Hypocrisy

Artillery Lieutenant Shale

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“Is it just me, or have the stars gotten too damn lazy for their own good?” Shale adjusted her telescope until the strange, pink-white dots weren’t quite as blurry. “I’m pretty sure they shouldn’t be hanging down over the Sporaton army like that. Last I recall, they’re usually up in the sky.”

“That’s what I’ve heard too, ma’am,” Tavin replied. The nervous young rifleman sounded so earnest that Shale wasn’t sure if he’d picked up on her sarcasm or not. “So I’ve been guessing that they aren’t stars. Stars aren’t in the habit of dangling twenty paces over a fella’s head or stopping cannonballs. Lots of things these stars do that they shouldn’t.”

She grunted out a chuckle. The boy wasn’t that clueless, then. Just anxious after his first proper combat. Probably didn’t help that he was taking orders from the woman he was supposed to keep in prison, Shale reflected. That was a mean little contradiction General Evie had forced him into.

“And you’re sure they’re what stopped the shelling earlier in the day?” Shale asked.

“I wouldn’t say I’m sure,” Tavin hedged. “But I don’t see what else it could be.”

Shale adjusted her telescope. The comparison to stars was a good one. For one thing, strange though it felt to describe hostile spellcraft as such, they were rather beautiful. The Royal Sporaton Army was camped beneath an eerie, celestial mirage, a vast dome of shimmering dots floating over their neat rows of tents. Thousands upon thousands of fist-sized apparitions twisted in the night, bobbing up, down, left or right, ebbing forward then drawing back, and generally shifting lazily as if they were buoys stirred by the winds of some unseen magical current. She tried to find a pattern in their movement, hoping to discern some meaning, but she couldn’t find a rhyme or reason to their motion. She could only tell that they moved in groups, bunched vertical tendrils bending and twisting like stalks of the tall grass they subtly illuminated.

They covered the entire vast army. Shale could see campfires stretching away into the distance, kilometer after kilometer of the city’s besiegers working beneath torch, spell, and starlight. In their design meetings for the forts, Shale and Professor Brown had hoped that the cannonfire from a pair of forts would push an enemy so much further from Tulian’s walls that it would be nigh-impossible to enforce a true siege. That would have been true for most any army that had ever marched through these lands, but not this latest one. If the more booksmart type of officers were to be believed, this was the largest force that had been assembled on the continent in half a century— and the only one in centuries that had been raised by a single power, rather than a coalition.

Though the Royal Army’s lines were thinner than they likely preferred, their teeming numbers afforded more than enough troops to ensure no one could get into or out of Tulian overland without having to walk straight through their defenses. Shale had overheard that the navy was going to be trying to do something about that, but she didn’t know what. Every time she thought of getting involved with the navy again, her mind involuntarily conjured up Lady Evie’s gray, dead eyes. Shuddering, she lowered her telescope.

“Get to your observation point, Private,” she ordered Tavin, stepping down from the ladder she’d been using. “I’ll get to mine. You understand where to be looking?”

“I was guessing it would be where the cannon’s pointed, ma’am.”

“Smartass.”

They walked opposite directions away from the 64-pounder, climbing up ladders that were ten meters or so away from the enormous gun’s muzzle. Shale all but leered at the beast as its operating crew got into position, double-checking its wheels, the rails they sat on, and took special care with the cryslock trigger mechanism. Those 64-pounders were stressful weapons to use, she knew. Though they’d technically been a direct copy of the trustworthy earth weapons the Governess had summoned illusions of, they’d been adapted to better fit Tulian’s future, and that meant there was always a touch of paranoia in their use. No one in Tulian, not even the Brown family, were true experts in the creation of artillery pieces. While the original guns had been named after the weight of shot they’d fired, there was no way Tulian smiths were going to rely on such a primitive manufacturing scheme for long. Possessing forewarning that future machinery would allow precise control of muzzle and projectile diameter, the 64-pounders had been more accurately dubbed the ‘160 Millimeter Rifled Steel Cannon’ by their creators, even if no one used that official name. Rifling machinery of such size had required Hurlish’s personal involvement and more than half a year to develop, which meant the cannons were, if not in absolute monetary terms, more expensive than all but the finest enchanted blade and armor. They couldn’t put that effort to waste. Going forward, 160 millimeters would be the standard bore of Tulian’s next-generation heavy armament, whether on naval vessels, coastal defenses, or forts. The grumbling from budget-minded sorts like Minister Vesta had guaranteed that.

Shale didn’t care how much it cost. She loved the weapon. That Parliament hadn’t officially authorised the cannon’s creation was beyond her comprehension. She’d personally stood before them to explain the beauty of its sleek, triple-grooved rifling, had waxed poetic about the breathtakingly elegant simplicity of the wrought iron barrel liners the rifling was cut into, and had gushed with girlish excitement over the ingenious method by which the finished liner was shoved down the throat of a uniquely robust steel jacket. The weapon was a masterpiece unlike any other, as much an advancement over the smoothbore cast-bronze Napoleons as those weapons had been over the ballistae they’d replaced.

However, to the barely-suppressed frustration of Tulian’s burgeoning gunsmith union, the Brown family kept calling the cannon material they’d worked so hard to create ‘mild steel,’ despite it being the finest quality unenchanted product the continent had ever seen. Considering the colossal force that the 64-pounders had to bear— every shot was launched by more emcotton than a hundred breechloading rifles could expend in a minute of rapid fire— there was really something to be said for the fact that the Browns insisted on calling it mild steel. If this is what they considered mild, the future of artillery was bright indeed.

Shale still didn’t understand how Parliament could think it wasn’t worth producing. Oh, they’d had their arguments, some of which even had merit. They said its increased range (five times that of the 24-pounders) was wholly unnecessary when the finest of enchanted trebuchets couldn’t reach half as far as those lighter weapons. They’d bemoaned that its lead shot would require yet another ammunition manufacturing pipeline, then had wrung their hands about whether or not the fuses under development would survive the concussive force of being launched from such a powerful gun, and they’d kept going on and on and on with all sorts of things Shale couldn’t have given less of a shit about. It was the finest weapon in the world. Why did they need greater reason than that to fund its creation?

Of course, Shale reflected, there’s more to those guns than most anyone knows.

She was one of maybe fifty people in Tulian that had an idea of what lay beneath the gun’s steel exterior. As the first of Tulian’s ‘built-up’ guns, they were actually composed of a complex array of tightly-wound steel, with more than a dozen individual pieces conjoined into the final multi-ton assembly. Difficult enough a manufacturing process to master on its own, there was more to it yet still. The original 64-pounders had been designed to fire blackpowder charges, not the more volatile emcotton, and that meant modifications were required. Each layer of the built-up gun had been enhanced by compressive enchantments intended to keep the gun as dense and resilient as possible. Jacket, breech, primary and secondary tubes, even the barrel liners, all had seen the hand of an artificer. Word had reached Tulian halfway through the weapon’s development that the Carrions were beginning to deploy their own primitive cannons, and that had meant the artificers assigned to the project, most of whom were Carrion immigrants, couldn’t be trusted with the full details of their work. They only knew that they were etching glyphs into steel plates intended to contain explosions of a force they scarcely believed was possible to achieve. The young artificers had desperately warned Shale not to do “whatever it was” she had planned, pleadingly explaining that they didn’t have anywhere near the skill to produce the results she’d demanded of them. Shale hadn’t outright ignored their warnings, but she’d not been half as concerned as the artificers wished she’d been. They hadn’t known that the pieces were to be welded together, not merely forged, and that it would be a Champion and her wife who did the work. The 64-pounders were an amalgamation of two worlds, where the strengths of both had combined into something more than their sum.

Shale licked her lips as the crews backed away. She wanted to fire the gun herself, but knew she couldn’t. Not while inspecting its effect on the target. The dark smoke of an emcotton detonation may have faded faster than blackpowder fog, but it wasn’t quick enough for her to get a good look at the impact, even with the Skills she’d gained to help guide her aim. She needed to see the shot’s flight from beginning to end.

“Ready!” The gun captain called.

She put her telescope back to her eye, adjusting it until she had the best view she could get from the damnably simple tool. She’d used the Champion’s beautifully enchanted Carrion eyepiece a few times before, and she almost wished she hadn’t. The cursed thing had left her spoiled and hungry for its equal ever since. At least this one was good enough to show her what she needed to see. She took a quick breath.

“Fire!”

Though her attention was forward, Shale’s Skills could feel the shot’s ignition process as if she was laying her hand on the gun. A firm press on a lever released the cryslock mechanism’s spring, sending the upper crystal flying forward to click against its opposite half. Sparks sputtered beneath that second piece of quartz, swirling and bouncing down the steel touchhole until they reached the neatly wrapped charge waiting below. Still white hot in the milliseconds after being summoned, the sparks burnt clean through the plain cotton container, exposing the fluffy white emcotton waiting below. Carefully twirled around a thin piece of wood to keep its compression and burn rate under control, lest the emcotton get so dense it became a bomb instead of a propellant, Shale felt one small spark alight upon the puffy spiral’s tail end.

Emcotton charges sounded different to blackpowder in a way that was hard to describe. As Professor Brown had explained it, the two compounds were quite different: blackpowder was a ‘low’ explosive, relatively slow to ignite and expand, while emcotton, just like the earthly guncotton it was inspired by, was a ‘high’ explosive, several times more energetic. Using some complex math and tests Shale hadn’t pretended to understand, the Professor had determined that the shockwave of Tulian blackpowder, when it wasn’t contained within the muzzle of a gun, traveled somewhere around seven hundred meters per second. Emcotton, as best he’d been able to tell, propagated through air at seven thousand meters a second. Shale still didn’t understand how emcotton blasts could move ten times more than blackpowder, yet not be considered ten times as energetically powerful. Whatever the reason for it, she thought the sound the charge made was beautiful.

CRRACK!

The report of the 64-pounders had been deafening even during the height of battle. In the calm midnight hours, the explosion was earth-shaking. Shale acknowledged the muzzle blast that battered her only in the way she tightened her grip on the telescope, waiting for the impact.

The lead slug zipped into the night, towing behind it a wake of disturbed air that, she’d been told, no one but her could see. Nothing in the world had given Shale an appreciation for distances and speeds than her work with artillery. The projectile covered a kilometer and a half in just under two seconds, arriving long before the cannon’s detonation could provide their target an audible warning. Unless someone happened to be looking right at the 64-pounder as it had fired, there was no way anyone could have been ready for its dive into the sea of pinkish-white dots over the Sporaton camp.

The lights were dense enough that the projectile hit one as soon as it entered the field. Rather than piercing the apparition, deflecting away, or doing anything so mundane, the massive lead bullet slowed noticeably, yet somehow kept the same angle to its flight, continuing on to smack a second light, an impact which slowed it even further. Though it happened in less time than it would have taken to blink, Shale saw the way both lights were stuck to the front of the slug, carried onward like soldiers desperately trying to slow a runaway cart. The bullet was far slower when it struck the third light, and it was then that Shale saw the strangest part of all: a flash of light no wider than her wrist, maybe ten meters long, crackling across the night. It speared the lead slug through faster than anything she’d ever seen, opening up like a spreading flower, tearing the now-stationary projectile into pieces of harmless confetti. It vanished as quickly as it had come. There was no thunderclap, ominous rumble, or any proof something had happened at all.

Shale blinked several times, trying to clear the vision of the eye she’d had pressed to the telescope. The thing had seemed faster than lightning, and it had been bright. It had existed so briefly she felt fairly sure she’d only been able to see it because of the lingering afterimage it left, not the light itself.

She shifted the telescope to her other eye, squinting at the army. She’d aimed the cannon herself. She knew the path the slug would have taken. Looking closer, she saw…

There!

Right along the bullet’s path were three dim lights that were, notably, quickly growing brighter. Shale started counting.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… eight?

The light reached its full luminosity too smoothly for her to be certain of the exact moment it matched the others, but when she accounted for how long it had taken her to find the lights in the first place, she guessed that it had taken no more than ten seconds for the spell to recover itself.

Damn. That’s fast.

Torches were beginning to bob and weave in the Sporaton camp. It was an amusing sight, seeing all the tiny figures running about in the distance. She imagined they were calling out to each other, to the sentries, many petrified with ideas that Tulian had thought to dare a midnight infantry assault on the camp. Looking at the chaos that a single cannon had created, Shale almost wished they had. The common soldiers of the Royal Army clearly had none of the discipline she now took for granted in Tulian regulars. An ambush would have worked wonders.

Satisfied with her test, Shale hopped down from the ladder, quickly moving behind the cover of the concrete embrasures. There was ongoing concern that the Sporatons would use the cover of night to sneak up some high-Level archers for the purpose of picking officers off the wall. Shale wasn’t all that concerned about it herself, figuring that few such veteran archers would be willing to undertake what a retaliatory cannonade would render a suicide mission. Still, since she was technically important enough to be the target of such an assassination effort, she was going to play it safe. She’d found her love of the army when shooting at people. Getting shot at was something she had no interest in.

“Bring the gun captains to me!” She called out, moving back toward the 64-pounder as its crew began hastily cleaning it for another shot. “We’re going to try something different. I want every gun that will bear aiming at the same target. The EXACT same target, understand me? We’re going to break through those damn lights navy style! A full fort broadside!”

A chorus of affirmatives sounded off as the night watch saluted. The gun captains were asleep, Shale knew, but most of them chose to sleep near their post. No one expected a night assault, but there wasn’t any point in taking unnecessary risks.

Tavin joined her once more as she began walking down the line, personally adjusting the angle of each cannon. The Sporatons had set up a big, gaudy-looking tent in the middle of their lines, and she’d decided to use it as her target. It was a safe bet that the people staying in such a fancy place were ones worth killing.

“I take it you had a good enough view, ma’am?” Tavin asked. “It happened too fast for me to tell how it’s being done, but I know it’s definitely the lights that are stopping our shots.”

“I saw it,” Shale confirmed. “The lights stick to the front of the shot, slowing it down, then rip the shot apart once enough of the little pricks have grabbed on. I guess it’s easier for the mages to cast a bunch of tiny pieces of spell than it is to get one big shield going.” She glanced down the sights of the 24-pounder she was stood at, gave the elevation gear a few extra taps, then moved to the next. “I’m thinking that if we send a full volley at one small little section, we’ll have good enough odds to break through.”

“Huh.” Tavin’s hand ran along the stock of his Hot Rifle as he considered Shale’s words, casually caressing the smooth wood like it was a lover’s arm. He made a face. “I bet rifle shots would slip right past. There’s a lot slimmer odds for one of my fifteen millimeter rounds to hit one of the lights.”

Fifteen millimeter? Not fifty-eight caliber? Gods, no wonder the Professor was so obsessive about measurements. Even with all he’s tried to do, it’s turned into a damn mess.

“That’d require you being able to hit a target a couple klicks out,” Shale said, crouching to adjust the next cannon. “If you can manage that, I’ll… Well, I guess I’d have to promote you or something, I s’pose.”

“I can’t shoot that far,” Tavin admitted frankly. His voice gained an odd, almost wistful timbre. “Not yet, anyway. Not yet.”

Shale rolled her eyes. “Damn kids. You all think you’ll end up a King one day.”

He gave her an odd look. “King, ma’am?”

“Old phrase,” Shale grunted. “I suppose it doesn’t make much sense in Tulian anymore.”

“Hard to believe that anyone would want to be a king, honestly.”

Shale eyed him as she moved to the next cannon. “What in the hells do you mean by that? Who wouldn’t want to be a king?”

“About the only thing I’ve ever heard of them is how much people hate ‘em. Seems like a fine way to get stabbed in your sleep.”

Shale looked at him incredulously. “How old are you, kid? Do you even remember when Tulian still had a king?”

“I’m seventeen, ma’am. And I remember bits and pieces from before the storms, that’s all. But even with the war on, folks seem a lot happier now than they did back when I was a kid.”

Look at that, Sara, Shale thought, bemused. You’re already managing to get people remembering the old days just the way you want. Bet you’ll be damn pleased to hear it.

“Seventeen means you’re still a kid,” Shale told him. “But I guess you’re right.” She slapped the cannon and grinned. “I’m sure as shit happier. Can you imagine being one of the poor peasant bastards staring down the wrong end of these guns?” She chuckled darkly. “Wouldn’t do it for all the coin in the world. Now c’mon, get out of the way. The gun captains are almost here.”

Tavin looked at her meaningfully. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping, ma’am? Eventually?”

“When I’ve got cannons I could be firing?” She spat on the concrete. “No. I’ll sleep when we run out of targets or ammunition, and not a damned moment sooner.”

Tavin shifted uncomfortably. “Well… What if a fellow had been given orders to make sure officers didn’t run themselves ragged doing just that sort of thing?”

Shale eyed him. “I imagine I’d tell such a fellow to fuck right off.”

“And what if the fellow’s order came from the Generals themselves?”

Shale hesitated. “Well… I suppose I might…”

“Lady Evie, specifically.”

“Shit.” Shale ran a hand through her hair, rubbing the thin spot right atop her scalp. It was almost recovered from her latest close call with experimental ammunition. “I guess I’d try to bunk down for a few hours. A nap here or there.”

“That might be for the better, ma’am.”

The conversation was dropped as groggy, half-dressed gun captains and their crews began filtering up to join Shale. As she explained her plan to probe the enemy’s defenses, a small part of her mind was beginning to wonder the best spot for her to drop a cot at. If she was going to be forced into resting, she’d at least stay close to her guns.

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Sergeant Mui Thom

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Tilting his head to inspect the featureless face before him, Mui found himself growing unnerved. He’d never inspected the Brown family’s green-cloaked guards so closely before. Everyone had given them a cursory once-over before, of course, but Mui himself had never walked up to one, stopped, and simply stared.

The… man? Woman…? The… person. The person was guarding Sara’s tent in perfect silence, as had always been their custom when they’d had three others to help them. Mui had gotten used to seeing green cloaks in the corner of his vision when he was with the Brown family. He’d always thought their faces were so unremarkable as to be difficult to tell apart at a glance, save for the fact they had the same pale skin as any other northerner. Looking closer, however, Mui found something strange. He’d been staring at the individual for several minutes now, but he’d never stopped feeling that their face looked unfamiliar. Difficult to discern.

Closing his eyes, Mui turned his thoughts inward. He tried to summon a mental image of the guard who was standing before him. Nothing would come. Only a list of attributes; that they were normal, that they had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and dark hair.

But what was the shape of their lips? What color of dark hair did they have? Mui didn’t know. He’d just been looking at them, yet he had no idea. He opened his eyes, searching their face, inspecting each part in turn, and even while his eyes were pointed straight at the feature in question, Mui found he still couldn’t tell a thing about them.

A dizziness began to take him. He wobbled on his feet, stumbling a step backward. The guard watched him without expression. He wasn’t sure if they could make an expression, in fact. Did they even have a face? Or was it just this? This incomprehensible assortment of shallow, meaningless details?

With nausea and bile rising alongside the disorientation, Mui started to fall further backward, arms windmilling, until there was a soft rustle of cloth— and a warm hand wrapped around his wrist, arresting his fall.

He blinked. The guard had caught him.

Mui looked down. The guard’s cloak had opened to allow their hand to exit. He had no interest in going mad at the sight of some Otherly thing, as he’d almost begun to fear this person was, but he couldn’t help but look.

Mui was quite grateful to see nothing more sinister than a human body. But it was one that was hidden behind a bewilderingly dense wall of objects. Bands of roughly-cut sapling wood wrapped their body like a second skeleton, providing a ladder’s framework by which dozens of objects were hung. Some were familiar, some not. What few Mui recognized included pistols, grenades, and long-bladed knives, but the rest were bizarre. Firearms of a shape and purpose he didn’t recognize, including an exceptionally strange one that began at the person’s neck and ended below their waist, yet had a long, thin metallic protrusion beneath its barrel that almost crossed their entire torso. Small spheres wrapped in knit yarn were nailed to the wood, a long, undecorated iron tube running between them. He heard strange groaning and creaking, as if the figure holding his wrist was made of the failing timbers of an abandoned home, and then he nearly sneezed as his nose was filled with overpowering scents. Salt, brimstone, and the rot of a soggy, rotten corpse left behind by the retreating tide.

Mui settled back onto his feet. The figure straightened as their hand retreated back into the cloak, but now their head was turned a touch down, the two dots of featureless eyes turned to him. Mui opened his mouth to thank them, but the coat rustled again. One hand emerged, a finger raised, and slid up to the figure’s lips. The contrast of something so obviously concrete next to the indiscernible smear that was their face nearly made Mui stumble again, but this time he held his ground, curiosity overwhelming his nausea when that finger was pressed to their lips.

They’re shushingme? What, because Sara is asleep? Astonished, he looked around at the still-bustling mercenary camp. Few could sleep when a battle was expected in the morning, and Mui was far from the only one up making noise.

Furthering his surprise, the green cloaked guard turned, walking away from Sara’s tent. When they’d taken a few steps without Mui following, they stopped and turned, their not-face looking at Mui.

This is why you came here, fool, he admonished himself. To see the last thing that Sara has kept hidden from you. Follow them.

The figure resumed their walk the moment that Mui joined them. Watching them as they moved, Mui found that their unusual gait and shifting cloak suddenly made a great deal more sense. Not only were they dressed in full plate armor, there was more equipment beneath those robes than any Warrior had ever carried, all loosely attached to what had seemed to be an awfully confining network of thin reeds and branches. Where once he’d thought the constant bulging of their form was disturbing, he now felt it was a wonder their cloaks so rarely showed the occasional bump poking through.

He wasn’t sure where they were leading him. He had a brief flash of concern that the guard was actually under Evie’s authority, and thus was dutifully acting out some pre-arranged order to discretely kill anyone who delved too deeply into their identity, but he quickly shook it off. As had been demonstrated to him countless times, no one in the Brown family would have needed a middleman to kill Mui.

Though I suppose little Tahn would, he amended, chuckling. The guard showed another sign of humanity by twisting their hips around, almost facing him.

“Nothing,” he assured them. “I haven’t slept in far too long and I seem to be going a touch mad.”

The cloaked figure turned around, satisfied.

Not an automaton, then. They have no thought, much less curiosity. Despite himself, he chuckled again. What do you know of automatons, Mui? That you’ve heard the word spoken offhandedly in plays you watched as a child?

The ramblings of his anxiety-riddled mind didn’t last for long. He was led into an unremarkable tent well within the Powdered Lead’s portion of the camp. The guard held the flap open for him, waiting for him to enter.

Okay. Odd, but…

He went in. The tent was empty of any sign of habitation. No bedroll, no pack, and no one else present. The only comfort was a tarp spread over the dirt, and even that was cheaply done. With the meagre starlight covered and the canvas thick enough to block most of the torchlight outside, he doubted those without catfolk’s eyes would have been able to see much of anything.

The guard sat down. Mui sat opposite them. He noticed that even now the guard had made sure that their green cloak folded out in such a way as to cover their entire body.

“Why do you want to know about me?”

Mui’s fur nearly leapt from his body. The voice was that of a tired, gruff woman, but he hadn’t seen the not-face move an inch. Seeing his confusion, the guard’s hands emerged from their cloak once more, reaching for their hood.

His eyes ached as the green cloth was pulled down. Though their face didn’t change a touch, his sense of it did. He became aware of more and more details as the cloak lowered, the vague abstractions giving way to visible traits. He saw a woman’s face, maybe in her fifth or sixth decade, her age showing in the wrinkles and sunspots. Her nose had a jagged twist in the center from countless half-healed breaks, giving testament to a life of combat, the impression furthered by a pair of pale, mostly-faded scars that ran from her left temple all the way down her face. Dark eyes smoldered over a chin thrust forward in challenge, muscles bunched behind her cheeks from her clenched jaw.

“Well?” She demanded. The illusion must have been altering her voice, too, because she no longer sounded a fraction as calm as she had before. “You have what you wanted. You’re the first one outside Master’s family to see this face. Why did you come to me?”

For a long while, Mui did nothing more than stare. He wasn’t ready for this. It was just… a woman? A normal human? True, her age and clear experience were noteworthy, but after months of wondering, theorizing, surreptitiously gawking, this was it? A normal woman?

“I… wanted to know what Sara still hadn’t shared,” he said at last. “If I can trust her or not.”

“You cannot.”

He blanched. “What?”

“I’ve spent a great deal of time around you, Sergeant. More than you realize. And I know my Master. She cares about you, but she has firmly defined priorities. You are not at the top of the list. And your Empire?” The woman scoffed. “It may not be her lowest priority, but it’s close.”

As the woman spoke, Mui came to realize that she had a type of Continental accent he’d heard from only one other person: Evie. Though her face was that of a brute, she had a refined, upper-class accent.

“I know that much,” he said. “I wouldn’t ever ask she lay down her life for me or anything so dramatic. I only want to know…”

He trailed off. What did he want to know? If he could ‘trust’ Sara, he supposed, but what did that mean? He’d never once thought she might throw him to his death or abandon him on the battlefield, but that wasn’t trust. That was basic human decency. So what was he searching for?

“Why did she hide you?” He asked. “She’s done so much, told me so many things, but never showed me a sliver of you. Her last secret. I feel as if there is so much of her that I already know, but what you are…” He licked his whiskers. “I’m just a soldier. But now my soul is being clawed at by loyalty to a friend, to my Emperor, and to my very faith. She is a Chosen of the Gods, but she is nothing like what they were supposed to be. And in all ways, her refusal of what she is supposed to be has been so… so brazen. But not when it comes to you. Why?”

The woman sniffed, cloak parting so she could wipe her nose. Her expression, though still stoney, softened just a touch.

“I can tell you. I’m allowed to. But I doubt you will find the answer satisfying.”

“Oh, damn you.” Mui’s tail flicked irritably. “With a warning like that, how could I walk away ignorant? You say you know me, yes? Then you must know that I didn’t come here without reason. I am tired of indecision, of being led around by people and motivations I cannot fathom. What are you?”

The woman didn’t respond with words. She merely reached up to her neck, two fingers pinching a button that was hidden beneath the fold of her cloak, and let it fall open.

Mui hissed.

Slick, polished metal was wrapped firmly around the woman’s neck. The same instrument that Mui had seen prompt Sara into summary execution of captured prisoners. What she had called the foulest of evils, the greatest shame of thinking beings, and, in her most drunken of rants, the reason why she believed none of the gods deserved worship.

A slave collar.

It was unbroken. Tulian’s High Archmage had taught his Imperial opposites the obscenely complex spell required to break the collars, how to leave them as nearly useless curiosities, but this example was whole. It would take an Archmage’s powerful touch to free the woman from her bonds— bonds Sara had forced her into! And Sara’s illusions, the mastery of her spellcraft… by the gods, it was far beyond what he’d ever reckoned. She’d been hiding her guard’s faces, their slave collars, and, he could only assume, the control band she wore on her wrist. And no one, not even General Borek and his mages, had ever noticed!

“If you ask my Master,” the woman said, “The other guards and I are her insurance against legacy. She detests the idea of Tulian citizens worshipping her as her own people did their founders. What better way to taint her image as an abolitionist than to own slaves in secret?”

Blood thundered in Mui’s ears. His eyes darted up and down the woman, trying to find an explanation. Another layer of illusion, a lie, something. All of the sudden he felt dizzier than ever, bewildered, completely disarmed. There was no way what he was seeing could be true. How often had he heard her disgust for the practice? She had killed men and women for less— for far, FAR less. She had threatened the life of those who underpaid their workers, had forced the Adjutant to begin giving even prisoners of war a wage for their labor, and now this? Sara Brown, a slaveowner? She who screamed her throat bloody with rage at her god, demanding they erase such a sin from all of time? How could it be possible?

“Explain,” he croaked. “What is the meaning of this? There must be some explanation. There has to be.”

“There is. But I will warn you, it isn’t an easy one.”

“I didn’t come here to leave with more questions than I started. Explain yourself.”

The woman’s collection of eclectic equipment creaked as she leaned back to settle herself more comfortably. After gathering her thoughts for a few moments, she began a quiet, contemplative narration.

“I was born as Renata Galin, fifth child of Tymon and Aurelia Galin. In my twelfth year, knowing I had no prospects for inheritance or greater rank, I elected to join the Knights of Castle Lament, where I served as a squire for the customary ten years. I became a true Knight just in time to join the eastern wars— when the King of Sporatos celebrated his crowning by sweeping his armies along the coast, absorbing the coastal city-states into the realm. I served with distinction, earning the interest of my betters, and so was often sent to engage in the skirmishes, raids, and minor conflicts that occupied the Kingdom in the years thereafter. Shattering the Tulian Republic was to be another such minor conflict.”

Renata’s voice, already gruff, dropped an octave lower.

“I was with the Knights that breached the city’s walls in the last days of the war. Surrounded and cut off, I was with the mercenaries who were trapped on the harbor wall. A cannonball took my left leg below the knee, struck the ground beneath me, and trapped me in the basement of a collapsing home. The sliver of potion I had left was enough to stop the bleeding, but that was all. I sat in darkness for two days, wondering if the gods would forgive me for cutting my own throat to spare myself a slow, ignominious death. And then she found me.”

“Sara,” Mui muttered.

“Yes. Evie would have killed me on sight, of course. But it was Master who was assisting with the recovery efforts, and that good fortune saved my life. She saw my armor, my weapons, recognized me as a veteran Knight, and made a decision. Gathering a few trusted individuals for the task, I was hauled away to a hidden prison. My wounds were treated, I was given food and water, and thin bars were installed in the ceiling to give me natural light. I was waiting for the hangman’s noose. Expecting it any day. I likely would have killed myself during that time, but of course they removed any tool I could have used to do so. I had to wait weeks before she came to see me.”

Mui braced himself for some terrible tale. For the story of Sara’s ire to rise during a conversation with the woman, her fury building until she clamped the collar around Renata’s throat without mercy, enslaving her forever more. Renata paused in her story, building Mui’s concern even higher.

“The ‘Mad Champion’ was not what I expected,” She said at last. “I expected interrogation. Torture. Whatever happened, I knew it would end with execution. But when she did finally come to me, she simply… talked.”

Renata’s eyes fell out of focus. Though she was looking at Mui, he could tell her mind was back in that cell.

“She didn’t ask questions. Not at first. She simply made statements. Observations. They began obvious enough. She noted that I was a Knight. That I was missing a leg. That I was unwed, and had no heirs. I was baffled, of course. What could be the purpose of telling me such obvious things? But she wasn’t acting thoughtlessly. She watched my every movement, my each and every reaction to her statements. And then her statements began to get more specific.”

Renata’s vision refocused. She peered at Mui.

“Can you imagine what that was like? To be sitting before a Champion of the Gods, listening to her words dance around your innermost self? She was a vulture, Sergeant Mui Thom. Spiraling down, down, down, ever closer to something terrifyingly profound. I didn’t say a word, but it hadn’t been more than an hour before she began to peck at the ragged edges of my soul. She explained it to me later. Master could watch my flinches, my blinking, my breathing, and know almost exactly what I was thinking beneath. Even in stalwart silence, I lay exposed to her. And she soon spoke truths of myself that even I hadn’t known. She told me of… of who I was. Everything. All that I had ever been.”

Renata looked away, eyes glistening.

“It was not a pleasant experience, Sergeant. There was nothing I could hide from her. She explained who I was. With an archivist’s dry tone, she told me why I had so feared a life of ignominity. She spoke of the way my people’s culture had formed my thoughts and values, turning what I once thought were my deepest-held convictions into trite, fragile little immaturities. She tapped her thigh in boredom while she explained the methods by which I fought, despite having never seen me hold so much as a knife. She told me why I targeted the body instead of the head: that I wanted to prolong the fight, to give myself more time in the heat of combat before I returned to the pale, listless existence that awaited me off the battlefield. I could see the contempt on her face as she detailed the insecurities which provoked me into striking servants for minor failures, how my position as a fifth-borne child had made me hate those of the rank I feared I might someday join. She hardly took a breath as she tattooed me with acidic insults, each burning deeper than any needle or blade could have reached. I knew they were true. It was impossible to ignore. Her intonation, the confidence with which she spoke, and the way her explanations wove masterfully past any and every defense I could have thought to offer? It was the truth. Pure and unfettered. In those first few hours, I was dissected. To her, my mind was nothing more than a vivisected bird laid out on a scholar’s table, but I was not dead. I was forced to watch her playing with my heart, rolling it from side to side in her palm, judging its weight and worth, deciding if it should be kept or discarded.”

“I can see your horror.” Renata met Mui’s gaze, a portion of her scarred face lifting in the tiniest of smiles. “You’re right to be horrified, of course. It was terrible. But she did not merely break me down. She who hated me, despised me, she still spoke… kindly?” Renata shook her head by the smallest degree. “As I said, she explained all that I was. Even the parts of myself that weren’t contemptible. She spoke of my adherence to chivalric codes, how I had followed them more closely than many other Knights she had met. She took time to work her way through an explanation of asexuality, sexual repulsion, and how it was only natural that I had so desperately fought my mother and father’s attempts to have me married into a higher station in life, despite it having obviously been in my favor. She spoke of Cleo— my old steed— and reminded me that I had more than adequately prepared for her care should I go missing in battle, as I eventually did.”

As Renata spoke, Mui found himself aghast. He had known in the abstract that Sara’s status as a Divine Chosen had gifted her a unique ability to peer into the minds of others, but he’d never been forced to truly confront what that meant. The way Renata’s voice trembled as she spoke, the misty tears in her eyes as she remembered the exchange… All of it was from a mere few hours of conversation.

“That sounds like a torture of its own kind,” he murmured.

Renata pursed her lips. “It might have been. But that was only the first day we spoke. In the end, it was weeks of these discussions. I began replying and speaking for myself on her second visit, despite having sworn to myself that I wouldn’t.” She shrugged. “Why not? It was clear that there was nothing left to hide from her. It was like being trapped before a mirror that was cursed to show only my foulest self. Or, perhaps more accurately, one that showed me just how foul I really was.”

“Horrible.”

Renata raised an eyebrow. “Was it? How many people can say that an avatar of divinity paid such close attention to them? You must understand, Mui Thom, that it did not stop there. When she had finished exposing all the wounds I’d never known I had, she began to offer me…” The woman’s mouth worked as she searched for the right word. “Solace,” she said at last. “An opportunity to better myself. With all my petty grievances and cruel habits revealed, she told me what I could do about them. How to master my anger, how to grow scars over those old wounds, and why I should do so.”

“Did you ever have a choice?”

“I don’t know. Did I?” A whisper of sadness ghosted across her face, then disappeared. “The Champion of Amarat stared into my mind, broke it apart, and offered me a chance to rebuild it. She understood me so perfectly that I still wonder exactly that question. I have no doubt that if she wished, she could have manipulated me so perfectly that I never knew my mind was being twisted. That I hold such a concern suggests she didn’t, but what if that was in her plan as well?” Renata tapped the collar at her throat. “And what of this? She commands me without compromise. How do you know that I am speaking the truth? She is the Champion of Amarat, the Goddess of Connection. The control over slaves given to others by the collar is a paltry thing next to her complete mastery over my body and mind. All she would need to do is order me to try my utmost to convince those who ask that I have my free will intact, and all my efforts would be bent to the task. You cannot trust a word I say— including even this claim.”

Mui didn’t know what to say to that. The complexity of it all was exhausting, making his head pound painfully. He rubbed his snout with both hands, moving up to massage his brow as he thought. Renata waited for him to speak.

“Why the collar?” He eventually asked. “Why enslave you? After all she’s done to destroy the collars, all the hatred for slavery that I have seen in her, why did she indulge in it herself?”

“As I said. Legacy. She wanted to ensure that the generation of Tulian citizens who were raised after her death did not worship her memory—”

“No,” Mui interrupted. “No, that’s not it. She could do that any number of ways. By the Hells, have you seen her? Releasing an essay on all she does in her bedroom with her wives would sully her legacy enough, much less her actions in battle, her crassness, her brutality, and a thousand other things. And Evie!” He all but laughed. “I know that woman. She allowed herself to be freed from Sara’s slavery, only to allow another to be put under that same yoke?”

Renata’s brows furrowed. “If you think that Evie disapproves of slavery-”

“Of course she doesn’t! I am saying she would be too jealous!” Mui stabbed a claw toward the collar. “She would never allow another to be enslaved by Sara, not without joining them in bondage, which must mean there is a good reason for that collar, one that supersedes even her freakish lusts. Why did she allow it? Are Sara’s illusions hiding a collar around her neck as well?”

“...no,” Renata said, drawing the word out cautiously. “And you are right that the collar confers an assortment of practical benefits.”

“Like what?” He demanded.

“Well…” Renata hesitated yet again. It was clear that she wasn’t used to exposing her secrets in such a manner. In fact, judging by the growing scratchiness to her voice, it had been a very long time since she spoke at such length. “As I said, her mastery over the collar is more total than is easily imagined. If she orders me to remember some detail or another, the memory will be conjured up as if it had just happened. She can order me to ignore pain, to forgo sleep, to not care about hunger. A great many things.”

“What, specifically, did she order you to do? To feel?”

Renata cocked her head. “This is not what I expected you to focus on, Sergeant.”

“Answer the question.”

“It is the same set of orders that the other guards received. We are all captured Knights, the highest Level she could secret away. Our body’s needs have been abstracted, turned into something more akin to intellectual recollection. I no longer feel pain; I only know that a part of my body is being damaged and how severe a wound I have suffered. It doesn’t distract me in the slightest, and thus the worst agony is now as easily ignored as, say, a shirt made of rough-spun wool. Many other potential weaknesses are the same. Hunger, sleep, illness, all are but distant memories for us. On the rare occasions we are alone, she orders us to train to the absolute limit of our physical capacity, thus ensuring we maintain a prowess beyond anything normally possible. She has also removed our ability to become distracted, so that we can choose to focus on whatever we wish with unerring perfection, but worded the command in such a way that we are not blind to other events while doing so. We cannot be tortured, coerced, or misled, and require far steeper doses to be drugged or become drunk. When we choose to sleep, we do so instantly, and can do so while standing, but are woken in an instant by the chirp of a whistle that others cannot hear. We each carry one, and you yourself have come upon me while I was asleep several times. It is why we travel in pairs as often as possible.”

Mui leaned back. Renata continued for quite a while longer, detailing a seemingly endless list of alterations that Sara had made to her and the other green-cloaked guards. Yet as she went on and on and on, Mui failed to hear one critical command: anything bad.

“By the fucking gods, Sara,” Mui finally said, interrupting Renata. “You tear open someone’s soul like a demon from campfire stories, then turn them into this?”

“This?” Renata asked.

“You!” He began to stand, frustration getting the better of him. “Some… perfected being. A flawless version of the human form.” He slung his pack over his shoulder, looking down at Renata. “I am sure she is disgusted with herself for what she did to you. Racked by guilt and regretting it every time she allows her thoughts to wander.”

“Yes,” Renata murmured.

“Do you feel the same?”

She shook her head.

“Then we are done here. With Evie gone, I assume I will see you during the battle?”

“I am to protect Master as her wife once did, yes.”

“Do me a favor, then.” Mui nodded to the bizarre gun slung across her chest. “I’ve seen an inkling of the firearms Hurlish is capable of creating. I assume that thing is one of her more terrifying works. If you need to fire it tomorrow, give me a warning, would you?”

Renata stared at him. Mui had one hand on the tent flap, ready to leave, but waited for her response.

“...if I can,” she hedged. “It will likely be spur-of-the-moment if it needs to happen. But you will know it when I do so. An ess-em-gee such as this was never meant to fire fifty caliber shells, and the end result has proven… dramatic.”

“I am sure it is,” he agreed, stepping out of the tent. “When does the Brown family do anything else?”