Godslayers

I pushed the last stack of paper toward Kuril.

“And done,” I said. “I cannot believe you were doing all this by yourself.”

“It’s easier on the days when I’m not responsible for anyone who punched an Oathkeeper.” She was smiling, but her eyes were sharp. “Nevertheless, I’m glad you resisted.”

“Sentences you don’t hear back home,” I said. “What would have happened if I’d let her drag me back?”

“It depends,” said Kuril. “The most likely outcome is that they would have held onto you until they extracted whatever you’re not telling us about your past.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “That.”

“This is twice, Ajarel,” she said. “Lirian was bad enough, but now the Oathkeepers? I’ve never seen Falerior stray so far from his duty before. What does he have on you?”

“You, uh, know him?” I asked.

“Professionally,” said Kuril. “You do know I’m the treasurer for Vitareas, correct? It’s a family holding the Voranetti have yet to pry from us.”

“Oh, so that’s why they were all so scared of you,” I said.

“They were under contract,” said Kuril. “Falerior is the best of their hounds; it’s why I hired his team. Which makes it important that we are all prepared for what happens when he comes back with someone else’s drobol in his pockets.”

“Right,” I said.

“Before the sun rises, Ajarel. What does he have on you?”

I sighed.

“I…” What did I even say here? “It’s not blood magic, at least. I promise. You kinda took me by surprise here.”

“If I did not, you would continue to put the discussion off.” Kuril watched me intently, tapping her charcoal pencil against the nearest stack of papers. “We’re family now. This stays between us.”

“Right,” I said, avoiding her eyes. “I guess… it’s about Salaphi.”

“Lirian announced as much,” said Kuril. “Will my own daughter show less loyalty?”

I closed my eyes. “Wow. That’s a lot.”

Kuril didn’t respond. I had to get control of this.

I took a moment to pull myself into that Velean roleplaying space, letting myself transcend the persona I currently occupied, letting myself become the person that communicated what I needed. I was not Ajarel, I was Lilith playing Ajarel. This wasn’t Lilith’s shame, it was Ajarel’s, and Ajarel needed to disclose it so Kuril would stop digging.

“Okay,” I said. I opened my eyes, looked at her. “Okay, you have to promise not to hate me.”

“Where’s your courage, girl?” Kuril looked unimpressed. “Out with it.”

“I was there,” I said. “When it happened.”

“I take it the rumors are wrong, then, and Alcebios did not descend in person.”

“As far as I can tell,” I said. “Just… the normal human tendency to turn on each other.”

“Oh, the Stranger gets her due one way or another,” said Kuril. “How much of it was your fault?”

My eyes snapped back to her face.

“You’re clearly ashamed of what happened there,” she said. “The inference is trivial. Falerior will have seen the same. I know him well enough to know that.”

“The tree is kind of my fault,” I said. “It’s, uh, because I was running. Running away, I mean.”

The silence extended out. I knew this tactic, they’d taught us in the Academy to use silence to get the other person talking. All you have to do to resist it is stand your ground, maybe make some eye contact to let the other person know you’re not submitting.

But that wasn’t the image I was trying to present here. People trust information they’ve won more than they trust information freely given to them by an interested party. I let the silence draw words out of me, as if they were a shield against the pressure.

“Lady Arguel summoned a monster,” I said. “I tried to bring it down. The method was, uh. It was awful. You’re better off not knowing.”

“Hm,” said Kuril. “You weren’t born in Salaphi.”

“No.”

Kuril was silent for a long time. This was a delicate moment; I couldn’t afford to disrupt it by saying the wrong thing. She looked up at me.

“How long do I have you?” she asked softly.

“What?” I sat upright in surprise.

“Kives,” she sighed, and I couldn’t tell if it was a curse or a prayer. “I should have known. A wanderer, living a life of happenstance, stumbling on events at just the right time. I should have known from the start. Lirian is dealt with—how long do I have before she takes you away from me?”

“I want to stay,” I said—as Ajarel, as Lilith? “Please. I don’t want to go.”

“Good,” she said. “Then we’ll go to the temple of Kives tomorrow and make sacrifices. Hm. Actually, it's Thephes the day after tomorrow. She'll be more receptive on her holy day. I suppose I’ll need to adjust some plans.”

Oh fuck. “I, uh, hope you won’t need to adjust anything. And we really don’t need to go to the temple. I mean, it should be fine, I left of my own volition all the other places I’ve been, but this time I’m not going to. I was adopted and everything.”

“You’re coming anyway. House Vitares leaves nothing to chance. Hm. The monster? Is it dead?”

“Yes,” I said with vicious certainty.

“Any other unfinished business from your travels that might drive you out of Vitareas?”

I shook my head. “Best I’ve got is that Eloi Voranetes hates my guts.”

“Right,” said Kuril. “That. You said Alceoi was friendly to you. Would that help?”

“Actually, um,” I said. “I think she might have been the one who poisoned me. I’ve been thinking about it. She was the one who told us to check the service tunnels, and Lirian was waiting when we went down there.”

Kuril’s jaw clenched. “I see.”

“Could we—” I started, then second-guessed myself. “Nevermind.”

“Humor me,” said Kuril.

“You said we would have issues if Falerior was on someone else’s payroll,” I said. “I don’t know how much—”

“Excellent idea.” Kuril jotted a note on one of six pieces of paper whose organization and significance I couldn’t interpret. “I’ll hire him immediately. Investigating Alceoi should keep him away from you.”

“I won’t have to talk to him, right?” I said.

“I’m sure he’ll squirm his way into a conversation or two. It’s what makes him a good Oathkeeper. It’s better than the alternative.”

“Cool,” I said. “Um, I’m going to go to bed, if that’s okay.”

Kuril waved me out. I left her with my lies.

*

Roel was pretending to be asleep again. My comm lit up with the pain radiating from her leg, intermixing with the emotional pain that almost drowned it out. The poor girl. She’d closed herself off so much since the attack. I’d tried to reach out, but she wasn’t ready to talk. She probably just needed space to process or something.

I crept closer to her in the darkened room, pulling up a chair to sit next to her. There was a spike of fear as I approached.

“Hey,” I whispered. “It’s just me.”

She didn’t respond. The fear response slowly started to drop.

“I fucked up,” I whispered, leaning back against the chair. “I fucked up. I’m so sorry. I tried to keep you out of danger and it came home anyway.”

Something else was bubbling under her cocktail of pain. Something between betrayal and hatred. It left me feeling distant, like there was a burning wall between me and whatever feelings I should be feeling. Gut pain and exhaustion; like my cloak, but ragged and sharp.

“I can’t fix your leg,” I said. “I know—I know you blame me for it. I’m sorry. I didn’t want this.”

Roel lay still, still pretending to sleep. I almost questioned whether the comm was accurate, but I knew from previous nights that the pain was too much for her to fall asleep.

“Fuck it.” I shut down my comm to non-emergency traffic. I sent it a command to reboot its recording function.

It would take about ten seconds to come back online. Until then, I would have true privacy in my head for the first time in years. I didn’t waste a second.

“Your muscles are too damaged to move your leg,” I said quickly. “Use a machine. This conversation never happened.”

I reset my comm settings and sat silently for a while.

“Fuck it,” I said again, as if I’d been mulling something over. “Sleep well, Roel.”

I stood up, lingering by the bed. Pulsing someone usually blanked the latest fifteen to thirty seconds of their memory, and I wanted to give her time for the idea to sink in. I probably wouldn’t be able to get away with this again, so I wanted to give her the best chance I could. If she didn’t remember tomorrow, well, maybe it’d be something to ask from Kives when I—

I stopped in my tracks.

So that was her plan. Hell no. Nope nope nope. Fuck this, I’m out.

I pulsed Roel and snuck out of her room, breaking into a sprint once I got onto the walkway that ringed the inside of the estate. I don’t know if anyone saw me, I just ran. Ran back to my room, shut the door, shoved my fingers into my hair and squeezed.

“Fuck!”

“Are you okay, Lils?”

The unexpected voice took me off guard and I screamed, pivoting to face the threat, pulser drawn—

Markus looked bemused as his comm shields fuzzed the pulser fire to harmless etheric noise. “Just me.”

“You fucking goon,” I said, throwing a punch at his bicep. He reflexively slapped it aside before it made contact.

“I just thought it’d be funny to surprise you,” he said. “Seriously, Lilith, are you okay?”

“Don’t fucking call me that here,” I hissed. “We have no idea who’s listening.”

He gave me a patient look.

“And no I am not okay, I am not okay, I might never be okay, fuck, fuck—aw fuck the commander’s going to kill me. She’s going to fucking cut me open. With, like, a spoon.”

Large hands grabbed my shoulders.

“Let’s calm down,” Markus said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Weakly, I pointed at the ceiling.

“I’m—” I said, tears starting to form in my eyes. “I fucked up, Markus. I’m compromised. Fuck me, I’m compromised.”

“Let’s sit down,” he said. “I’ll scan you, alright?”

I nodded shakily, sitting down on my bed.

“Your comm shield is fine,” he said. “I’m going to pull your comm log from the ship.”

“There’s,” I said, but couldn’t finish the sentence. Oh god, I’d really just committed treason. I couldn’t bring myself to admit it to Markus.

“I’m seeing a small blip about two minutes ago,” he said. “Did you put your comm in privacy mode?”

I looked away. “Yes.”

“It’s okay, Lilith. We all do it. Looks like your comm shield’s fine. No breach was recorded.”

“She might have covered it up,” I said.

“I just scanned you for indoctrination, and the comm didn’t come up with anything.”

“She could have interfered with the scan!”

“Lilith,” Markus said, holding my shoulders again. “Why do you think you were compromised?”

“Because—” I took a deep breath, released it. “Kuril’s dragging me to the temple of Kives the day after tomorrow. To make sacrifices. And I thought about asking her to help Roel.”

“Asking Kives?” Markus didn’t look angry or concerned or anything.

I nodded slowly. Markus breathed out slowly.

“You’re fine, Lils,” he said. “You’re not compromised. You’re just worried about Roel and your brain was looking for options.”

There was a sob in my throat that wanted to make its way out. I couldn’t speak or it would usurp whatever I was trying to say. The tears were still flowing. I closed my eyes, restricting my world to just the down mattress under me and the painful lump in my chest.

“I need to pull out,” I said. “I can’t handle this. I’m going to get sucked in because I finally have a family that doesn’t hate me and Kives is going to use that, Markus, I am weak. I’m vulnerable. Lirian already used that against me, and she’s a half-rate operative. Kives is a god. We need to scrap the op. Just leave me out next time.”

“Deep breaths,” said Markus. “There you go. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m fucking compromised,” I said.

“Deep breaths. The commander and Val are out on recreation right now." Meaning Abby was out having sex and Val was doing whatever Val did. "Let’s not make any hasty decisions until they’re back online.”

I fell back on the bed. “She’s going to use this time to let us talk ourselves into the wrong choice. We need to get out, now.”

“And then what?” Markus asked. “Every time you form an attachment, we call off the op?”

“She has me thinking about sacrificing to her!”

“There’s a big difference between thinking it and doing it,” said Markus. “There’s a standard procedure for fake sacrifices. We’ll get you through this.”

“It’s such a fucking trap.”

“We’re Eifni, Lilith. We break traps. This isn’t the first oracle we’ve killed. They’re not invincible.”

I slammed a fist on the bed.

“I know! She’s just really going to hurt us before she dies!”

Markus sat down on the bed next to me. “You know I love Cades.”

“Eugh,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Yes, I got a blast of that.”

“Let’s say I jumped ship right now,” said Markus. “Cades isn’t going to outlive me. It’ll end eventually. And even if it didn’t, who knows? They’ve studied centennial drift back on Veles. In most cases, you eventually change too much to have the same relationship. It’s always temporary one way or another.”

“So what, I just shouldn’t care?” I said. “I do care. That’s not something I can control. Roel’s just like me. I care about what happens to her, and now I care about the fact that I got her injured.”

“You can choose not to care with the proper exercises,” said Markus. “But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying let yourself care—but always remember that there’s an end to it. For every relationship you have, there’s a point where you’ll talk to that person for the last time. Even on this team. Care while you’re here. But one day you’ll need to move on.”

“That’s fucking depressing,” I said.

“It’s the truth,” said Markus. “Our infiltrator before you was named Petra. We loved him as much as we love you. And he’s gone now, but we’ll always carry him with us.”

“Are you going to carry Cades with you when we go?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Markus.

I thought about leaving the Vitares family behind, leaving an Ajarel-shaped hole in their lives and ruining all of Kuril’s plans to rebuild the family.

“I can’t carry that many people,” I admitted.

Markus smiled, patting my arm. “It’s always hardest the first time.”

“I’m going to fix everything for them,” I said. “I’m going to help them rebuild. At least I won’t ruin them when I leave. That’ll make it easier. That’s not too disloyal, right? It’s what my cover is supposed to do.”

“Maybe we should take on the Voranetti,” Markus said. “That should help them reclaim some standing.”

He kept a perfectly straight face, but a significant look in his eye reminded me that we were both Velean.

Markus wanted to free Cades from the Voranetti.

The dominoes began to fall. Comments the commander had made about the job being emotionally taxing. The multi-year, sometimes multi-decade deployment windows. The team’s strange lack of oversight on my growing closeness with Roel and Kuril.

Godslayers were still human, after all. The team was expecting that I’d seek out human contact. After all, they were doing it too.

All I had to do was walk away when the time came.

I offered my hand to Markus. “Deal.”

We shook on it.