I was filled with an unaccountable nervousness as I approached the Fool’s Errand. It kinda made sense—getting stabbed in the kidney, along with all the horrible events that had followed, had to leave something of a mark on my brain. But as I meditated on the feeling, trying to trace it back through the lines of my psyche, that explanation… didn’t feel right. The tension was in all the wrong places in my body.
If I’d felt like I was walking into a combat situation, I would have felt more energy in my arms, like I was getting ready to block a blow or strike an enemy. This tension was more in the shoulders, trying to get me to hunch them in, shifting my steps toward more of a shuffle. I sulked toward the ship like my parents had called me downstairs to yell about my grades.
I almost tripped as my brain made the connection. Was I afraid that Erid disapproved of me?
Maybe Aulof was right about those parental issues, I thought.
Well, fuck that. I reached out for the anger at my core and felt it blaze up through me, weaving through my spine into my limbs. I stepped through into the crystal clarity of ak ha var, re-weighting the tapestry of my past memories into a weapon that would carry me through this fight. Fresh memories would be sufficient here: I just needed to seize control of my emotions, not convince my subconscious I was a different person altogether.
I was the defiant warrior, stepping out alone, outnumbered, and unquestionably confident in victory.
I was the passionate friend, pushing Dal Salim to step into the future with us.
I was the hammer of the Old Ways, a blade unsheathed against the mightiest angel of the sea.
Shoulders straight and head held high, I strode confidently past the watchman of the Fool’s Errand. He didn’t challenge me. I liked to think it was because I projected a strong impression of belonging there, but I wasn’t willing to drop out of invisibility to check.
I smiled fondly at the familiarity of the ship. I’d killed my first demigod of the mission right over there, the dread pirate whose name was just on the tip of my tongue. Up on the deck to my right, I’d convinced Erid to let me test out my cool new sword on a bunch of pirates.
My smile fell. I’d gotten the word “pirate” from my comm’s translation of an Estheni word, but comm translation wasn’t free of implication disjuncts. Were the pirated I’d killed actually the cliched scallywags, raping and pillaging across the high seas, or were they just… people?
I thought about the slaves that had been chained to the rowing benches. People they might have been, but people could suck. Maybe there were no good guys here, just a bunch of people who had the bad luck to be born before the Geneva Convention. To build a world that was actually good, Eifni Org would have to break everything down and get them all to stop being so savage.
I happened to pass Enochletes on the way in—the kid looked like he’d seen better days—so I stole his sword. Erid wasn’t in her cabin. I poked around a couple places before I heard her voice in conversation with Pellonine’s. They weren’t talking about me, so there wasn’t really an appropriate dramatic moment to barge in and reveal myself. After waiting for one for a couple minutes, I just gave up and opened the door.
The two women looked up sharply as I entered, but didn’t seem very surprised to see me here. Erid didn’t draw on me, which was a little awkward after I’d gone through all the trouble to steal a sword for self-defense. Pellonine watched my sword warily, while Erid took one look at my face and barked out a laugh.
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re screwed in the head?” she said by way of greeting.
“You literally stabbed me two days ago,” I retorted. “They had to replace. my fucking kidneys. Like hell I’m walking in here without a weapon.”
Erid waved me off. “Where’s your pet?”
I blinked, momentarily unsure where I was. My family did have a dog, but how did she—
“Dal Salim,” Pellonine said in a much more diplomatic tone. I shot her a glance, finding it impossible to get a handle on her from body language alone. Fortunately, I had a military-grade comm that could read beyond body language.
Pellonine was terrified. She was treating me like some kind of bomb. I guess that was kind of reasonable, given everything she’d seen me do.
I looked around for something to sit on. There wasn’t anything convenient, so I just sat down on the floor, back to the wall, sword resting on my knees. It felt nostalgic, like I was gossiping with the girls back in my college dorm. Except back then I wasn’t considered an apocalyptic monster, so it wasn’t a power move to do it.
“He’s done. That whole thing was kind of an impulse decision, to be honest with you. I didn’t see things playing out the way they ended up doing. We’re dropping him off here. He can make his own way.”
Erid smirked. “But not before he told you how to get to Phabos, eh?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been there too. It’s not that big a deal.”
Pellonine leaned forward. “Please take my words in good faith, Danou. I mean no offense. But I know the honored captain, and I believe she’s curious—given the somewhat chaotic nature of your interests—about what becomes of your partners when your association ends.”
Erid snorted, but didn’t contradict her.
“Oh,” I said. “Don’t worry, then. He’s happy. We parted as friends.”
“Always a good day to hear a pirate’s happy,” said Erid. “You know what I think, Idiot?”
I closed my eyes. “Rarely.”
“I think you need us,” said Erid. “I think for all your mythmaking and posturing, there aren’t that many of you, or otherwise you wouldn’t have sent an inexperienced little girl who got herself stabbed last time she took this assignment. I think you’re stuck.”
“That’s nice,” I said without opening my eyes. “I could say you’re full of shit, but something tells me I don’t have a lot of credibility here.”
According to my comm, Pellonine was getting pissed at Erid for provoking me like this, but she wasn’t really my concern. I had to keep Erid focused on the Horcutio project.
“Credibility?” Erid laughed. “Sealord’s pubes, no. It went to the deeps with Friend of Heaven.”
“That’s about what I figured,” I sighed. “I’m not really hearing a point.”
“The point is, you’re not in the position you want us to think you are. And even if you’ve got the honored admiral fooled”—her tone was dripping with sarcasm, and I felt Pellonine stiffen—“I ain’t buying it. If you want to navigate, then navigate. But no more of your Calamity showboating, no more pushing us to make the decisions you want. I don’t know your game, but I know we ain’t parting as friends. The Fool’s Errand sails the day after tomorrow. Dawn. Until then?”
I opened my eyes. Erid leaned in, anger sweeping over her face like a storm.
“Get the fuck off my ship.”
I met her gaze, feeling… surprisingly calm. I’d expected this to hurt—and it did. I’d always thought she was cool and I wanted her to like me. But somewhere along the way, that part had stopped mattering. I’d hurt her too. She’d tried to mentor me when we met, in a disastrous, adversarial way, and I’d stabbed her in the back and gotten her people killed. Even me using the same name as back then probably counted as a weird kind of continual trauma.
I thought back to the Vitares family and the ways I’d caused them to suffer. Did they hate me now, the way Erid hated me? Was this my life now? Worming my way into people’s lives only to bring those lives crashing down around their shoulders?
At the end of the day, Erid had suffered enough from me.
“Fair enough,” I said, pushing myself upright. “See you in two days. Oh, and don’t be too hard on Enochletes.”
“What for?” Pellonine asked.
“Losing this,” I said, tossing the stolen sword into the middle of the room. When they looked up, I was gone.
There was a pause.
“You aren’t fooling anyone,” Erid called out. “Close the damn door.”
The door sheepishly closed.
*
It was time to say goodbye to Dal Salim.
He wasn’t a full auxiliary. Never would be. There were protocols for that case: practical, minimalist ceremonies to honor an ally of Veles who took the field for our cause. Suitable for a diversity of field conditions, but only if they’d accepted a comm.
But Dal Salim had been by my side for this whole campaign, and something was owed there. I couldn’t tell you what, exactly. But I went with him to meet the local group of Dancers, who we were hoping could help him disappear.
Val and Aulof went with me. Markus was still recovering from the body swap and remained on the ship. He was still going by Markus, even though he was wearing a female body now. With Val present, it was an open question whether Ell might find an excuse to join us, but apparently she was busy tonight. Negotiations were underway between the superpowers, treaties were being drafted, and every scribe on the island was wearing out their wrists and eyesight in the process.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
With the storm gone and the North Wind defeated, Ethelios was returning to normal. The streets were starting to fill again—slowly, cautiously—almost reaching the level of activity we’d seen when we arrived. It took attention to avoid bumping into people. We walked slowly, without breaking into a footrace this time. The mood wasn’t right for that, and for all his virtues, Dal Salim didn’t really match Markus’s energy.
We’d been told where to find the encampment. Dancers weren’t totally welcome anywhere the Estheni had a foothold—that tends to happen when your religion openly celebrates its freedom from the strict social regimentation of your society. They’d been pushed to the margins of the island, an open slope too steep to build on. A handful of taller buildings hid their camp from sight until the final approach: a collection of colorful, weathered tents and terraced platforms made from driftwood and old lumber from the docks.
There were a lot of children. They outnumbered the adults by something like two to one, which raised a lot of sustainability questions. I didn’t ask. The Dancers had cleared out a handful of flat areas higher up the slope, and the children were currently chasing each other around.
Dal Salim had been silent on the way. He smiled when he saw the kids.
“The heart will always find a home,” he remarked, watching them play.
“I have no idea what that means,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m going to miss you, buddy.”
“The richness of the journey belies the heart’s breadth it lasted,” he replied, wrapping his arm around me in a side hug. “Grow well, Lilindi.”
“Oh, c’mon,” I said. “I’m immortal. You don’t actually know I’m younger than you.”
Aulof snorted.
“Traitor,” I muttered.
We hiked up the path, following the switchbacks that had been worn into the slope. They noticed our approach before long. I picked up several worried conversations, along with the familiar voice of Tijal—the food cart person who’d led us to the temple of Horcutio.
Tijal came down the path before we reached the encampment proper, arms wide and and giving off an etheric signal of cautious calculation. The demigod’s blessing was still active, obscuring their gender from noetic perception. It was a little weird that my comm wasn’t freaking out about it, but that happened sometimes. Not every blessing is a military threat. I just hadn’t been assigned to the kind of missions where you run into those until now.
“Welcome, friends!” Tijal announced with an actor’s smile. Too genuine. “If you’ve come for my food, I’m afraid Kul Hammared has charge of the cookware today.” They shifted to a stage whisper. “Between you and me, he’s stingy with the salt.”
They winked at us. “I’ll be back at my stall tomorrow, now that the storm has passed. Why don’t you come back then?”
“We’ll be glad to visit,” Aulof said. “Please excuse the surprise visit. We’re here to ask a favor.”
“We need to make this this guy makes it out of here safely,” I said, indicating Dal Salim.
Tijal inspected Dal Salim curiously. “I know you, don’t I?”
“Dal Salim,” Dal Salim said. “A fond customer of yours.”
Tijal snapped their fingers. “Dal Salim! Peace be upon you! I remember now. The poet.”
“Peace be within you,” Dal Salim replied, bowing his head. “I have no wish to bring my storm to you and your bonds.”
“That’s the irony of wishes,” Tijal quipped, looking over the rest of our party. “And I suppose the rest of you are—what, bodyguards?”
“An honor guard, perhaps,” Val said.
Tijal nodded seriously. “That speaks well of you. Truly. In that case, there is a message I think you need to hear.”
We exchanged glances.
“Kives,” was all I said, speaking over comms.
“Stop,” the commander ordered. “Paranoid rumination is a known indoctrination vector.”
“In the worst case, we shoot Tijal,” Val added.
“What a waste of talent that would be,” Aulof said. He sent us all a recording of his sense memory the moment he’d bitten into Tijal’s street food.
“Truly regrettable, but needs must,” Val said.
“Can we try not shooting anyone?” I said, annoyed. “We’re here for Dal Salim.”
I got amused acquiescence from the others, which—while not quite condescending—made me grit my teeth.
“Of course,” Aulof told Tijal. “Lead on.”
Tijal bowed and turned around, beckoning us after them with an effete twirl of their hand. They pranced up the path, leading us through the encampment. We passed hesitant and welcoming faces both, greetings shouted across the slope and gazes averted up close. Aulof had somehow transformed into a Dancer himself, adopting a loose, jaunty walk and a flirtatious smile he deployed like a cowboy quick-drawing a revolver. Dal Salim carried a little pool of dignity with him, humbly welcoming the attention of those around him as if conversation were a gift he gladly gave them.
Val stayed aloof, observing the camp curiously. After a moment, I realized I was doing that too.
Suddenly, my comm picked up another demigod. My head whipped around to find the target, only to meet a familiar gaze. It was Rodi, the demigod of Horcutio I’d fought back on Baros with the trap-making ability. He nodded to me. The bottom dropped out of my stomach.
I looked back at the kids near the top of the slope. I couldn’t recognize any of them—I should have paid more attention—but this community really was too small to have this many children.
Unless, for some reason, a boatload of orphans had just arrived in the wake of a battle, and the Dancers had taken them in.
Tijal brought Dal Salim over to a pair of women—romantic partners, according to my comm readings—and delegated him to their care.
Aulof held out his hand.
“Our thanks to you,” he said. “May courage guide your spear until the last of your battles.”
Dal Salim grasped him by the arm in a warrior’s greeting—“May peace follow you for the rest of your days,” he said—and then Aulof stepped away.
Dal Salim nodded to Val. Val nodded back.
Then it was my turn.
“I don’t know what to say, man,” I said after a moment. “I’m bad at goodbyes.”
“You wouldn’t understand mine anyway,” Dal Salim said with a straight face.
“Hey!” I said, fighting the grin creeping over my face, but Dal Salim was grinning now too and we couldn’t stop the laughter that followed. I threw my arms around him. The positioning was a little awkward—I had to tilt my head away at a weird angle to avoid taking a chin to the forehead—but it was a good hug. He squeezed once and released me.
“I thought it might be best if I were forgotten,” he said. “Now, I think, I am content to be remembered, for as long as it pleases you to carry my memory.”
I tapped the side of my head.
“It’s not just in here,” I said. “The adventures of Dal Salim will live forever in some storage center back home.“
Dal Salim laughed.
“I hadn’t thought mortality would be so hard to retain,” he said. “Go to your friends, Lilindi.”
I looked over my shoulder, where Aulof and Val were following Tijal further up the slope.
“I won’t forget you,” I promised him, and jogged after them.
*
I can’t confirm or deny that there were any tears after that, but there certainly weren’t any left by the time I caught up with the group.
We passed the flat area where the kids were playing. I tried to shove down all the feelings of guilt that came with them—I’d done enough, hadn’t I? I’d saved them from the disaster at Baros. Sure, arguably I was the reason they needed to be saved in the first place, but what were we supposed to do—not save everyone here?
Well, technically it would be their descendants we were saving, since it was unlikely that uplift was going to happen here within a generation. Or at all, assuming this whole Kives program ended up working out.
What was I even doing here?
I was trying to be moral. I was trying to care about the people we collided with, trying to minimize the harm to them. But what was the point if they were all just going to die anyways and get eaten by a god?
There was that old story about the kid on the beach, tossing starfish back into the ocean. And after being told he couldn’t save all of them, he tossed another one in and replied “saved that one, though.” And that’s heartwarming and everything but like, when you get down to it, what did it mean to save a starfish in this analogy? What was I saving these people from?
I’m sure Val had an equation for that. I could just imagine him throwing the math up on the big screen back on the Ragnar, talking me through the utter pointlessness of everything I was doing. Here a term for the suffering I was preventing, there a term denoting the measurement of my own discomfort. The mathematical formula correcting for subjective bias—canceling out my preferences, substituting the Standard Reference equations. And then he’d take those numbers and show how mercy was just a rounding error compared to the importance of the deicide project.
Look, he’d say. Paraphysics isn’t intuitive. Your intuition reflects your life and your experiences—not the truth. None of us have the right to put sentiment above the math. You earn the right to have opinions when those opinions are true; if not, that which can be destroyed by the truth, should be. We have robust mathematical models defining what objectively matters. You can disagree. But you will be wrong.
I didn’t know what I’d say to that. Maybe there wasn’t an answer and I just had to suck it up. But I was getting worried, because it was increasingly clear that all the mathematical justifications in the world couldn’t stop me from feeling like shit about this.
We reached the top of the slope. There was a small meadow, dotted with brightflowers, with a breathtaking view of the sea. Bright blue waves rolled gently over the horizon. I heard birds calling, the lively sounds of the Dancer camp behind us, and the town behind them. I hadn’t noticed the sunlight until now—obviously, it wasn’t dark, but you just don’t notice the light until it streaks through pink clouds and makes the colors of your world warmer.
“We’ll have privacy here,” Tijal said. “You said you were pilgrims, right?”
Aulof pinged caution. “No, but I see how you might have gotten the impression.”
“My mistake,” Tijal said with an easy smile that didn’t match the tension they were radiating in etherspace. “Well, I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors. The Estheni Calamity has begun. Might have something to do with the North Wind camping out here—may Horcutio turn his gaze away.”
Tijal spat to the side—a superstitious gesture. Our comms warned us of mild divine activity.
Aulof’s hand strayed to an innocuous fold in his clothing.
“Frankly, I’m doubtful that the Calamity is real,” Val said.
“Is that so?” Tijal asked. “Maybe you’re right. But just in case, I’d like you to know that we have no temples. Rucks does, and I’m sure the Varasites keep them well. But for the faithful, we are the temple. The laws of hospitality are sacred to Rucks. No harm will befall a guest in good faith.”
“You said you had a message?” I asked. “Who’s it from?”
“Why, from Rucks,” Tijal said, face turning sharp. “I don’t speak for the Shifter, but she came to me in a dream with a prophecy. Knock down any temple you like—just not this one. You lied to me, strangers. Hospitality does not protect you, and woe to you if you press your luck.”
The commander’s hand was inside his shawl now.
“We’re not here to cause trouble,” I said hastily. “You know Dal Salim’s not one of us. Please. We just want to get him out of here safely. No one has to get hurt.”
“Yeah?” Tijal said. “Tell that to the kids down there.”
Divine energy spiked. My comm screamed an alarm and I reflexively threw all my spare power to the etheric shielding. The commander fired a shot, but Tijal was gone.
“I’m compromised!” Aulof yelled, then fell to the ground.
“Godfire,” Val snarled. “Shield breach. It’s in the network.”
“Who’s in the network?!” I shouted.
“It’s Rucks,” Val said. “Close off your network access! Markus, you too! Refuse all incoming communication!”
Markus didn’t respond.
“Fuck,” I said, following Val’s directions. “How’d he get past the firewall?”
“One of us might be indoctrinated,” said Val, nudging Aulof’s body with a foot. “If not, Rucks might have found a bypass, or lucked into something. Blocking network access seems to—”
He fell over, unresponsive.
I stared at the body with a creeping sense of dread. The hell was I supposed to do now? If Rucks didn’t need the network to get us, then should I risk turning it back on?
With sudden, cold clarity, I realized I might be the last living crew member of the Ragnar. If Rucks killed me, the only Velean presence on Theria would be the Face Sponge. And from what I knew of commander Blackfin, he wouldn’t hesitate for an instant to destroy the planet.
My comm registered an incoming contact request.
From Aulof.
I stared at the unmoving body on the ground. Fat fucking chance, Rucks.
Okay, think, Lilith. What did I need to do to stay alive? Could I save the others? I had next to no information here—even Val didn’t know the form of the attack. I needed to get back to the ship. Could I make it there? The noises from the camp had vanished along with Tijal, so either they were all hiding or something else was going on.
When the divine contact started, it was like a giggle. Like when you’re a kid, and Mom is tickling you and you’re trying not to laugh. And you fight it and fight it, try to clench down, try to stop the laughter from escaping but—
I burst out laughing. Everything went black.