“I’ve been looking for you,” Irene said as she sat down next to Ian.
“Here I am,” Ian said with a smile.
“I heard there is a blue force approaching,” Irene said. “I went out to check on it.”
“You shouldn’t put yourself in danger that way,” Ian responded. “The guard will take care of it.”
“There are a lot of them,” Irene started to say, before Ian cut her off.
“They are mostly hunters, with a few warriors. Our warriors and wizards will deal with them easily enough,” Ian responded.
“Are you sure?” Irene asked him. “We have lost a bunch of warriors lately and they have healers.”
“Back at Londontown,” Ian replied confidently, “they will be no help to them here.”
“There are at least three healers with the raiding party,” Irene stated. “I saw them myself.” Ian flicked out a spell. Irene recognized it as muffle.
“Don’t get hysterical, just because they are wearing blue silk it doesn’t mean they are healers,” Ian told her.
“I saw them cast heal,” Irene said urgently.
“Look,” Ian said, “you're not a fighter. I have this under control. I am tier five, no tier zero wizard is going to be a problem.” He dismissed the muffle and set his beer down. “You're under a lot of strain, let's go on up to my room and relax for a bit before I join the night watch.”
He rose to his feet before Irene could respond. She was forced to follow him in order to continue the conversation. Ian projected an aura of confidence as he crossed to the stairs and climbed them.
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When Irene took the aptitudes her job choices were limited by the psychological questions. Most people didn’t even notice the psychological results, since it was the measure of their spatial ability or their inherent ability to learn logic or language that defined their job choices.
Irene’s limited empathy qualified her for medicine, while her ability to see multiple solutions granted her entrance to engineering. It was her lack of leadership prerogative that banned her from Command. Even at the age of eight, when the aptitudes were given, Irene was curious. She read that long detailed report on her measured abilities and wondered what is leadership prerogative?
Irene looked it up. After weeks of reading bits of psychological texts, none of which used the term ‘leadership prerogative’ and were decidedly over the reading comprehension for most eight year olds, Irene decided the term was the designer's euphemism for a leader's ability to project confidence and act with certainty.
Once taken, the aptitude tests were open for review, although Irene was certain most eight year olds never looked at them again. Irene discovered she could change her answers on the test and see how that would alter her results. This didn’t actually change her aptitudes, those first pass results were fixed. With careful experimentation she was able to figure out exactly what each question was measuring.
The questions that measured ‘leadership prerogative’ all measured her ability to understand the other person’s point of view. At first blush Irene thought these were the questions that measured empathy. The low empathy score she attained made her think she got them wrong.
However careful testing proved that all the empathy questions were about emotion. They were things like four children won’t let a fifth child join them, how does that make the fifth child feel? The questions were all dressed up in different activities and friendship levels, but essentially that was what they were. Irene looked at all those activities and friendship levels and responded that some of the time the left out child was angry or hurt and sometimes not bothered at all. If it was reasonable they wouldn’t have fit in the conveyance anyway, she felt the request was more of a friendly greeting than anything.
Her experiments with the test showed her that if she wanted a high empathy level she needed to say the left out child was traumatized with despair in every situation. She thought that wasn’t empathy but rather a measure of a person’s lack of emotional control. Only an extremely over sensitive person would believe someone else was devastated by the everyday event of being told no.
Going back to the point of view questions, Irene saw she actually got them all right, if right was being able to see multiple points of view. Her answers on those questions were part of her high score on the ability to see multiple solutions that qualified her for engineering. If she wanted a high score on leadership prerogative she needed to only see one point of view and ignore all the others. It didn’t matter which point of view she selected. As long as she stuck with the viewpoint through all the questions about a described situation, her leadership prerogative score went up.
At the age of eight Irene could not figure out why not seeing another person's viewpoint would increase the measure of a person’s leadership ability. Years later she concluded that the designers felt that if a leader didn’t see an alternative, they would push through the given plan without question. They would act with certainty. That confidence would give the appearance of a strong leader. Irene wondered if this was really good leadership or if it was a manipulation by the designers to see the plan written down on far away Earth carried to completion.
Ian was part of Command. In order to get that position he tested high on leadership prerogative. Irene never considered that before. As she lay there, listening to Ian’s heavy breathing beside her, she did.
Ian didn’t reject her arguments as much as he just didn’t hear them. He would smile, compliment her intelligence and distract her with sex. Obviously the same thing just happened, only this time she wasn’t distracted. The sex was strangely empty. There was something Ian said that was still bothering her.
‘No tier zero wizard is going to be a problem.’ Irene heard those words echo in her mind. To her those words were an admission of two things. Ian was perfectly aware there were healers among the blue raiding party. He was out there and saw them himself. Otherwise, how would he know they were all young? They did look like tier zero wizards, but they weren’t. They were at least tier one, because heal was a tier one spell. Ian calling them tier zero was proof that he didn’t know heal.
Irene respected Ian because he didn’t use the heal addiction to rule. Now Irene wondered if it was really higher morals that kept him from using heal to rule, or if it was just a lack of opportunity. Irene felt like she was just waking up to the fact that Ian was willing to do anything to get on top.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Ian snorted slightly and woke up. He rolled so he could check to see if she was awake. Irene laid a hand on his head and stroked his hair, her thoughts still far away.
“If you are worried, why don’t you help with the defense?” Ian commented. “Sophia set up a nice sniper's nest in a tree on the right side of the entrance. From there you could cover the terraces. I wouldn’t expect you to kill anyone. Just cast electrified floor and stun anyone who gets too close.”
It was the same as killing them, Irene thought. Especially with all the water in the area. The electricity based spells were very affected by the conductivity of the environment. She might as well cast chain lightning, only that wasn’t a spell Ian knew.
“Why don’t you do that?” Irene asked, in a calm voice.
“I am going to go around behind and hit them from the rear,” Ian explained. It was a good plan if the goal was to kill them all. Only Ian claimed they were just going to ‘bloody their nose and send them packing’ or at least that is what he said before he started kissing her.
“It's true then,” Irene continued in the same measured tone. “You're going to use the ring on Darien and take his place as leader of Chicago.”
“Who told you that?” Ian snapped. There was something in his voice Irene didn’t like.
“You did,” Irene responded, “just now.” She reached one hand down over the edge of the bed and grabbed the hilt of her Speedwell knife where it lay in the pile of her clothes. “We are all crew of the Speedwell,” Irene said to him, in one last try to change his mind. “As Command it is your duty to protect us all.”
“It is the crew’s duty to obey their Captain,” Ian retorted angrily. Ian clearly felt he was captain, only he wasn’t. One of the last things Agatha said to Irene was, “You are Chief Engineer now.” Irene checked. There in the Speedwell’s computers, after a long list of empty entries, the first of which was captain, was the listing for chief engineer. Irene’s name followed it. It is an engineer's duty to maintain the ship, because without the ship the crew will die.
Maintaining the ship meant many things. She could see no other way.
She pulled the knife. She forced speed into her muscles as she twisted and turned. She shifted the blade slightly in her hand as years of skilled instinct took over. She plunged the knife down into Ian’s chest. The blade smoothly slid between his ribs. Ian made no move to shift out of the way, or block the blow as he usually did when sparring.
Disbelief shrouded Ian’s features. He cried something, Irene had no idea what. He lifted a hand off the bed beginning a cast. Irene imbued the blade with lightning stunning the breath out of him. She welcomed the pain of the electricity as it leaked from his body into hers where they touched. She hoped it would kill her, because she really didn’t want to face what came after this moment.
A fountain of white light spilled out from below the bed. It traveled through the bedding under Irene and encased her in a column of light. The column continued up into the ceiling above. A feeling of well-being filled her. The light vanished.
Ian was dead. Irene let go of the knife and tumbled back out of the bed and onto the floor. Horror and pain filled her. Heartache crashed onto her, because no matter how she looked at it, the truth was she loved him.
His blood was on her. Its bright red color was almost a perfect match for the red silks of a fire wizard. Irene dragged herself to her feet and half ran into the sanitation facility, where she plunged into the bathing pool. She scrubbed her skin until it hurt. She dunked her head under the water repeatedly. She was reduced to a shaking, gasping pile.
In the end the cold drove her back out. She didn’t warm the pool before diving in. The water was uncomfortably chilled. It seemed colder to her than usual. It was much colder than the hot tears that streamed down her face.
Her initial reaction passed, as her survival instincts kicked in, or maybe it was her horror. She could not stay here with Ian laying dead on the bed. She rose to her feet and carefully reentered the sleeping room. Her pack and staff were close to the door, but her clothes were littered across the room. She picked up each article and carefully inspected it for any stains. She dressed slowly, in the reverse order from how she undressed. She reached as far forward as she could to drag her pants back toward her, so she didn’t have to get near the bed.
Finally she was clothed. She picked up her staff and swung her pack over her shoulder. She opened the door and stepped out. Irene firmly shut the door. She put her back to the room and walked down the hall. The knife sheath on her belt was empty. Irene wasn’t certain what happened when the renter of a room was dead. She wasn’t sticking around to find out.
She came down into the common room to find it occupied by a large number of women and children. It was late, long past the dinner hour. Irene expected the fighting to begin in earnest at first light. She couldn’t understand what all these people were doing here. She paused at the bottom of the stairs and studied them. They were all nervously trying to sleep. Only the youngest seemed to be having any success.
“Did you need something?” Ellen asked her. She came out of the inn’s kitchen as Irene studied the group.
“Why is everyone here?” She asked. The entire group looked like dependents to her. Without Ian or her fighting, this square was going to lose. Although she would like to believe that no one would kill a child, in the heat of battle Irene wasn’t so certain. There were plenty of war atrocities in human history. These people needed to lock themselves into a rented room until the fighting was over and calmer instincts prevailed. No one ever figured out how to gain entry to a room, apartment or shop without the renter’s permission. “The protection crystal won’t hold the fighting back. Mistakes are too easily made during the fog of war.”
“Where else would they go? These are the spouses of the warriors who have died. No one has coins for the rent,” Ellen explained.
“What about you?” Irene asked.
“I have a single room provided with the position, but everyone won’t fit. If the fighting spills over, I’ll take the youngest there,” Ellen explained.
“I thought you owned the inn,” Irene said.
“No, Ian does. I just work for him,” Ellen said this like it was no secret. Irene wondered how that information never came up.
“Well get everyone loaded up,” Irene said suddenly. “They can’t stay here. I know a place you can go.”
“What?” Ellen asked.
“Load up your stuff,” Irene called out to the room. “We are getting out of here. You don’t want to be here when the fighting starts.” She turned and looked at Ellen. “Pack up as much food as you can in ten minutes,” Irene ordered her. She fished out her gathering bags from her pack and handed them to Ellen.
“We are leaving in ten minutes,” Irene called out to the room. Ellen hurried off. Irene was happy to see the woman needed no further prompting. Irene circled the room, pushing the woman and children to move. Irene counted eight women in the room, nine if she included Ellen. There were at least thirty children, Irene lost count. The oldest was eleven or twelve, while the youngest was a week old infant. Irene ordered the older children to carry the youngest ones that were incapable of walking themselves. Irene knew this was a bad idea, but the situation being what it was, her options were limited.
Fifteen minutes later, Irene swung Ellen’s youngest onto her hip, and led the group out of the common room and into the center courtyard. The protection crystal in the center of the square was half the size it was that morning. It was barely three inches tall. The crystals in some rest areas were literally bigger.
She kept a steady pace across to the square’s back door. She gave the guards at the gate a killing look. They both appeared shocked and fell back without comment. Irene was glad since she planned to hit them both with tier zero lightning to stun them if she had to.
The group followed her out into wildspace.