“Wait wait wait,” I said. “Soulmates are real?”
I paused.
“And Val has one?”
The library guards didn’t notice my exit because I was good at my job. And also invisible. They looked up as the door opened, but with my cloak artificially insisting there was nothing there, they were back to their game before it registered that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
I bit my lip. The cloak still didn’t feel right, ever since that close call with the angel. Those guards shouldn’t have looked up at all.
“Technically speaking,” the commander said, “two people are considered soulmates with respect to each other if they score in the 95th percentile or above on the Mfawa Compatibility Index.”
“You might have one back on Veles,” said Markus. “There’s a whole industry around matching people to their soulmates.”
“I don’t have a soulmate back on Veles because I’m fucking asexual,” I said, casting a dour glare at the torrential drizzle outside of the library awning. ”Commander, where am I going?”
“There’s a smudge on the topography that could be a tunnel,” the commander said. “It could just be an artifact on the scanner, too, but I’m not seeing anything else. Head east.”
I sighed and flung myself out into the rain.
“So that’s the thing,” Markus said. “You can run the math on anyone; you don’t have to date them.”
“Turn left here,” Aulof said. “And for what it’s worth, Lilith, Eifni Org uses a modified version of the MCI to calculate team assignments.”
“Yeah,” Markus said. “The issue is just how the math works out. A soulmate relationship is compatible enough to put it three standard deviations above the norm. Most people can’t actually manage that degree of compatibility. You can lose yourself pretty fast if you’re not prepared for it; a lot of people suffer identity damage after a soulmate relationship.”
“What do you mean, ‘after’?” I asked, ducking through an awning just to get out of the rain for a few moments. “I thought soulmates were a happily ever after kind of deal.”
“Soulmates experience centennial drift, same as anyone,” Markus said. “Worse, even. At that level, you feel the smaller changes more.”
“That’s fucking bleak.”
“Those statistics aren’t reliable,” the commander said. “There’s already a high rate of identity degradation associated with repeated pneumatological surgery.”
I made a face. “Wait a second. I had that.”
“You’ll be fine. It was only once, and your surgery didn’t substantially alter your personality.”
“Aulof’s talking about the companies that matchmake you to your soulmate,” Markus said. “Most people need to put in a lot of personal work before they can have a soulmate, so if their one-in-a-billion partner isn’t already in the company’s network, they’d be out of luck. So they offer a package where you hand over a chunk of luxury credits and they surgically coerce a functional compatibility score to soulmate levels. These are the people making up the bulk of modern soulmate research.”
“Charles fucking Darwin,” I swore.
“It’s a desperate business,” Markus said.
Aulof emoted concern. “One that Val is smart enough to avoid.”
“If this is how Kives wants to help us, I vote we just kill her,” I said.
Aulof didn’t reply directly, switch back to the general channel. “Lilith, the entrance should be close to your current location.”
I was Velean enough to know he was agreeing with me. But we’d be coming back to Operations at the end of this, and I didn’t want them to stick me in a soulbox.
I was in a grungy alley—I swear, this island was nothing but alleys—looking at a couple of unremarkable doors. I shifted into absence meditation, dissociating from my noetic perception and restricting myself to sensory experiences. It didn’t take long—once I was free from etheric influences, one of the doors suddenly become a lot less unremarkable. Not to the point of actually being remarkable, just—whatever, you get it.
“Found it,” I told the team.
I knocked politely on the door. With my force mace. At full charge.
The weapon’s kinetic translators cracked like thunder, sending wooden shrapnel everywhere. One piece scored a long cut across my face, stinging as my cheeks stretched into a lunatic smile. I’m a simple girl: if it burns or booms, it’s a friend.
I was supposed to leave the medical translator back on the ship, but it was so convenient I’d tactically forgotten to do that. It wasn’t like there was any risk of blowing our cover—Kives already told everyone we could regenerate. So if there were any invisible witnesses, they’d see my wounds closing up and know they were fucked.
Although, to be fair, they probably would have figured that out when the door exploded.
I descended into the earth, keeping a hold on my absence meditation to prevent people from sneaking up on me. We’d deployed with MDOs, but my stint fighting Merisites during the Kabiadiad had taught me that it was simpler to sniff them out myself. The Old Ways were pretty big on relying on skills over tools.
The force mace didn’t count, of course. I was going to hit a home run with the next invisible person I saw.
The tunnel was dark even with my enhanced optical capabilities, and I regretted not asking Val to upgrade my eyes with ultrasound or something. My night vision was good enough not to trip. I struggled through as best I could until I started to see glimmers of light on the floor.
The silence cultists or Sisters of Confidence or whatever they called themselves had been sloppy. There was a gap in their doorway. I raised my force mace and made another one.
The grody floor and seeping brickwork gave way to concrete and tile, immaculate except for the bits of door that were suddenly everywhere. I stepped through, taking in the space. They’d lit it with ghostlights, tinting the whole space a pleasant pastel purple. It reminded me of Lirian, souring my enjoyment of blowing up the door.
The walls were covered in shelving, each sporting a label and holding several flat, waterproof leather sleeves. I scanned over the labels, picking out a couple names I recognized as Estheni cities.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Huh,” I said. “This really is a post office, isn’t it?”
“Where the couriers read your mail,” Val said. “Is there an archive onsite?”
“Let me check. There’s a door in the back. How was your date?”
“Ah,” Val said, and I felt annoyingly like he’d somehow inferred our whole private conversation just from that. I guess from his perspective we’d gone quiet for a long stretch. “Perhaps too well. She’s following me, presumably to see where I’m staying.”
I snickered and stepped into the room, heading for the back. There was an opening on one of the walls with a basket below it—looks like I’d found the letter chute from the library. As I changed course to recover my grenade—I was less enthusiastic about it going off now that I was in the room—I caught a hint of movement. A section of the room with no one in it.
I narrowed my eyes. My brain was suspiciously insistent that no one was there. I’d let my absence meditation slip. As I drew myself back into that headspace, certain details became apparent. A sleeve. Knees, tucked up against a trembling chin. A cloak.
Cloak Girl’s fearful eyes met mine. I gave her a big, warm smile.
“Well, hello there!” I said.
She screamed.
Both of us moved at once, her bolting for the exit and me dashing to intercept. She was fast—I’ll give her that—but I was faster. The cloak was a liability. I snagged it with my free hand and yanked her back, and as she pivoted to defend herself my hand slipped through her guard.
I grabbed a handful of her shawl just below the neck, hoisting her off the ground and slamming her against the wall. With my other hand, I brought the mace to bear. I overloaded the mace’s electrical contact, snapping off a couple sparks near her face. She went still.
“That’s bad for the weapon,” the commander noted with disapproval.
“Let’s try this again,” I said with satisfaction. “Hi! My name’s Danou! What’s your name?”
Cloak Girl shook her head frantically.
“That’s not very polite,” I chastised her. “What am I supposed to call you?”
“N-nobody,” Cloak Girl said. “Oh, goddesses. Oh goddesses, I’m going to die.”
“Probably!” I said brightly. “You know, in the sense that everyone dies eventually.”
Cloak Girl whimpered.
“I knew a whisper who said something like that,” I commented. “‘I am no one.’ Is that what you do to go invisible?”
Cloak Girl screwed her eyes shut. “Lady help me. I’m sorry, Danou. I can’t—I can’t tell you anything.”
She tensed up, waiting for me to kill her. I felt… kinda bad about that? It’s pretty awkward to be alone in a room with someone who’s acting like you’re trying to kill them.
“Is this some kind of oath thing?” I asked.
She cracked one eye open. I sighed and lowered the force mace.
Cloak Girl spoke in a very small voice. “We vow to safeguard that which is hidden.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” I said, looking her up and down. The cloak was edgy enough, but she was too brown to be an Ebony. “Alright, I’m just gonna call you Raven, okay?”
Raven nodded fearfully.
“Great,” I said, deciding not to tell her that the rest of her new nickname was ”Dark’ness Dementia Way.” “So, you kinda called me out in front of the Magistrate. It’s kind of your fault I got stabbed in the kidneys. That really hurts, by the way. Have you ever been stabbed in the kidneys? It fucking sucks.”
Raven shook her head.
“So I kinda feel like you owe me,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted out frantically.
“Hey, water under the bridge,” I said. “I’m gonna set you down and then we can talk about how you can make it up to me, okay? My arm’s getting kind of tired. Oh, and if you try to run, I’m going to have to break your legs.”
Raven froze up, and stood perfectly still as I set her down. A tear rolled down one of her cheeks.
“Please don’t take my face,” she whispered.
I blinked. “Why the fuck would I want your face? Actually, don’t answer that. You told the Magistrate that we’d gone down to the temple. That was a secret, right?”
Raven nodded, biting her lip.
“So,” I said, “clearly you can give out secrets under some circumstances. I’m just here to see what you guys have on me and my friends. Can you give those to me?”
Raven shook her head.
“Use your words,” I prompted her.
“We spend secrets when it’s right,” she said, looking up at me and immediately looking away. “This isn’t right.”
I didn’t have a response to that.
I’d underestimated her. She was obviously terrified for her life, so I’d been prepared for her to be a coward, but that wasn’t what was going on here. Behind all the fear was an impressively solid set of principles. Raven wasn’t a coward, she was a hero with an anxiety disorder.
That was an uncomfortable thought. I grimaced. If she was being a hero, what did that make me?
Time for a change of tactics.
“I think I understand you now,” I said, putting the mace away. “I’m gonna make you a deal. I’m not your enemy, okay? I’m here to stop something really bad from happening.”
Raven looked toward the door.
“Sorry about threatening to break your legs,” I said with a guilty smile. “The, uh, last whisper I tangled up with stabbed me a bunch.”
“That’s awful,” Raven said.
“I got better,” I said. “So, here’s the deal. I need to know what information you’ve got on me, and what the Cult of Silence know about it. If you tell me that, I’ll get the angel off the island.”
“I’m not stupid,” she said. “If you could do that, you would have done it already. You don’t need our secrets to get rid of him. It doesn’t stop being extortion if it’s someone else’s life.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you have a couple weeks? Because I can sit down and show you the math of why this is the most moral action you can take here.”
Raven drew a deep, shaky breath, then reached behind her and held something out.
My eyes widened and I took an involuntary step back. She was holding my grenade. Why was she holding my grenade? She should be a high-velocity cloud of meat!
“I don’t kn-know why you killed those people in the temple,” she said shakily. “Maybe I should care, but I don’t. This is yours, right? I know it’s a weapon. I can tell, somehow. You came here to kill me too.”
“Um,” I said, slowly backing away. “That’s, uh, that’s a grenade. It was all I had on hand. If it explodes, we’re both going to die, except I’m going to come back and you won’t. I swear I’m just here for information.”
“M-maybe it’s best this way.”
More tears streaked down Raven’s cheeks. I realized I was an idiot and had my comm re-establish contact with the grenade. Sure enough, its sensors said that no one was touching it.
I turned it off.
“It’s really not,” I said, stepping closer. “I just disabled it. We’re safe now. If you hadn’t been using your blessing, you’d have died the moment you touched it. Okay? I just saved your life. Is that worth anything?”
Raven slumped to the ground. I gently pried the grenade from her fingers.
“Fine,” she whispered. She looked up at me. “Her name is Mephele.”
“Mephele?” I repeated. There was something familiar about the name. Wasn’t that a character from one of Roel’s Merisite stories? These guys were way too dramatic.
“Mephele,” Raven confirmed. “There. A name for a life.”
“And…” I said. “Who is Mephele?”
“She has the answers you want,” Raven said. “That’s all I can say.”
“I’m sure she’ll randomly pop up in my room at some point and I’ll stab her on reflex,” I said. “Well, thanks, Raven. You should probably find a priest of Gamal or something to deal with the trauma from this. Tell me something, if I go rummage around in that back room, am I going to find your archives, or are they somewhere else?”
Raven shook her head. I checked my comm, which said there was no one there.
“Can you say that again, this time without the blessing active?” I said.
She took a deep breath. “The archives aren’t here.”
This time the comm said she was telling the truth.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” I said, strolling out of the room.
I let my absence meditation lapse, tuning back in to my comm feed.
“That’s a bust,” I said as I entered the tunnel. “Taking out the North Wind should be our next priority. Once he’s gone, we can try to scan for the Merisite archives.”
“You probably should have silenced her,” Aulof said.
“It just—” I said. “It didn’t feel right. I guess in your words I’d say something like ‘I respected her honor’ or something like that.”
Aulof laughed. “It was your decision. Speaking of the angel, by the way, he’s in your vicinity. Be careful on the way back.”
“Noted,” I said. “How close?”
“I don’t think he’s incarnated the body he fought you with. The presence seems to be spread out over the area.”
“I guess I can cloak,” I said, but didn’t feel too happy about the prospect. I really needed to have Val take a look at it. I turned it over in my head, weighing the risks of asking him for help.
I exited the tunnel, glaring at the storm. “Hey Val—”
Lightning hit the ground next to me, flinging me into the air. In shock, I spun awkwardly and plowed into the muddy cobblestones, rolling several times. Scrambling to my feet, stinging like crazy, I hastily drew my force mace and extended it to its full length. The edge of my hakmir was smoking.
The North Wind was bearing down on me, crackling with fury. In one hand he held a sword made of lightning, and in the other he had a shield made of solid thunderclouds.
I spat mud out of my mouth as he stormed down the street at me. “Hey, got a deal for you. Remember how last time I ran off while you just kind of stood there? What if—”
Today, he said, raising his sword, you die.