The next day, we gathered in the grungy dirthole of a hovel where Markus had stashed Dal Salim. It was dingy and smelled like mud and dead rodents. The walls and ceiling were haphazardly covered in a gross-looking plaster, sheets of which had fallen off to reveal the rotting wood beneath.
The big, grey-fuzzed pirate was waiting peacefully when I showed up, absentmindedly running his fingers over the scar on his throat. He brightened when he saw me, the look of thoughtful contemplation on his face broadening into a gentle smile.
“Lady Danou,” he said. “Your comings and goings have been precious. I am rich in them.”
I hunched my shoulders. “Sorry. Lot going on recently.”
“So I see,” he said without condemnation. “The storms have been mighty of late.”
I sighed. “Yup. Mighty’s a good word.”
I looked for a place to sit, but there wasn’t really any furniture in here. Or even a floor. There was a single rug on the dirt, which Dal Salim was occupying. I opted to lean against the least grungy-looking wall. Despite our closeness, I didn’t feel like we had the snuggly kind of relationship.
Markus bounded through the door behind me, bowing to Dal Salim.
“Peace be upon you,” Markus intoned.
Dal Salim laughed. “Peace be within you, stranger. Your pronunciation is good.”
“I’ve got an ear for these things,” Markus said, smiling.
I realized Markus must have been speaking in the Parmedi language. I vaguely recalled it was called Houda or something like that.
“How did you know what to say?” I asked Markus.
Val’s voice interrupted us. “Haven’t you asked yet?”
He stepped dourly into the room, his movements subtly awkward to my enhanced vision. The commander had denied him a recovery period—he cited the time pressure of the mission, but it was clear to everyone in the room that it was a punishment for his antics—so he was remote-piloting his own body with his pylon implants. There was an irony to that, given that he’d drawn the commander’s ire by advising me to do the same.
I felt weird about that. Val didn’t feel manipulative to me. It felt more like he wanted things to be a certain way, and he’d always push for things to end up that way. And what he wanted for me was to be a badass. I wanted that too, so it was okay.
The whole thing about co-opting Kives… well, I wasn’t sure about that one. I was here to kill gods and save souls. Letting one live wasn’t exactly the mission.
It still felt all so abstract. On one level, we weren’t supposed to hit all of the gods. Our primary goals were reconnaissance and clearing out the low-hanging fruit; the secularization teams were supposed to work on the entrenched gods with generational techniques. So it was always going to be the case that we left with the job undone. But, like, someone was supposed to do it after we left. If no one was going to do it, why were we even here?
The questions all swirled in my head, and none of them had answers.
“First things first,” Markus said. “Dal Salim, you’re involved in all this to a deeper degree than we normally aim for. You’ve proven you can keep council, and you’ve supported our friend through a brace of difficult situations. So, I’m Markus. This is Val.”
“Lilith,” I said, slightly sheepish.
“You honor me,” Dal Salim said. “I too have a secret name.”
We waited.
“It is Dal Salim,” he said. “You know it already.”
I smirked. “Not very secret, then, is it?”
Dal Salim nodded seriously. “It is only secret enough. I had meant to warn you, Lilindi.” His accent broke through comm translation as he garbled my name. I couldn’t decide whether it sounded Indian or Arabic. “You vanished before I could mention: now that we have reached Ethelios, I would prefer to be known as Dal Pashir, should you encounter other sons of Parmad. Better that my name does not find its way back.”
“We will honor that,” Markus said, affecting some of Dal Salim’s seriousness. “I told you yesterday that Erid turned on Lilith. We can’t guarantee your safety if you return to the Fool’s Errand. Since we’re the ones who put you in this position, we’d like to make you an offer. Join us as an auxiliary. The main benefits are that you’ll get to live forever and you’ll be given citizenship in our homeland once the mission is done. The main drawback is you’re going to have to help us mess things up around here. There’s going to be a lot of suffering before things can get better.”
“Mm,” Dal Salim said, glancing at me. “You own my life already, Lilindi. Was that so little that you needed my soul?”
I waved my hands at him. “I don’t own shit. Your life, your soul. I don’t think our laws let people own souls in any case.”
“Not all debts stand on law. I decline, Markus of Calamity.”
Markus nodded. “If it helps, it’s nothing nefarious. Our homeland is a powerful place; we’re not expecting anything for those rewards that you’re not already doing.”
“Also,” I interjected, “if you don’t want to live forever, you could just try living for an extra decade or two and see how it suits you. You could be young again. Get a girlfriend or something, I don’t know.”
“The urge has never sought me,” said Dal Salim, smiling apologetically at me. “And I do not wish to be caused to live, by my hand or by others’.”
My face fell.
“Convince him later,” Val said. “We have time-sensitive objectives.”
“Right,” Markus said. “We picked up that the Magistrate’s men moved supplies to the Trade Fleet ships last night.”
“Erid, or more likely Pellonine, must have leveraged Lilith’s performance into an agreement,” Val said. “Antagonizing them yielded a positive result after all.”
“We just gotta get you doing that on purpose,” Markus said, leaning over to grab my shoulder affectionately. “Anyway—Dal Salim, did you hear anything about that while you were hiding out here?”
Dal Salim peered into the middle distance.
“I’ve left only twice,” he rasped. “Once for food, and once to relieve myself. The wonderings of the isle have eluded me.”
“No pressure,” I said. “We’re just covering our bases. Anything on the North Wind?”
“On that front, yes,” Dal Salim said. “He has abandoned his post again tonight. The storm remains; no one has braved it yet. There are some who say he greeted them at their doors in the night.”
“Is he Mormon or something?” I muttered.
“They said he seeks four strangers,” Dal Salim. “The count meant little to me before, but there are four of us now.”
“Horcutio was active during the initial ambush, too,” Markus said, exchanging glances with Val. “That’s a mark against your Kives theory.”
“That is a fundamentally ill-founded assertion,” Val snapped, “and I find it suspicious that you chose to deploy it when we don’t have time to explore why every assumption behind it is wrong.”
Markus flicked his head to the side and withdrew a tablet from underneath his shawl.
“This is a moving painting,” he explained to Dal Salim, who studied it with interest.
“It does not move to my eyes,” Dal Salim said.
Markus casually dragged the image around with a finger. Dal Salim let out a noise of enlightenment.
“The image on here was taken from Lilith’s memories,” Markus said. “That’s the girl who outed her as a Calamity. Can you tell us anything about her?”
“I do not know her,” Dal Salim said. “But I know her kind. In Parmad, they are known as Sisters of Confidence. They carry messages across the empire, defending them against encroachment. Among the Estheni, they are called the Cult of Silence, and pay homage to the Estheni goddess Meris.”
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There was a loud crunch and everyone turned to look at my boot, which had somehow embedded itself in the wall.
“What?” I asked. “Go on. Keep talking.”
“They keep their secrets to themselves,” said Dal Salim. “But they have a repository on Ethelios. It’s hidden in the library. We scurrilous sorts find our way there eventually.”
“We should find out what they have on Lilith,” the commander said. “If nothing else, it could inform Val’s theory that Kives has manipulated the mythology of the region to cover for us.”
“Sign me up,” I said.
“This will be reconnaissance first,” said Markus. “No burning down the library, okay?”
I shot him an offended look. “What are you, crazy? I would never.”
Did he think I was stupid or something? It was raining way too hard for the fire to take.
*
Dal Salim’s directions to the library were about as clear as his normal speech—that is: poetic, circuitous, and full of tangential philosophical musings—but we did find it. I was surprised that a piddly little island like this had a library, but when I brought that up, Val snippily pointed out that this island was a major diplomatic site between the two regional superpowers. Being forced into action with a new body made him really rude.
We all felt it the moment we stepped through the door. There was divine energy here. Dal Salim’s intel was good. We exchanged nods and moved in.
The library’s foyer was cool and dry, a sharp contrast to the humid storm air on the other side of the door. A service counter—unmanned at this hour—cordoned off the backside of the room. Behind the counter, a doorway presumably opened to where the actual books lived. I say “presumably” because I couldn’t see through it—there was a curtain of waxed leather instead of a door.
The walls had slits instead of windows, presumably to limit the entry of moisture into the room. Mesh-topped baskets had been affixed to the walls at regular intervals, each with a spigot on the bottom that drained into covered stone channels that wound around the foyer.
To our left, two guards sat at a table underneath a ghostlight. Crude paper cards were scattered all over the table in patterns I couldn’t interpret. They raised their eyes as we entered, seeming more annoyed than concerned at our entrance.
“Five drobol,” the one closer to us announced in a bored tone of voice.
Markus laughed, radiating artificial friendliness. “We both know it’s four.”
“It’s after hours—” the guard began to retort, but was cut short as Markus clinked a pile of five drobol on the table.
“I’m in a good mood,” Markus said with a cheeky grin. “Enjoy your game.”
They were both smiling as we slipped through the door behind the counter.
“Did you see those baskets on the wall?” Markus asked as we entered the rows of shelves. “What was that about?”
“Humidity,” Val said. “I checked one of the baskets and it was full of salt. A setup like that would condense the moisture from the air, then feed it into the drainage channels. I suspect the Cult of Lorana had a hand in the construction; the care of documents is a religious duty for them.”
“I’m not complaining,” I said, enjoying the break from the storm. “Alright, where do we start?”
“Anyone see the statue Dal Salim mentioned?” Markus said.
“No, but locating it should be trivial,” Val said, withdrawing his moirascope from underneath his shawl. “This island is a sailing hub, so assuming a reliable traffic of letters, there’s a significant change that one or more formed… an… entanglement.”
He stared at the display, blinking twice. Then he shoved the device into my hands without warning.
“Cloak now!” he subvocalized.
It was my turn to stare uncomprehendingly at the display. I couldn’t interpret most of the readouts, but my eyes widened as they fell on the temporal proximity indicator.
I didn’t need the moirascope to tell me. I could already hear the footsteps.
“Shit,” I hissed, looking up at Markus. “Contact in three.”
Val made a single, urgent gesture at me and I engaged my cloak, cradling the moirascope like a football.
Just as emptiness embraced me, a woman in white Oathkeeper robes rounded the corner.
“Hey,” she said to the guys, then did a double-take. Her eyes swept over Val, head to toe. “Heeeyyyy…” There was a pause, as though she was about to say his name, but evidently she’d forgotten. She recovered quickly. “Imagine meeting you here.”
The second greeting came with a slurry of carnal implications my comm treacherously insisted on communicating to me.
“Hello, Ell,” Val said, adopting a faint smile.
“I don’t trust this,” said the commander. “Identify and contain.”
Markus pinged affirmative, then smirked and shot Val a gloating look. “Who’s your friend, Laoces?”
Ell raised a flirtatious eyebrow at Val. “Who’s yours?”
“Kanabades, this is Ell,” Val said. “I made her acquaintance on the road west. Ell, Kanabades is a traveling companion. We stopped over in Elsinat together, though I don’t believe you met.”
“‘Made my acquaintance’?” Ell teased him.
Markus laughed and nudged Val. “You can do her better than that.”
Val’s smile broadened. “Excellent, though short-lived company,” he conceded.
“Ew,” I subvocalized. “Wait, is this what you do with all of your free time?”
“We should swap stories,” Ell said, leaning casually against one of the shelves and making heavy, intentional eye contact with Val. “Who knows how long the storm will last?”
Markus and Val glanced at each other.
“Is this Kives?” Markus asked. “We can’t have her poking around while we investigate.“
“Of course it’s Kives,” Val snapped. “One of us needs to draw her off. Not me.”
“Val, what did the moirascope say?” asked the commander.
“I didn’t have enough resolution at first. Lilith, I need you to look at the moirascope display.”
“We’re trying to move along as fast we we can,” he added out loud. “I can’t guarantee I’ll have time.”
I titled the moirascope so that the screen was visible, dismissing the notification that Val had access my visual feed.
“No,” Val said simply.
Normally, there was no connotative content to his speech, but something slipped as he spoke. A vast wave of anger and pain swept through my senses, then vanished as suddenly as it emerged.
Before I could so much as ask what the hell had happened, Val’s stance shifted.
“I’ll distract her,” he said. “I retract my previous assessment.” Markus pinged affirmative.
“Val. What what that?” the commander said. Val pinged busy.
“Live a little,” Markus said, nudging Val. “We’ll finish up without you.”
Val turned his attention back to Ell. “Would you like to take a walk?”
Ell’s body language evinced hesitation, her grip tightening on her bag. “Now? I really needed to get some work done.”
“Val. We cannot tolerate any unknowns after an indoctrination investigation. I need you to respond.”
Val ping busy again and sighed. “Our captain’s been working himself up to brave the storm. I’m not sure we’ll be in town tomorrow.”
Ell’s eyes widened. “Why are you sailing under a man? That kind of impulsivity in a ship captain...”
Markus threw an arm around Val. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take. Surely you can spare a few minutes? Laoces talks a lot about you.”
Ell looked conflicted.
“I’ll watch your bag and pick out a nice table for you,” Markus promised her. “You won’t even lose any time.”
She chewed her lip.
“Okay,” she said slowly, a smile blossoming over her face.
“Yes!” cheered Markus, bouncing over to take her bag. “True love wins again!”
Ell blushed. “I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘true love.’”
Val, wearing a matching smile, slipped an arm around her and ushered her out of the room.
Once they were out of normal earshot, she whispered “he’s not going to steal my inks, is he?”
“Can’t get any respect these days,” Markus muttered playfully. I slipped back into visibility, moirascope absently hanging from one hand.
“Val, I’m about to pull rank,” said the commander.
“Acknowledged,” Val replied. “Situation appears to be contained. I’ll compile a full report once I’m back on the ship.”
I switched to a private channel without Val. “What the hell’s going on?”
Markus shrugged. “I don’t know how to operate a moirascope. Commander?”
“I’ll pull up the image from Lilith’s feed,” Aulof said. “Focus on the mission. If he’s going to distract her with sex, he’s going to have to do it with pylon control. I have no idea how long he can keep that up convincingly.”
“Did not need to have that image in my head,” I whined.
Markus patted me on the head.
“You know, it’s not unusual for people to have pylon sex on Veles,” he said.
“Nope nope nope not listening.”
“It’s just that usually your partner is remote-controlling yours.”
“Oh, look! A statue of Lorana!”
I broke away from Markus, heading blindly between two of the shelves. I was lying about having seen the statue we were looking for, but it wasn’t that big of a space. Maybe I’d get lucky.
This aisle was full of scrolls, which got a raised eyebrow from me—the Estheni had a demonstrated capacity to produce books, so why were they messing around with an obsolete medium? The scrolls were all loving arranged in little diamond-shaped cubbies, whose numeric labels shed no light on their contents. I stopped and carefully slid one out, taking a peak inside. It was parchment rather than paper and it felt weird.
“Ohhhh,” I breathed, taking a look at the shelves and estimating the number of cubbies. “Hey guys, they’ve got, like, thousands of maps in here.”
“That makes sense, given the island’s importance,” said Aulof.
“I wonder if Erid’s maps came from here,” I said.
“We have no way to tell, unless you wanna stick around and learn their filing system,” Markus quipped. “Were you serious about that statue?”
“It must have snuck away,” I deadpanned. “Alright, I’m moving.”
Replacing the scroll as gently as possible, I prowled down to the end of the row.
“Bingo,” I said.
Lorana was standing against the wall on a square pedestal. The carver had depicted her holding a scroll in one hand and a hammer in the other, her wavy, flowing black hair melding into an ornamented blue dress. I flipped her off and traipsed closer to investigate.
Sure enough, there was room to squeeze around the back of the pedestal, just like Dal Salim had told us. The view from behind told another story: What appeared from the front to be Lorana’s black hair was actually the hooded cloak of Meris, her shrouded face peaking out from what should have been the back of Lorana’s head. Meris’s arms were crossed, smugly, and there was a smirk on her face that reminded me of Lirian. Estheni characters at her feet spelled out lious tu elekoi: “Wisdom hides in silence.”
Below them, a small chute—big enough for letters, but too small to fit a person—dropped into darkness.
“Alright, gang, target acquired,” I said.
“Good work,” the commander said. “Ah.”
“What?” I said. “Everything’s working out just fine, we just need Val to drop the—ah.”
“Apologies. I was overwhelmed and forgot to leave you with the tracking device.”
“All good, man,” I said, unclipping a grenade from my belt. “We can improvise.”
I dropped it down the chute, carefully tracking the sound as it bounced its way down.
“Lilith,” the commander started, but sighed and didn’t finish.
“I covered my angles!” I protested. “The Ragnar can track all of our tech, right? Judging by the sound, it’s about twenty feet below us.”
“What if a Silence cultist picks it up?” Markus said.
I shrugged. “I set it to trigger on human contact. They become a shower of meat and we follow the boom.”
“I suppose I’m up, then,” the commander said. “I’ll start the scan now.”
“Lilith will exfiltrate now,” Markus said. “I’ll stay until Ell gets back.” He paused. “Switching to a private channel, commander. Any luck with the moirascope signature that spooked Val?”
“I’m heading out,” I said, making for the door.
“It’s—” the commander said, breaking into an incredulous laugh. “It’s bad. Really bad. I didn’t think this was mathematically possible. That girl, Ell? She’s his soulmate.”