It didn’t do anything except piss me off. Unless Banu Mi can target an event just from the annoyance caused by her intervention.”

“I don’t think she can do that.”

“You don’t think? Godfire, you knew there was an oracle, why didn’t you brush up on your moirology?”

“Be glad I didn’t. Without exception, moirologists are smug assholes. The entire breed.”

“You’re already a smug asshole. It’s not like my situation would get worse.”

Kriamin evidently decided not to contest the point. “Have you got a number for me?”

Rade looked at the spinning wheel as it stopped. “Site four. Anyway, how did Banu Mi know to mess with the poison tea?”

“It was an earthquake. It would be hard not to mess with the tea.”

“Right when I poured it, though,” Rade argued. “That was Banu Mi. Don’t fight me on this. You know what her work looks like.”

“It has to be coincidence, because the alternative hypothesis is that random number generation isn’t actually effective against her and she’s only been playing along.”

“Godfire!” Rade yelled, kicking the headless corpse of Councilman Laoh. “Godfire! What the fuck is wrong with this planet!?”

Forget physical exfiltration. He wasn’t going to sit around waiting for whatever comedic response Banu Mi had planned. He knocked over a few oil lamps and called it good when he saw smoke.

By the time his comm warned him about the angels, his soul was safely en route to the Skolfr.

Not today, bitch.

*

Roel leaned against the wall, the same way Lirian liked to stand when she appeared out of nowhere. Unlike the whisper, Roel did it because it let her put all her weight on her good leg. The wound was well on its way to recovery, but it seemed like the pain got worse every day, no matter how much golos bark she chewed.

Alouren was pacing while they waited.

“You should sit down,” Alouren told her. “We don’t know how long she’ll be.”

“I need to be standing when she comes in.”

“She could be here already. She does that all the damn time.”

Roel’s eyes flicked to Alouren’s face. Ajarel wasn’t the only person who swore that way, but until recently, Alouren hadn’t been one of them.

“That’s not how it works,” Roel said, keeping her thoughts hidden. “We can’t talk about her when she’s here.”

“Well, your leg needs a rest,” Alouren said irritably.

“It’s fine,” Roel lied.

Alouren shot her a look that said she knew the truth, but she’d learned to stop pressing her best friend about it.

The inner door opened, revealing an old man in black robes. Roel’s eyes widened slightly. Behind him, oily torchlight illuminated the halls of the catacombs of Bulcephine.

“The viewing room is prepared,” he intoned. “Know that you tread upon ancient paths. Each step is an echo of stories lost in ages. Tread carefully, lest you be lost in them. Welcome, outsiders, to the Lost Road.”

Roel bowed her head in respect, then risked her guess. “Thank you, Archivist. Lead the way.”

He met her eyes, smiling slightly, but didn’t confirm or deny it. “This way.”

Roel’s first step on the black stone of the Lost Road was with her crippled leg. Pain shot through her thigh. She tried to tell herself she was beyond caring, like the heroes of her stories, but pain was actually very hard to ignore.

She’d taken a tincture to stop the tears before meeting with the Cult of Silence. Her eyes itched from dryness now, and when no one was looking, she soothed the discomfort by pressing a wet cloth to her face.

Clamped around her waist, the assistive device swiveled with each step, using the motion of her good leg to push the crippled leg where it needed to go.

Your muscles are too damaged to move your leg. Use a machine. This conversation never happened.

Roel had done all the work, but the idea was Ajarel’s. Not something she’d come up with on the spot—something she’d already known and wasn’t supposed to say.

No wonder Lirian was obsessed with her. What else had she known?

As always with Ajarel, the questions came too late. Lirian’s message had been hesitant, wary of overconfidence, but ultimately out of alternate explanations: Ajarel was dead.

Her secrets propelled Roel along the Lost Road toward her final resting place.

The catacombs were covered floor to ceiling with shelves for the dead. Many were empty, others occupied by anonymous skeletons with tarnished keepsakes. Their names belonged to Meris now. The path intersected identical corridors apparently at random, the monotony broken only by the occasional door of black stone.

Roel walked at a pace that kept the pain to a minimum, and wasn’t entirely surprised that the old man remained exactly three paces ahead of her.

The old man took turns at random—as far as Roel could tell, having given up on memorizing their path a handful of turns ago—leading them deeper into the heart of Bulcephine. They never saw another person, but sound carried far in those corridors: occasionally the Lost Road brought them the distant noise of footsteps and whispered voices.

Intellectually, Roel knew those sounds came from real people, but it was easy to believe they were the echoes of moments lost to time.

The door to the viewing room was carved from unmarked black stone like all the others. The old man pushed it open and motioned them through with a smile.

The room was cold and somewhat cramped. There was a matching door on the other side, which for all Roel knew was just another entrance to the Lost Road. In the center of the room, a shroud-covered body rested on a table. Roel avoided looking at it.

Lirian was lounging against the wall, the usual smirk absent from her face. She tore her eyes from the body as they entered, acknowledging them with a humorless quirk of the lips.

“Lirian,” Roel said, painfully making her way to the whisper. They grasped hands briefly, Roel allowing herself to lean against the wall. She didn’t quite manage to keep the relief off her face.

“Godsmile,” Alouren greeted Lirian, tone somewhere between nervousness and excitement.

Roel kept her face blank, but sighed inwardly. At some point, she was going to have to take her idiot best friend aside and have a conversation about hiding her attraction. Lirian wasn’t the first woman she’d favored with this behavior—and thank the goddesses no one had noticed, or there would be trouble—but she was certainly the most dangerous.

Well, depending on whether you counted the body on the table.

Lirian slipped into character with a twist of effort that Alouren missed and Roel didn’t, returning the greeting with a warm smile. “How was the journey?”

Roel shot her a warning look. Lirian tilted her head apologetically and turned down the warmth about half.

“It was about as painless as it could have been,” Alouren said.

“You look better,” Roel said before Alouren could give them any real information.

Lirian did look better. Last time Roel had seen her, Lirian’s face had been covered in makeup to hide the bags under her eyes, and there were obvious cracks in that sense of perfect poise and control she liked to project. She wasn’t quite back at her full potential, but she lacked that sense of being hunted that had started to manifest over her last few thessim in Vitareas.

“I can sleep again,” Lirian said. “You have no idea what it was like. I actually thought I was going to die. Every time my eyes closed, I’d feel her looking at me.”

“Bad dreams?” Roel said.

“More than dreams,” Lirian said with a shudder. “We can feel eyes on us. I know when I’m perceived. The stronger the perception, the stronger the response. And this—it was horrible. And it stopped when she died.”

Roel forced herself to look at the figure under the sheet.

“Show them,” Lirian said.

The old man nodded, then pulled back the sheet.

The body had been preserved with a process that had shrunken its flesh. Roel braced herself for the smell of rot, but what she actually experienced was the acrid stench of the embalming chemicals.

Her throat had been cut, and the shrinking effect of the preservatives had pulled the wound open to the point that you could see the back of her throat. The face was almost skeletal, the skin pulled taut around bone—with the exception of the eyes, which almost bugged out of her shrunken face.

“It’s not her,” Roel said immediately. “Ajarel had brown eyes.”

“No one has violet eyes,” said Lirian.

“Clearly at least one person did.”

Lirian’s lips thinned. “The hand-truth of the body was recorded by an acolyte when it was added to the Archive. Show her.”

The old man nodded, producing a leather-bound rectangle about the length of a forearm and half as wide. He opened it, revealing an astonishingly lifelike sketch of a face, sealed in transparent wax.

Roel’s breath caught. The face was Ajarel’s. Her eyes were closed in the picture.

“Was Ajarel a Faceless?” Alouren said.

Lirian shook her head. “Feel her eyes.”

Roel reached out, hesitating, then touched one. The surface was smooth, unnaturally so.

“I’m no expert on how eyes feel,” Roel said. “But it feels very different than rubbing my eyes from sleep.”

“Eyes are gelatinous sacks filled with a fluid,” Lirian said. “The embalming process usually deflates them. Those are not eyes.”

Roel breathed in sharply.

Your muscles are too damaged to move your leg. Use a machine.

“They’re not eyes,” Roel said quietly. “They’re machines.”

Lirian glanced at Roel’s leg. Roel didn’t react; she couldn’t prevent Lirian from making inferences, but she could avoid giving her more information.

“That’s impossible,” said Alouren with a glance at Lirian. “You can’t see with a machine.”

Roel exchanged a look with Lirian. Alouren didn’t know about the sleepers. She still thought the unnatural sleep was a purely magical phenomenon. But if Ajarel had one impossible device, why not two?

“The conclusion seems impossible, but everything points to it,” Roel said. “Those eyes aren’t natural. They were a replacement.”

“Then how did she lose her natural eyes?” Alouren countered. “There’s no scarring.”

“Maybe she was Faceless and she had impossible machines,” Lirian said. Roel could tell that even she wasn’t convinced.

“No,” Roel said. “There’s no explanation for any of this. Too much of this is impossible. If we keep chasing answers that make sense to us, we’ll be wasting our time.”

Lirian made a noncommittal noise.

“Loradian Saga, book three,” Roel said. “I don’t have the exact quote memorized, but something like ‘the boundary of the world is the boundary of understanding; and thereby the end of understanding shall ever be the end of the world.’”

Everyone looked at her.

“Loradian Saga?” Lirian said doubtfully. “You think Ajarel was the Calamity? She’s—dead.”

“Where’s Thala? No one has seen him since the Kabidiad, among the living or dead. Who made the sleepers? It can’t have been Ajarel—they bore no tool marks. She wasn’t alone in her mission.”

“Sleepers?” Alouren asked. Roel waved her off, mouthing later. That seemed to satisfy Alouren enough to keep going. “It didn’t feel like Ajarel was the Calamity. Maybe she was a god?”

“What kind of god can be killed with a knife?” Lirian said. “Roel is right. We’re wasting our time looking for explanations we can understand.”

Alouren grew pale. Lirian only looked weary; Roel supposed she’d had more experience with their enemy than the rest of them. Even the old man looked unsettled.

“I will search the Archives for lore,” he said. “There may be answers to be found.”

“There are no answers,” Lirian said. “Not for the Calamity.”

“We’ve answered at least one,” he said with determination. “Godsmile, ladies. Lirian will guide you back.”

Then he was gone, as if he’d never been there. Neither door had opened.

“I’d like to talk with Lirian privately for a moment,” Roel said. “Alouren, can you wait outside?”

Alouren looked at her curiously, then nodded and left.

“What is it?” Lirian asked when they were alone.

Roel cut straight to the point. “I want the Seal of Meris.”

Lirian snorted. “You’ve read too many books.”

“I know a lot about the Lost Road.”

“From books.”

“I want to keep my memories,” Roel said. “This is too important. The world is ending.”

“You don’t understand,” Lirian said. “All of that is made up. The Seal, losing your memories? People invent ancient memory-stealing magics because they don’t understand that secret-keeping is an act of discipline and devotion.”

“I understand that very well,” said Roel. “And then I watched you let Alouren into this room, so now I know there’s an ancient memory-stealing magic.”

Roel stared at her challengingly. For a few seconds, neither woman looked away.

“Fine,” Lirian said. “You’re like a puppy or something. In the name of Meris, keeper of all truths and so on, do you swear to safeguard that which is hidden?”

“Yes,” Roel said instantly.

Lirian leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “There. Sealed. If you talk about this with someone who doesn’t know about it, it’ll melt your soul.”

“Noted,” Roel said.

“I’m not lying. It happened to one of my brother acolytes.”

“What was his name?” Roel probed.

“Olonia,” Lirian said instantly.

“And should I change the name when it’s my turn to lie about it?”

“There are no lies.” Lirian smirked. “Only eye-truths. Welcome to the Cult of Silence, Roel.”