Godslayers

Kuril was in a bad mood, and Roel almost regretted that she was about to make it worse. Almost. But the blade was descending and they had precious little time to get out of the way.

“I’m busy,” Kuril said without looking up from her desk.

Bofa stopped pushing Roel. “If it’s not a good time—”

“No,” Roel said with finality. “Kuril, we need to talk now.”

“We can talk at dinner. The Jeneretes—”

“Can wait. Ajarel is occupied with Thala and Cades. We need to talk now.”

The urgency in her voice finally earned Kuril’s attention. The disheveled matriarch of House Vitares had forgone the morning’s appointment with the house stylist, and her hair fell embarrassingly down her back in a tangled mess. Roel was far past giving a shit. Her sister’s gaze slowly focused on her as her mind broke away from whatever task she’d been so absorbed in.

“Ajarel?” she said.

“She’s a whisper,” said Roel. “And she needs to go.”

“She’s your family now,” said Kuril. “Don’t let your jealousy overcome you.”

Roel nearly screamed at her, but forced herself to focus on the pain in her leg. She let it drown out the unfairness of it all, the mountain of idiocy she was struggling against. She could do this.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “yes, I think you should have made me sashbearer as soon as I became a woman. Maybe then we wouldn’t be in this situation, and you wouldn’t be so desperate that Ajarel could sneak her way into the heart of our House. Of course I’m jealous, Kuril. But what matters is this: you’ve staked the survival of our House on the trust of a woman whose name you didn’t know last year. And I don’t think we can trust her.”

“This isn’t one of your children’s stories,” Kuril snapped. “The Voranetti are sharpening their stakes. Ajarel’s plan is a risk, but the survival of our House is in question either way. Would you rather trust Sael Voranetes?”

“Yes,” Roel said simply. For a brief moment she enjoyed the sight of Kuril coming up short.

“You’re just saying that,” her sister sighed. “You haven’t been the same since your injury. Do you think Lirian injured your mind with that strike?”

“Horcutio’s bouncing testicles, Kuril!” Roel yelled. “Listen to me!”

Kuril’s shocked expression was priceless. “You need to maintain decorum,” she managed.

“Decorum?” Roel seethed. “Which of us is flaunting their hair like a drunkard?”

Kuril blinked, looked at Bofa, and hastily wrapped her hair in a messy knot. Roel inwardly winced. That was going to be painful to undo later. Then her leg throbbed and the sympathy turned to cold satisfaction.

“Are you happy now?” Kuril asked, glaring at her. “I suppose not. You still have too many sisters.”

“I loved her,” Roel said. The admission choked up her voice, but she wouldn’t let herself cry. “She didn’t love me. Maybe she wanted to—but in the end, I was useful until I wasn’t. You’re still useful, Kuril. You haven’t seen it yet. She doesn’t talk to me anymore. She doesn’t care. I would love to wait until you experience this yourself. It would be just. But if that happens, House Vitares will die. The Voranetti claim our assets, the Oathkeepers bar us from commerce in the city, something.”

Kuril’s displeased stare found another target. “Bofa, where is she getting these ideas? Why haven’t you discouraged her?”

Bofa shifted behind her. “Roel, perhaps it would help to share the evidence you’ve collected.”

Roel turned in her chair to glare at him. She didn’t want to do that.

Why didn’t she want to do that?

The answer came quickly. Because then it wouldn’t be her investigation anymore. Because then she’d just be the useless crippled girl staying at home while the others did the important work.

But this was about the future of the House. She steeled herself.

“I’ve been in communication with Oathkeeper Falerior,” she admitted. “We’ve been using the Voranetes investigation as cover to continue investigating Ajarel.”

“That terrier and his thrice-cursed rigidity—” Kuril started.

“Let me finish,” Roel said, then sighed. “Please.”

“No, you’re right,” Kuril said, leaning back in her chair. “Open eyes.”

Are the blessing of Androdaima, Roel automatically completed the phrase in her head. “Thank you, sister.”

She took a moment to organize her thoughts. “I… didn’t want to think I was just collateral damage. Lirian didn’t have to—cripple me.”

“The doctor says—”

“I can’t walk,” Roel said plaintively. “Have the courage to name it!”

A look of pain darkened Kuril’s face, but she said nothing.

“She didn’t have to cripple me,” Roel said again with a challenging look. “There had to be a point. And of course the obvious conclusion is it forces you to lean more on Ajarel which is—yes, I know, it’s a conjecture, don’t make that face. So I had Falerior investigate her other alleged victims. The so-called stain on Cades’s honor, the accidents and disappearances plaguing any man who would outshine him. Bofa?”

Roel had designed her chair with an integrated vertical shelf, spaced wide enough to hold the thickest volume of Harimenedes’s Annals—the obvious benchmark; the only longer book she was likely to read was the collected tragedies of Aenel, which were only properly enjoyed in the southeast corner of the library. But she’d cleared the shelf for this (Parmilion didn’t count) and filled it with documents, one of which Bofa withdrew at her prompt.

She turned a page.

“Gedia: thought to be an itinerant laborer, drowned in an apparent accident. Miner. Efra: bondbearer to House Jeneretes, tripped over a table and crushed his hand, which had to be amputated. Miner. Deirocedes: bondbearer to House Jeneretes, caught an affliction of the lungs after drinking tainted beer. Miner foreman.”

Kuril blinked rapidly as she assimilated the information and churned her way toward its implications. “Enough. I know you’ve run the numbers. How many?”

“It’s impossible to say,” said Roel. “A thousand people die in this city every year, and the Oathkeepers weren’t able to get access to most House records, where those records even existed in the first place. The Jeneretti refused access to their records, by the way; remember that for later.”

“They would have done that regardless,” said Kuril.

“Sixty deaths,” said Roel. “Twice that in disabling injuries.”

“That can’t be right,” said Kuril. “That’s more than the number of competitors in the Renathion.”

“Exactly,” said Roel. “The Renathion cases were the starting place, but when we sent initiates out to gather more information, they came back with more stories than we expected. Mining accidents, drunken brawls, equipment failing. Every report I read mentioned boardhouses plastered with wards against Alcebios. Every miner in Vitares knows someone crippled or killed in the last two years. They think they’re cursed, but the Jeneretes punish anyone caught talking about it.”

“You think this has to do with Salaphi,” Kuril said softly.

“Falerior does, because he’s a terrier,” Roel said. “I think it’s too targeted. This is goal-driven behavior. A missing forman replaced with an idiot or a tyrant. The sole veteran on an inexperienced team gets drunk and drowns in the baths. This is a campaign of fear, and Kuril, it’s affecting the output of the mines.”

“It’s not a significant decrease—”

“The Jeneretes are lying on their reports,” said Roel. “At least, according to rumor. The metal isn’t being bought up, Kuril, it never existed in the first place.”

Kuril shot up from her desk. “Then Ajarel’s plan—”

“Has no chance of working,” said Roel. “But after we willingly open an investigation into market manipulation in Vitareas, what happens? House Jeneretes will be exposed, we’ll be censured for bad faith business practices—even if the Oathkeepers won’t, the other Houses will have a hard time trusting us again after the brightmetal scam—and who’s left to fill in the power vacuum?”

Kuril started to pace, and Roel let out a relieved breath. Her sister was thinking, really thinking, and that meant everything was going to be okay.

“I find it hard to believe that the Voranetti engaged in such a convoluted scheme to outmaneuver us,” Kuril admitted. “It’s like something out of your stories. To be blunt, I’m less surprised you uncovered it than I am that you have evidence for it.”

“I’m just a crippled girl, forgotten in my chambers, spending my days reading letters about expeditions I’ll never experience firsthand,” Roel said. “But I’ve drawn a map from what I was given, and it shows that Ajarel pushed us straight into a hole. We can’t trust her.”

Roel had never seen her sister look so vulnerable. Her pacing slowed to a stop, eyes moistening, shoulders slumping. For the first time in ages, Roel saw how tired her sister was, the weight of the House bearing down on her. This might have been the gale that snapped her mast.

“We should talk to her,” Kuril said wearily. “It could have been an earnest mistake.”

Roel doubted that, but she could see her sister needed hope.

“It could,” she gently lied. “But I’m your family too, Kuril. Lirian only got my leg. My mind is more than capable.”

Kuril approached and knelt very precisely next to her good leg. She wrapped her arms around Roel.

“Open eyes indeed,” she murmured. “The goddess may see us through after all. Thank you, Roel.”

“Thank you for listening,” Roel whispered into her shoulder.

There was a rustle of clothing, then Bofa’s muscular arms wrapped around them both. They acknowledged him with simultaneous “mmm” noises. Maybe everything would be okay in the end.

The door to Kuril’s office lurched noisily open and energetic footsteps dashed in.

“Guys! Guys!” Lady Ajarel shouted. “Big news! The—shit, hold on.”

She turned around to push the door close. Roel thought she saw her wipe her face on her shawl, but Ajarel was moving too quickly to be sure. By the time she was facing them again, the group hug had broken up.

“We got Cades to talk,” said Ajarel. “The Voranetti aren’t descended from Varas. They’re descended from Meris.”