“You brought them here despite all sense.”

Neiaz stood at the head of the table in the great hall, looking forward at the wall beyond. Neither his head nor his body ever moved. He continued:

“This woman uses wicked magic within our very sanctuary. No breath of mana has been exhaled within our gardens in millennia. Yet you say nothing.”

“Would you like me to scold her?” Trito said calmly.

“Scolding would be a start.”

“You and your vacant eyes are welcome to try, elf,” Eris said. “Yet you will not convince me that it was better to slay Dorian than to spare him with magic. I have done only what I must to see my business settled—nothing more.”

Trito glanced at her. She gave him the briefest smirk back.

“She is right,” Trito said. “And though I wish she had done otherwise, it is in her nature to settle disputes with her power. She cannot help this, any more than you and I can help that we are unaging.”

“You are a fool as always, Prince Trito,” Neiaz said. “I wonder if you have learned anything at all.”

“Please,” Aletheia said. She tried to find his eyes as she pled. “We know what you think of us. And you’re probably right. But we’ve come so far, for Corvo’s sake. Don’t hold who we are against him. He’s just a kid.”

Neiaz tapped his fingers on the table.

“What do you see in this one who speaks?” he said.

Trito glanced to Aletheia. He gave her a long look, up and down, and Aletheia flinched beneath the weight of his gaze.

“Honesty,” he said. “Devotion. Humility. And rare mercy. She speaks the truth of her heart.”

Aletheia sighed as she cringed. The description was a relief, for she was at Trito’s mercy; if he condemned her, then their trip would be for nothing. But he didn’t.

She was grateful. That did not stop her from feeling like his characterization was not quite right.

“And what of the one called Eris?” Neiaz said.

Now Trito looked to Eris. This time his answer came almost instantly:

“Beauty. Vanity. Intellect. Cruelty. Selfishness. An urge to control.”

“You may have chosen words less obviously true,” Eris said, folding her arms and rolling her eyes.

“And the true love of a good mother,” Trito added. “That is what I see in these two women. They are both warriors, of a kind rarely found among humans.”

“Warriors,” Neiaz said. “Like the lionesses in a pride, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. Time will tell. I will not begrudge you for turning down their plea, but only reiterate that the magic these two magicians wield is fleeting and will fade with the waning of their lives. But that of the Shadow Man they seek to destroy is eternal. He will never be unwound, except by our hands. Thus I ask for you to forgive their indiscretions, and lend us succor.”

For the first time, Neiaz’s neck tilted downward. His mask lifted upward by a fraction of a hair, yet it was enough for Aletheia to see the sanguine corner of an empty eye socket beneath.

He lowered himself over his out-pushed seat. Yet it was too far for him to reach, and he would have fallen on the ground—except for Pherenike, who watched from the corner of the room. She rushed to him and pushed the chair forward.

Thus he sat.

“I have known Prince Trito for a hundred generations,” he said. “Know that I do this only at his behest. Now.” His head turned to Trito, as though he knew precisely where he sat. “Tell me everything that has transpired. Again. Spare no detail.”

So again, and hopefully for the final time, the story of the Shadow Man was told to Neiaz. He listened silently for hours as every detail was spilled. Eris told him of the glass rider, of her suspicions of a spell that could give life to the inanimate, and of all the Shadow Man’s habits. When at last her words were spilled, she collapsed, exhausted, back into her seat, and she pulled Corvo into her lap.

Neiaz said nothing for a long while. He stared ahead, as he had before, in silence. Pherenike came near him and settled on the floor at his chair. Trito said nothing. Eris watched him in silence.

Ten minutes. Twenty. Aletheia felt like she was stuck in stasis, like something had gone wrong and no answers would ever come from Neiaz after all. Maybe they had been caught by a demon. This was eternity now.

Yet just as she was about to ask what was wrong, the elf’s mouth opened.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“You are right,” he said. “This is powerful magic. It is challenging to believe that it was wasted on a magician’s pet.”

“Yet you have heard of such things before,” Eris said.

“Yes. I have. Many years ago.”

Again he tapped his fingers rhythmically on the table.

Suddenly he stood.

“Follow,” he said, and he led them from the library.

They followed Neiaz up the tower. He moved with the precision of a man who could still see. He never missed a step, never stumbled, and never was lost or turned around. Aletheia wondered if he saw the compound clearly in his memory. If he knew its interior perfectly and saw it in his mind as he traversed it. That was what it meant to be an elf, wasn’t it? To never forget?

The staircase spiraled around. And around. And around. They reached the second floor and found a laboratory, and a third and found ancient machines, and a fourth and saw a museum of countless artifacts, of weapons and armor and trinkets and bones hanging from the ceiling and stretched along the walls, and then the stairs reached up even farther. But all was cloaked in utter darkness. A stray torch lit this place and that, but without magelights, she could not discern much beyond the reach of the nearest fires.

Occasional spotlights of red shoe through cracks in the wall. One illuminated the skeleton of a lion, placed precisely at the center of the floor now down so far below.

Aletheia’s wounds had healed quickly, but she had to stop to rest after the museum. Corvo did, too; he collapsed on a landing at her side, panting, too tired to go on, so Eris picked him up and carried him the rest of the way.

Aletheia stayed behind. She stared at the museum beneath her. It was small now, so far back.

She looked up.

There were hundreds of feet left to go before the next floor. That would be the tower’s top.

She sighed.

Trito appeared at her side.

“Would you like me to carry you?” he said.

She gazed up at his eyes. The words he had used to describe her flashed through her ears. It was hard to believe he really thought so well of her.

She shook her head, but took his hand and used it to climb to her feet. Then they ascended alongside each other.

At first there was silence. But she decided to speak her mind.

“Is that really what you think of me?” she asked. “What you said?”

“Do you think I’m wrong?” he replied.

“You were right about Eris,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have said what I did not think.”

“It’s just—I don’t know. I don’t think I’m all that great.”

Trito smiled. “You think mercy, devotion, and honesty are virtues. Yet they can be vices in excess, as anything else.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Clearly not. Yet consider honesty. Is it better to lie to Dorian, and hope he survives this adventure; or should we tell him the truth, and relive what has already passed? Mercy should always be considered, yet she who is too merciful will not mete out punishment where it is deserved. And devotion can cause a woman to live for others, and never consider how she might best live for herself.”

Suddenly she felt as though she had been described very accurately, and she realized that he was right. It was pointless. She wasn’t like Eris. She couldn’t argue with a man twice as old as her own civilization.

She hung her head and continued on. But again a question chewed at her brain.

“Why are you doing this for us?” she said.

They passed a landing. Charms hung from a bar anchored into the wall, of a make Aletheia had only seen once, a decade ago, in a witch’s hut. She glanced at each as she passed them by.

“I have known many men and women in my time,” Trito said. “Thousands. I have met every archetype there is to meet. Kings and princes and rogues and beggars. I have seen the best and the worst of humanity and all the other races beside. But in all that time I have seen few quite like you and Eris. Is that not enough?”

“I don’t know if it’s enough,” she said. “Is it all?”

Another smile. Trito said, “No.”

“So what’s the real reason?”

Trito shrugged. “I would ask that you do not tell Eris. It would distract her. But I trust you to know the truth.”

Aletheia stopped. He stopped, too, and they looked at each other. She felt like a halfling trying to meet his gaze. She might as well have been.

“I saw a vision.” His look became serious. “Of great wars and conquests yet to come. Of a new age of man. Of a future that could be, yet is not decided, where neither the Cult of the Aether nor the Magisters of Pyrthos hold power over mortals, and where day will be brought back to Seneria and the ruins of Ewsos will be rebuilt to how I remember they once were. And at the heart of all this stood you, and Eris, together.”

“And Corvo?” Aletheia said.

“And Corvo,” Trito said.

“You think you saw the future,” Aletheia said slowly.

Trito nodded. “And there is only one power in the world who can show living creatures what is to come.”

“The Lioness,” she whispered.

“Of course. She often sends dreams to those she knows. She has shown me much over the millennia. You and she know each other well, do you not?”

Aletheia hung her head. She did not want to think those thoughts, yet she nodded all the same.

“That is why I helped you with the Boyar, and why I follow you now. All may prove nothing more than a dream; but this future suits me, and I would prefer it comes to pass. And if it should not—I am Leaina’s servant. I do as I believe she wants me to do. For now, that is to look after you and Eris.”

“You’re religious?” she said.

“No. Religion is founded on faith.” He leaned down near her head. “I, like you, do not need faith. I have seen her. She shows me things to come. She told me where to find you, and who you were. She did all this without my belief. Just as how you, who have seen her, needn’t be faithful; you know what is true and what is not already.”

“You know what I saw when I died,” she whispered.

“Yes. And I know she was the one who came to care for you and Eris when no others could. She has told me this as well.”

At first she had been doubtful. But now she saw that Trito spoke the truth. He had kept it concealed for so long, yet now it all made sense. Why he had chosen her. Why he had come so far with them. It was all because she fit into someone else’s plan.

The thought disgusted her, at first. She did not want to be a slave to some higher power. She wasn’t interested in service. Yet then she realized—if the Lioness were real, as she knew her to be—that there was no greater assurance that there was a place for her in the world after all.

Her time wasn’t over. She wasn’t meant to be dead. She still had a part to play.

They continued upward again. And while Aletheia had much more to say, this time she held her tongue. She was too busy trying to imagine it—trying to really picture what Trito was saying. Could Corvo ever become a duke? Would he become the Archon of Katharos? Would he became the new Regizar? Maybe he could, in the sense that any man could become anything. But that did not mean it would happen. For now it seemed unlikely enough that he would ever grow up at all.

She couldn’t quite imagine that little boy as anything more than he was now. Yet now, suddenly, she believed; and now, suddenly, she had hope for the future that she had not felt since Corvo had first been born.