“Are you certain?” the demon in disguise asked.

  “I am,” Aretan replied, pausing at the entrance to the cave. Tool markings and foot-worn stone hinted at a long history. “And were your mistress uncertain, she would not have sent you along.”

  Mereneth frowned, the expression looking out of pce to Aretan, almost pout-like on the young Navanaean face she wore.

  The ex noble, ex soldier, ex mercenary took a deep breath and steadied himself, offering a small prayer to the Eight.

  “If what Isidore and I uncovered and what your mistress was able to corroborate are correct, then much of the history of Navanaea as I know it is untrue. Or at least incomplete. We owe it to the Formid to try to restore that cooperation.” He stepped inside, feeling the sun on his back recede as he stepped into darkness.

  “What will you tell them?” Mereneth asked, following, eyes moving from side to side, glowing briefly in the darkness. “That you’re sorry your ancestors drove them from their homend to the edge of the mountains?”

  Aretan winced. “There is no apology that is sufficient. I will continue as I have in my letters, earnestly and with the interest of the greater whole.”

  “And you can’t tell me what that pn is?”

  Aretan shook his head. “No. But you will know soon.”

  Mereneth side-eyed him as they came to the first bend in the narrow cave. “Because you can’t trust me?”

  “No, because they are already listening, and it is best the pn is heard by only those whose need is certain.”

  The demon in disguise sighed and rolled her eyes. “You could have told me on the way over.”

  “Correct.”

  Up ahead, the passage brightened, several side tunnels branching off into the shadows. The pair headed for the light, emerging into a shaded chamber, open to the sky and surrounded by cliffs. A few gnarled trees took root by a small, muddy spring in the center, the water flowing off underground to one side.

  Winter flowers were blooming, pink and white against the dark orange-brown of the rocks. Several rge, ft stones sat in a circle on hard-packed dirt above the spring, looking like the stools of an audience chamber.

  Which, in a time long past, they probably were. And they would fulfill such a purpose again here today. Standing above those stones, tall and unreadable, were two Formid. The taller one had reddish-bck chitin, while the smaller was closer to a sand color. They each stood seemingly stiffly on long legs, with the taller’s lower pair of arms held back near the base of a giant hammer and the shorter’s arms crossed gently around the narrow pinch of their waist.

  The smaller wore a red-orange sash, the rger a mantle. And both of them were staring at Aretan and Mereneth with solid bck eyes—two main ones and four smaller above and below. With mandibles in pce of jaws, Aretan looked to their antennae for ck of a facial expression, but he couldn’t get any sort of read.

  However, from the letters sent back and forth these past weeks, Aretan guessed the smaller of the two to be Scribe, whom he had been the longest in contact with. The other then, the one whose solid eyes seemed to shift between him and Mereneth, would be Hammer. The one who had met Zarenna and who had asked to be present.

  More were doubtless waiting in hidden pces, and from the way Mereneth tensed, Aretan could guess there were more than a few. After all, who would not be wary when an exiled descendent of the people who so viciously betrayed your kind offered an olive branch?

  “Stop,” Scribe commanded in uncannily perfect Turquoiser. There was no accompanying raised hand, no step forward, no shift in posture. Just a slight turn of their head toward Mereneth.

  Aretan stopped. He replied with the coded phrase, the real one not the decoy. If the pair rexed, they didn’t show it. Hammer’s lower hands kept near the base of the rge hammer on their back. Mereneth looked as calm as a sheltered oasis, somehow.

  “Who is the other?” Scribe asked.

  “Mereneth. She is a representative of Lust, allied with Zarenna, Sovereign of Wrath.”

  Scribe took a single step forward, though Hammer did not move. “You mean for us to follow the same as your vile elite?”

  “I am not bound,” Mereneth said simply. Her clothes were light, loose, and showed her neck and colrbone in full.

  Scribe inclined their head toward the demon, antennae twitching. A few tense moments ter, they spoke again. “So you are not. You wish then to free your kind?”

  “Some,” Mereneth answered with a too-wide smile. “Others should die.”

  “So your letters spoke truth.”

  Aretan nodded.

  “But we find it difficult to believe your sincerity.”

  “I understand.” He bowed, formally.

  “We know that you had forsaken your title, however. Long before this war. And you have brought no army to this pce.”

  Aretan did not move, letting Scribe continue.

  “And this one vouches for your friend Zarenna, though they only met briefly. As such, we will hear your pn that ‘could not be risked through a letter.’”

  Aretan blinked at the unexpected sarcasm. For a voice so uncanny to… no, now was not the time. He stood up straight and looked at the pair in front of him. To come closer to whisper, to ask for privacy now would cast into doubt his sincerity. He needed to be made vulnerable, to tie Lillith and her ilk to this conflict they had rgely stayed out of.

  The thought twisted his stomach. This was not the responsibility he had for his mercenary company, this was more akin to his family’s actions and he struggled to keep painful memories from forming, from thinking of their awful demise.

  Before he could convince himself otherwise, Aretan spoke. “I believe it necessary to remove the ruling family of Navanaea, and to end the practice of demon summoning and binding by any means necessary.”

  A faint hiss emanated from Scribe, though Hammer stayed silent. “You mean to betray.” Their words ended with a click.

  “I mean to make right.” Aretan clenched his hands, hard enough to hurt. “I never supported binding demons; I never supported our expansion to drive your kind out.”

  “You would see your kind subjugated under ours.” Another click.

  Aretan looked up—Scribe had moved closer, and the only sign of emotion came from their quivering antennae. “No,” he said firmly. “I would see an end to the war and the first step toward a future of cooperation.”

  “Hopeless.” Click. “Idealism.” Click.

  “This one disagrees,” Hammer said in a hissing voice, speaking for the first time. “This one believes that we should judge the now, not the past.”

  Scribe froze, then jerked their head toward Hammer so sharply that Aretan could barely follow the motion. “And forget their horrid crimes?” Click.

  Hammer stepped forward, and Aretan realized just how tall they were when they towered over Scribe from not half an arm’s length away. “And not become what we hate.”

  Aretan and Mereneth shared a gnce as the two faced off, antennae twitching. Whether it was a silent contest of wills or a conversation neither could understand, the shadows had moved down the walls by the time the pair backed down and Scribe turned back to face Aretan and Mereneth.

  “We will hear the how of your pn.” They gestured at the stone seats, hiss and lick gone from their unreadable voice. “If you dare entrap us, you will not leave this pce alive, demon ally or no.”

  Aretan nodded and stepped forward. “Should I do such a thing, death would indeed be a fitting punishment.”

  MadMaxine

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