The Magistrate’s guards were expecting us, and apparently the guys I’d sent running earlier today hadn’t convinced her to let us in. The ones at the door had tried to cause a scene, anyway. Their bodies lay peacefully on the side of the road.
I holstered my pulser and turned to Dal Salim.
“They’re alive,” I explained. “Just taking a nap. This is a nonlethal weapon.”
“Proceeding,” Val said, stepping forward. He patted Ell on the shoulder and unslung the concussion rifle from his back. It was a bulky device, four feet long, almost more of a bazooka than an assault rifle. A deft flick of a switch triggered a concerning electronic whine.
“Now, that one?” I said. “Very lethal. It’s supposed to be for buildings you don’t like. You hit a person with that, they basically lose their skeleton privileges.”
Val smiled mirthlessly and sighted on the crack between the doors.
“Cover your ears,” I told our unaugmented allies.
“Weapons free,” said the commander.
He depressed the trigger. A green dot appeared on the hinge. The whine stopped.
WHUMPF.
A wave of compressed air blew us all backward from the impact site, where the concussion rifle had just translated an eighteen-wheeler’s worth of kinetic force. The doors launched off their hinges, splintering under the strain. The blast wave tore tiles off the floor mosaics and ripped bricks out of the walls. I remembered there had been some furniture in that entryway; the memory was all that remained of it.
Val lowered the rifle. “Clear,” he said with a suspicious lack of smugness. Men were shouting inside the building, rapid footsteps in corridors we couldn’t see.
“He does this every time,” I explained to Dal Salim. “He’s pretending not to be smug, but he’s totally smug. You can tell.”
Dal Salim nodded sagely, which earned him a look from Val. Ell stared at Val, open-mouthed. The etheric radiation coming off her was uncomfortable. She didn’t have to go and make things weird!
Val passed me the rifle, which I took with less enthusiasm than I’d ever handled a weapon in my life. I handed him a sword.
“And now for our lovely hostage,” he said, offering her his hand.
Ell nodded anxiously, taking it in her own.
“You’ll be fine,” he told her. “This is safer than the last operation.”
He wrapped his other arm around her shoulder, escorting her into the ruined entryway. He held the sword to her throat.
“Here,” I said, pulling out a tablet for Dal Salim. “It’s what he sees and hears.”
Val ventured deeper into the building, keeping Ell close. It wouldn’t show up on Dal Salim’s feed, but following on my comm, I could hear Ell’s heart pounding. Her left hand, hidden behind her shawl, was balled in Val’s tunic. It tugged at him whenever their steps fell out of sync.
The door to the Magistrate’s court was guarded by three men brandishing swords.
“Alcebios!” one of them barked, a wiry Parmedi man with confidence written all over his face. It faltered slightly as Val raised an eyebrow.
“The Estheni goddess of betrayal,” Val said. “Interesting battlecry.”
“Release her!” the guard shouted.
Val scoffed. “If I were willing to listen to your instructions, there would be no point in arriving with leverage. Enough. The Magistrate was warned we were coming. You have no power to keep us out. Do you see the door behind me?”
He tracked their eyes as they shifted fearfully to the debris, taking in dozens of microexpressions in the space of a moment.
“Correct,” said Val. “You do not.”
Ell shivered in his grasp.
“The Calamity is come,” he intoned. “Yield.”
Looking rather spooked now, the guard who’d spoken first stepped aside. The ones behind him followed his lead with relief.
Val dragged Ell through the door.
The hall was more or less how it looked when I left—well, minus all the blood and the rest of the Alcebios bullshit—with chairs set up on either side of the hall. Erid and Pellonine sat on one side with a selection of sailors I recognized as ranking crew, while the other side had a bunch of Parmedi guys.
Dal Salim let out a breath as Val panned over them. I shot him a questioning look, but he ignored me.
The scribes were ensconced in the same alcove over on the side. If not for the fact that they were all wearing different clothes, it felt like they just hadn’t left since I’d been there. One of them gasped and shouted Ell’s name as they entered, which earned her a stern grip on the shoulder by an older woman in Oathkeeper robes.
The Magistrate sat with an air of displeasure on her throne at the head of the room. Her lips curled as Val made eye contact with her. The guards around the room began to step toward him.
The chorus of murmurs that had arisen with the pair’s entrance swelled as she rose to her feet, then lapsed into silence when she spoke.
“Alcebios,” she said.
“Ah, curses,” Val said in an absolute deadpan. “Woe and disaster. I am truly undone.”
He shoved Ell roughly toward the scribes. She ran, playing her part with maybe too much authenticity.
“My apologies for the presumption,” he said, nodding in Ell’s direction. “After my companion was almost murdered in this room, we felt some leverage was necessary.”
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“Let’s hope this works,” I said, watching her go. In moments, Ell was buried in hugs by three of her fellow scribes.
“It will,” said Val. “I almost wish it wouldn’t.”
*
Hand amplifiers can coerce a target’s perception in the moment, but their power of persuasion fades over time. That’s why the Eifni Org field doctrine for enlisting auxiliaries is built to work without them. In the hours Val spent alone with her, under the pretense of answering her question, he immediately got to work.
Worldviews only shift one proposition at a time. It was no use trying to get Ell to accept, all at once, that every god is a predator, that gods can be killed, and that we were here from another world to do just that. So we would go down the script, one point at a time, until Ell attained full auxiliary status. At that point we could ship her off to Veles, safe from Kives’s clutches. Oracles can’t see across heterocausal boundaries.
Of course, given the oracle in question, Ell would be in for a lengthy period in memetic quarantine, but that was probably an unnecessary precaution.
Protocol dictated one of several memetic attack strategies, depending on the form of piety endemic to the target’s culture. Estheni culture would be considered Type 1D: high respect polytheistic regime with mythological interpantheonic conflict. Ell already believed that her gods were at each other’s throats all the time—another suspiciously helpful move by Kives, what with the Calamity theology she’d prepared ahead of our arrival—so it was simple enough to tell her we were picking sides.
I’d already had anti-theist sentiments when Eifni picked me up, so I’d never needed to go through this part of the process. Ell would need time to work up to the idea that every god needed to die. In the meantime, we’d let her believe that we were fighting some gods on behalf of other gods. There wasn’t much of a practical difference in terms of what we’d need her to do.
That left the question of whether it was acceptable for mere mortals to act directly against a god. That might have been an issue if we weren’t going after Horcutio; the only less-loved god was Alcebios. Ell was an ordained Oathkeeper, if on the administrative side of the institution—the only thing stopping her from acting against Horcutio was that hidden belief that the gods can’t be stopped. The same belief the commander had helped me uproot months ago.
Ell might have had a harder time uprooting that one, but—as if by sheer coincidence—the mightiest angel of Horcutio had just been struck down, and who’d pulled the lyre string that ended him?
She wasn’t quite on our side yet. But she had a head full of Velean propaganda, a communication device hidden inside a gifted earring, and a promise to meet her soulmate at an out-of-the way inn tonight. On paper, she was ours. But who knew what that meant when Kives had a seat at the game board?
*
The Magistrate examined Val for a long moment, examining him like she’d found a dead insect in her kitchen and was wondering what she needed to do in case there were more of them.
“Apology accepted,” she said eventually. “Do go and convey my regards to your murdered companion. Preferably at the soonest opportunity.”
“By your will,” Val said, then knelt. “Magistrate Filorius, the heralds of the Calamity offer our respects. As a gesture of goodwill, we have slain the being known as the North Wind. Your island is free.”
“Bullshit,” Erid interjected.
Val turned, favoring her with an empty smile, and stood. The guards kept slowly advancing on him, which he ignored.
“Surrender your blade,” said the Magistrate.
“For various cultural reasons, I am not permitted to do so,” he said, focusing intently on the blade. A translation engine inside the device began to reshape the blade, rounding the edges until the blade was a thin cylinder. “I hope this will suffice.”
The Magistrate sat down, waving a hand dismissively. “As long as the Magistrate’s Peace is obeyed, work whatever magic tricks you want. But we are rapidly approaching the point where I insist that you work them elsewhere. I am not impressed by tricks. If you’re not just here to perform, get to the point.”
“The Calamity is upon you,” Val said, addressing his remarks to the room at large. “This age is coming to an end. Your actions in these waters have weakened Horcutio. His end approaches. The only question is whether his power passes uninherited. Honored admirals, this opportunity I bring you. The Crown of Horcutio lies on the hidden island of Phabos, sacred to Horcutio and now undefended. Whoever claims it will have dominion of these seas.”
Val looked expectantly at Pellonine and Erid, then at the admiral of the Parmedi delegation. I felt Dal Salim stiffen next to me, and turned to see what was up.
The unflappable man who’d born insult, slavery, violence, and even divine wrath with a calm smile now wore an expression of naked fear.
*
Dal Salim wasn’t considered an auxiliary according to Eifni field protocol. The field manuals had ranks that described how much you were able to trust someone with mission objectives, and in order to hit “auxiliary” you needed to have a comm socket installed. Outfitting an auxiliary with a comm makes it easier to coordinate in the field, and also ensures the integrity of deicide team as an operational unit. It’s not like we surveil people all the time, but the comm gives us all the necessary metadata to mathematically prove that they’re not just playing along with the program in order to screw us down the road.
Of course, that was small comfort in the face of an enemy who could weaponize determinism itself. The field manuals had always struck me as obnoxiously over-prepared, but the existence of Kives was forcing me to consider that maybe they weren’t paranoid enough.
Dal Salim wouldn’t have that problem. He’d refused the offer to become an auxiliary. He’d never experience the expanded consciousness that comes with a comm, and one day he’d die and never return. He had a sense of solidity to him that made me hope he’d stick around long enough to reincarnate into a baby somewhere, but natural reincarnation is a crapshoot. Adult souls don’t mesh well with infant bodies, and most of his past life would end up degrading or being overwritten before his new body could take advantage of the adult soul piloting it. When Dal Salim died, Dal Salim would be gone.
But he was here for now, at least. We had time to work on him, even if the commander told me it was pointless. “I’m sorry, Lilith,” he’d told me. “Dal Salim is waiting to die.”
I knew he’d try to justify it with his centuries of life experience, so I didn’t argue. But I also didn’t agree.
It was a moot point anyways. We didn’t need an auxiliary for this part of the plan. We just needed an ex-pirate who knew the location of the secret island. Dal Salim had agreed to speak to the assembled parties, on the condition that we avoid naming him during the event.
“Why?” I’d asked him. “I know it’s weird to start asking now, but fuck it. Why the fuck are you helping us kill your god?”
“My god left me,” he’d replied. “Or I left him. Oru will take me in time. But now, I am not killing a god, I think.”
He’d stared off into space for a moment, refocusing on me with a gentle smile.
“I am helping a friend.”
My eyes malfunctioned a bit. They got kinda blurry, and my tear ducts started overproducing. Look, I’m serious, it was a legitimate technical problem. Shut up.
*
“You good, dude?” I asked.
“I cannot go,” he said softly.
“What?” I said. “We were gonna use your fake name and everything.”
His expression was wry. “I should have known this would happen. Those who drink too lightly of life find their cups overflow.”
“Get him moving,” the commander said.
“Dal Salim,” I said hesitantly. “We’re gonna need you real soon. Did you recognize one of the Parmedi guys?”
“What use are secrets now?” Dal Salim sighed. “Yes. Their admiral is Dal Kalim Zelekhir. The crown prince of the Parmedi Empire.”
“Your brother,” I said in the same moment he said “my brother.”
Dal Salim blinked. “You knew?”
“No, but I had a really horrible guess.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Guys, he’s not going in there.”
“Dictate the directions,” Val subvocalized. “We can adapt. Go.”
“Fucking Kives,” I muttered.
Val had just announced that we knew the directions because of a pirate who’d been there. Now, he said—in elevated formal language that had me rolling my eyes—each navy would be provided with a herald to show the way.
“Dal Salim!” Erid shouted out. “You’re just repeating the incoherent mumblings of that crusty old pirate and passing it off as a prophecy!”
The Parmedi admiral looked at her suddenly. “Dal Salim?”
“You know him?” she drawled.
Dal Kalim smiled politely. “No, perhaps not. Forgive me; it was just an idle thought.”
Back outside the mansion, Dal Salim’s eyes were wide. Well, shit.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, pushing Dal Salim away toward an exit street. “I’m making an executive decision here. Kives bullshit inbound. Thanks for the help, buddy, but we’re getting you out of here.”