“Try to make me. See where it gets you.”
The words are barely out of my mouth when I regret having said them. Not because they were untrue; simply because they were… unproductive.
No, that’s not right. I regret them because they come from the fear churning in my stomach and from the anger boiling in my veins. I regret them because I’m hungry for a fight, and because I want to inflict pain. Still, reflection of my weakness and trauma-induced ethical drift though they might be, I don’t retract or soft-pedal them.
They are, after all, true.
There’s a thrumming in the silence as the god before us places his hand on the membrane between the Temple and the outside. His eyes close in concentration, and I take the opportunity to step to the side, using the act of lounging against the wall as both a way to still the mildest of tremors in my limbs and to take a step back, getting some small distance from the exit.
I’m not running, I try to convey with my body language, for no purpose other than the performance of it. I’m relaxing. Take your time.
My companions don’t exactly mirror me. Amber is a step behind me and over on the other side of the hallway leading to the exit, Zidanya’s two, maybe three steps behind me, and Sara is well behind us. They’re alert, ready for action, for all that they’re trying to mimic my ease—and it says something that Zidanya is uneasy—and I wish to the stars and back that they were somewhere else, somewhere safe.
A long breath in, a long breath out. It’s not, the impetus isn’t coming from me; it’s coming from Seidr, and our lungs move with his without preamble.
The membrane tears, and he steps through in a wash of magic and power. He smiles, thin and impassive, and three things happen faster than I can track: activation, denial, and weight.
Activation. I’ve been creating Motes and orbs since Zidanya said something was wrong, a steady stream of stored, frontloaded capacity fit to cause a god some pause; and I don’t say that idly, after Lily had to go to some trouble to deal with what I was packing. Every orb activates, and both because I’m a product of my culture and not a blithering idiot, it’s as hard of an all-out knockout blow as I can manage. There aren’t as many Motes up as when I… as then, but the effects themselves are better tailored and harder to deal with.
Denial. The flood of power shreds the Motes before the trigger mechanism propagates. It’s not an amount of time I’ve ever been able to measure, but that epsilon is the difference between the godkiller—or at least, avatar-killer—I’d been trying for and what I actually get. The orbs might as well not have even fired, for all the good they do without the Motes backing them up; no magnifiers, no amplifiers, no shredding or dampening or nullifying of magical defenses, just a dull flare of color and a feeling of futility.
Weight. By the time Seidr’s taken one step into the corridor, there’s what feels like a force just shy of crushing on my shoulders. Bend the knee, it says, in something both more powerful and subtler than any command or suggestion Lily had used on me. You can’t take this without bracing, it says. As indomitable as you might think your will is, your body will shatter before the domain of a god, for that is the order of things; the god in strength, mortals in weakness
I had fallen, when Lily had withdrawn her domain from me, leaving me for less than a second unmoored in an endless moment. It had been a world of not just a lack of meaning, but of nega-meaning; a place where there was the impossibility of attributes, because the concept of attributes is just that, a concept, and without the living to name it, it does not exist. Even the Endless Void is merely that; you can breathe the air you bring in, and have your lungs sustain you, because it’s air, it’s made out of oxygen and nitrogen and a few other things besides, your lungs are lungs, and you exist.
Seidr’s domain is a step beyond Lily’s, but this isn’t something that claws at my traumas and speaks to the nightmares that leave me tangled in cold sweat and sodden sheets when I wake. This is a demand that I bow to the social order, that I bend the knee to power for the sake of its power. It’s a demand that I recognize authority on the basis of authority, that I follow on principle.
Sara’s hiss of pain has me glancing backwards to see an utterly unfussed Amber supporting her. Do not forget, Sara Evetheri, in whose company you are, I read on her lips, warmth blossoming in my chest, and Zidanya steps to stand between the staggered prodigy and the god.
“Adam Levi James. Outsider, Magelord of one of My creations, my Reca. Void-traveler, Runewright. Unraveller of the Impossible, Wizard of First Principles.”
Those last two sounded very specific, and like I’m supposed to understand some additional level of meaning in them. “Seidr.” My voice is nowhere near as dry and affect-less as his, but I’m making an effort. “God of the social order, and the maintenance thereof. Of stasis, of the shackle and the lash. Of the slaves in such darkness that they know not the light.”
“I suppose I am.” He looks at me, consideringly. Gradually, softly, the pressure on me, that immense divine weight of personality and power fades, and he tilts his head quizzically. “It has been a long time since I last walked these halls. It imparts a certain perspective, I suppose. Stand, if you will. Diminished as this avatar is, perhaps we might speak more freely.”
“What—” I stop before I say are you playing at. “Your voice changed. This avatar?” My mind whirls. “The Temple. It’s… restricted you in some way.”
“A great dragon cannot fly by wing alone; belike a god becometh an eagle, crossing yon threshold.”
Seidr’s eyes track over to Zidanya, and something twists and curdles in his expression. The weight of it flashes in the air, and I see her breathe out sharply and set her feet before he turns back to me, back to his faint smile. “You spoke rashly and in ignorance. Will you allow that latter to be rectified, that you might perhaps reconsider the former? I should prefer your alignment to your uninvolvement, and that to your annihilation. Bide a moment, and hearken to me.”
Oh. Oh.
If there was anything I’d been expecting out of him, this de-escalation wasn’t it. The surprise shatters my focus, and it’s not just the surprise. If defying his domain is my birthright, the heritage of my blood and bone, written in every myth and oath and cemented in every argument around the refectory table and in the fiery declamation of my coming of age, then his new, softer demand, especially coming on the heels of my attempt at conclusive violence, is something that bypasses every defense, every piece of my defiance.
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“I’ll give you your chance at a recruitment pitch.” I lean against the dungeonstone wall, feeling the absoluteness of everything about it, letting that ultimate expression of immutability reassure me. It takes an effort to remain insouciant, but it’s an effort I’m happy to make. “Since you’re being so mellow and all, suddenly. Give me your best shot.”
“In short,” the god before me says, “the core of your ignorance is this: mine is not the domain of stasis.”
Seidr’s avatar is compelling. His body language is perfect, something straight out of a thousand years of continuous tradition of trying to convince by reason and expression of life experience; his voice is steady and emotional by turns, precisely as abstracted and subtle as befits someone who is kin to that emotionless voice that spoke outside.
I take, therefore, some care to detach myself from the immediacy of his argument. Everything he says, I ingest and recontextualize before thinking about it; every point he makes against my argument or in favor of his, I reframe in my own words back at him before engaging; measures to avoid arguments in bad faith and stampedes, repurposed to also avoid meddlesome rhetorical magic and manipulation. What emerges is what he allows is an adequate understanding of his position, even if he would have used different words, which is kind of the point. He’s a god; even in this quite literally Godsforsaken place, his chosen words have an inherent power that goes beyond the logic of his arguments.
Which would have been convenient for him, because it’s an argument I’ve heard plenty of times; it’s an argument that the Fleet has grappled with over and over again.
“Risk-averse, risk-aware,” I say quietly, “doesn’t justify your position. It would justify an investment of resources into particular domains, but it doesn’t justify autocracy; actually, just the opposite” He goes to say something, and I lift a finger and shake my head. “No, no. We’ve agreed that I understand your argument. There’s no clarification that’s due. You’re just wrong.
“The Fleet operates on what is, strategically, a razor’s edge. Three layers of backups for every system, rigorously tested failovers, and an outsized number of talented, experienced engineers doesn’t actually do anything for you if you run out of water, if you have to duck out into the Deepness when you’re drawn down and you’re sitting at an anchor-station too far from a star to let the arrays soak. And I’m not saying the Fleet is perfect; my life was absolutely proof positive of that.”
“Then what—”
“The question is who benefits.” That shuts him up, as well it should, though the edge of confusion in his features is risible. “You’re talking about Cador like it’s a lifeboat, and I guess in some respects it is, but it’s not any more of one than the fragile ship in the darkness that was my home for thirty years. You’ve got a nigh-permanent state of emergency, this incredibly weird one that has become fused with the Stillness. You justify it on the basis of oh, the Firstborn might still be out there somewhere, and there’s demon fuckery going on somehow even though all of the godlings that the Goddess ate are back. And that would be fine, it might even be true, but who determines what that state of emergency needs? Who decides what the Stillness requires, who’s protected by it, what counts as upheaval?”
“Those who know. Those who understand.”
“How convenient that those are the folks at the top!” I let the venom seep into my voice. “How convenient for the lifeboat captain that disagreement is mutiny, that his autarchy must not be questioned!”
“Better that than another Great War!” Seidr isn’t exactly yelling, but there’s a fury in him, and it thrills me to hear it. “Better to grow within the bounds of the order. Better that the strong rule, so that fewer die, for the more total the futility of rebellion, the fewer will die attempting it. Better that war becomes a game played amongst the powerful, whose stakes are limited to those who choose to engage in it; better that, so ordered, society grows in skill and technique and power, and everyone’s lives are bettered.”
“You say that, but it’s clear from history that you haven’t actually seriously considered any alternatives. You probably can’t, literally; it would go against your inherent nature, wouldn’t it?”
“An order changing is still order, if it changes deliberately,” Seidr retorts dismissively.
“Then try something new for once.” I push myself off the wall, making eye contact with every ounce of challenge I can. “Make a professional class within the clerical ranks, associated with the Temple and Zidanya’s renewed Arcadia. Give them suzerainty over some of the more judiciable stuff that right now is in the hands of the nobility. Get the Craftguilds together, have them make an Assembly of Artisans, and give them some genuine power, too.
“I’m not going to be your minion, Seidr. I’m not going to worship you or bend the knee. But you’re making a mistake asking me to, when what you should be asking me is to be an out-of-context solution to problems you didn’t even know you had. What you should be asking is for me to be your partner. And if in the end the lessons from thousands of years of my own history aren’t applicable, if those experiments based on the governance of the Worldships fail, you’ll get what you want anyway.”
There’s a crystalline moment in which I think it might work. A split second of time in which I start to hope, and then Seidr shakes his head.
“I will not permit your madness to break this world, Outsider.”
“You have no idea,” I say softly into the sharply rising tension and magical energies, “what madness is, or what it means to break a world. But I guess you’re about to learn.”