Hall of the Fallen, Veraz, Capital of Clan Verazlan
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.23 Interstellar
Janus’s breath caught in his throat as Koni spoke to her mother, and her mother answered. He couldn’t put his finger on what made him look up, but what he saw between the two women was like a high-bandwidth transfer of pride and disappointment, love and loathing, in both directions and all the more dangerous when Koni’s mother caught him staring and turned her face toward him with the warmth of a statue.
“What is your name, aspirant?”
“Emissary Janus Invarian, honored elder,” Janus replied, doing his best to let the force of her gaze wash over him.
“Emissary,” she said. “Curious. The last emissary I knew was Brago Tlali-Acamatl, and he was an animal before he beat his grandson to death. Are you an animal, Janus Invarian?”
“Mother!” Koni exclaimed, but her mother silenced her by waving her hand without looking at her.
Janus relaxed. It was a good thing he’d left Fury back with Mick. She might have overreacted. A year ago, he would have been thrown off balance by this sort of posturing, but that was before he got to know people like Lira, Nikandros, and Murkinson. Janus might have been a simple engineer and scientist, but he knew diplomats reduced people to a set of responses, saw negotiations as a game, and used words to wound. “We’re all animals, elder.”
Janus heard a small chuckle from one of the robed Verazlans, but he kept his eyes on Koni’s mother.
“The Council of Elders thank you for bringing Koni Atl-Verazlan back to us unharmed.”
“Brought me back?” Koni asked. “I thought I was repaying a clan debt!”
“That you incurred,” Koni’s mother said, still without looking at her daughter. Her eyes were locked with Janus’s. “Koni has suffered enough. The clan will repay the debt in full.”
“Lira Allencourt will negotiate for me,” Janus said, waving Lira forward as if he were bored.
“Are you not able to speak for yourself?” Koni’s mother asked.
It was all Janus could do to keep his temper in check. His outward calm was a conditioned response, born of the pain manipulators and plotters had inflicted on him. “I’m an Emissary, Elder. My actions speak for me. I’m sure someone can escort me to the pedestal while you and Lira haggle.”
He heard Koni suck her breath in, but Koni’s mother laughed. “An Emissary indeed! It might have done my daughter good to stay with you until the end.” The lead elder of Veraz allowed herself to break eye contact with Janus and look appraisingly at her daughter.
“Am I to have no say in this?” Koni asked.
“I’m sure you’ll have many things to say, Koni,” her mother said. “We can talk about it over dinner.”
Koni’s mother introduced herself as Tialli Atl-Verazlan. Janus noted she didn’t use the “teuctli” honorific, and he supposed that neither she nor anyone else on the plaza in front of the massive central building needed to. The other elders also introduced themselves with varying degrees of warmth and interest, and Janus’s wrist comm cataloged their faces and names, although it happened so quickly, Janus didn’t retain any of it.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Soon, the team was being ushered through the cyclopean building’s massive archway, through a wide tunnel that led to an inner courtyard lit by blue light.
“What just happened?” Mick asked.
“They’re going to try to buy Koni back,” Janus told him.
“They’ll succeed,” Koni said, her expression cold and tired. “My mother will keep offering more until it would be foolish to say no.”
“No one accused Janus of being overly smart,” Ryler quipped, and Janus punched him in the shoulder. “Ow!”
“Read the rover, Ryler,” Janus said.
The cultist sighed. “No one appreciates how right I am.”
Fury turned her head sideways and latched on to his calf. Mick hauled back on her harness, but Janus could tell she was playing, mostly because Ryler wasn’t screaming or on fire.
“Ow, ow! Get off me, you mangy beast!” Ryler said, hamming it up.
Koni laughed.
Janus saw Tialli look at her daughter in surprise and, a half-second later, regret.
It made him think of Callie, and of Ivan on good days and bad ones. We can’t help but hurt the ones we love, can we? he thought, but Tialli had already recovered and turned back to talk to Lira.
They exited into the courtyard, which turned out to be some sort of carefully maintained park with manicured grass, topiaries, and carefully cultivated trees. Blue globes of different sizes floated at uneven spaces, lighting the garden with gentle light. If it weren’t for the walls and the tunnel behind them, Janus would have thought they’d stepped back into a magical forest. The space was as big as a small village.
“It’s a great big bloody building,” Mick said.
“It’s a symbol of my culture,” Koni said. “The other clans build homes for a lifetime. We Verazlan build for generations, and we’d rather die than give ground. Our strength is our highest virtue.”
“You’re wrong,” Ryler said gently, all traces of humor gone from his voice.
Koni’s upper lip twitched. “Tell me then, priest. What is my culture, and who are my people?”
Ryler raised his hands in surrender. “Oh, I’m not arguing that’s who you’ve become, Koni Atl-Verazlan. But this is the Hall of the Fallen. It’s where aspirants were brought to be buried during the plague years. There are thousands of them here, under the trees. We walk among heroes. They broke quarantine to help those who needed it, and only Veraz would accept their bodies for interment when they died—demanded them, really, because you recognized them as part of your own. Hardship forged strength, which solidified into a sense of honor and now decays into pride,” Ryler said sadly. “The highest virtue of the Verazlans who built this building was sacrifice.”
Koni reeled as if she’d been slapped.
“What in the void, Ryler?” Janus said.
“Sorry,” Ryler said, covering his eyes and shaking his head. “There’s just a lot of data on those first aspirants, and it all converges here. It’s a little overwhelming.”
Janus glanced at the metal plate above Ryler’s right eye, and it occurred to him that there might have been greater changes to his friend’s body than it appeared in the past year, but for the moment, he needed to see to Koni. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
“I…” Koni hesitated for one of the first times in Janus’s memory. “I don’t know. It is a hard thing to hear, that you do not live up to your ancestors’ glory.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Janus said, thinking of Prometheus Base and putting a hand on her shoulder.
Koni looked at Janus in surprise.
Janus looked away, pulling his hand back, and found the Verazlan elders were waiting for them. “We’d better catch up.”
“Yes,” Koni said, passing him and striding ahead.
It took another five minutes of walking to reach the center of the structure, where the pedestal sat.
“This is where the first expedition beamed information to waiting ships and gave them the tally of the dead,” Ryler said, his voice hollow and detached.
The elders looked at each other.
Ryler placed the data cube in the small indentation. As before, the low hum from the machine built into a faint buzzing, and then the machine clanked, raising the hairs on the back of Janus’s neck.
The scores appeared as a hologram above the cube, with only ten teams remaining now. One of the coldsider teams was gone. Several of the elders spoke at once in dismay, but not because of the foreigners. The scores ranged from 12,400 to 15,034—tighter than before—and Janus thought he knew the reason why.
Team Invarian was sitting at 14,467 points, in fourth place after the compartmentalist team, who had dropped back from being in the lead.
The externality, whatever it had been, was gone.