“We’re growing.” Veshtu told him when they sat in the office Veshtu used to run the Hair Viper sect’s operations. Their sect, it had always been their sect, since they were boys running in the tunnels and ganging up to drive out men who tried to claim the comfortable places, or the gates where they could sneak into the larger tunnels in order to raid the stalls and caravans on their way deeper into the dregs with bags of grain and boxes of canned goods, occasionally even mobile cold boxes stuffed with fruits and vegetables that would have cost a small fortune even above ground.

“Soon we’ll be able to claim one of the water-pipes. I’ve been laying the groundwork for weeks, but now that you’ve transcended, we’ll be able to accelerate our timetable. Soon we’ll be able to start dealing with the sects on the bottom.”

Darro grunted and studied his reflection in the cup of tea he’d been served when he entered the office. There was little enough to see. He was a dark silhouette against the lights strung across the ceiling. Only his eyes retained any definition against the wavering surface, twin points of silver looking out at him from a dark face.

“You’re an army unto yourself now.” Veshtu said. “That will more than make up for the extra guns the topsider’s wealth has bought the Dawoods.” He raised his cup in a toast as Darro looked up from his own and Darro mimicked the gesture without feeling. He could sense the small army built up around the office they’d called home since taking it seasons on seasons before, back when they’d been young, back when they’d been poor, and weak. Back when wiping out a sect as small as the Essek family who’d held this place before them had seemed like an undertaking instead of the few hours easy labor it took him now that he’d become an adept

They sipped their tea and Darro found himself lost in the memories. Somehow, despite the dark and desperation that drove them to take this place all those seasons ago, those times seemed brighter in his memories than the power they’d achieved since. He spun the bitter tea in his cup and remembered the filth they’d subsisted on when they’d been no more than a gang of orphaned kids, before they’d named themselves for the hair-vipers they shared the dark with, and promised one another they’d become more than the rats those creatures preyed upon.

“You used to mock me for my breathing exercises.” Darro said. “Do you remember?”

Veshtu smiled when Darro looked up. He had a narrow hawkish face, eyes the color of darkness instead of Darro’s silver ones and a receding hairline that had given him a widow’s peak well before he was even thirty. “I was wrong.” He said.

Darro smiled in return. “I always knew.”

“And I’m glad you did.” Veshtu sat back in his chair and held the cup of tea in front of him. “I’ve been doing my own breathing exercises now, just like you tried to teach me when we were young, though I doubt I’ll ever catch up at this point.”

Darro nodded and they sipped their tea in silence.

“We would never have made it this far without you.” Veshtu told him. “I’m sure you realize that.”

Darro nodded but stared into his tea and tried not to think of the killing he’d done since taking this place. “Do you remember when you almost brained me with a stone while we were taking this place?” He asked instead. He waved around the office with his cup.

“That was the guard, what, a street or two down from here, by the old pallet merchant’s place, the one that burned down when the Third Eye Sect tried driving us out of here. You’d knifed him but I thought it went the other way around and because your silhouettes were so close to the same…” Veshtu shook his head in wonder. “How things would have changed if I hadn’t missed.”

“You didn’t miss.” Darro grunted. “You almost broke my arm.”

Veshtu chuckled at the memory. “I guess that is how it went.”

They both raised their cups again and drank.

“It was a good thing though, in the end.” Darro said as he gazed into his cup. “You shot that Third Eye would’ve lit up my back at their headquarters, and again when we pushed them out of this cavern.” The sunflare rifle he’d used to do it still leaned in one corner of the office, along with the armor and battlegear he’d accumulated with their victories, pistols and the little arquebuses he called barkers, grenades, even though he’d long retired from going into the the field now that Darro could do almost all of that work for him.

“I guess we’ve both played our part.” Veshtu said quietly.

Darro watched his reflection shake in what was left of his tea. The dregs drifted near its bottom, visible now that he’d nearly emptied it, and bitter, he knew, as the death they’d both dodged a hundred times.

“How many of us are left?” Veshtu asked, not a real question, they both knew the answer. “Not many.” He sighed. “Ibrim, Yikts, Andow. Andow’s got three kids now, brats as wild as we used to be. They’ll be our future once the wheel finally comes round to take us.”

Darro looked up at him. “Not your children?”

Veshtu made a face, something half regret and half disgust. “No.” He said. “No, none for me unfortunately. I’m… we’re friends, so don’t go spreading this around, but I’m fairly sure I’m sterile. I’ve tried, pits below I’ve tried, but, nothing seems to take, and I spent some time in the wastes, topside, before finding my way down to the pipes. If I had kids, I expect there would be something wrong with them, with their spirits, as a result.” He tilted his cup in a half salute. “So, I’ll prepare the way I suppose, for Andow’s kids, and yours.” He looked at Darro, who returned his gaze to his cup before downing the tea and setting the mug onto the table.

Veshtu fingered his mug of tea, turning it in his hand as he studied Darro. “You know this sect could be yours, don’t you?” He asked. “You’re the single most powerful creature this side of the bottom. I’ve seen you tear through entire sub-sects on your own. There’s no reason for me to remain in power, as I do, if you decided you wanted my place.”

Darro looked at the empty cup that sat on his friend’s desk and tried not to compare it to the life he led now. He’d read some of Sikhaya’s books since she’d raised them between them like a barrier that he didn’t know how to cross. The author had made a lot of comparisons like that in the book, objects that represented more than just the thing itself. It had made his head spin to try and comprehend, like the woman he’d risked his life for only for her to grow distant and indecipherable, as silent as the empty cup in front of him.

“You’ll have children soon too.” Veshtu went on. “Probably several, if I guess what goes on between you and that girl of yours behind closed doors.”

Darro looked up at Veshtu, but didn’t return the grin offered to him across the desk. “I will.” He agreed simply and looked back down at the cup.

Veshtu spun his cup in his hands, then reached forward to carefully set it down, still half full, on the desk that divided them. “None of the others contribute as much to our sect.” Veshtu told him as he straightened the cup. “I’ve made sure they were comfortable, but as the, organizer, of the sect, I’ve taken the viper’s share of the spoils. I’d say, it’s only right, if they want to leave operation of our organization to me while they go starting families and keeping themselves near the middle ranks. Though I’ve offered a few of them higher positions as our sect grew.”

Darro felt Veshtu studying him across the desk but couldn’t be bothered to take his eyes from the empty cup between them.

“I’ve done my best, however, to make sure that you receive everything you ever asked for.” Veshtu went on. “We depend upon you, the same way they depend upon me. I don’t want to think that you would ever be dissatisfied with your place in what we’ve built, or what you get from it.”

Darro just looked at the cup for a long time while he mulled the word “dissatisfied” over in his mind.

“If there is anything, we haven’t done for you.” Veshtu said as he refilled his tea. “You have only to ask.”

Darro looked up to meet Veshtu’s eyes as Veshtu raised his cup in a toast towards Darro.

“We depend upon you.” Veshtu said again. “I want you to remember that you can depend upon me. Just as you always have.” He raised his eyebrows in a question and Darro looked back down at his cup.

“No.” He said. “No, there’s nothing. Nothing you can do, anyways.”

“Let me know if you change your mind.” Veshtu said. He lifted an ornate pot from the hot plate on his desk and held it out. “In the meantime,” he asked, “more tea?”

His son was born in darkness. He was not there when it happened, but returned from supporting Veshtu in some negotiations by standing at his back and looking more threatening than the three cultivator’s the sect had brought as bodyguards for their leadership, to find Sikhaya sitting alone in a dark room with the baby screaming in her arms while she stared into space. She did not even turn her head to look at him as he lifted the crying boy from her arms and carried him to the nurses he’d hired to help her through the birth.

“Why did you leave her?”

The nurses wouldn’t meet his eye as he made the demand. They stood with their heads bowed to him out of respect while his son still screamed in his arms and the icon churned at the edges of his aura.

“She told us she did not want us there.” The head nurse said from the back of the small room where they’d been folding sheets until he’d interrupted them. “She screamed at us in fact. She made her wishes very clear.”

Darro clenched a hand and looked down at the little bundle wailing in his arm.

“Poor babe is probably hungry.” One of the nurses said.

Darro stared at his son. He tried, half-heartedly, to rock the child, as he’d seen mothers do in the deepest tunnels when he’d spied on them as a boy, just hoping to steal something from them to eat. “How?” He asked without looking up. “How do we feed him?”

“His mother should be the one to feed him.” The head nurse said from the front of the room. “But I took the liberty of hiring a wet-nurse when you brought me on. She can feed him as well, until the mother is feeling better, or if her milk runs out. Here, I’ll take him.”

Weathered hands pulled the wailing boy from Darro’s unresisting arms and he watched the old woman hand him to one of the waiting women who turned her back to Darro in order to suckle the infant.

The head nurse returned to look up at him.

“You should go back to your wife.” She said in the silence that followed. “We’ll take good care of the boy, but she will be tired. She may need more care now than the boy does.”

Darro just stared at the wet-nurse’s back. “What is his name?” He asked.

“If she named him, she has not yet told us.” The Head Nurse replied. She hesitated. “She, may not have done so. She is very tired, and she may have been waiting for you.”

When he returned to her room she still sat like a statue in the chair he’d found her in, staring at the wall.

“He has a strong voice.” He told her after an uncertain silence. “I’m proud of you.”

Her head turned to him, but the eyes that looked at him didn’t see him. They were voids that saw nothing and drifted towards the ceiling even as they found him.

“I don’t care.” She said, then turned away.