“Lord Seiji.” The paladin turned to face my directly. “I thought we had an understanding.”

“Yeah, the understanding was for one mission: go into the forest, investigate the source of the zombies. Job’s done, Rhydion. We know enough—more than enough—to prepare whatever proper response is called for and come back with the resources and personnel to carry it out. I don’t know what this sudden personal obsession of yours with having some kinda parley with the witch is about, but it’s above and beyond, and I am done. I’m not risking my life or Aster’s fucking around with vampires and giant spiders and devils. I did my part. Now we’re leaving.”

“And you believe that determination is yours to make?” he asked quietly.

“There’s nothing to determine! I am relating obvious facts. We have done what we came here to do. Now you’re trying to do something entirely different which none of us signed on for and which has come far closer to getting us killed than the actual mission. It’s done, I am out. If you want to hold me in violation of our…agreement…”

I sighed, letting the motion move my shoulders into a fatalistic shrug.

“Then I guess we can get on with deciding who’s left.”

The ensuing silence was one of the tensest I’d ever shared with somebody I didn’t think was actually going to try to kill me. Aside from that being out of character for Rhydion, he still hadn’t picked up the sword he’d dropped when rescuing Dhinell. He just…stared at me. Moments like this made the blank ambiguity of that visor seem downright oppressive.

Harker cleared his throat. “So, question for you, Lord Seiji. That business he was saying about you planning to murder me. What’s that about?”

Weird moment for that interjection, but okay; I was mostly just grateful for the break in the tension.

“I have suspicions about you, but despite what Rhydion seems to think, no. I need quite a bit more to go on than that before I straight up execute somebody.”

“Good to know,” he said, nodding. “That being the case, if you’re bugging out, I’m coming with you.”

Rhydion’s helmet shifted to face him, and still he said nothing.

Harker shrugged, his expression defensive. “Look, the fact is, he’s right. I know what I signed up for and I’ve done my job, but you’re talking about something else, now. This was a scouting mission; we’ve got the intel we came for. I’m not even complaining about the zombies or the devils, you said up front there might be Void shit at the back of this. But what you’re doing now, Rhydion, is dragging us all into repeated fights with dangerous shit because you’re fixated on cornering a woman who wants nothing to do with you. There’s a lot wrong with this, starting with the fact I wouldn’t’ve come along if I knew where this was gonna end up. If Lord Seiji and Delavada are leaving, I’m goin’ with ‘em.”

“I see this perspective is broadly shared.” The paladin shifted his attention once more. “And you, Sister Dhinell? Do you feel it is time to end this campaign?”

“I…I know my duty. I joined this mission in good faith and I will see it through to whatever end.”

In an odd, backward way, I think Dhinell’s assertion was the clincher. The words were siding with him, but her voice was small and wavering; the woman looked terrified and miserable.

Rhydion finally bent, picked up his sword, and returned it to its sheath. “Very well. The truth is, I understand your point, and when laid out this way I find I cannot disagree. While I will not deny it disappoints me that you are unwilling to continue… It remains true that this has become something other than what we set out to do. That being said, I have a request.”

We all tensed.

“Go on?” I prompted after a moment, when no one else did.

“Once we have returned to civilization,” the paladin said, slowly shifting his helmet to look at each of us in turn, “I ask your discretion. Please leave to me the sole duty of determining what shall be reported to whom. Understand that all of this has become more complicated than I anticipated, and the response to it will have repercussions beyond settling the matter of occasional zombies emerging from the forest. It must be handled with care, and with strategy.”

We glanced around at each other.

“Please,” Rhydion said quietly. “This is important.”

“Well, I mean…sure.” Harker shrugged again. “You’re the boss. I’m not gonna stand up to formal questioning or anything over this, but as long as it doesn’t turn into that I’m happy to let you handle it however you like. Wouldn’t be the first job I had to be discreet about, not by a long shot.”

“You are my superior in rank in both the Convocation and the King’s Guild,” Dhinell added, nodding emphatically. “It’s quite proper for the matter to be handled as you see fit. I am well within my prerogatives to say so to anyone who asks.”

“Same, I guess,” Aster added more laconically when his attention turned back to her. “Far as the Guild goes, you’re the designated lead on a sanctioned mission. The report’s your job.”

Silently, the helmet turned to me.

“Well, you’re not my superior in anything,” I said, “but on the other hand, I don’t report to anybody else, either. No worries, Rhydion, there’s nobody in the Fflyr power structure I particularly care to keep appraised of my activities anyway.”

“That,” he said, “is an example of one of those more skillful deflections you mentioned a moment ago, Lord Seiji.”

“It’s also the plain truth,” I said sweetly. “I’ve no intention of going over your head and I don’t care what you say to any of your superiors, nor do I want to talk with them at all. Scout’s honor.”

He stared at me.

“Nor,” I amended after a moment, “if it worries you, am I interested in bringing any other factions or major players into this.”

None except my own, of course. Hopefully that would satisfy him.

“Which leaves,” the paladin said very softly, “using what we have learned here for your own purposes, Lord Seiji. And what, I wonder, might those be?”

No, I didn’t really think so.

“What might yours be?” I retorted. “This was obviously a spur of the moment choice for you, Rhydion. You didn’t set out wanting to powwow with Khariss and hammer out an arrangement; you didn’t even know she was here, or that she existed until I came along with my tip from the beast tribes. For a last-minute diversion, you’re pretty damn invested in the idea. Why is it so important to you? What do you want with her?”

“It seems to me, Lord Seiji, that you and I should have a conversation in private.”

Oh, fucking great.

“Sounds delightful,” I said, smiling pleasantly. He probably didn’t need a magic lie-detecting helmet to see through that one.

“Such things can wait until we have attained more secure surroundings,” Rhydion said, suddenly brisk. “Very well, let us withdraw. Hopefully, if Mistress Gwylhaithe truly desires above all to be rid of us, she will not hinder our exit.”

“The way Aster and I first came in is no good,” I said. “We could use the path you guys took, or the kitchen entrance in the basement I used to get back in here after Ozyraph’s fun little prank. I did take out most of the zombies in the courtyard outside, but there’s a high probability of running into more giant spiders that way, not to mention that level seems to be where Khariss goes to ground, and we’ve all seen what she’s like when cornered.”

I paused, an idea occurring.

“Or…we could just walk out the front? I was out there a few minutes ago, and like I said…no more zombies. The front steps are gone, but the drop isn’t too bad. Worst case, somebody breaks an arm and I can fix that in seconds.”

“That…might be the most expeditious route,” Rhydion agreed. “We have options for navigating such a descent that don’t involve breaking any limbs. Come, let us waste no more time.”

I forbore comment about just who had been stubbornly wasting our time and we all fell into step, watching our flanks. It was a pretty straight shot to get out: up the corridor, down the stairs, across the great hall and out the front door. Easily the most straightforward route we’d had to take in this ludicrous spider-filled labyrinth of a house.

“You know what’s really weird, though?” Aster mused.

“Where do I start?” Harker muttered.

“Those giant spiders are… Well, I dunno if their intelligence is on a human level, but they show clear personality, and they can obviously follow orders and carry out complex tasks. How is it she can get spiders to work that well as undead, but can’t make the corpses of actual people do anything more than moan and shuffle around?”

“Moan, shuffle around, and attack,” Dhinell said darkly. “Wretched, bloodthirsty things.”

“Well, my point stands.”

“Makes sense to me,” Harker said, shrugging. “Humans are way more complicated than bugs. Especially the brains.”

“Yeah, but spiders normally can’t—”

“You wanna turn around and ask her?” I inquired pointedly.

Aster shot me a scowl. “I was just wondering. You can’t tell me it’s not weird.”

“Aster, it’s me, Seiji. I do not have the attention span to keep track of everything about this place that’s weird.”

She gave me a Look and a long-suffering sigh, and dropped it.

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Fortunately, Rhydion called this one right: Khariss did not put in another appearance, nor did any of her spider lackeys. We were left strictly alone all the way across the house. In just minutes we had shoved the front door open, with some difficulty—it wasn’t even locked, but clearly had not been opened in years, and the hinges didn’t want to cooperate—and were standing on the ledge beyond. Well, it was a ledge now; before the stairs were melted, it had been a…

Do you call it a porch when there’s no roof and it’s in front of a huge mansion? Somehow that didn’t seem right.

Everyone had to stop and take in the scene. Looking at it all from this vantage, I had to consider that I might have overdone it a bit. Charred zombie corpses carpeted the entire courtyard in pieces, some still lightly smoking; most of the ground under them was blackened by lightning strikes. Huge black marks crisscrossed the inner walls where I had, entirely gratuitously I must admit, raked them with streams of furious electricity.

“Your good spells, huh,” Harker said finally, his voice impressively even.

I shrugged and smiled. “What can I say? I was in a bad mood.”

Rhydion studied me in silence.

----------------------------------------

Getting down wasn’t all that hard, and from there it was a straight shot right out of zombie town.

We had to fight our way out, of course. My little tantrum had cleared out the worst concentration of them, but there were still more zombies around the third side which came shuffling over to investigate as we passed through their territory. Then, too, there were a lot in the village outside; not nearly as tightly packed as in the manor grounds, but this village had been their stomping ground, after all. Even once we slipped out through a gap in the damaged walls, the surrounding area was still zombie country for a good distance in every direction.

As fights went, it wasn’t that hard; just tiring because it was so constant. We fell smoothly back into our previous strategy, with Aster and Rhydion taking point, me largely applying Shock to stun targets to they could be finished off by one of Dhinell’s large arsenal of anti-monster spells or Harker’s anti-magic bow. It took us mere minutes to carve our way out of the village, and the rest of the day to get to what we considered was a safe spot to camp for the night. We pushed it, taking only a few breaks to rest our legs and otherwise taking turns to chew travel rations on the move, or pause when somebody had to go behind a bush.

The others kept glancing at me as I continued to do nothing but stubbornly Shock zombies into submission, but nobody said anything and I wasn’t about to. There was a very real strategic reason for them not to see exactly how I could single-handedly wipe out an army, but to be honest, I was enjoying making them wonder even more than I would have enjoyed making them tremble in awe.

Especially given the high likelihood of that second one happening eventually, whether I wanted it to or not.

We pressed on past nightfall, a move that was objectively risky, but we had a good reason: there was no way of getting all the way out of zombie territory before dark, and we already knew of a secure campsite. And indeed, after having to navigate by my light spells for barely half an hour, we were there again. The flat-topped khora was just as we’d left it, right down to the minor damage we’d caused to the shell from climbing up and down it.

“All clear,” Harker reported from up top, leaning over and waving at us. “Fireplace is still good, no sign of critters or enemies being up here. C’mon up and let’s settle in.”

“Thank you, Harker,” said Rhydion. “And to all of you, my friends, for all you’ve done today. Please, get some rest; I will take the first watch. Before that, I beg your patience for just a little bit longer. Lord Seiji, a word?”

Oh, we were doing this now? I didn’t see what the hurry was—but then again, there were a lot of possible reasons he might want to have this particular conversation at the end of a long and very hard day, when I was exhausted and generally not at my best. So this was gonna be one of those talks, huh.

“Sure,” I said magnanimously, gesturing ahead. “Lead on.”

Rhydion led me a distance away into the night, me keeping my Firelight bobbing along above my hand. He was careful to bring us out of easy earshot of the campsite, but not out of view of it; the glow of a fire appeared in moments, making for an easy landmark.

“Did you know there used to be a dungeon on Dount?”

Huh. Not the opener I’d expected.

“Yes, I did.”

The paladin turned to face me. “I am surprised, Lord Seiji, and impressed. That bit of knowledge is not merely esoteric, but actively suppressed. To have found it after being here such a short time speaks well indeed of your resourcefulness.”

See, this shit right here was why he wanted to do this when he knew fatigue was wearing at me, I just knew it. I had to be careful with this guy. It was my policy in general to lie as little as possible, but with Rhydion especially… He definitely had some magic in that helmet that let him see more than his eyes could unaided, whether or not it was an actual lie detector. But magic or not, he also made heavy use of the classic strategy of always knowing more than he let on. It left me constantly uncertain what I could afford to say.

“I mostly talk to and hang around with the kind of people the regime you represent doesn’t think of as people. They know things that might surprise you.”

He nodded once in acknowledgment. “And do you also know what happened to the dungeon?”

“Same thing that happened to the landbridge to Savindar.”

“Satoshi Hara is a revered figure in multiple nations, now. As the last Hero, he must be; many of those who hold power today prop themselves up in part on his legacy. Having been born into privilege, I have been graced with the opportunity to peruse a number of texts which are not available to the public at large—and even the more sensitive documents pertaining to Hara are strikingly uncritical of him. Directly, that is. I was also graced with a good education, however, and the attendant ability to…read between the lines.

“There are contemporary accounts of the Dark Crusade which do not shy away from the brutality of Hara’s tactics. His overt cruelty toward captured sources of information, and disregard for collateral damage. Oh, not in so many words, of course; it is often the driest descriptions of his battles that are the most alarming. It is beyond question that the Hero was not the paragon that today’s institutions require him to have been. Generously…he could be interpreted as a man driven by purpose and willing to embrace any necessary means.”

He paused, and I waited; I was very familiar with the character of a pause for dramatic timing. You gotta respect another guy’s showtime.

“A man very much like you.”

Okay, that stung a little. Still, I kept my mouth shut as Rhydion continued.

“I am…not inclined to be so generous. There are other accounts, even less direct, but which lay bare the truth for those willing to examine the dates and the subtext. Many mentions of the Hero’s feasts and festivals—parties which, if one cross-references other materials, occurred in times and at places where it is hard to imagine a Hero being at the feasting table rather than the front lines. Not to mention the careful measures taken by his allies to keep him out of the presence of their wives and daughters. Many accounts of how eager the adventurers of the day were to fight alongside the Hero—and not mentioned explicitly, but still recorded, the interesting detail that female adventurers almost never sought a second mission alongside him.

“The historians could not call attention to these things, nor editorialize on their meaning. Even then, they knew what would happen if they did. Any volumes which record such thoughts are long since destroyed, those not in Viryan hands. But still, they made sure the facts were preserved, so that the truth could be discerned by those willing to look. No one hides things in plain sight better than a scribe.”

Holy shit. I’d known about the dungeon and the landbridge, obviously, but… Fuck. Hadn’t this guy killed Yomiko, in the end? I suddenly hoped to God all he’d done was kill her, and relatively quickly.

“So that was the Hero, Satoshi Hara,” Rhydion said with a weary sigh. “And of course, his conflict with Yomiko Kurobe was in many ways a proxy duel between two empires, Lancor and Savindar. Of them I will only say that nations do not have friends, or morals—only agendas. In the end… Of the major players in the Dark Crusade, I think the only one who was truly trying to do the right thing, or at least the closest they could manage to it in an intractable situation, was the Dark Lord. And she came to the end people usually do, when they try to impose virtue through straightforward brute force.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the implications of him telling me all this. I was even less sure I understood what those implications were, but they made me as uncomfortable as a spider in my bedroom that disappeared the second I looked away from it.

“So,” I said quietly, “is this…an offering of trust? You tell me something that could get you in big trouble with your superiors if I repeated it, a little thing I can hold over you so I’m inclined to feel more favorably toward you?”

“Hardly,” he said in an amused tone. “It would be my word against yours, and you could not induce my superiors to listen to you if your life depended on it, Lord Seiji. No, I… Well, I suppose I do appreciate having the opportunity to discuss ethics in a context I cannot afford to repeat in front of most people. But it is all germane, also, to our situation.”

“Our situation with Khariss?”

“Our situation on Dount, and in Fflyr Dlemathlys. Between Lancor and Savindar.”

He knew. He knew something. The question was what did he know. How much?

“You’re thinking a little bigger than I am,” I said, accurately. Dealing with them was an inescapable inevitability, but one far down the line for me. I hoped. I had way too much on the plate right in front of me to worry about the Empires. “Let’s zoom back in, shall we? What you wanted to discuss was Khariss, or so I thought.”

“Yes, there is that,” he said quietly. “You know the thing that most surprised me today, Lord Seiji? I knew the name Khariss Gwylhaithe. She was indeed a historical figure—minor, but known to those who care about such things. A confidant of no less than Dark Lord Yomiko, and a woman not known to have had any great power, but to have been close to Yomiko. A friend. She disappeared in the turmoil following the Dark Lord’s death in Lancor, when her beaten armies retreated all the way to Dount, those surviving settling into the regime in Shylverrael. And no, before you ask, Khariss Gwylhaithe was never anything but an elf Yomiko happened to have liberated from slavery. I was not feigning ignorance of the vampire legend. However she ended up that way, by her own alchemy or the auspices of some devil, it occurred after the Dark Crusade collapsed.”

“Okay, that is pretty interesting,” I admitted, “but I’m having a hard time picturing you being as insistent on making friends with her as you were based purely on historical curiosity.”

He shook his head. “No, I cannot picture us being friends, under any circumstances. Even if she is as opposed to Virya as she claimed… Well. My intentions toward her, Lord Seiji, are less than pure.”

Very slowly, I raised my eyebrows. “Now, you listen here, mister—”

“Not like that.” His tone of blended amusement and irritation was muted, but still one of the more expressive voices I’d heard out of him. “I have already told you what I intend. This country must be saved from itself, and that will never happen so long as the individuals and powers invested in its status quo are able to see change coming. As soon as there is a threat to their power, their constant infighting magically ceases and they form a united front. The only way to overcome this is to make them form that front, and then devote their energies in a direction that will simply waste them while their support system is dismantled from beneath them. And…I intend to use Khariss as that distraction.”

He paused, his armored shoulders moving just slightly, providing the barest hint of the steadying breath he drew in before continuing.

“So you see, Lord Seiji, it matters very much to me whether Khariss is a devoted Viryan, or a Void witch…or whatever else. In some potential outcomes, I dared to hope she might be persuaded to assist willingly in this plan; if nothing else, it represents a chance at revenge against the regime which destroyed her own. A conflict is never just between the two parties involved. There are always a thousand surrounding factors which shape how it may go. In some ways…what we found was the worst possible outcome. The appearance, at least, that Khariss Gwylhaithe is a woman who has suffered much, done as little harm as she could manage, and wants only to be left in peace.”

“But you’re gonna turn the Clans on her anyway,” I said softly.

“I think that will likely be the outcome.” Rhydion had been gazing into the surrounding darkness, but now turned to face me again. “The decision is not necessarily mine to make.”

A prickle ran down my back. “Come again?”

“I realize your experiences have left you predisposed to think the worst of the Clans, but the reality is that change will most likely come from within their ranks. There are always those among the privileged who recognize injustice when they see it—or at least, when it is pointed out to them. And more prosaically, those are the people most likely to have the resources, education, and free time to actually do something about it.”

I thought about the Yviredhs, about Nazralind and her friends, and about overly idealistic college kids back home.

“Okay,” I said warily, “I’m willing to entertain that notion in theory. Still pretty dubious about this notion that you wouldn’t be the one making the decisions, though.”

“You think so much of me?” he asked wryly. “Indeed, I began my career with all the untested conviction of a young highborn that I knew best, that if those who refused to yield to my justice were broken before me, the rest would fall in line. I…don’t know how many people you have gotten killed, Lord Seiji, but I know how many I have. And the thing that troubles me most about you is your willingness to continue on the same course. Because I know what that feels like.”

Oh, this was really hitting below the belt now. The slow rise of anger and adrenaline had banished my cloud of fatigue; now I was fully occupied with control of my expression. I drifted above the current in the familiar grasp of showtime, ready to unleash all that energy at need, but revealing none of it.

“And so you found yourself someone else to make the hard calls and take the responsibility? That smells like sheer cowardice, Rhydion.”

He turned away from me, once again staring out into the night.

“I…very much fear you are right.” The paladin’s voice was softer than I’d ever heard from him, with undercurrents I couldn’t fully untangle. “More than any other, that is the fear that plagues me.”

“Oh? I thought your biggest fear was somebody with your convictions and no restraint.”

“That is the disaster whose inevitable outcome I dread the most, but not that which perpetually costs me sleep. I have made my alliances with care, Lord Seiji; I am not such a fool as to follow the dictates of anyone who has not proven a command of strategy and an ability to get results. But still. No matter how often I reconsider my situation from every angle, no matter how intellectually certain I remain that I am pursuing the most effective strategy… There is no escaping it. The fact that this…most effective strategy…is exactly what you say: delegating the moral responsibility to another. Avoiding the cause of my own worst failures and darkest memories, allowing me to stick to simpler actions which are more within my skill set. You see what I mean, do you not? Even if it is the right thing, objectively, I can never escape the worry that I am simply being…a coward.”

I considered his armored back, mulling. This was certainly more vulnerability than he’d ever shown me. Obviously, there was no ignoring that it was manipulative, but just because something was manipulative did not mean it wasn’t sincere. The best manipulations were.

“This may sound odd coming from someone who’s called you a coward multiple times, including just now, but when you lay it all out that way… I think that sounds like one of those questions.”

He half-turned, presenting the side of his visor to me. Apparently that thing didn’t impede his peripheral vision too much, which was just straight up unfair.

“Come on, you know the ones. You’re Fflyr, I know you’re well-versed in literary tropes. ‘Am I a coward’ seems right up there with ‘have I gone mad’ and ‘do I have a soul.’ If you’re even capable of asking the question, you have the answer.”

After a moment, he inclined his head once in a nod. “You are surprisingly adept at offering reassurance, Lord Seiji. Perhaps you should make heavier use of that skill.”

“Hey, now, I’ve got a brand to consider.”

I had a lot of other things to consider, too. Some nebulous resistance, rooted in the highest levels of power in Fflyr Dlemathys and dedicated to carefully making this place less abhorrently shitty? Oh, that was big fucking news—as was the fact that Rhydion was apparently not even the highest up in it. Something like that changed every other calculation. Depending on how well I played this, they could either be exactly what my own plans needed, or present a bigger obstacle than I’d faced so far.

Not least because their plan was to use Khariss as a stalking horse to distract the Clans and undermine them from behind while they weren’t looking. And the fact was, Khariss made a way less suitable target for that maneuver than I did. I could not afford to ignore these people.

“So that is your question, answered,” Rhydion said, turning back to me. “You now know why I care so much about assessing the witch as closely as possible. I believe mine remains, Lord Seiji. Why do you?”

Oh, I was going to have to handle this as carefully as I ever had anything in my life. Okay, I could do this.

Showtime.