“Say that again, Val, because I don’t think I heard you right,” I said.

“Lilith, we know your comm is on. This is obvious posturing,” said Val.

It was our first strategy meeting since the pirate op. We'd all had a chance to rest and recover, and I'd convinced Markus to watch Muppet Treasure Island with me. Now it was back to business, but instead of planning revenge on Kives, Val had a different idea.

“I don’t know, maybe Kives just manipulated my comm,” I said. “I can’t think of another reason I’d hear you’d suggest giving the fuck up on her.”

“We cannot win this campaign by charging directly at the nearest threat like a—”

“We have to charge at something, did your fancy thesis tell you that, or did it just—”

“Shut up!” said the commander. “Lilith, you’re out of line. I don’t want to hear another interruption out of you. Val, explain yourself.”

“Kives allowed us to win,” said Val. “She did not have to. But she let us injure Horcutio.”

“Kulades threw the transmitter overboard. We weren’t able to connect the kill to the amplifier,” said Markus. “That’s a stretch.”

“We—her enemy—killed her husband’s child when she could have stopped us,” said Val. “Whatever the effect, make no mistake—this outcome had her consent.”

“Why?” asked the commander. “Your best guess, obviously.”

“I believe she is offering us a detente,” said Val. “Obviously, our effectiveness increases as the pantheon weakens. Kives may be gambling for time to increase her own strength—perhaps develop her progressive aspect.”

“Or more,” said the commander. “Do you have a triphase model for her?”

“Not at this time,” said Val. “Fertility and legacy are close enough, harmonically speaking, that a hypothetical third aspect would be unbalanced. On another god I’d say there’s no possibility, but Kives is the most effective oracle I’ve ever seen or heard of. We must also consider the barrier as a potential stabilizing factor.”

“Understood. Run me a report,” said the commander.

“I must refuse on grounds of operational security,” said Val. “If we learn that information, there’s a risk of it getting back to her. I can do a preliminary investigation and recommend a threat rating, if you’d prefer.”

“Mm,” said Abby. “Good point. This isn’t convincing me we should change targets, however.”

“We could attempt some exploratory strikes,” said Val, “but I suspect they’ll meet with the same outcome. We should let the invasion team handle her.”

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say that,” said Abby. “You seemed emotionally invested.”

“Of course I was,” said Val. “It was a challenging problem. The mission objectives come first, however.”

The commander nodded and that was the end of it.

Markus, who had clearly been turning an idea over in his head, finally spoke up. “We didn’t kill her husband’s child.”

Val raised an eyebrow. Abby turned to him. “Expand on that, Markus.”

“To be specific,” Markus said, leaning forward, “we killed her husband’s bastard. Maybe that’s all she wanted.”

“Vengeance isn’t part of her portfolio,” said Val.

“Infidelity’s bad for a relationship, though, right?” I said. “Doesn’t that go against the fertility side of things?”

Val glanced up at the corner of the room as he thought. “I’ll have to run the math, but I think it’s not impossible.”

I beamed.

“Good point, Lilith,” said the commander. “Then we need to discriminate between hypotheses. We’ll hit another target first. Meris is a priority target, but we’re blocked behind Javei before we can hit her. Val, what do you have on the Oathkeepers?”

“Most relevantly, we won’t be able to pass the literacy requirements,” said Val. “We’ll need to infiltrate a temple of Lorana first.”

“What if Kives fucks us up again?” I said. “For all we know, we’re being baited into screwing up our best shot at everyone else. We just need to do one mission to figure out how much of a truce she’s giving us, right?”

“Lilith’s on a roll,” said Markus. “Yeah, I’m with her. Let’s hit a simpler target. We can figure things out afterward.”

“Dice,” ordered the commander. My bag with the RPG stuff was over in the corner, so I got up and brought her some. "To summarize, we're removing Kives and Horcutio from the decision space, we're blocked on Meris and Javei, and we don't anticipate operations against Rucks, Seindel, or Alcebios. That leaves five."

She picked up a d6 and looked at me.

“Do you have any emotional attachment to this die?”

“No, ma’am,” I said, avoiding her gaze.

“Was it involved in any noteworthy events you can remember?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry I forgot, it won’t happen again.”

“Does it possess semiotic implications of any kind beyond those natural to its form and purpose?”

“It will if you keep grilling me on it,” I muttered.

The commander paused.

“Good point,” she said, putting it back in the pile and selecting an identical one. “Same questions, no grilling.”

“No!” I said. “Just roll the damn thing!”

She rolled the damn thing. “Looks like we’re going after Kabiades next,” she said.

Markus wooped. “I call athlete!”

“Are you serious? They compete naked, dude,” I said.

Markus gestured at his body. “Look at me, Lilith. I’m doing them a favor.”

*

Sporting events were traditionally held on Renatha, the day of the thessim devoted to Kabiades. Splitting the year into sections of twelve had left the Therians with five days left over, and Kabiades got one of them as his holiest day. It was about four months out—eleven thessim and a bit, if you wanna count along—and we wanted Markus competing in it to get our best shot at the big guy. Like, sure, you can ruin the Olympics by calling in a bomb threat. But can you imagine if some dude won a gold medal and then blew up the stadium? Total chad move.

We needed Markus to be that chad. That meant we had to start making a name for him as soon as possible.

Val and Abby talked a bunch about field equations and harmonic dissonance and stuff, which I didn’t really follow, but the bottom line was that they were still working on the kill plan. We’d figure it out when we had more opportunities. Besides, maybe it would turn out that Kives was only willing to hold back if we went after Horcutio, in which case we’d have to abandon the whole thing anyways.

Every population center of reasonable size had a temple of Kabiades. Or, put another way, Kabiades had no temples. Instead, the Therians built arenas, in which competitions were held and sacrifices were performed in the open air. Women weren’t technically forbidden from setting foot inside the arena proper, but we’d get really weird looks if we tried. Therian women instead took to the elevated seating around the arena, and did I mention the competitors performed naked?

We’d set the ship down outside a city called Vitareas, a tricky operation that had required pulsing all the guards on the south wall in the dead of night so we could translate a cavern underneath the main road. The commander didn’t let me do the pulsing because I’d been “using your cloak as a crutch,” which was total bullshit. She got the guards herself. The Ragnar was now nestled under the ground right outside the wall, where—if all went according to plan—it’d stay until Val repaired the emitters or whatever was broken. He’d be working on that while Abby, Markus, and I explored the arena.

We got up early the next morning, exiting the ship via another ladder that led right up to the roadside. Once the engines were repaired, we’d make a more sophisticated entrance inside the town itself, but the translator engines’ output precision was nowhere near good enough for that at this point. We’d dressed in travelers’ rags, each with a large backpack full of “trading goods”—mostly costume changes, with a tablet and a few weapons at the bottom of Abby’s pack. The guards waved us through with a cursory explanation of how to find the temple of Varas, where we’d need to pay a fee before using the market. Abby thanked them for the directions, but took us down a side alley once we left line of sight. Varas could wait for another day.

We found the arena easily enough: it was one of the most open parts of the town. By the look of things it’d been built outside the city walls, once upon a time, before the city had expanded and another set of walls enclosed it. The temple grounds themselves were open to traffic from any direction, but most people seemed to prefer entering via the free-standing arch down the street to our right. After a brief subvocal discussion, we headed down that way. When in Rome, etc. A brief comm scan didn’t reveal anything too fancy about the arch, but the carved marble testicles hanging from its peak suggested some kind of cultural meaning. Maybe it was supposed to be a good luck blessing.

Having found our point of entry, we briefly retreated to a nearby inn to set up a forward base of operations, paid for with coin salvaged from the wreck of the Friend of Heaven. A quick change of clothes and Markus and I were back on recon, leaving Abby behind with the bags.

We passed under the balls. Nothing pinged the comms, so it wasn’t a fertility blessing or anything. Not that it would have done anything if so: Markus wouldn’t experience any effect because Eifni had stopped producing reproductively viable bodies millennia ago, and I—you know what? That’s private, let’s move on.

Next to the arch with the balls, there was this really well-built dude in a long cloth-of-gold skirt and metal shoulder pads. Bronze, I think. Like, not even a wrap or anything, just the shoulder pads and some impressive pecs. He had a cart with fresh-cut vine wreaths, which some of the people trickling in were purchasing for a drobol each. It looked like it was just guys buying them, but our sample size was pretty slim—we’d only seen, like, ten people go in here, two of them women. I chose not to get one. Gender roles were pretty rigid, and we weren’t here to make a scene with an avoidable faux pas. Markus did get one. We moved to a social distance that communicated friendship rather than a romantic relationship, just in case the wreath was another unintentional invitation to a threesome again.

Ahead of us, there were stalls along the path leading up to the arena. Some of these were already taken, all of them by men wearing wreaths. Maybe the wreaths were like a stall rental permit? Delicious smells were wafting from all but one of them: one of the guys on the left was weaving. The rest were cooking variations on Therian breakfast food: vegetables roasted in pepper vinegar, tubers and chicken gravy on flatbread, and one guy was doing what looked like a hibachi routine on a shield with a couple of sharp knives and a slab of red meat. Apparently the point was part cuisine and part exhibition—hibachi dude was definitely the most inventive about it, but they were all cooking with some degree of showmanship.

“Oh my god,” I told Markus. “This is medieval Tinder.”

“Tinder?” he asked.

“It’s a dating app,” I said. “You, like, make this advertisement about yourself for people to read, and they can say that they’re interested in you. And if you say you’re interested in them, then the app puts you in contact. Apparently it’s mostly just horny guys who swipe right on everyone, but it’s a solid idea in theory.”

“Ha!” said Markus. “They must be children, right?”

“Nah,” I said. “I’ve heard horror stories about forty-year-old creepers who think age gaps are totally fine.”

Markus looked at me questioningly for a moment, then realization crossed his face. “Uh, ‘children' was a poor term given the culture gap. I meant more that… they don’t understand the experiences and goals of other people.”

“Assholes,” I suggested.

“Assholes,” Markus agreed. “So you’re saying that the stalls are advertisements. And given which god these grounds are dedicated to, the women show up and take their pick.”

“I guess you’re on the market,” I said.

“I should take this off,” said Markus. “These poor guys won’t get any attention otherwise.”

I laughed and went for the shoulder clap, which, given the height difference, ended up being more of a clap on the shoulder blade instead. “You’re the best, Markus.”

We made it to the arena. Vitareas was a town of moderate size, so the arena had a decent capacity. Spectators could sit on long wooden benches affixed to stone terraces, one on each side of the course. It reminded me of a high school football field, except more Greco-Roman. Renatha was a few days away, but there were a few men training on the course. Mercifully, everyone was wearing some kind of—I guess you could call it a thong, but that would imply it was supposed to be sexy. More like a keep-everything-out-of-the-way kind of garment. I was cringing with vicarious embarrassment for Markus, but he just seemed to think it was funny.

Most of the athletes were doing laps—probably warmups—but there was a pair wrestling over to the right. “I bet Markus could kick those guys’ asses,” I said. “That might be our way in.”

“It would depend on the local fighting styles,” said Abby. “If it’s a recreational martial art, Markus might be at a disadvantage. We train for combat, not fitness.”

“Competitions of this type tend to be indirect combat training,” said Markus. “I’m probably competitive. I’ll see if I can find out what rules there are.”

“Let’s keep scoping things out,” I said. “Running, wrestling—they’ve gotta have more things than this.”

“Oh, shit,” Markus breathed. “Lilith, Abby, look at that.”

He pointed. I looked, and therefore so did Abby—there was a camera hidden in my hair. Down the field, something like a chariot was rolling toward the course. It was different from a chariot in that there was no horse pulling it. Instead, there was just a complicated assemblage of gears, connected to realistic-looking horse legs that were too stiff to be anything but artificial imitations. One man stood in the normal place you’d expect someone to be in a chariot; another man was somehow slung inside the mechanical horse, heaving on a lever of some kind.

“Fuck me,” I said. “Is that a fucking steampunk horse?”

“They don’t have mass production,” said Abby. “We’re into the more densely populated area of the region, so we’re more likely to run into things like this if they exist, but they’re probably one-off creations by master craftsmen.”

“Craftswomen,” I corrected her. “We’re a matriarchy here.”

“Lilith, did you switch your comm output to your native language again?”

“No,” I lied.

“Lilith. The word ‘ultho’ is gender-neutral.”

“Fiiiiine,” I said. “You got me.”

“Val, can you make me a mechanical horse?” asked Markus. “I wanna compete in that event.”

“Val’s offline,” Abby said. “I don’t think the repairs will be done in time for you to gain recognition.”

“Then I guess I’m doing this the old-fashioned way,” Markus said. He stretched, grinned, and cracked his back. “Time to get some of that underwear.”

“Please tell me you’ll wear clothing when you’re not competing,” I said.

“We’re operatives of the Eifni Organization, Lils,” said Markus, slapping me on the back. “I’ll tell you anything you want to hear.”