Sudha naming conventions, it turned out, were exactly the opposite of what I’d thought they were. Their internal politics and civic religion, on the other hand, I hadn’t understood enough to even guess about… which was great, because I’d have gotten it completely wrong.

“So let me get this straight,” I said after a little while. “You folks manufacture your Gods?”

“A thousand questions, and you remain stuck on your fourth.”

“The rest of it makes perfect sense,” I muttered in embarrassment. I had gotten mentally stuck on that point, and probably hadn’t paid as much attention to the rest of what he’d been saying. “Your Praetor is this sort of incredibly powerful figure, but limited by the role they’ve become defined by, fine.”

“That’s… not untrue,” he said begrudgingly, “even if somewhat reductive and simplified.”

“And you take these unwieldy, long names when you start doing a thing and you set them aside and take shorter names that reflect what you’ve done, rather than like what your aspirations are. That’s different, but it’s not, like, something I can’t wrap my brain around, and it does make clear why you were pissed at me; it was this sort of sarcastically-coded denigration-by-praise thing to you, like if you were calling me, I dunno, Your Ladyship or something.”

I had the pleasure of watching Cleric Veil’s junior, the young man who was Kibosh’s Novice, get visibly taken aback. He’d made that same face when I apologized, but for all that he aspired to light the world on fire with the passion of his faith, he obviously hadn’t had much faith in me; I could see the surprise that I’d put in the effort to understand, rather than just going through the motions.

He should have known better; he had, after all, my full attention, and I was fascinated. It had been brain-bending to think about, because of how reversed it was from how I usually thought of epithets, and the story of his grandmother had been equally enlightening in its way.

“So anyway! I get that stuff! It’s the divinity stuff that, yeah, my brain’s stuck on. I even get your shitty waste-fire politics and civics, and wow am I glad I wound up in Shem instead of slavery land.”

“It was abolished over a century ago!”

“You literally just told me the story of how your mom picked up a name upgrade when she helped her mom and some monster of a guy murder a Consul like thirty years ago. What was it you said about it? That it was one more step towards eliminating slavery-in-fact?”

“Imbalances of power are inevitable and omnipresent,” he said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “The Kingdom of Shem retains an aristocracy enshrined by law, however changed from its origins and tempered by the practice of adoption it has become.”

“Just because they’re inevitable doesn’t mean you have to endorse them. Leaving aside the state of literal non-stop civil war—”

“—as well you should, given that the Praetor ensures that none are harmed who do not choose to join Struggle—”

“—like I said, leaving it aside!”

Even though, I refrained from saying, desperation can make you make terrible choices, because I was leaving it aside. And their deaths would leave their families no less bereft, no less in mourning; what balm was it that a parent, a child, or even a friend died taking deliberate risks in the pursuit of power? But I was leaving it aside.

I paused for a moment to gather my words, and nodded gratefully at his letting me do so. “The rate of hitting peak Third Tier in Sudh—of making it to sixteen out of twenty in one Class—is less than a twentieth of Shem’s. It’s a bit under two percent, if I understand correctly?” I raised an eyebrow, waiting for the nod. “And if I understand correctly, that’s because the economy is structured to make you have to push much harder for those levels. Your people are doing what we did back home—getting ground down for marginal gains that get eaten by the further grind, having to take risks to get ahead.”

“They are worthy, who rise—and they rise, who are worthy. Our rate of those who reach that threefold apex of mortality, three Classes at the highest summits of Third Tier, is tenfold higher than this backwards land’s. Higher still is the ratio of those who take the step into eternity.”

“A nation of structural inequality justified by the fact that those who benefit from it rise higher on the backs of those who labor without that access,” I scoffed. “Listen, I understand that dynamic. A higher share of immortals at the cost of people in general? Even as someone whom you say would be in the former category, well.” No ethical consumption, my gremlin of a brain interjected, but I doubted the idiom would transfer over.

“They rise, those who are worthy,” he insisted. “It is not an idle claim. The Gods we raise see to it, and the Praetor in the last resort; none lack the resources to grow, even if we do not lavish our resources on the idle. Without pressure, the Shemmai masses grow, but they grow as a thicket grows. The cities of Sudh are as an orchard, drinking the sky to bear fruit.”

“Blackberries aren’t any less valid than apples, though I have no idea what you actually mean by that. What happened last time there was a war between Shem and Sudh, though? I actually haven’t read much about it, other than one romance novel set during the war, but I know it didn’t go well for Sudh.”

“The thorns,” he admitted, “savaged us as we reached in for the fruits—gauntleted were our hands, but they struck for our throat, our heart.”

“What actually happened?” I shrugged at his odd look. “I mean, you probably have a perspective that isn’t something I’ll get from anyone here, and I really don’t know much about it.”

He looked at me for a moment longer, obviously trying to decide whether I was serious. Closing his eyes for a moment, he visibly marshaled his words.

“The armies of Sudh were mighty,” he eventually said, “each fifty thousand strong or more and led by five Immortals, and there were fifty Immortals Valiant further—those unattached, who roamed as the wind. Those armies took enough territory to begin to grow Gods, and the Praetor set down their roots. They had conquered, as was the Way, to spread the Praetor’s Peace into a nation in need of it, and no army contested their march.”

“And then,” I said softly, “the Irregulars happened. But that’s all I know.”

“They rose from every walk of life, the Irregulars; Shemmai in the triple peak or apex of the Third Tier, citizens of every stripe in their doubles and triples crossing the border the day the first God was born. They were as the flies, the locusts, or the grains of sand, and unchained also by any hope—they walked into Sudh’s lands dead already in law, so unlikely was their survival and so determined were they to not let their capture be used against their Kingdom. Twenty five thousand Seekings, each only ten strong, and what each and every one of them sought was to evade conflict and leave only desolation in their wake.

“Even the Praetor, present as they were in every pace and stride of Sudh and paramount as they were in might, could stop only seven Irregulars of every ten. It was one fortnight to Frost; and they burned or befouled six out of ten granaries, and laid spells and alchemicals that would render every well and the very groundwater in the sacred lands of the Principate death to drink.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“God grant that their names live in memory for a thousand years,” I whispered. “A hundred and seventy five thousand dead Shemmai civilians-turned-combatants, because you thought you had the duty and right to conquer wherever your borders touch.”

“They called it the Millennial Folly, after.” His hands, I noticed, were white where they gripped the edge of the table, and his wrists and forearms shook fractionally. “Enough centuries have passed for its memory to fade from most, and for a fraction to forget why the blade was justly pressed to our neck—why we gave over all those involved, from the greatest to the least, to Shemmai justice. Sudh wars with Deshanna, now, and with the Remnant League when they take to the water to challenge us, but never again with Shem.”

“I think,” I said softly, “we’re getting a bit off track here from the civics. Unless you want to bring this back around to why somehow this proves Sudh's superiority?”

“War is not a proving ground for the righteous path,” he said firmly, hands relaxing like this was more familiar and more comfortable ground. “War is not the purpose of the Way; it is the means by which its reach extends, and it is the illumination of the fundamental sin, no more.

“The Way, rather, is the Peace; it is the ability of anyone to know that strife will touch them not unless they seek it, that the Gods we grow and empower will never betray us or our ideals which necessarily become theirs. This is why we surrendered in that war, and why the Irregulars struck as they did; though we could have weathered the winter, it would have been a betrayal of those who must be protected.”

“How is that Peace different from Shem’s? Except for the part where nobody talks about the Shemmai wars of conquest, which, I’m not an idiot, the campaign against the Forest is a literal genocide.” I hadn’t yet brought my unease to James about that; I trusted him not to judge me for my questions, but I needed to know what my questions were first. “They’re pretty into the, like, egalitarian nigh-utopian thing here,” I continued distractedly, “and I don’t think anyone expects the likes of Emmna or Basathon to start shattering cities.”

“We live in a village with a dungeon protocol, Miss Nadash, where in our first days we were instructed as to when to run, and in which direction.” His voice had an incisive edge, and I tapped three fingers to my forehead to acknowledge the point. “I admit that the villages of Shem are keystones in pushing back the Forest—and the Wardline, a great bulwark. But far more could be done were the Praetor’s hand cast over the doors to the darkness below, rather than relying on the schedules of Clerks and spears held in mortal hands.”

“Like the Praetor cast their hand over a bunch of civilians-turned-soldiers defending their home from a war of conquest?” That got me a pair of narrowed eyes, and I immediately knew that was unfair—and, knowing I did, he waited for me to retract it. “Sorry, no, they were soldiers, fair game. But why are the people of Sudh those who must be protected and the people of Shem aren’t? What’s the moral framework by which it’s proper to invade?”

“It is the Peace, the shield that is the Praetor’s hand! And that is precisely the moral failure of… Syza has a word, That-Was; we say it was Sudh-That-Was, the Sudh of that time past which we shall not see again. The Praetor must be the shield of Alqar, so that all those who dwell here are protected; and the protection must remain the truth at the core of us, or the Peace is a lie.”

That’s not a moral framework, I almost said, but it would have been pointless pedantry—their belief that they had a duty to protect everyone, whether they liked it or not, was the answer I was looking for. There were more questions I could have followed up with, obviously, ones like and if you became the shield of this continent, of Alqar, who would keep you in check and were that to happen, what would the rest of Yelem think and do, when you cast your eyes overseas. But I didn’t ask them, and not because they weren’t worth asking.

Rather, I was distracted by linguistics.

I chewed for a moment on that word he’d used, the term for a thing as it used to be, picking out some of the compound bits and recognizing a few. “There’s a Sylvan word,” I began, and then cut myself off. Too late, I knew. Sophie, you moron.

“Sylvan?” His eyes went wide in surprise, and he switched to that language. “How came you to speak the Precursor Tongue? A Traveler, I know you to be, and so know I that the skill came unto your having by Integration.”

“Ask your boss,” I said in Shemmai, forestalling the conclusion I could already see flashing across his face. He was sharp—I’d made a mistake by volunteering, again, enough information for someone to figure out that I had ties to the Gods whose Yelemi shards were the Remnants in the Forest. “I’m serious. Cleric Veil is fully informed. But ask them tomorrow, right?”

The too-clever young man matched my grin with a smile of his own, narrow at first and then more genuine. “Indeed. It is… Ease. I admit to being not yet accustomed to a mandate of idleness; the mantle of the divine is not to be set lightly aside, and I do so only by narrow sufferance of the custom’s strength.”

“I feel ya.” I sighed, rubbing my temples with my fingers. “It’s genuinely hard for me to stop, like, seeing everything through the lens of the cool magic and alchemy I could be doing. I can’t imagine how much harder it would be if my role were largely social.”

“It is not harder, it is impossible.” He drew himself up, and I could feel a weight in the air, something… paternalistic, which instantly got my hackles up. “In every word, in every deed, I represent the Way whether I wish to or not. There is not a breath between Novice Kibosh and Devoted Acolyte Cataclysmic Burning Faith.”

“And is that going to be a problem between us? If I can’t talk to Novice Kibosh, and if I don’t recognize any moral authority possessed by your Way?”

I leaned forward, locking eyes with him. Something was bubbling up inside me, and I channeled into… well, into my body language, into the set of my shoulders and the flexion in my fingers. I put it into my presence, the same way he did.

If anything crackled between us, if sparks flew or the world shivered, I couldn’t tell. I’d have backed down, if it had, I was pretty sure—it was Ease, and he wasn’t supposed to be working.

“It is not so fragile, the Way. If it cannot answer your doubts, if it cannot convince someone as fresh of perspective as you?” He shrugged, the pressure in the air fading. “The most fundamental sin is to believe yourself strong when you are weak. I know this to the core of who I am. If my arguments do not give justice to the Way, then it is my weakness, and I will sharpen myself against the whetstone of my peers.”

“The fundamental sin.” I leaned back on the bench, careful not to overbalance and topple—there wasn’t a back, so it was a real concern, given my history of pratfalls. Not the first time he’s brought that up. “To think you’re strong when you’re weak, that’s the fundamental sin to you. You guys must have taken it really badly when you lost that war, huh.”

“Would it be a minor thing, in your culture of origin, to so repudiate the act that you must name the nation destroyed? It was a sacrilege, what was done. A sacrilege, that they brought such danger to the people in their charge; and so did Sudh become Sudh-That-Was, and a nation did we make anew.” His eyes flashed, literally flashed gray with a tang of steel faintly perceptible in the air. “With power must come a righteousness of outcomes. We gave over the armies to Shemmai justice, but those who decided upon the path or who forsook their duty to speak against it met an end no less final and immediate at the Praetor’s hand.”

I drummed on the table, then realized that I was drumming on the table because there were drums, they were doing something that sounded like a warmup. “I don’t believe in your Way,” I said levelly. “I think your Gods are more ludicrous than divine, and your whole society is structured in a way I actively dislike.”

“I find you to be unfocused and too fixed upon your navel,” he retorted with a burgeoning grin, “and your relationship with the Gods and the notion of divinity to be not only utterly impossible but heretical. The vision of society you hold dear is, as you say, structured in a way I both dislike and find to have clearly worse outcomes.”

I held out my palm at the exact moment he did the same. “Let’s be friends,” I said, grinning back at him. “We’ll disagree on almost everything.”

“Until I convince you.”

“Feel free to try, Seeker.” He didn’t take the bait, keeping a very commendable poker face, and I cracked first—first and almost immediately. “Seek Perfection Through Discourse. If you don’t object, I mean.”

“I cannot think of any name more Shemmai for one such as I,” Seeker said with grave seriousness. “I will endeavor to do justice to it.”

I didn’t know what to do after we pressed our palms together, but also it didn’t seem to matter. Laughing together as the last of the tension faded, we headed separately towards the beating of the drums.