Chapter 40

“Completing your mission is of the utmost importance. It is essentially impossible to get past the inherent cowardice encoded into every life form, the survival instinct that says that living to fight another day will be the best way to achieve your goals in the long term. Sometimes your survival and your success are at odds with each other, and the sooner that you come to accept that, and that you will still complete your mission even when the cost is your life, the sooner you can start coming to terms with your impending death.”

—Duties: A Treatise, Fal’Vaelith

Sylvas turned to face the bruised, bleeding, and battered crowd. “We’re here to kill the shikari queen.”

That set off no small amount of conversation. “If you’re on board with that plan, great, we could use whatever support you can spare.”

He was surprised to hear a crackly voice from behind him. Fern was sneering. “If you go kicking that nest, we’re the ones who’re going to suffer.” 

There were some murmurs of agreement from the crowd. Sylvas waited until they’d calmed before he explained himself. “Your signal isn’t getting out. Whatever activated the defense platforms in orbit is obviously going to be in the Aion ruins. Help is not coming. Now, if we can stop the shikari and lower those defenses, then you all have a chance of surviving this. Without that, we’re all dead. Sooner or later.”

Malachai glanced sideways at Sylvas as he spoke. His scars kept his usually subtle expressions far from clear, but there seemed to be a hint of disapproval in his stare.

Another rumble of agreement came from the crowd. Sylvas could understand Malachai’s disapproval now; this was an exercise in futility. “We are going to kill the shikari. We are going to save your lives. If you want to help us, that’s great. If you don’t, we’ll manage.”

He turned away from them to find Rania. “How long until the next wave arrives?”

She glanced at the sky. “It’s usually every six hours, but this close to dusk, they’ll usually hold back until they can come in a bigger group in the night.”

Malachai straightened up beside Sylvas. “Then we shall join you in the defense of your city.”

Sylvas tried not to roll his eyes. “You’re going to see the medic after they’re done with Hector. See if they can’t get you looking a bit more like your usual self, and then you’re going to get some rest.”

“Do not make the mistake of thinking you command me, Sylvas Vail,” Malachai bristled. “I do not submit to you simply because you are temporarily stronger than me.”

He held up a hand to stop the argument, very deliberately ignoring the word ‘temporarily’ in the midst of all that. “In the morning, we’re going to make our counter-attack, and we need to be fresh for that. See if you can’t drag Kaya away from Hector long enough to bed down with you.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort.” Malachai looked briefly disgusted before realizing that Sylvas only meant for them to sleep, then he cleared his throat. “Apologies, I shall… convey the message.”

“Thanks.” Sylvas threw the necromancer a proverbial bone. “She talks rings around me, but you might get through to her.”

The crowd had begun to disperse now, back to whatever it was these people had been doing other than licking their wounds. Malachai had a clear route to the tent. Still, he paused. “Will you also be resting until the shikari come for us?”

Sylvas smiled. “I’m going to catch up with our friend Rania here.”

A few steps away, in mid-argument with Fern, the archaeologist’s head jerked around at the sound of his voice. “Going to pump me for information on the vault, are you?”

Though he could hear Mira tittering in his hind-skull, Sylvas did not blush or falter at the turn of phrase. “Among other things.”

There was nowhere particularly private around the camp where people could eat, drink, and talk, but Rania still had at least some of the quarters she’d been assigned on arrival in one piece, so they went there under the disapproving stares of the various other archaeologists who kept on eyeing Sylvas as if he was up to something.

Half of the prefabricated cell had collapsed, giving the whole thing a slanted roof and some additional ventilation that nobody would have ever wanted. The window had been clawed out of its frame at some point, and Sylvas noticed that wherever Rania went, the rifle she carried would move with her around the room, always remaining in easy reach. Her gaze drifted to the doorway and the window constantly. She was always waiting for the next attack, as traumatized as any of the other colonists, just better at hiding it. Sylvas decided not to stand on ceremony. As soon as they were in the room, he launched into it. “You work for the Consortium.”

“Past tense.” She slumped into a chair and rested her head on a fallen iron beam. “They cut ties with me when I wouldn’t leave the folks here to be eaten by shikari.”

Sylvas could find nowhere else to sit in the hovel, so he perched on the end of her bed. “Why would you work for them to begin with?”

“Work with them, not for them.” She fidgeted with her sleeve, pulling at a loose string. “They hired me to do a job, that’s all.”

“A job that has resulted in how many deaths so far?”

She glared at him. “If you’re trying to guilt me, it isn’t going to work. I’m un-guiltable.”

“You opened the vault—”

She cut him off. “The vault’s still shut. Vaults need a specific key, and we didn’t have it. We opened the ruins around the vault. Set off whatever trap this planet is meant to be. Got chased out by the shikari. Given time, and study, I would have worked out what unlocked the vault, communicated that to the Consortium, got my pay, and bobbed along to the next gig.”

“And you have no qualms about handing over the contents of vaults to those smugglers?”

“Don’t know if you realize it, living pretty in the middle of the Empyrean, but jobs aren’t that easy to come by out here?” She leaned on the beam again, pressing her forehead against it. “If I want to do what I’m good at, sometimes I need to deal with people who aren’t very nice.”

“Until they were ‘not nice’ to you, and you ended up stranded here with the bomb you just set off.”

She stopped him. “They wanted me to leave with them, but I wanted to help the folks here before I did. It was all very brave. Very stupid.”

Sylvas sank forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “What did you hope you could achieve by staying?”

“My hopes are all up in smoke now.” She sighed. “I thought I might be able to close the ruins, stop more shikari flooding out, but there’s no way we can get close. The queen was a busy little bee while she was locked up in there. It’s full of shikari guarding their mom.”

“And the people here, they’re all fine with you being the cause of all this?”

Once again, she caught him with a glare. “The shikari are the cause of all this, or the Aions, if you want to point fingers all the way up. I’m just the unlucky tit who opened the door for them.”

She sat for a long moment, letting her words hang in the air, and then she pulled herself back from whatever unpleasant memory she’d been stuck in. “But you… who are you?”

This was going to be awkward. “You don’t need to know that.”

They were sitting surprisingly close thanks to the limited amount of space in the room, so this time when she smiled, he caught a glimpse of one of her teeth catching on her lip. Like she was biting it to stop the smile from going too far. “I don’t need to know anything, but I want to.”

The truth of why he was here was definitely something that needed to remain a secret, but there were parts of it he supposed he could share, just like he had with the gangsters. “Your old employers tried to kill me. I came after them. That’s all.”

She looked at him sideways. “The Thesulan Consortium tried to kill you?”

“I’m hardly the first person they’ve tried to kill,” Sylvas deadpanned.

“I don’t know about any of that.” She sank back in her seat again. “Hell, I don’t even know who you are.”

Once again, he was at a loss for how much he was really allowed to share, and how much was inviting disaster. He’d shared everything about himself freely with people before, and the repayment had been brutal betrayals. He didn’t think he could go through that again. “I work for the Empyrean.”

“Well, that’s vague.” She huffed. “Want to give me anything else to go on? A name, maybe?”

There were a million different fake names that he could have given her, a dozen abbreviations or variations that might have been workable, but so far as he was able to tell, she was being forthright with him, and despite his misgivings about her, he wasn’t going to repay that with an outright lie if he could help it. “Sylvas.”

She rolled her hands. “Go on… you can squeeze the whole thing out.”

“Sylvas Vail.”

Her brows drew together. “The Ardent’s new gravity mage? What the hell have they got you out here for?”

She was sitting too close for his comfort, so he straightened back up so that their heads weren’t so close to touching, and her face wasn’t so close to his. “It’s a long story.”

There was a hint of a blush on her freckled cheeks. “It’s going to be a long night.”

That is flirtation, darling. I know you aren’t intimately familiar with it, but there is an implication there that she wants to spend the night with you. Perhaps it would be best if you take her up on it. Get all the ‘information’ that you can out of her.

He scowled at Mira, then remembered to reply. “Maybe once I trust you a little bit more, you can have the rest of it.”

“You don’t trust me?” She laughed. “Sylvas, you literally just dropped out of the sky and started shredding shikari like they’re your favorite treats. I don’t trust you.”

He crossed his arms. “Good, then we’re even.”

“No, we’re not! I don’t trust you because you know everything about me, and I know nothing about you. You don’t trust me because I took a job from someone who pissed you off. Those aren’t the same thing.”

He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. It had been a very violent and busy day. “I shouldn’t have even told you my name.”

“Tomorrow morning would have been really awkward if you hadn’t.” She was too close, and he could feel her breath on his cheek. His eyes snapped open again, and he could see her once more, leaning in.

He tried to keep his nerves under control. “Because?”

She threw up her arms and mock shouted, “Hey, guy I just met, look out behind you, there’s a giant shikari about to eat you.”

The smile that came to his lips was a traitor. He’d never meant for it to show itself. “You can’t come with us to the vault. You don’t even have your first circle.”

“Syl, I’ve been fighting these things for three weeks without needing any magic.” She patted the rifle beside her. “Besides, you don’t even know where you’re going, let alone how to get past the traps, locks, and everything else. You need me if you’re going to make it in there.”

All of this time he had been watching her, assessing her, trying to understand her motivation in all of this, and so far, he had nothing usable. “I don’t need someone I can’t trust at my back in a fight.”

“Then you’d better start learning to trust me because I’m coming. This is my mess, and I’m going to clean it up.” She reached under the bed and pulled out a dusty crate of supplies. “So how do you want to do this?”

Is she propositioning you? Is my little darling finally going to lose his innocence? Better take her up on it quick; your past prospects have all died before you could seal the deal.

Sylvas almost choked. “Do what, exactly?”

She showed him a bottle so coated in fallen plaster that he couldn’t tell what was meant to be inside it. “Learn how to trust me.”