Chapter 10

“At various times throughout the development of the Empyrean, there have been crisis points when the entire enterprise could have crumbled. Times when internal disagreements or external pressures might have resulted in the dissolution of the system of government or the destruction of the political or trading power of the collective. Yet at each of these points, there has been an invisible hand guiding the Empyrean through troubled waters. Information that was pertinent to the situation would suddenly be uncovered. A key agitator driving one of the crises might find themselves inexplicably unable to continue their agitation. Someone operating outside of the public eye was working to keep the Empyrean safe, and while the more religious among us might ascribe such things to fate, I am of a more literal bent. My belief is that there is an Empyrean Intelligence Service capable of markedly more than we are aware that its operatives achieve openly.”

—The Invisible Hand: A Thesis on Empyrean Intelligence Services

Hector walked into the wine bar with a predatory stride, his gaze sweeping over Sylvas and the others as if they were not there. They had been given a description of him along with the illusions woven over them when they were released from their private quarters in the Palace of the Vestige, and he more than lived up to it.

The elves of the city favored pastel colors, flowing, layered clothing, and simple elegance in their personal decoration. Hector was dressed in a black vest, a pair of oil-stained trousers that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a dwarf, and a substantial pair of boots the same color as his T-shirt, but at least a decade old, judging by how badly scuffed they were. Where elves were entirely devoid of body hair, so far as Sylvas had seen, Hector had a bristle of curly black hair right down the length of his arms and protruding from the front of his shirt. The only part of him that was clean-shaven was his face, but even that bore stubble. He was an average-sized human who would have been almost entirely nondescript in most places throughout the universe, but here, he stuck out like a sore thumb.

Malachai leaned in to whisper to Sylvas, “I was under the impression that this gentleman was meant to be a spy. Surely, he could have done something to blend in?”

Meanwhile, Kaya was just staring at the man, and his arms in particular, with a sort of glazed expression. Sylvas had to nudge her to get any sort of response. “Yep.”

Yet in spite of the fact that he should not have fit in at all on Alvarhain, a few moments after he’d sat up at the bar and started chatting with the elvish woman behind the counter, he seemed to fade out of everyone’s memory. No eyes were turned his way, and even when he laughed at some quip from the bartender, nobody so much as glanced around. Sylvas turned his magical senses in Hector’s direction, trying to work out if there was some sort of complex illusion at play to hide him from the awareness of those around him, but there was nothing. He was just blending in purely by behaving as though he belonged there. Presumably, there were other humans on the planet, tourists making a visit to such an important cultural site, and presumably his appearance was commonplace enough that he’d be forgotten about almost as soon as he left, but even so, none of the now ex-Ardent were impressed.

Time began ticking by, five minutes, then ten, without any sign that their contact was going to make contact with them. He went on chatting away happily, pretending that he’d never seen them. 

“Are we meant to make the first move, do you suppose?” Malachai finally asked, his patience running out a little faster than Sylvas’ own.

“We were told to wait here, and he’d contact us,” Sylvas repeated verbatim from his perfect memory. “And that is what I intend to do.”

Kaya had failed to look away from Hector after his arrival. While the other two had maintained their cover as two elves just having a drink, the illusory avatar covering her form and doing some rather complex re-ordering of light to make it look like the honey wine she was glugging was going into the elvish mouth about a foot above her actual mouth had remained locked onto Hector. Sylvas nudged her again. “Any thoughts?”

Following her exact line of sight would have informed Sylvas that she wasn’t staring at Hector so much as his arms to the exclusion of all else. “I bet he could pick me up with one hand.”

“Very helpful.” Sylvas sighed, settling back to mime drinking his own wine. He didn’t hate elvish wine, but he was informed that it was something of an acquired taste, and the length of time that it took to acquire that taste sometimes outlasted a human lifetime. It mostly tasted like fizzy water to him, with the odd hint of something floral mixed in as an aftertaste. He knew that much of elvish culture revolved around subtlety. He just wished that the food and drink weren’t so subtle as to be completely bland to his palate. Then again, he was now quite happily consuming what would be a lethal cocktail of heavy metals and chemicals or anyone but him as a dietary supplement with every meal, so perhaps his palate wasn’t the most refined to begin with.

“His arms are very well-defined.” Malachai kept trying to make polite conversation with Kaya, even though they had nothing in common other than their mutual friend, and it was endlessly entertaining to Sylvas watching the usually suave and refined crown prince struggling to make a single topic connect.

“I wonder if the muscles go down the rest of the way?” Kaya replied. “I wonder if the hair does, too…”

Malachai’s upbringing had been somewhat conservative, given his position as major nobility, and he still wasn’t entirely accustomed to the way that the lower classes talked about attraction to one another. His illusory elf form blushed to a soft blue tone.

Sylvas cleared his throat, perhaps a little too loudly. “Malachai, please don’t encourage her. Kaya, please dial down your hormones by about seventy percent.”

Who taught you about hormones? Mira’s voice immediately chimed in. And don’t you want to get my opinion on the matter? On his rather shapely hands and the way that they could be wrapped aroun—

I absolutely do not. Sylvas sent back as he promptly muted their connected and watched as both of his companions looked down at their drinks and tried to compose themselves. 

At the far side of the bar, someone playing one of the intensely complex stringed instruments that the elves seemed to favor began strumming it on the raised stage, and all eyes were turned in that direction. The first chilling notes of some long-forgotten tragedy had just begun to unfold in a ballad when Hector slipped into the booth beside them.

“Nice to meet you.” He had a wolfish grin that made Kaya’s mouth open and shut a few times without any noise coming out. Sylvas held out a hand to the man and was unsurprised to find it squeezed hard enough that it probably would have cracked bones if he hadn’t been magically reinforced.

“Sylvas Vail. Malachai Dusont. Kaya Runemaul.” Hector rattled off their names, pausing only briefly as he said Kaya’s to take in her overabundant excitement. “First time meeting someone like this?”

“Did we get something wrong?” Sylvas glanced around at the empty booths around him.

“You don’t look comfortable.” Hector still had his own glass of wine in his hand, and he swirled it, allegedly unleashing a bouquet of complex aromas that entirely passed Sylvas by. “People who don’t look comfortable stand out in places that are meant to be comfortable.”

“I am perfectly comfortable,” Malachai complained, stiffly. 

Hector leaned in against Malachai’s side, making the man, and the elf projected over the man, bristle with annoyance. “You’ve got the experience, you know how to project confidence, and you know how to own the room, but now you’re in a room you don’t own, you don’t know what to do. Formal rules hold up in formal settings.”

“Out of the three of you, Sylvas is doing the best job, and he looks like he just made planetfall.”

Sylvas opened his mouth to object but honestly couldn’t. He had no idea what he was doing. Kaya pouted, though. “What’s the stanzbuhr doing that I’m not?”

“Well”—Hector rolled his head on his shoulders, loosening up—“he didn’t make the illusion of an upper-class elf drool over some stray human.”

“What, elves can’t appreciate the view?” Kaya was smirking now, trying to be flirtatious. Sylvas once again found himself about to intervene, to tell her off for trying to fraternize with a superior officer, then realized that, strictly speaking, none of them actually had a rank anymore. They were all equals. They were just bowing to Hector’s experience.

“Elves appreciate the view the same way they eat, drink, and do everything else.” He nodded up at the mirrored panes lining the wooden engravings lining the ceiling of the bar, where a half-dozen different elves had been glancing until just a moment before. “Subtly.”

The elves out drinking in the bar had been watching Sylvas and the others surreptitiously the entire time, using the mirrors positioned around the bar to reflect reflections back and forth and give the impression that nobody was looking at anyone else. He let himself sink into his chair a little, groaning. “Have we just blown the whole… undercover thing?”

The wolfish smile looked a little more genuine this time. “Wouldn’t worry about it, kid. This is our home turf. A capital city on a capital world of the Empyrean. Most of the ears here are ours, and even the ones that aren’t won’t know what to make of us.”

Sylvas frowned. “Why would the Empyrean have… ears here?”

“Funny thing about building a great big conglomeration, inviting everyone to live together under one roof.” Hector knocked back his drink in an entirely un-elven manner. “You end up with most of the trouble inside your house before you even start.”

That seemed to surprise even Malachai. “You are suggesting that the Empyrean spies upon its own people?”

“Spy… That’s a word that just sounds nasty. Like you’re doing bad to somebody by listening to what they have to say for themselves and believing them.” Hector hoisted himself out of his seat, startling them all after so long waiting. “Ready to see your new rooms?”

They made their way out of the bar, trying to be inconspicuous and making themselves much more conspicuous as a result. The only one who was doing a halfway decent job of looking like somebody leaving a bar with friends was Kaya, and Sylvas was pretty sure that the reason she was hanging onto Hector’s arm had nothing to do with verisimilitude and more to do with his biceps. Sylvas leaned in to hiss in her ear, “Remember subtlety?”

“Screw subtle, I’m having fun!” She laughed back.

Once again, Sylvas couldn’t really complain as she was doing a far better job of maintaining their cover than either he or Malachai. The crown prince looked over at him, “Should we also… cuddle?”

Sylvas nearly choked on his own tongue before he got his coughing fit under control. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“I fear that I may not be as well equipped for this role as I had assumed.” Malachai spoke so softly that without enhanced hearing, Sylvas would have missed it.

Trying to gather his wits and not accidentally lead Malachai into thinking that he was going to remain in physical contact with him for a moment longer than necessary, he gave the other man a pat on the back. “We’ll learn together.”

“Perhaps,” Malachai agreed in a tone that felt all too cheerful and upbeat compared to the grim attitude that he’d shown through the evening so far. “Or perhaps we will fail together and die.”