Val cut me up to facilitate my alibi for the Vitares family. Etherically, not with an actual knife—we’re not barbarians. These were definitely going to scar, which was cool on the one hand, but on the other hand I kinda wished I had some battle scars that weren’t faked. The ones from Lirian were gone, courtesy of the translation engines.

I wanted so badly to see her face when she noticed that. Too bad she’d probably be invisible when it happened.

We’d replaced Lirian’s more utilitarian stab wounds—mostly on my back, where no one would properly appreciate them—with a series of bloody frontal slices that were dramatic but mostly superficial. They stung. I’d nudged my cloak on juuust a bit to take the edge off. The commander kept looking at me like she wasn’t quite sure if something was off, and Val hadn’t made any comments, so I was pretty sure I was getting away with it.

I changed back into the bloodstained clothes I’d been wearing during the attack. The bloodstains didn’t exactly match up to the wounds, but whatever—when they found me, no one was going to look that closely.

Abby walked with me to the exit of the artificial cavern where we were hiding the Ragnar. It looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie—thick cables strung between lights spiked into the walls, illuminating a walkway of toothed metal. The ladder was gone—with the engines at full precision, we’d just put in an elevator that shot straight up into a hollow in the city walls.

Abby’s hand paused before hitting the button to take us up.

“Tell me the rules of weapon safety,” she said.

“Where is this going?” I said.

She let her hand drop, leaning against the railing with a smirk. “It’s a power play, obviously. Go on.”

I rolled my eyes, recalling the list they’d taught me at the academy. Same idea as the ones I’d learned on Earth, with minor variations. “Whatever. Rule one, weapons aren’t safe even when you think they are. Rule two, pick your targets on purpose or not at all. Rule three, follow escalation procedure. Rule four, if I get killed by my own weapon then Instructor Hetle will track me down, resurrect me, and kill me twice.”

Abby giggled. “You know that’s not an empty threat, right?”

“No fucking way,” I said.

“About a thousand years ago, a student got lethally disarmed during the final exam. Hetle was so mad, they pulled him out of the academy crypt and shot him again. Made him spend the lifestyle credits on both bodies, too. At first Rule Four was just a joke among the other instructors, but Hetle decided to own it after a couple years.”

“Shit,” I whistled.

“Anyways,” said Abby. “You got angry during the Renathion. Any particular reason for that?”

“They were assholes,” I said. “The real question is why none of you were angry.”

“Val’s an asshole. You’re not constantly losing your cool with him.”

“I heard that.”

“Back to the science mines, peon,” Abby said, sharing a grin with me. “Well?”

“Look, it’s just not right,” I said.

“No disagreement there,” said Abby. “We can demonstrate that etherically. Why were you angry?”

I gesticulated unintelligibly. “Because it’s something you should get angry about! Are we done here?”

“Not if you don’t understand this,” said Abby. “Injustice is a waveform like any other, Lilith. As a godslayer, waveforms are your weapons. You decide who gets angry, who gets inspired, who feels entitled or threatened. But that means you have to follow Rule Two. When you get angry like that, you’re shooting yourself.”

“Not gonna lie, that’s kind of fucked up,” I said.

“Did you think this was some kind of vacation?” asked Abby. “We’re not here to interface normally with this culture. We’re here to tear it apart. You have to be above all of this.”

“Yes’m,” I said curtly. “As ordered, ma’am.”

Abby considered me. Wordlessly, she pressed the elevator control.

*

They found me shivering in an abandoned building, bleeding from numerous knife wounds, bleary from induced exhaustion. The Vitares family would never learn that Abby was the old woman who’d given them the tip, or that Markus had scouted the location during yesterday’s searches.

I was bundled back—home?—in a flurry of activity, soothing words, worried faces. As I came in range of the walls, my comm overlaid sensor data on my vision, overlapping fields of vigilance against our invisible bullshit enemy. Lirian wasn’t here. I dismissed the sensor data with a thought.

Kuril was present only briefly, patting my cheek with a glib comment about all the adventure in my life. Her words bled an etheric mix of relief and worry. The worry might be a problem—would she decide I was endangering the family and throw me out? What would happen to them if I left? For that matter, what would happen when we completed our mission and I had to go anyways? I didn’t get a chance to probe—the Visionary had called a council, and Kuril was duty-bound as the head of House Vitares to attend.

Roel didn’t leave my side. She’d had a couple servants drag what appeared to be a lap desk into the corner of my room and spent most of that time sketching something she wouldn’t let me see. When it was done, she promised. For all that she seemed terrified of letting me out of her sight, she ran out of conversation after about two hours of sporadic chatting. I ended up faking a nap while streaming a Velean romance novel from the ship’s library. I’d had to pause this one right when it was getting good—Farkan had just betrayed the rest of his polycule to advance a couple ranks in the academic hierarchy, and Sevil was trying to convince the other two that it was all part of a larger plan because she might get audited if they deregistered at the same time.

I didn’t see things going well for Sevil—she was kind of codependent, that gets punished in Velean stories—but maybe she’d catch a break.

When I got bored of that, I got them to bring me another lap desk so I could draw too. Roel wasn’t allowed to peek, I decided. Only if I got to see her sketch first. Hadn’t really drawn since college; I’d taken an art class for elective credits and ended up being the one to draw character portraits for all the nerds in my RPG group. I’d also never used these tools to draw before. The charcoal stick wrapped in hard wax was at least theoretically similar to a pencil, but their paper wasn’t the industrially emulsified wood pulp I was used to. The level of friction felt wrong. Therian paper was a lot thinner, and texturally felt halfway between paper—Earth paper, I guess—and linen. I asked Roel what it was made of, but she just named a plant I didn’t recognize and the conversation stopped there.

Anyways, despite my various difficulties I managed a pretty good sketch of a displacer beast. It’s kinda like a panther, but with these giant tentacles that like teleport you if they touch you. Or something. I had to recreate most of the monster manual from memory and not everything made it.

Kuril came back, looking very concerned, but she wouldn’t tell me what was going on. She managed to pry Roel out of the room for long enough to explain whatever it was. Roel had to leave her sketches behind. She warned me not to peek. I nodded and promised her I wouldn’t. She had a cool thing she wanted to keep secret. I could respect that.

About one minute later I decided that as an honorary big sister it was my god-given right to peek, so I wormed my way out of the sheets, setting my lap desk aside, and stumbled over to her chair.

It wasn’t art.

The centerpiece of her sheet was a series of drawings on a sketch of a human head and torso. In the first, the subject wore a complicated filigree headpiece halfway between a beekeeper’s veil and the big straw hats that rice paddy farmers use to keep the sun off. The only clue that it wasn’t just a fashion statement was a bulky box at the base of the neck containing some kind of spring. Roel apparently intended for it to be covered by the subject’s hair.

In the second drawing, the spring had fired, and the headpiece had resolved into twelve independent mechanical arms swinging away from the head. In the third, the mechanical arms had extended to their full length, their tips retracting to reveal blades.

I wanted to dismiss it as some fanciful product of her imagination, but the pictures of the Head-Mounted Instant Lawnmower were surrounded by some kind of script I didn’t recognize. My heart sank. I couldn’t read it, but even in another language I could identify what looked like equations.

Roel was designing a weapon. A stupid, impractical weapon whose only purpose was decapitating everyone in a three-foot radius around you. The kind of weapon you’d only think of building when you were in danger of getting stabbed by invisible people.

“Guys,” I said. “Look at this.”

“Are those mathematical equations?” said Val. “This is an excellent sample, Lilith. Well done.”

“Thanks,” I said distantly. I was way too out of equilibrium to care about the praise. “But that’s not why—uh, Roel drew this.”

“She’s clearly inexperienced,” said Abby. “That much torque would sprain her neck.”

“You’re worried,” said Markus.

“That one,” I said. “Okay, look, I know this sounds dumb, but—am I traumatizing my fake sister?”

“This line of work can be emotionally taxing,” said the commander. “Normal humans aren’t built for the level of deception we engage in, and it can be hard to accept the consequences that happen to the people we work with. If you’d like, I can have Val adjust the empathy on your next body.”

I clenched my fist. “Do not pressure me right now."

Markus interrupted. “Roel’s just a kid, Lilith. This is probably just how she’s dealing with your recent brushes with danger. It might help to think of it as Lirian’s fault.”

“I guess she did try to kill me twice,” I said.

There was a pause.

“Once, Lilith,” said Abby. “We faked the first one.”

“Riiiiight,” I said. “That happened.” I was about to say something else to deflect the embarrassment—exactly what I had no idea—when the door opened and Roel came back in.

She looked at me standing over her drawings with an expression of surprise—which quickly flashed to hurt, then anger.

“Oh,” I said. “Hi.”

*

“You said you wouldn’t look!” Roel yelled.

“Why is a teenager designing weapons?” I said, gesturing at her drawings. “You’re just going to get hurt.”

“Excuse me, which of us is recovering from multiple stab wounds?” the little brat shot back, cocking a hip and glaring at me.

“It’ll be both of us if you actually tried this thing on,” I said. “There’s way too much torque on this, you’ll break your neck. And that’s assuming you don’t slice yourself to ribbons with a misfire.”

She blinked at me, considering for a moment. Then her eyes shifted to my displacer beast drawing.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Just some imaginary creature,” I said.

“I heard Salaphi got attacked by a monstrous creature,” Roel said, examining my face. “Did you see it? Is that what it looked like?”

“No, I just made it up,” I said, waving a hand as if brushing away the tangent. “Look, Roel, weapons development isn’t safe. You can’t just do this unsupervised. Do I have to tell Kuril about this?”

“I just told her,” said Roel. “Did you think I wouldn’t? She just told me to have Peres supervise. I told you not to look because it was supposed to be a surprise. Now you’re yelling at me in my own house!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting down on my bed. “I’m just worried. Lirian’s not going to go after you, okay? It’s me she hates.”

“Her lackey attacked me during the ball,” Roel said, stiffening. “She’s still out there somewhere. I’m not you, okay? I can’t fight. If she’d attacked me during the Renathion, I would be dead. I could have died two days ago!”

“Roel, I’m sorry, it’s okay—”

“It’s not okay!” Roel yelled, crying now. “Lirian’s never attacked a lady of grace before. Now she has! And you won’t tell me why!”

“Wait, me?”

“I’m not stupid,” said Roel. “Thala and Kuril keep talking when they don’t think I’m paying attention. And Alceoi, she kept making cryptic comments after you left. You can’t keep hiding things from me after everything we’ve been through together!”

It’d been like… a week?

“You mean, like, the ball and stuff?” I said.

She shrunk in on herself. “It was a line from Mephele. The sentiment felt appropriate.”

“Do you want a hug?” I asked. She nodded. “Come here.”

She nestled up against me as I held her close.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “But we’ll figure it out together. I’ll help you, okay? You can teach me how the workshop works.”

“It’s a stupid project anyways,” said Roel. “I could tell Kuril didn’t think it was going to work. The arms are too thin and I can’t work out how to get thicker ones.”

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Did you mean it when you said we’d figure it out together?”

“I did,” I said, because there wasn’t really another answer.

“Do you promise? Not like when you promised not to look at my schematics. Do you really promise?”

“I promise,” I said.

The lie felt like getting stabbed. Believe me, I would know.