I was all set to protest my innocence to Oathkeeper Vanerel, but there was only one response to being asked if I’d seen an invisible girl, so all that prep work got thrown out.

“What? That’s a contradiction in terms,” I said. “If I could see an invisible girl she wouldn’t be invisible.”

Vanerel blinked, then bullied onward. “I think we both know that’s not the real reason you haven’t seen one. Lady Ajarel of Salaphi, correct?”

“Um,” I said.

Was I? I was and I wasn’t, and either answer could read as a lie depending on how her truth-detection blessing functioned. There were too many unknowns here.

I frantically went over what I knew about Oathkeepers. They were supposedly able to detect deceit, but we hadn’t done an etheric analysis of how that worked. Theoretically Falerior shouldn’t have been able to tell when I was lying, but apparently the Bullshit Rod of Detect Lilith was specifically an anti-whisper countermeasure and not like a putting your hand on a Bible before testifying in court—which, while we’re on the topic, how the fuck was I supposed to know that? So if he’d known I was dodgy from the get-go, maybe using the hand amplifier to cancel out my deception had just forced him to conclude nothing I said could be trusted.

“It’s not a difficult question,” said Vanarel, taking a step toward me.

Fuck it. If you’re going to fall, fall forward.

“Okay, look, lady,” I said, glaring at her. “I know you all profiled me and I probably look suspicious as hell. Fine. So be it. Forgive me if I don’t want to say anything incriminating. But also, you know what? I don’t know what fucking counts as far as your lie detection thingy goes. As of this morning I’m Lady Ajarel Vitares. So I think that means I’m not Ajarel of Salaphi anymore? Or at least it’s not as true as the current name? But like, I don’t know, do I really belong in the family? Like, come on, they’ve only known me for a couple mo—thessim, and like I know there’s the whole life debt thing but I don’t even know if they really like me! Roel’s just lonely because none of the other kids in her peer group have the same interests, and I’m pretty sure Kuril doesn’t even approve of me but she’s desperate and she’s stuck with me anyways so might as well, right? I mean, fuck, am I Lady Ajarel Vitares? I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the one with the fucking truth vision.”

Vanerel whistled. “Sounds like you’ve got some thinking to do.”

“Not helpful, lady,” I said, but honestly it was kind of a weight off my shoulders to say all that to someone, so my tone was grateful.

She closed the distance and grabbed my arm. “How ‘bout we chat about it on the way back to the Javeiron.”

“Woah woah woah,” I said. “You can’t fucking abduct me in broad daylight! I’m graced!”

“They always say that,” said Vanerel. “Funny thing about that is you ain’t got the arm strength to stop me.”

“Maybe that means you should stop yourself,” I said, pressing my hand amplifier to the wrist that was holding me. I flicked it to one of my presets, a cocktail of overwhelming shame and remorse, with top notes of self-loathing and misery. I called it the Mom Special. Even from the secondhand blowback I was cringing at how corny that clapback was.

“Girl, I have a job to do,” she said. “I’ll stop myself when I’m good and ready. And get that thing off my arm. I don’t know what fortune-teller you bought it from, but she stole your money.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “You don’t feel bad about what you do?” I prodded as she dragged me down the ramp.

“I serve the god of justice, girl.”

I subvocalized a warning to the rest of the team. “Hey, uh, quick update, hand amps don’t work on Oathkeepers.” I shoved the hand amp back in its hidden pocket and fished around for my pulser.

“So what’s all this about not feelin’ like you belong? The priest said you were a Vitares, didn’t he?”

“You’re literally dragging me off for an interrogation,” I said, slipping the pulser into my hand. We were almost out of the arena now. “Why are you helping me with my personal issues?”

“It’s no reason not to be kind,” she said.

“Fair enough,” I said, and pulsed her. Then I pulsed her again.

“How many of those things have you got?” Vanerel asked. “Goddesses, Ajarel.”

“Fucking bullshit,” I spat. My hand tightened around the pulser grip.

Vanerel laughed. “How long have you been carrying those arou—”

I snapped. The pulser was accelerating towards her face before I even noticed I’d thrown it. It caught her right under the eye. She gave a throaty shout and released my arm on reflex, hands moving to protect her face.

Fuck the fancy sci-fi weapons. I was a weapon.

I followed my academy training, pivoting to the side and shoving her while my ankle hooked around her load-bearing foot. It was the best option here that didn’t cause permanent damage. Vanerel went straight to the ground.

She’d probably had decades of experience on me, but I was younger and I had the element of surprise, and in a fight that can make all the difference. She wasn’t armed, but I wasn’t about to get into a fistfight with a hardboiled old lady in chainmail.

This would be the part where the action movie heroes of my childhood would go for a knockout blow to the head, but all the mooks in those movies probably ended up with brain damage and the Oathkeepers were definitely going to hit me with a round of police brutality if I did that. So instead I just yelled at her.

“I’m not a whisper!” I shouted while she scrambled upright. “I didn’t hurt Roel! Leave me alone!”

I activated my cloak. I snagged my pulser where it was laying on the ground—having picked up a few scrapes the commander would not be happy about—and ran for the judges’ podium. The Oathkeepers might have a bullshit wand to detect me, but the lady who was close enough to be a problem had no way to talk to the guy who was holding it. Later, suckers.

“Update,” I subvocalized. “Pulsers don’t work on them either. Or at least on this one.”

“It looked like it worked from what I saw,” Markus laughed. He must be watching my feed.

“Abby—,” Val started.

“Already on it,” she replied. “I have eyes on Falerior. I can get you a deep scan.”

Val treated us all to the etheric impression of a throaty chuckle. Normally when he laughed like that, someone was about to die.

“Who are we murking?” I said.

“Much has been made of the corrupting madness of Alcebios,” he said. “But given the number of anti-whisper countermeasures they have available, who else might that blessing be effective against?”

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“Ha! Fuck them!”

Val’s voice was inquisitive. “Them?”

“Uh,” I said. “You know. What’s-his-face.”

“She means,” said Abby. “Hm. Val, there’s an anti-memetic effect active in the area. Our Merisite opponent is onsite.”

“Let’s fucking go,” I snarled. “I don’t remember who they are, but I hate them so much.”

“Negative, Lilith, Markus is almost up. Get that relay to the judge’s podium.”

“Yes’m. My MDO is clear,” I said. “Abby? Markus?”

“Clear,” said Abby.

“Lilith,” Markus said in the very patient tones of someone who was waiting for me to remember he was currently naked except for a glorified loincloth and had nowhere to hide an infrared camera.

“It’s been a long day.”

“It’s not even noon.”

“It’s been a really long day.”

“There’s two people ahead of me,” Markus said. “Can you make it in time?”

“We’re gonna find out,” I said. I booked it.

The cloak got me close to the podium with a minute to spare. Onto the next obstacle: the eye rod was pointing directly toward me, and if I approached the podium while cloaked, the Oathkeepers would guess I’d messed with it somehow. They might guess anyways, but so far all they had on me was that I’d assaulted one of them arresting me for a crime I didn’t commit. Which, uh, would have been pretty bad back on Earth, but also grabbing me without a formal warrant or anything was all sorts of out-of-line if we were using Earth rules. I could probably deal with it.

I quickly stripped off several of my more expensive accessories and my reversible shawl. The accessories went into a pouch inside my skirt, the shawl went back on with the darker-shaded inside facing out. I let out the large ringlets in my hairdo and hastily tied it into a small ponytail on top of the existing mess of braids; it wouldn’t look pretty but it would look different.

I decloaked slowly, letting the people around me acclimate to my presence instead of suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Out came the amplifier relay, a clay mug we’d stolen from the arena grounds and synced to the resonator back at the Ragnar.

“Hey you,” I said, grabbing an attendant. “Top me off.” I handed him three drobol, which was overkill, but I was in a hurry. He nodded obsequiously and reached for one of the wineskins slung over his back.

“The good one,” I corrected him.

He paused, then reached for a different wineskin. One happy consequence from Isseret’s tutelage: I knew how to identify the good booze at stadiums. Only the best for our esteemed judges.

I saw Falerior patrolling along the edge of the arena grounds. He was holding the Bullshit Wand loosely at his side, but his attention was on the stands, sweeping over the audience. I tried to pull up Abby’s lessons on posture and bearing, letting myself blend in with the crowd. Don’t let yourself be too stiff. Don’t look around suspiciously. Move with purpose, but not so aggressively that you draw attention.

Falerior’s eyes passed over me. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Mug of wine in hand, I approached the judges’ podium as they listened to some well-toned naked dude sing about some battle I’d never heard of. Gritting my teeth against my comm’s attempt to contort spears enjoining like clashing teeth into three syllables, I set the mug down next to the nearest judge.

“A gift,” I told him, then withdrew before he could ask any awkward questions like “why?” or “from who?”

“Mission accomplished,” I said, vanishing back into the crowd. “Markus, Val, it’s all your show now.”

“Want to watch?” said Val.

“I gotta look for, uh, the fucking person.” I hopped on his feed anyway.

“I’m blocked here too,” said Markus. “Have these competitions been directly disrupted yet?”

“No,” said Val.

“I’ll wrap things up with the Oathkeepers, then,” I said. “Maybe we can pivot them against her.”

“I’ll move to support,” said Abby.

It was time. Markus was up on stage.

“O proud daughters of Vitareas!” he bellowed. “Today I will sing for you The Lay of Kirigiel!”

That got a decent reaction from the crowd; we’d picked something well-known enough that obscurity wouldn’t be a problem. But our real hidden ace was miles away, cracking his fingers in front of the now fully assembled notion organ. Its console was halfway between an organ and an arcade game: three rows of twelve keys each on the right, and on the left a plunge grip designed to accept your whole forearm for maximum maneuverability or something. A digital display showed a three-dimensional representation of the waveforms being produced at Markus’s location.

“We got this, buddy. They fall,” Markus said.

“They die,” Val replied.

Val pressed the first key as Markus let his first note fly, and the effect was beautiful. Literally, that was the key Val was pressing, while modulating the undertones with the left-hand grip. The entire arena was spellbound—even Falerior, distracted from his pursuit by the transcendent majesty of Markus’s song.

Then the song began in earnest. Markus was passable on musical skill—certainly in the top half of the randos in this competition—but with the addition of the notion organ, the song was grander than anything Theria had ever heard.

With lightning-fast twitches of his arm, Val shunted etheric tones onto different channels of the notion organ, expanding them or drawing them in. The keyboard wasn’t laid out like an Earth piano (the keys were all the same size), and Val didn’t play it like one either. Every key was quickly and skillfully depressed in sequence, each time like he was setting some switch on a nuclear launch console, until another twitch of his arm loaded the frequency into the chamber and fired it on another etheric channel.

The story of Kirigiel took shape more viscerally than any other story I’d heard—her common origins as the daughter of an unjustly disgraced blacksmith (with a mere twist of inflection, Markus seemingly impressed on us the shame and squalor of her upbringing); her desire to bring the truth to light; her initiation as an Oathkeeper; and the mystery she solved that no one else could.

I was enraptured, and so was everyone else. (Channel seven on Val’s notion organ was outputting a sense of fascination.) Feelings swelled and receded with Markus’s voice as we experienced every emotional beat of the song. We were swept along with Kirigiel as she followed her destiny and saved the Empress from a deadly plot.

And through it all, a clay mug on the judges’ podium broadcast the feeling that this, surely, was excellence worthy of recognition. Sorry, kids. We’ve got a god to kill. You can feel your own feelings some other time.

Markus won laurels right there. That was his second pair; one more and we were set for the Kabidiad. Now all I had to do was stay out of jail until then.

“I’ve got a plan for the Oathkeepers,” I said. “Abby, you got eyes on Falerior?”

“He’s below the podium. Move to the right and you’ll see him.”

I activated my cloak again, restoring my outfit to the state I’d walked in with. Then I strolled to the bottom level of the arena seats, slowly pulsing my cloak on and off. By the time I reached the railing, Falerior was waiting for me.

“So,” I said, looking down at him with every ounce of self-possession I could muster.

“So,” he echoed, expression just as open and neutral as the day of my interrogation.

“I want to make a deal.” I was sauve, I was confident, I had value to trade here.

“And what deal would that be?”

“I know you want the truth of what happened to Roel,” I said.

“That is, of course, my divine duty.”

“I know you’ve come to some conclusions about me,” I said dismissively, “but I’m here to tell you that here at this very Rethanion, there is a, a, um.”

Falerior raised his eyebrows. “There’s a what?”

“A… you know, that thing?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“The thing! The invisible thing! Their name is… fuck, I can’t think the name.”

“I don’t follow.”

I grimaced. “Motherfucker!”

“There’s a motherfucker?”

“Yes!” I jabbed a finger at him. “Oathkeeper Falerior, there is an invisible motherfucker in this very arena, and with your help, I swear by all the gods that we will catch this motherfucker.”