Chương 51: Chapter 50: Good

Jorm hadn't stopped saying it since the curtain fell shut behind them.

"He agreed to the bet. He doesn't do that unless he's sure we lose."

"I cannot believe I let myself get dragged into this." Vector paced a tight circle outside the den. He rounded on Elma and Jorm both, finger swinging between them.

"You're not Karnaks. You lied to me."

"You wanted us to hand you our actual names," Elma tapped the frog mask.

"What did you think these were for?"

"Fine. Fair." He didn't sound like he thought it was fair.

"The teleportation thing. Is that a lie too?"

"No."

"Great. Let's test it right now, then."

"Make your mirror." Elma held his eyes.

"I'll show you." Repera's fist closed around a fold of his shirt.

"I'm hungry." So are we, the Other put in, unhelpfully. Vector exhaled through his nose, some of the fight draining out of him.

"Food first. Then." He pointed two fingers at Elma, more tired than accusing now.

"After lunch, you show me."

"I will." Elma turned. Lucien had gone quiet somewhere in the last few minutes, facing away from them as he braced himself against a pole, quiet in a way that didn't suit him at all. Silk stood planted at his shoulder like a fixed point.

"You're running away," Elma said. Neither of them answered. Silk turned her face toward the street instead.

"Why." Lucien let a long breath go before he managed it.

"Christa said something's wrong with you."

"Nothing's wrong with me."

"You've always been strange." He wasn't unkind about it, which somehow made it land harder.

"A four-year-old with a lead no grown Resonant in this city had. A four-year-old who held perfectly still with a scythe pulled against her from the other side of a table." His jaw worked.

"I don't think you'd tell us your actual story even if I asked outright." Elma said nothing.

"But you've been right. About all of it, so far." He turned to face her.

"I want to believe you don't mean any of us harm."

"I don't."

"Or Christa."

"I don't."

"Wait." Vector's head snapped up.

"She's four?" Jorm's elbow found his ribs." Shh." Lucien kicked a loose stone across the cobblestones and watched it skitter.

"After all this, can your Roots take us anywhere? Me and Silk?"

"Anywhere. Or close enough to it." He pressed the heel of his hand against the bridge of his nose.

"All that money went down the drain. For nothing."

"There, there." Silk's palm landed flat between his shoulder blades, like she was patting down a coat. He exhaled and faced Elma properly this time.

"I don't care what you are. Whatever's living behind your eyes, whatever you actually are underneath all of it." A beat.

"These last few days, I think I've gotten to know you about as well as anyone's going to. You remind me of a person. The first time I met her, she was just like you." Silk's gaze dropped to the ground between her boots.

"And I think underneath all that," Lucien continued, "you're just as good as her." Something pulled tight in Elma's chest, sharp and unfamiliar and entirely unwelcome. Good? Good at what? She didn't know why she felt it this time, only that whatever this was, it felt nothing like the praise Hephryx used to measure out to her in careful, calculated doses, praise that had always come with a price attached, even when it didn't say so out loud. This vague praise from this unimpressive man made all of that feel small.

Feel fake.

"Something's coming for Veraxys," Lucien said.

"And it looks like we're the only ones who know about it and aren't running."

"Well, I don't know about that." Vector crossed his arms. Lucien's brow furrowed.

"In case you've forgotten, we're the only ones who can get you home."

"Were you asleep back there? Sekar just offered to take me there." Vector pushed back.

"You're not seriously believing that, are you? The man's desperate for manpower. Do you really think he'll go anywhere near the shore and risk losing some of his people for your sake?"

"Okay, you're making a great point." Vector paused.

"Well, it all depends on whether she's bluffing or not." He glanced at Elma.

"And I'm telling you now, if something really is coming for this nation, I'm not risking my life or hers." He pointed at Repera.

"Not for it. I'll help you with this investigation of yours, but if it fails, that's none of my concern." Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"If that's your stance, we'll respect it," Lucien said.

"Good." Vector paused, letting that settle before rubbing his chin.

"What the hell is even coming for this nation? It couldn't be the Tide, could it?"

"If it was, the Shepherd would have warned us already," Lucien said.

"Well, it's certainly strange. Let's hope we're not pissing some God off." He glanced at Lucien.

"So you're, uh, a Kresnik?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Lucien's eyes narrowed.

"Nothing. I just didn't know you're a noble, uh…"

"So what now," Silk interjected. Lucien's attention shifted to her. The question seemed to pull him out of the conversation with Vector, and his voice had steadied when he answered.

"We win this tournament. Then we tell Christa everything."

"Why not just tell her now?" Jorm asked.

"If Sekar tells us who set him up to it," Elma said, "we can gather enough evidence against them to bring Valerius back. Telling Christa now, without evidence, won't give her much to work with."

"What she said." Lucien nodded. He squared his shoulders, some of his usual bluster creeping back in.

"Let's go save Veraxys." Jorm straightened, her posture snapping rigid.

"Yes, sir." Repera immediately straightened beside her, copying the posture as best she could.

"Yas… ser." Silk approached Elma silently and stood to her left.

"You're sure Hephryx will be caught in this?" she whispered.

"I'm sure." Silk adjusted her cloak over her blade.

"I hope you're right." Repera tugged at Vector's sleeve again.

"I'm hungry."

"Right. Yes." Vector rubbed at his stomach.

"We are extremely overdue for lunch." He cleared his throat.

"So, nobles, since we're working for you, I suppose it's your treat then?" Lucien sighed. They didn't get far. The street just beyond the den's entrance had filled with Alloys, moving in loose, methodical pairs, stopping vendors and passersby, describing rather than naming: a girl in a cloak, a guard, a maid, a man. Not one of them said Elma. Not one said Altheris. Christa had kept Elma's disappearance off the official record entirely.

She hadn't wanted word of it reaching the people who wanted Elma dead, giving them a reason to start looking for her. Only the highest-ranking leaders and those directly involved knew anyone was actually missing. Sekar was seemingly one of them. They turned around before the nearest pair finished with their current vendor. Thiyya was already coming the other way. Lucien made a sound low in his throat, thin and involuntary, that under any other circumstance Elma would have filed away to ridicule him for later.

Curtains Down. She used her Innate Ability and compressed her Field the instant she registered the golden armor, hoping the absence it left wherever Thiyya's Field overlapped her own would read as nothing more than an unremarkable gap in a crowded street. If Thiyya sensed Elma's weight, she'd recognize her immediately. They kept walking. Heads down.

"You four." Lucien's arm shot out sideways, sweeping Elma, Jorm, Vector, and Repera behind him and Silk in one motion, his whole body angling into the space between them and the woman closing the distance at an unhurried walk. Thiyya stopped an arm's length away. The gold plate caught the light and threw it back in hard flashes, forcing Elma to keep her eyes moving rather than hold them on her for too long.

"Seen a girl," she said, flat, professional, "cloaked, hair might be dyed gold, if some of it was showing underneath. Could be traveling with a grown man and a maid. They may be under duress."

"No." Lucien's voice came out admirably steady, undercut only slightly by how personally offended he looked a half-second later. Probably because she didn't recognize him. Thiyya's eyes flicked over him once, unimpressed, then past his shoulder to the four huddled there.

"Family," Lucien said, too quickly. Thiyya's expression didn't change in any direction that suggested she believed him. Silk moved before the silence could curdle into something worse. She drew Jorm out from behind Lucien by the shoulder, presenting her like something for sale.

"That's fine armor there, m'lady." Silk suddenly took on a completely different register.

"You must be a serious Resonant to carry that. My daughter's serious about the sword herself." She nodded toward the red-wrapped hilt across Jorm's back.

"If you need a reliable soldier to fight to the death for this beloved nation, she wouldn't disappoint you. Looks frail, but she carried a full carriage on her own back once." Jorm went stiff, her mask hiding whatever expression crossed her face. Thiyya laughed, short and clearly uncomfortable.

"I'll... keep that in mind. Next time I'm through."

"No. No next time, she can follow you in silence. You wouldn't even notice her there," Silk said.

"Until you're free. Just for a while. See how formidable she is."

"I already have a disciple."

"What's wrong with one more?"

"I meant—" Thiyya blinked.

"Disciples. Already too many."

"Then what's one more." Silk said it immovably.

"Come on."

"I really don't think—""She wouldn't get in the way at all. M'lady, you'll be doing this nation a favor, I promise you, m'lady."

"I have to actually get back to—""Just try her for one hour, at least." She looked down at Jorm.

"Go follow her—" Thiyya was gone before she finished the sentence. Elma didn't catch so much as an afterimage—one heartbeat she stood there, mid-refusal, and the next the space held nothing but disturbed air and a scrap of paper lifting off the cobblestones in her wake. The fastest thing Elma had ever seen move, by a margin that made every other fast thing she'd catalogued feel stationary by comparison.

At that speed, she thought, distantly, Thiyya could probably circle the entire city and be back before the dust from her own leaving had settled. Lucien exhaled like a man surfacing from underwater. He looked at Silk. They all did.

"What the hell was that?" Silk looked at them and shrugged.

"It happened to me a lot. Some of it just... sticks." Vector let out a brief laugh.

"That was pretty damn cool."

"Well, it worked on her," Lucien said.

"Not sure if it'd work on the next Alloy we meet, though. We can't stay here."

"Well, we still have to eat." Vector protested.

"And why exactly are we hiding?"

"We can go to my house," Jorm offered.

"Is it safe?" Elma asked.

"We can check when we get there."

"Well, we don't have a choice, do we?" Lucien said.

"Lead us there before another Alloy shows up." They settled for raw cuts from the nearest butcher's stall. The places actually cooking anything worth eating sat too far back into the crowded main street to risk it, close enough to the search that Elma didn't like the odds. The cuts apparently cost a substantial amount of Barbs, because Lucien complained about it the entire walk to Jorm's house, in exhaustive, uninterrupted detail, and did not once run out of new angles to complain from.