A Loving Man; A Selfish God

Aymon was awake early the next morning, the second day on Tyx-III, before his alarm. He wasn’t sure what had woken him. It hadn’t been Halen leaving— he almost always slept through that, since Halen was quiet as a cat getting out of bed. And it wasn’t the foxfire of the algae on the stone walls, or the hum of the ventilation circling dead air out and fresh air in. It was a lingering sense that something had gone wrong.

His first instinct was to flag down one of the soldiers who kept guard outside his door, and ask where Kino was. He couldn’t have put his finger on why that was his first impulse, but he imagined that Kino had left their conversation at dinner less satisfied than he had. When he was informed that she and Halen were having breakfast together in the dining room that had been reserved for them, Aymon’s hackles only barely lowered. If she was up early as well, it must be something disquieting about the nature of the planet itself.

Aymon made his way to the dining room and found a hot meal waiting for him. Unusually, Halen, although he had finished eating, was still there. Most days, Halen had too much to accomplish to want to sit around, and would join Aymon again during the day as he was needed. But, today, he sat across from Kino with his black coffee steaming in his hand.

Kino was poking at her rice bowl with disinterest, letting it go cold.

Aymon sat down next to her, and she barely looked up at him.

“Good morning,” Aymon said. Kino just nodded. “How long have you been up?”

“I didn’t sleep,” she said.

“At all?”

She shrugged.

“Security here is tighter than it is on Emerri,” Halen intoned. “Wandering alone through the tunnels to burn off your insomnia is not something that I can recommend.”

“Mm,” Aymon said. Halen could handle Kino’s penchant for wandering; it didn’t require his input. He let the soldier who served him his breakfast put it down in front of him, then step out of the room. Aymon raised his hands, said a quiet blessing, and then took a delicate few bites of the simple meal.

“Yan and Sid arrived at Olar about an hour ago,” Halen said. His voice held a cautious note in it, and Aymon looked up from his rice and egg sharply.

“That’s on schedule, isn’t it?” Although they had left Emerri after the Sky Boat , and the physical distance to Tyx-III was longer, the First Star was fast enough to make up the distance, so that they arrived at approximately the same time.

Kino appeared disinterested, but Aymon knew she was listening to every word that Halen said. Halen glanced at her, then at Aymon, who nodded.

“They are on schedule, yes,” Halen said. “The Sky Boat was attacked by pirates en route.” His voice was calm and even, and it quenched any initial reaction that Aymon would have had. That was the effect that Halen could have on him. It didn’t work on Kino— she looked up, eyes widening and small frame tensing.

“The first thing you would have told me is if they were grievously wounded, and you wouldn’t have had the news held from me before I got to breakfast,” Aymon said. “They’re fine, I assume?”

Kino’s shoulders slumped back down. If not relaxed, she was at least not ready to leap from her chair.

“Yes. Yan’s minder, Maedes, sent me a personal message.”

“Along with a comprehensive report?”

“That came from the Fleet liaison who is accompanying them, though Maedes and Hernan both signed off on it.”

Aymon nodded. “What did it say?”

“As I said, they were attacked by pirates. The Fleet liaison followed established procedure and ordered them to evacuate ship, which they did. On the shuttle, Sid— on Yan’s orders— threatened the pilot and liaison into returning to the Sky Boat , where they participated in its defense.” Although Halen’s voice remained utterly calm, there was still something in it that Aymon could catch but not understand fully. Perhaps it was the idea of evacuating ship, the standard procedure for government travelers on contract on Guild ships— that had always made Halen uneasy.

“They weren’t hurt at all?” he confirmed.

“No,” Halen said. “They are uninjured, and the damage to the Sky Boat itself was minimal.”

“Good,” Aymon said. He was sure Halen was waiting for him to ask the right question, but he felt that he needed to tread carefully. The topic of pirates could be a tender one for Halen. “Do you want me to punish them or praise them? For disobeying their minders and defending that ship.”

That was the wrong question, because Halen did not answer it. “I want you to follow Maedes’s recommendation, and leave Tyx early to meet them at Olar.”

“She recommended that? Why?” Aymon asked. “Have the Guild negotiations fallen apart already?”

Halen’s voice was suddenly much sharper. “Because they are your apprentices, Aymon,” he said, reminding him of their conversation from the other day. Aymon acknowledged it with an incline of his head. Halen pulled a folded piece of paper out of his breast pocket and slid it across the table. His voice was softer as he said, “Maedes asked that only I come to Olar. I don’t know why she asked that— perhaps she felt she couldn’t ask it of you. But I am asking it of you.”

Aymon unfolded the piece of paper and looked it over. It was Maedes’s letter. Despite its clipped and professional tone, there was a real urgency and concern in it. She wasn’t worried that Yan and Sid couldn’t handle their mission on Olar, but the fact that she was making the request that Halen leave Tyx— take the First Star ! — and go to Olar made it clear that she was worried.

Aymon knew Maedes in a general sense: she had been part of Stonecourt security for several years, and had saved his life, once, which had led her to transfer into Halen’s personal staff. She had been steady and professional, and Halen had specifically recommended that she become Yan’s right hand during her apprenticeship. This was enough for Aymon to take her recommendations seriously, and to feel a real flicker of his own concern for Yan and Sid, though he tried to tamp it down into pragmatism. Halen surely noticed the feeling, but Aymon kept it off his face and out of his voice.

He didn’t pass the letter to Kino to read, though he could see her trying to look at it. He instead folded it and put it in his own pocket.

“I often was frustrated by how Herrault found it difficult to trust me to accomplish things on my own, in the first year of my apprenticeship,” Aymon pointed out. “I don’t want to stifle them. Especially when they have just proven their competence.” It was a token objection, but he wondered what Halen would do with it.

“Then tell me to take the First Star ,” Halen said. “I’ll go alone.”

“No,” Aymon said. He picked up his fork and stirred his breakfast bowl. “I will go— if Maedes is that concerned, and you. But not for a few days. There are still things that I need to accomplish here. Unless that’s an unacceptable delay?” He cocked his head.

“No,” Halen said. “I think just knowing you’re coming will help.”

Aymon nodded. He put cream into his coffee and stirred it idly. “What do you think, Kino?” Aymon asked.

“Do you want me to stay here?” Kino asked. “You can leave early. I can finish the tour of the front, and meeting with the Fleet.”

Aymon looked at her curiously. “Could you?” he asked, thinking of their conversation from the night before. He sipped his coffee. “As a thought experiment— say I left, leaving you here, and this base was attacked. Like what happened to Sid and Yan. What would you do?”

Kino stared straight ahead— at Halen, though her gaze seemed to pass directly through him to the far wall. “Whatever I needed to do.”

Aymon smiled, with teeth. “Good.” His tone switched bac to businesslike. “But that won’t be necessary. There’s nothing here that requires my extended physical presence, or that of my proxy.” He looked up at Halen. “From what Maedes said, it seems like Yan and Sid were able to do exactly what was necessary, as well.”

“You do want to praise them for their mutiny,” Halen said.

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t think praise is what they would want from me. Even if it was what I was inclined to give.”

Aymon’s laugh was harsh. “No, I expect Yan wouldn’t appreciate that from you at all.”

Halen finished his coffee and put his mug down on the table with some finality. “I’ll arrange our departure and move our schedule up.” He stood.

“Thank you,” Aymon said, catching Halen’s arm as he walked past. Halen nodded, then slipped out, leaving Aymon and Kino alone at the table.

Kino looked absently up at the ceiling. In her monotone voice, she asked, “How many people did they kill?”

Aymon didn’t answer for a second. “You’re making a lot of assumptions.”

Kino remained silent. Aymon drank some of his coffee.

“It’s unclear,” he finally said, thinking of the few details in Maedes’s letter. “Somewhere between fifteen and fifty. Maedes had no way of knowing, so that’s an estimate. What makes you ask?”

Kino shrugged.

“Have you ever killed someone?” Aymon asked. “Of the three of you, you’re the only one who might have had a chance to before now.” He paused. “Answer me honestly, please. I certainly am not going to send you to a tribunal if the answer is yes.”

“No,” Kino said. “I usually walked out, if there was trouble.” She was still looking up at the ceiling. Aymon followed her gaze, but there was nothing above them but the heavy, craggly rock.

“I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“Because I get the impression that you would not want me to come rushing to your side, if you were there instead of here. It would lead me to think that you had experience, and knew how to deal with it. Am I wrong about that?”

She shrugged.

“It’s funny,” Aymon said. “In that respect, I was much more like you, in my apprenticeship. But perhaps that was because First Herrault had no desire to coddle us.” He finished the egg in his bowl, and scraped the remaining grains of rice with his fork. “Do you envy Yan and Sid?”

“No,” Kino said. She stood, abandoning her unfinished breakfast. “Did you think I would?”

“I would have, if I were you.”

She shook her head and walked away, short red cape and long black braids flapping behind her as she went. Aymon signaled to one of the guards at the door to make sure she didn’t go wandering too far.

Aymon spent most of the day so occupied with Fleet meetings that he barely had time to think about his two distant apprentices. He had always been good at focusing on the task at hand, solving problems that could be solved. It was only at the end of the day, after a grueling formal dinner, that Aymon made his way to the private transmission room to set up an ansible call with his apprentices. It would be the mid-morning for them, and though he did not have their full schedule on hand, he knew vaguely that they were not going to meet with the Olar governor until the evening, at a private dinner. He wouldn’t be interrupting anything to call now.

He hadn’t told Halen that he would be calling them, but he assumed that Halen would be pleased. This wouldn’t take long.

The private transmission room was quiet and small, lit to best capture his image over the camera. The ansible operator had set it up for him, and so all he had to do was sit, poised, and wait for the connection to go through, and his apprentices to appear on the screen. He checked his appearance in the monitor— vain but forgivable. The waiting four note drone of the dial tone cut off as the connection went through.

On the screen was not Yan or Sid, but Yan’s minder, Iri Maedes. She was a stocky woman, with a serious, quiet frown on her face. She was dressed in warm clothing, including a knitted toque, and snow dusted her shoulders, rapidly melting in the warm environment of the car she sat in the back of. Aymon could see a busy street out the window behind her. Yan and Sid were nowhere to be seen.

Maedes saluted, her fist on her chest, which caused the computer she was taking the call from to bounce on her knees, the picture— already delayed and soupy— jittering. Aymon nodded in greeting.

“Maedes,” Aymon said. “Where are my apprentices?”

“Sir, I didn’t expect you to call. Apprentice BarCarran and Apprentice Welslak are on a tour of City One. The governor insisted that they be shown around.”

“They could have paused the tour for a moment.”

“Is it absolutely necessary that you speak to them?” Maedes asked.

“I was told that it was of the utmost importance that I abandon my trip to the front, and rush immediately to Olar to see them. So I would think that I am more important than a city walking tour, yes.”

Although Maedes tended to be unflappable, this comment made her simultaneously flush and straighten her back. “I didn’t think it was within my station to recommend that you change your plans,” Maedes said.

“Why did you ask Halen to come? Was it just because you knew he would pass along your request to me?”

“No, sir,” she said, but offered no elaboration.

“Then tell me the reason.”

If she could have straightened her back further, she would have. A cloud passed across the sun outside her car, casting her into dim grey shadow. “Apprentice BarCarran is distraught,” Maedes said. “In particular about the way the Sky Boat ’s crew treated her. I believed that Halen would be able to provide the best—” She broke off, unable to name what it was that Halen could provide. “Understanding view of the situation,” she said, finally.

Aymon thought in silence for a moment, but Maedes was not the type of person to be cowed by his silences. “And I would not? Which is why you’re deliberately keeping my apprentices from me?”

“Sir.”

“Maedes, if I did not owe you a personal debt, this insubordination would cost you your post.”

“Consider your debt paid in full,” Maedes said. “Dismiss me. It would be well within reason for you to do so. I should have done more to stop Apprentice BarCarran from involving herself with the Sky Boat ’s trouble to begin with.”

“No,” Aymon said. “It’s good for her to learn to lead.”

Maedes now was the one to be silent. The sound of loud traffic from outside the car she was sitting in was muted, through the tinny microphone of her computer.

“When will you allow me to see my apprentices?” Aymon asked. “I hope you won’t blockade me at the airport when I arrive.”

“If you write to Yan, you may get a better idea of what she needs right now.”

“She’s ‘Yan’ to you now, is she?”

Maedes didn’t rise to that. “If I had judged the situation on the Sky Boat better, I would have been able to prevent some of the pain she is in. Not all of it, perhaps, but some,” Maedes said. “I consider it my responsibility to not add to it, or allow you to add to it.”

“Let me be clear, Maedes,” Aymon said. “If you believe your duty to my apprentice is to shield her from making decisions, and the consequences of those decisions, then you are in the wrong line of work. If Yan succeeds me, as she may, she will not have the luxury of personal feelings. The sooner she understands this, the better.”

“Yes, sir,” Maedes said. It didn’t take Halen’s gift of insight to know that she did not really agree.

“I will be leaving Tyx in two days. Before I leave ansible range, I would like to have some communication with my apprentices, in whatever form you will so graciously allow that to take.”

“Yes, sir,” Maedes said. “I told Apprentice BarCarran that if you wrote to her, she would be obliged to write you back.”

Aymon gave one sharp nod, then ended the call without any further pleasantries. He smoothed out his expression before he left the ansible room, and kept his steps light instead of prowling through the corridors towards his own room. He found Kino standing in the hallway outside her room, touching the wall of the tunnel with two light fingertips and looking up at the faintly luminescent rock above her, but he swept by her without a single word of acknowledgement, his long red cape flowing behind him and brushing her back.

Although Aymon could appear cool and professional to those around him, Halen must have felt his approach from down the hall. He was already waiting in Aymon’s quarters, as was their usual evening custom on days when there was nothing urgent happening. He was sitting at the dining table when Aymon came in like a thundercloud, and he said, without looking up, “What did Sid say to you?”

This unexpected query put such a deflating pin in Aymon’s anger that he barked out a laugh. “You know a lot, but you don’t know everything.”

“Is that so?” Halen said. His thick fingers turned a page in the notebook he was writing in.

“Does Sid usually make me this angry?”

“No, but he has the potential to. I don’t think Yan would, so I assume you didn’t talk to her— I wasn’t expecting her to speak to you anyway, since Maedes said she wasn’t planning to contact anyone unless forced.” Halen finally looked up. “But you did go to call them,” he confirmed.

“Yes, but your personal project— Maedes— wouldn’t let me see either of my apprentices, regardless of if they wanted to speak to me or not,” Aymon said. He took a few pacing steps as he spoke, his arm gesturing like he was addressing a crowd. “So it was a complete waste of my time.”

Halen raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“You’ll be pleased: in my great magnanimity, I didn’t even do anything you would disapprove of.” With Halen, and Halen alone, he could be as loose and unrestrained as he wanted. He used the power to scrape the chair back from the table, then sat down with his legs crossed.

“I am pleased,” Halen said when he had settled himself.

“I am annoyed,” Aymon said.

“What would you have said to Sid, if you had spoken to him?”

“I don’t know,” Aymon said, waving his hand. “Nothing of particular importance. If I felt like he needed it, I would have impressed upon him that I am relying on him to deal with the Olar situation. Focus on the task at hand. I assumed that would be fine, though Maedes seemed to think I would deliberately upset them.”

“Why did you call them, if you had nothing in particular to say?”

“Because they’re my apprentices,” Aymon said, half grumbling despite how unbecoming it was as a tone. “Do I need an excuse?” Halen smiled at him, and although the expression pleased him, Aymon fitted his face into an annoyed frown. “At least Maedes said that written contact would be agreeable to her. You’ll have to write a letter, since I can’t be trusted to not upset whatever delicate balance Maedes thinks she’s striking.”

Halen slid the notebook he had been writing in towards him. Aymon flipped it open, Halen’s neat and blocky handwriting filled the last few pages, his heavy hands on the pen having compressed the thin paper so much that it developed a completely different texture. Halen had anticipated the need, and had already ghostwritten quite a delicate letter to Yan, though it could easily be modified to include Sid.

“Write your own postscript for it,” Halen said as Aymon read it over. “They know what letters from me read like. And Maedes probably won’t tell them that you tried to call.”

Reminded of this, all warmth that Aymon had felt from reading Halen’s letter evaporated. “Just this once, I’m afraid I have to question your staffing choices, Halen,” he said.

“You don’t believe it’s a good sign that Maedes puts her duty towards Yan above her own career?”

“I think she has a complete misunderstanding of what that duty is,” Aymon said. When Halen said nothing, Aymon asked, “You don’t agree?”

“What do you think her duty should be?” Halen asked.

“I must confess, I’m not really in the mood for a dialectic,” Aymon said.

Halen laughed. “No, I’m aware.” He leaned back in his seat, which creaked under his weight. “You let me choose their minders for a reason.”

“I don’t have the ability to pick that kind of staff,” Aymon said. “You already had people in mind.”

“I like Maedes,” Halen said. “I picked her because I think she understands something very important.”

“And what might that be?”

“For her to be useful to Yan, her duty is not to you, or the Empire. Her duty is to Yan alone. Yan has other duties, but Maedes has only one.”

Aymon shifted, leaning his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand. “Is that so?” he asked. Half lazy, flirtatious. “That’s a strange order for you to give her. I don’t know if anyone but you would think that this is the way that Yan is best served, let alone the Empire, or myself.”

“Certainly you wouldn’t think that,” Halen said, smiling. His voice was even, but it was still intended to ruffle Aymon’s feathers. He twitched but refused to give Halen the satisfaction of changing his tone, even if Halen knew exactly how much he had poked him.

“I wouldn’t?” Aymon asked. “Not even when I consider that I am best served by having you in that way?”

“Are you best served by my attention?”

“I must be. I enjoy it.”

“But you enjoy it less to see people devoted to someone other than yourself,” Halen said.

“I’m not God, Halen,” Aymon said, still leaning on his elbow and watching him. “I don’t need the undivided attention of everyone in the universe.”

“No? It sometimes seems like you do.” Halen was teasing him openly now.

“No,” Aymon said. “I only need yours.”

Halen was silent for a moment, looking at Aymon. “It would be easier for God to attain the universe’s undivided attention, if God made the universe with only one man in it.”

Aymon ignored the verses from Terae’s Song which flooded into his head, instead focusing on Halen’s soft eyes and nothing else. “You’re right,” Aymon said. “But since I’m not God, I don’t have to worry about giving every man the same share of my infinite love.” He smiled. “I’m afraid you serve a selfish man, rather than a loving God.”

“I prefer one to the other.” Although the line was as flirtatious as the rest of the conversation, Halen was weirdly solemn, in a way that Aymon couldn’t pick apart. The smile was gone from Halen’s face, and his voice was soft but low. “And I’ve only served one, for a long time.”

“Apostasy, Halen,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Halen replied.

On the last scheduled day on Tyx-III, Aymon took a plane trip to visit other parts of the front. He left Kino behind, as she had asked to take a tour of the deeper cleared caverns, including some hot springs that were further out. Since she was with her minder and plenty of other guards, and was capable in her own right, Halen deemed it safe enough for her to go, even though communications in the further, deeper part of of the caves away from the base were patchy.

The flight back to base was exhausting and uncomfortable. It took place in the dark, the sun having set an hour before takeoff, but the onset of night only served to make the constant barrage of wind more disorienting. Without a visual reference to the ground, and with his power unable to reach far enough to feel it, Aymon’s unease grew with every shudder of the fuselage and increasing whine of the engines. Halen was a bulwark against the dark window, his profile lit only by the floor lights in the cabin, which were barely enough to see by. The real lights had been turned off, in case Aymon wished to sleep on the nearly four hour flight, but he found that impossible.

“What are you thinking about?” Halen asked Aymon, during the last half hour of their flight, as they were beginning their even rockier descent towards the airstrip.

Aymon waved his hand. “I don’t like this planet.” The sentiment encompassed everything relevant: the state of the war, the current plane trip, and the uneasy feeling the planet seemed to generate in his chest. He had no desire to talk about specifics here in the plane, though. Halen knew it all, anyway.

“You should have gone with Kino on her sightseeing tour. It seems that she likes it here. She might have been able to get you to come around.”

“It has always been completely opaque to me what Kino likes and dislikes.”

There was a moment of silence, during which only the screaming of the wind could be heard in the cabin.

“It won’t take us too long to get to Olar,” Halen said.

“That’s a planet I hardly like better.”

Halen nodded and fell silent. They weren’t sitting near enough to each other to touch, and it would have gone against Aymon’s usual professional behavior even if they had, since the airplane was a somewhat public space, given the soldiers not part of Aymon’s personal entourage.

The door at the front of the cabin opened, revealing a brief glimpse of the glowing control interface of the plane, and the two pilots. One of the pilots turned, and said something to the soldier sitting in the jump seat, who walked carefully back through the swaying airplane to speak to Aymon.

“First Sandreas, sir, there’s a message from base.”

“What is it?”

“General Lang wishes to speak to you as soon as you land.”

“About?” Aymon had no patience for this.

“Base command didn’t say, sir.”

Aymon didn’t even need to motion to Halen, who was already standing from his own seat and making his way to the cockpit to interrogate the base staff over the radio. Aymon waved the soldier off, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against his seat. If there was nothing that could be handled until he landed, then he would just have to wait until he landed.

He kept his eyes closed, but felt the brush of air moving past him, and then Halen sat in the adjacent seat, this time close enough to touch. He didn’t take Aymon’s hand, laying loose on the armrest, and instead leaned towards him, voice a low rumble directly in his ear.

“Kino’s party was attacked,” he said. “She’s missing.”

Whatever thoughts had been circling Aymon’s head halted in their tracks, and a sudden, empty chill passed over him as it seemed like every muscle in his body tensed at once, outside of his control. Halen put his hand on his shoulder, to stop him from leaping from his seat, and left it there.

“We’ll find her when we land,” Halen said. “We’ll be down in ten minutes. Lang is meeting us at the airfield.”

“When did this happen?” Aymon asked. His voice was clear and cold, but this wouldn’t fool Halen, who could feel every one of Aymon’s nerves on high alert.

“Several hours ago. But the group she was with only made it back into contact with the base about twenty minutes ago.”

“Why, exactly, did it take so long?”

“The attack involved several sections of the tunnels being caved in. There hasn’t been a full investigation yet. But it cut off communications, and caused Kino to become separated from the group.”

“How?” Aymon asked. His anger, the easiest emotion to reach for deliberately, the one that could push away fear— if only because it gave him something to do — made him want to take the soldiers who had abandoned his apprentice and—

“When the tunnel collapsed on top of them, Kino shoved them out of the way of the falling rock, and they ended up on opposite sides of the obstruction,” Halen said. His voice was even. Aymon wondered if he was lying, just to douse his anger. It didn’t help much, even if he was.

“And is anyone looking for her?”

“Yes,” Halen said shortly.

The remainder of the ride was tense and silent, and when the plane skidded to a touchdown on the airfield, Aymon was getting up from his seat before the plane had even come to a stop. Everyone scrambled to clear a path for him to leave the plane.

The whipping wind outside was still too hot for comfort and felt incongruous with the darkness, and the sparse lighting of the runway and the plane’s landing lights only made Aymon’s shadow stretch and bend crazily as he stalked towards General Lang, standing with her soldiers on at the end of the airfield.

Aymon used the power to make his voice carry further— not even a difficult trick, but an effective one. “Where is my apprentice, General Lang?” he asked. He hadn’t even yelled, but the sound cut through the wind like a knife.

She didn’t answer until he was closer.

“We’re looking for her,” she said. “Teams have already been dispatched to clear the blockages, and to navigate to her last known location through alternate routes. We will find her.”

“I was assured that you would not lose her in the first place,” Aymon said. “You will have to forgive me for having little confidence in your assurances, at this point.”

The coldness in his voice startled his old friend, and her demeanor changed. In this moment, they were no longer friends. “Yes, sir,” said.

“General Lang,” Halen said. Aymon hadn’t even noticed him coming up behind him, but of course Halen was going to stay at his shoulder, as close as possible. “Is Apprentice Mejia likely to be alive?”

Lang’s expression was unreadable in the blinking red runway lights. “Yes,” she said. “She seems like the type.”

Halen stared at her. “Please do not confuse your hopes with an accurate assessment of the facts, General,” he said finally.