“You think I’m going to just believe you? Accept that you’ve changed in an eyeblink? Become compassionate?”
“Changed?” Raidriar asked. “No, I have not changed. I am king and god to this people—I have always been both destroyer and life-giver. We do not change.” He inspected the bottom of his mug. “None save for Ausar. He is different. I have not yet decided fully if I find that remarkable or reprehensible.
“Regardless, child, human civilization goes in cycles. One cannot let them have prosperity for too long, or they will misuse it, destroying themselves and others. For this reason, they have been cast down—given humble roots, to inspire simple wholesomeness. Still, it has been a good long time since I have allowed a golden age, an age of discovery and wonder. I had been thinking of having one arrive soon; and for your rebellion, I have moved up the timetable.”
“Go suck on a rock,” she said again. “A muddy one.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Raidriar said. “I assume it’s a grander insult than it sounds. You really mean to keep fighting me?”
“Yes. We’ll rebel.”
He laughed. “Against what? Did you hear me? I’ll make the people free. You’ll lead my people to rebellion while those underneath the other Deathless are being beaten and oppressed? You will waste your time in the one place in the world where everyone will be fed and happy?”
“I . . .”
“I always keep my word,” Raidriar said. “You have won. Rebellion over. Freedom established. Congratulations.”
Isa felt nauseous. The problem was, he might be telling the truth. What would she do if he started treating everyone in his kingdom well, without any further need for bloodshed?
“With freedom proclaimed here,” Raidriar said, “with me becoming a benevolent god who grants technology and wonders, you could take your fighters to the other oppressive regimes. You could change the entire world, free hundreds of thousands. Or, I suppose, you could stay here to sputter and fight, becoming increasingly irrelevant as I bestow boon after boon.”
“I hate you,” she whispered.
“I think you know I don’t really care,” Raidriar said. He set his empty mug on the equipment, then strolled toward the way out. “But don’t sound so surprised that I have bested you. I have been doing this for a very long time, child. Did you think, perhaps, I had learned nothing in those thousands of years?”
He left.
Isa stared at her mug, fuming. Heaven take that creature.
I can’t fight things like him, she thought, angry—though she wasn’t completely sure why. Angry that Raidriar had agreed to give his people freedom, wealth, and technology? Why should that make her so furious?
She turned, looking at the equipment behind her.
She had watched Eves set it up, then almost use it.
She had watched very, very closely.
Oh, hell, she thought, realization dawning.
IT WAS quite an undertaking in full armor, but he was Deathless, and his body worked at a constant peak of efficiency. He arrived cautiously, peeking over the lip of the floor toward the throne room.
It appeared to be empty. The throne hadn’t even been repaired from the attack that Siris had fended off here, so long ago. He heard the faint drip of water leaking somewhere. Raidriar insisted that the copy was here, in this palace somewhere. Could the God King be wrong?
Siris rocked on the chain, swinging back and forth until he could throw himself out over the small gap onto the floor of the throne room. He landed with a crash of clanking armor, but came up quickly and slipped his sword from its sheath with a leathery rasp.
He waited there, in a crouch, listening. He heard only that same dripping from before. That, and . . . muttering?
What in the name of the seven? Siris thought, and spared a moment of amusement that his instinct—given him by his upbringing—was still to curse by Raidriar and his Pantheon.
He crossed the throne room and found an open door at the back. He could swear this hadn’t been here before—but, then, the opening looked to be hidden in the stonework. Perhaps it had existed, but Siris hadn’t found it.
The muttering came from inside. Siris located the source of the dripping. Not water, but blood, dripping from the toe of a daeril who had been nailed to the wall with a spear through its chest.
Siris stepped through the door and into a room of silvery metal and wires. Raidriar sat here, with no helm, muttering to himself and tapping his finger against a mirror.
Hell take me . . . Siris thought. The Soulless wore hair that hadn’t seen a comb in far too long. Its clothing was soiled, and beside it sat a plate of what appeared to be fingers. It raised one of these to its lips, gnawing on the flesh and tapping at the screen.
“He’s going to end it,” the Soulless muttered. “Boom. Gone.”
The Infinity Blade lay in a heap of swords beside the doorway. Discarded as if it were junk. Did that mean the Blade was a fake? Siris slipped it from the pile, causing several swords to clank.
The Soulless twisted in its seat, his eyes wide, hands clawlike and rigid. Siris raised the Blade, falling into a battle stance.
The Soulless snorted. “Come to kill me? Ha! Joke’s on you. Just a copy. How stupid you look!”
“You do know, then,” Siris said.
“Yes, yes. Just a copy. Everything is a copy.”
Siris frowned. “You’re a Soulless.”
“Everything is Soulless!” The clone ran fingers through its hair. “Whole world. We thought we were playing chess with him, you see. We’ve all gotten very good at the game. We know all the rules. Problem is, he’s not playing chess. He’s playing solitaire!”
The Soulless’s mind, it appeared, had not lasted the ten years that Raidriar had said it would.
“Solitaire!” The Soulless put another severed finger into its mouth and chewed at the flesh. “Don’t you see? Different game entirely! Different pieces? We’re the pieces! We aren’t playing against him.”
“It is hard,” Siris said, lowering the Infinity Blade, “to realize you are not what you thought. I understand.”
“Wait.” The Soulless stopped laughing, then focused on him more directly. “Ausar?”
Siris nodded.
“I should probably kill you,” the Soulless said. Instead, it turned away from him back to his mirror, spitting out a fingerbone with the flesh chewed free. “It’s hard to decide. What is my allegiance? Do I resent my prime, the real Raidriar? Or do I wish him to survive, so at least one of us can. Of course, he’s a copy too . . .”
“A copy?”
“Not of anyone specific,” it said. “But this whole world is a copy, you see, just like me . . .”
“Why did you kill the daerils?” Siris asked, looking at the fallen fingerbone.
“Killed everyone. I couldn’t let them see my face, and my helm was getting stuffy. The fingers are disgusting, I realize, but I need to eat something. Stops those damn corpses from scratching the ground, too. Yes, I’m quite mad. Combined effects of an unstable Q.I.P. and an existential crisis, I suspect. Dagger?”
“What—”
The Soulless spun and lunged for Siris in a fluid motion, carrying a dagger, lips wide and bloodied from its gruesome meal.
Siris took a step forward and rammed the Infinity Blade into the copy’s chest. The poor creature’s knife skidded ineffectually across Siris’s armor. It might have once had Raidriar’s skill—the dead daerils indicated that was likely the case—but by this point, the copy had fallen too far to fight with any real skill.
The Infinity Blade flashed briefly. Not as it would for even a lesser Deathless, and the corpse slipped off the Blade.
Siris shook his head, stepping up to the mirror that the Soulless had been inspecting. He read in silence for a moment.
Then he gasped.
ISA RESTED her fingers on the machine.
This cursed machine . . . it was the source of everything wrong in the world. It was the source
of them.
She almost went back to her drinking. She’d only had one mug so far, not enough to really even notice. Perhaps if she were more drunk, this decision would make more sense.
Don’t be stupid, she told herself, walking around the device.
She should destroy this machine. Stop Siris from being able to change any of her soldiers into abominations like he was.
But she didn’t. She stopped beside the control mirror instead and stared at it for a long, long time.
She wanted to fight them. She knew, deep down, there was only one way to do that. She’d rescued Siris because of that single fact—that without Deathless of their own, they had no chance.
It’s going to come to this, she thought. I can either make the decision myself, or I can be pushed into it.
That, in the end, was the deciding factor. She had always been, and always would be, the master of her own destiny. She would not let another make this choice for her.
She made it herself, and began working on the machine, pushing the buttons she’d memorized as Eves worked earlier in the day. It was time to become one of the things she hated most in the world.
She’d just have to see if she could live with herself after it was done.
DEVIATION
THE NINTH
“YOU ARE fortunate,” Galath said as his scientists prodded at Jori’s limp body. “He is not quite gone. His Q.I.P. can still be associated with this form.”