Chương 50: Chapter 49 : Shared Purposes

They shoved through the curtain and the smoke hit first—thick as foam, rolling over them in a wave that burned behind Elma's mask despite the frog's painted grin doing nothing to filter it. Her eyes streamed. Somewhere past the sting, her lungs registered the same complaint, only sharper and deeper. She reached out with her Field and dragged the smoke sideways, clearing a channel through it before it had finished settling. Three weights hit her first, before the shapes behind them resolved. Heavy.

All three, especially the one in the middle. If he wasn't a Tsar, he was the closest thing to one she had ever felt. The smoke thinned to reveal a card table, low light pooling over green felt, cards fanned in three sets of hands and a glass bowl filled with cigar ash. Two men flanked it, facing each other across the table's width.

The one on the right wore his dull gold hair long and combed back, his frame narrow enough that his white coat hung a size too roomy on him, a long, pointed nose aimed down at his cards like it disapproved of them personally. Altheris coloring, Elma catalogued automatically. Nobility, probably—minor branch, given how far he sat from anything resembling command presence. The one across from him took up twice the space without effort.

His shoulders strained the seams of a black shirt cut too tight, and a beard black and dense enough to pass for a broom swept down over most of his chest. And between them, at the far side of the table, facing Elma, sat Sekar. Moderately built. Not broad, not lean. Gray hair, a gray beard gone a few days past its last proper trim, a fur-lined coat the color of ash draped loose over his shoulders. Nothing about his body said faster, stronger, didn't make any sense.

Nothing except the unmistakable weight he exerted on the fabric of the world. The bearded man's eyes landed on Vector and lit up with something ugly and delighted.

"You." A grin split the black beard in half.

"Heard you were hunting Sekar. That so?" Vector held his gaze, unbothered.

"I was. Yeah."

"No—no, he's not, not anymore, that was—" Lucien's hands came up, waving the whole sentence back down.

"Misunderstanding. Fully resolved." The big man was on his feet before Lucien finished, floorboards groaning under the sudden shift of weight.

"Ox." One word, flat, from the ash-coated coat behind him. The big man—Ox—froze mid-rise, jaw working, before dropping back into his chair with a scowl aimed squarely at Vector's smirk. Sekar drew slowly on his cigar and let the smoke climb steadily toward the rafters before he spoke again.

"You interrupted our game." His voice came out rough, sanded down by years of exactly this kind of smoke.

"This had better be worth it."

"We—well." Lucien cleared his throat, twice.

"We were actually hoping to, ah. Join. The game." Two maids appeared from somewhere behind the smoke, silent, each carrying two chairs at once without visible effort, their movements clipped and a half-beat too smooth to be entirely comfortable to watch. Elma's eyes tracked past them to the wall, where two more stood motionless in the dark, as if a task was the only thing they knew how to do. Something about the way they held themselves didn't sit right. She filed it, without time to chase the thought further.

Sekar's hand swept toward the empty seats, cigar trailing smoke through the gesture.

"Sit."

"We're not playing cards," Elma said.

"We'd lose."

"I see." Sekar didn't look especially surprised by that either.

"You need something from me."

"We do."

"And that is?"

"Information," Vector cut in, before she could answer herself.

"We enter the Bastion's inscription tournament. We win, you answer a question. We lose, she joins the Bastion." The boy was too eager to share the plan, as though he didn't want Sekar thinking it had been her idea. Sekar drew on his cigar and said nothing for long enough that the silence itself became the answer.

"She's a Karnak Tsar." Vector pressed on regardless, undeterred by the lack of reaction.

"You really want to pass on that?"

"Tempting." Sekar tapped ash into the bowl at his elbow without looking at it.

"But I might just tell you for free. That tournament's got the weakest Resonants this world has to offer. Any one of you could probably clear it alone." Plan's dead, the Other said, flat. You need to leave. Now. Vector's laugh came out a half-beat too loud.

"Well—what would you call a fairer game, then?" Sekar tossed his cards face-down on the felt and leaned back, boots landing on the table's edge, attention swinging fully onto them for the first time.

"I need to know who I'm dealing with, first." He tipped his chin at Elma.

"Karnak." Then at Lucien and Silk in turn.

"And you two?"

"Merchant." Lucien didn't miss a beat.

"Peasant stock. She's my wife."

"Names."

"Right, of course. Bron." A fractional pause.

"And—Silva."

"Interesting company you keep." Another pull on the cigar, a third of it gone already.

"A Karnak, two peasants, and him." His eyes flicked toward Vector.

"Must be quite a story, how the four of you found each other."

"Well." Lucien spread his hands.

"Shared purpose has a way of bringing people together, in time."

"That's not wrong." Sekar almost smiled.

"So," Elma said, before the conversation could wander further from the point.

"Are you playing or not?"

"This is a dangerous gamble for me." He studied her over the cigar's ember.

"I think you can sweeten it."

"A potential Strategoi isn't sweet enough?" Vector asked.

"It is. But I'm the one most likely to lose this bet, which means if I somehow don't, I want it to actually matter." His gaze slid, deliberate, between the two of them.

"I want both of you." Vector's mouth opened, nothing coming out of it for a second.

"Don't play obtuse, Vector," Sekar said, almost gently.

"I want both of you."

"Well—" Vector floundered. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Didn't you want to fight me?" Sekar's eyebrow rose.

"I didn't think this tournament would be enough to scare you." Vector looked at Elma. She looked back at him. He held her gaze for a moment, then sighed.

"Right." Vector's composure snapped back into place, thinner than before.

"Fine. Done."

"Now that's worth the risk." Sekar took one last pull and knocked the stub into the bowl.

"Then we have a bet," Elma said.

"I suppose you could call it that—" his eyes found Elma's directly and held there "— Elma Altheris." Her heart dropped straight through the floor. Lucien didn't move. Silk didn't either. The whole table had gone still around her, frozen mid-breath. Ox and the golden-haired man didn't so much as blink. No surprise anywhere on either face. They'd already known. Damn it, the Other said.

"Elma?" Vector's head swiveled between them.

"Who the hell is Elma?" Sekar was already lighting a fresh cigar, unbothered by the wreckage he'd just detonated across the table.

"Does anyone know you're here?"

"Yes." It left her before she'd finished deciding to say it. If he believed no one knew where they were, there'd be nothing left holding him back. He raised one hand. The golden-haired man rose without a word and started toward the curtain.

"Desmond's daughter, I'd guess," Sekar said, thoughtful, almost to himself.

"She wouldn't have wandered far."

"What the hell is going on!" Vector shouted. Does he mean Jorm, Elma thought.

"I meant others," Elma said, her breathing growing difficult.

"Other people, not just her."

"She's not here." Lucien's voice came out too fast, too certain.

"She's nowhere near here." The maids had already closed around him, two of them settling into the space between his shoulder and the curtain. Sekar's boots came off the table.

"Sit." Flat, to Elma.

"I won't ask again." She sat. Any wrong move, you go for his head, she told the Other. Got it.

"I've spent a long time around Karnaks," Sekar said.

"Longer around nobles. I know exactly how you people sound. And I know what you two definitely don't sound like." A tilt of his head toward Lucien and Silk.

"Lay a finger on any of us," Lucien said, "and you're finished. Do you understand me."

"You've known from the start," Elma said.

"Suspected." Sekar didn't deny it.

"Word just came in that you had gone missing not two minutes before four strangers walked in matching every description but the mask and the cloak. I'm not that slow." The golden-haired man reappeared through the curtain, Jorm's arms pinned in one fist, her Gund clamped uselessly in the other. Repera trailed behind his leg, beating both small hands against it, and Vector hauled her back before she could get anywhere. He shoved Jorm forward. She hit the floor.

Elma looked at him with a promise she would gladly die delivering. He caught the look, and smiled at it.

"Jorm." Sekar said her name once. Jorm didn't answer. Didn't look at him either.

"You've awakened," he sighed.

"You're too weak. One wouldn't believe that you were Desmond's child. You couldn't even get a fraction of his might."

"Nor his height," the golden-haired man said. Ox wheezed.

"You're ruthless Galin." Elma saw Jorm's mask move with her jaw. Her hands clutched her cloak, but no word escaped her. A maid walked toward Sekar carrying a massive silver scythe. He grabbed it without looking and drove it into the maid's chest. Behind Vector, Elma heard the faint, crystalline tink of mirror shards forming. A sharp exhalation escaped Jorm and Lucien. Elma blinked. He pulled the scythe free. No blood came.

Instead, liquid metal drenched the edge of the blade before the silver wound closed immediately. The maid retreated without a reaction. She wasn't a real person. The maids. They were dolls? Sekar's thumb ran once along the flat of the blade. It came away wet, and he slowly rubbed the silver bead between his finger and thumb.

"Mercury," he said.

"I coat everything I carry in it. Not much survives it once it's in the blood—even a strong Bio Resonant will struggle to get rid of it." He lowered the blade, eyes settling on Elma.

"I thought I'd overdone it, using it on you." The old wound in her chest gave one slow, phantom ache. That fake Alloy. It was him.

"But whatever's living in you took it like nothing," Sekar went on.

"Came back looking for me, after. I can feel it looking at me right now. Through your eyes."

"Living in her?" Lucien said. Sekar ignored him.

"I'm guessing the question you're here to ask is whether anyone put me up to it." He looked at her, waiting. Elma nodded once. He grunted, low, and sat back.

"I know you're not what you appear to be. Don't know exactly what you are. What I do know is I might be the only person in this city who doesn't care." His gaze slid to Vector.

"I know what the two of you are capable of. What you'll be capable of, given time. With both of you standing behind the Bastion, we've got a real chance of surviving the outside. We can form our own faction, coalition, you name it."

"What?" Vector's head came up.

"We're leaving." Sekar said it like nothing.

"Might pass close enough to Xenotopia on the way. Who knows."

"That's treason," Lucien said.

"My nation's already marked for ruin. Our Sovereign took half our strength with him when he marched, and whatever's left of Veraxys when he finally comes home won't be worth calling a nation." He looked to Elma.

"I don't intend to be standing in it when that happens. Neither do you. Do you?"

"Marked? By what?" Lucien asked. Sekar didn't answer.

"Valerius will never forgive that." Lucien's voice had gone thin.

"You'd spend the rest of your lives running."

"Better than spending the rest of them dead," the golden-haired man said, from the doorway. Sekar turned fully on Lucien.

"Lucien Kresnik. I know about the little arrangements you've been making—waiting for the cover of the Rain to run, with your guard." He let the word land soft and precise.

"If I know that much, I promise you I'm not the only one who does." Running, Elma thought. He was going to run with Silk. Seems like everyone in this city's got a plan they're not telling anyone about, the Other said. Lucien's face drained white.

"That's not—it isn't true. It can't be." Silk's hand found his arm, steadying him before he could sway.

"Shared purpose," Sekar said.

"You can come with us. You can live however you like. Isn't that what you want?" Lucien didn't answer right away.

"It was," he said finally.

"It is. Veraxys has given me plenty of reasons to hate it." His jaw worked.

"But I can't just run from it. Not after everything they'd done for my family."

"Still calling yourself a Kresnik, after all that." Sekar turned.

"And you?" Vector stared at the floor, then at Elma, and said nothing useful for a long moment.

"I'm not sure." Sekar's eyes came to rest on her last.

"You?" She let the silence sit before she answered.

"You tried to kill me."

"Nothing personal in it. A bet I lost, that's all." A pause.

"Would it help, if I told you I'll never try again?" If she wanted out of Veraxys, she would've gone at any moment. Her green Veins removed many of the obstacles that seemed to keep everyone else trapped in this world. If Sekar couldn't protect her from Sable, and Elma seriously doubted he could, there was nothing he could offer her. If she left Veraxys, it would not be as anyone's weapon. Not Sable's. Not his either.

"Seems none of you can settle on an answer," Sekar said.

"Lucky for everyone, we already agreed on how this gets decided. Win the tournament, you get your answer. Lose, and you answer to me instead. Fair, I'd say."

"Perfectly fair," Ox said. The golden-haired man nodded once.

"You can go." Sekar struck a match, cupping the flame.

"One thing, before you do. I couldn't just end your lives—but I could ruin them just as thoroughly. Your secrets. Everything either of you cares about." His eyes moved lazily between Elma and Lucien.

"So I'd rather my brief stay in this city remain unbothered while I'm getting ready to leave." Elma stood and walked out. Jorm snatched her sword back out of the golden-haired man's grip on the way past, so fast he barely registered losing it. None of them spoke until the curtain fell shut behind them.