“I cannot in good conscience condone the Sieve’s continuing,” Riris said plainly. She conveyed no argument in her tone, simply an unyielding certainty. “I have seen the effects of Reginald Tamaias’s battle first-hand, and any resources not spent on providing aid to those suffering from it are resources wasted.”

A predictable stance for her to have taken, yet one that was no less inconvenient as a result.

“Our position as organisers is to ensure the smooth running of the Sieve, not the wellbeing of its audience. Let others handle the rabble.” Sins leaned across the table as she countered Riris, staring the woman down evenly.

Seeing an opportunity, Karma cut in.

“What lady Sins says is true, our failure as Organisers would disgrace both us and our nations. What the world, Bermuda especially, needs at this moment is a moral boost.”

She knew that, in advocating for the continuing of the Sieve, she was proposing Bermuda be strangled of its resource. Condemning many hundreds, possibly thousands, to slow, ignominious deaths by starvation.

It sent a dagger of guilt, frustration and disgust twisting into her heart. And yet Karma had no choice. For the world to be as it should, for its people to live the best lives possible, it needed to fall under Olympian rule. Thousands were a worthy sacrifice to ensure the salvation of billions.

That didn’t make her feel any less like a monster for being the one to sign their death warrants.

“I hardly think a city of refugees will take any solace in the goings-on of any event while their homes lay in ruin around them,” Riris arched an eyebrow as she gave her answer.

Apparently she had no intention of underestimating Karma, unusually that was an issue. People were far more easy to direct when they believed one was incompetent rather than adept.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Karma conceded. “But I doubt Bermuda has the resources at hand to adequately sustain so many new refugees regardless, would it not be better to give them a beacon to look to?”

Riris seemed about to answer when Balogun spoke up.

“The question here is not about refugees or damage to the city, it is about the Sieve. I will not allow Bârëi to be disgraced by an unrelated battle between Immortals.”

Riris turned to her, not missing a beat as she replied.

“And would you instead have it disgraced by openly ignoring citizens in need? There are not enough resources at hand to provide for Bermuda while continuing the Sieve, to choose one over the other will send a message no matter what the intent.”

As the Fable finished, Balogun paused, then began to look thoughtful. Karma immediately recognised the tell-tale expression of one who was mulling over new information, and leaning towards changing their mind.

She needed some way of bringing Balogun over to her side, from what she’d seen Riris was a lost vote, but that didn’t mean the motion itself was beyond salvaging.

After a moment, an idea came to her and she spoke again.

“And what about Tamaias’s killer? It would seem to me that, when the Overseer of a Sieve is slain in the middle of its running, the motivation is more likely than not to sabotage that same Sieve, no? I wouldn’t be so eager to allow their scheme to work, they seem to care more about sabotaging our nation’s efforts to see it through than they do about damaging Bermuda itself.”

As manipulations went, it was a gamble. Hinging entirely on the assumption that Balogun was intelligent enough to grasp the implication that Bârëi’s representative voting in favour of a motion that directly aided a hostile plan would be more harmful and disgracing than their involvement in a failed Sieve.

Of course it also relied on her not being so observant as to realise that it was an implication Karma herself had deliberately woven into her counter for the sole purpose of nudging her in favour of sustaining the Sieve without obviously attempting to appeal to her patriotism.

She found herself glancing at Balogun’s face from the corner of her eye, tentatively scrutinising the woman’s every expression as she held her breath and waited to see whether her endeavour would bear fruit or not.

It was almost paralysingly relieving when the woman nodded to her.

“You make a good point, Lady Alabaster. It would be unwise to play into the obvious intention of our enemy’s plans, certainly without gathering additional information on them first.”

Karma hid a satisfied smile even as Zilch spoke up.

“And what if continuing the Sieve forces Danielz to simply attack another of us? Do you all really think he will simply sit back and do nothing upon seeing his first attempt fail?”

Fuck. Having already weighted her persuasion of Balogun on Tamaias’s killer planning on undermining the Sieve, Karma had no choice but to accept that, following that same logic, his natural next step in stopping it would be to move on to the remaining organisers.

Zilch was, apparently, still quite irrationally nervous. His insistence on identifying the killer as Danielz in spite of the doubts cast on what he saw showed that perfectly. But that didn’t mean he was without reason.

Karma had made a grave mistake in dismissing him as a nothing more than a guaranteed vote in opposition of her motion.

“There are upwards of a thousand Immortals on this island, no?” She asked, her mind roaring like an overtaxed steam engine to weave a logical counter-argument even as her mouth worked to buy precious moments.

“I believe there to be closer to two thousand,” Zilch answered stiffly.

Allowing a faint smile to play at her lips, Karma made sure to keep any condescension from her voice as she spoke.

“I see. And would it not be a fairly simple matter for any of us to find additional security among their ranks? There may be no more Demigods on Bermuda but Ra and our mysterious attacker, but surely no one here is so convinced of the infallibility of higher Immortals as to believe them more than a match for numerous middling ones.”

She allowed her words to hang in the air, confident that such a statement from her, a meagre Gladiator, would pluck at the pride of each one who heard it. At the look of indignance on each organiser’s face, she could see it had succeeded.

Whether they would choose to act on that pride, however, was another matter entirely.

“Would you ask us to take such a risk,” Sorafin asked. His chilly tone seeming well at home amidst the cold stones of their temporary chambers.

Karma silently cursed herself for assuming him to be a safe vote, she’d completely overlooked the incentive to halt the Sieve provided by the very idea of its organisers being in danger.

“I ask nothing that I’m not willing to do myself,” she answered cautiously. The words came to her slowly and delicately, decelerated to a glacial pace by the knowledge that a single misspoken phrase could lose her the consensus.

“Reginald Tamaias was stronger than any of us, and yet his death came from him travelling alone. Do not let it distract you from the fact that any of us are safer than he, provided we take the necessary precautions.”

Sorafin’s gaze didn’t waver in any way which might indicate doubt, worry or anxiety. It remained entirely unchanged, even as his voice cut into Karma like hot breath on the back of one’s neck.

“And for those of us without strong ties to Bermuda, or Unix as a whole, such precautions are far from simple. What would you suggest we do to safeguard ourselves from sharing our colleague’s fate?”

Her patience being tried by the man’s incredibly irksome insistence on providing logical counter-points for her suggestions, Karma struggled to keep her voice steady as she answered.

“We can take shelter in one another’s company, or simply remain in the Crux for security. Or one of many other things which would not require us to abandon our specially-chosen duties for the sake of self preservation.”

Sorafin arched an eyebrow, but said nothing more as he leaned back. His unreadable face could have been hiding either consideration or dismissal, and Karma had no way of discerning which.

Not knowing was so blindingly infuriating that she almost broke the unspoken rule and brought her Eye of Analysis to bear.

Almost.

“I have little desire to see my movements restricted, Princess.” Balogun said, the pride and indignance in her tone extremely obvious. Karma turned to her.

“Would you rather they be restricted to the parts of Bermuda you already exclusively find yourself in, or be forced from the entire city and island?”

No answer met with that, but from the annoyed agreement in Balogun’s eyes Karma could tell she’d gotten her way. Riris opened her mouth, and she hurriedly cut the woman off.

“I see little more progress being made here, shall we call for a vote to end it all now?”

At any other time, the difficulty in getting the Immortals to agree on voting itself would have been a source of some ironic humour. Having already exhausted herself playing with them, Karma felt nothing but impatience and the silent urge to scream that they hurry up.

Eventually, graciously, the process began.

“I vote aye for discontinuing the Sieve,” Riris said. Her lack of confidence that the consensus would match her decision was clear.

“I vote aye for discontinuing the Sieve,” Zilch blurted just a moment later. He seemed to be vibrating with fear.

“I vote nay for discontinuing the Sieve,” Karma breathed, injecting all the softness she could muster into her voice.

“I vote nay for discontinuing the Sieve,” Sins added. There seemed a kind of eagerness in her voice.

“I vote nay for discontinuing the Sieve,” finished Sorafin. Settling the matter in its entirety.

Karma smiled as she addressed the other organisers.

“Wonderful,” she beamed. “Now, I understand keeping things on-schedule is virtually impossible at this stage, so I would propose a five day break.”

***

The first to leave, Karma had the hallway to herself once again as she made her way through it. She didn’t mind, after being cooped up with the passive pressure outputted by a room full of Immortals, she’d be surprised if her claustrophobia took less than a month to fade.

One of the Kin’s feet scraped against the floor, producing a screeching noise as the metal slid across the granite. It was rare for them to slip up in such a way, and the fact that one had made her wonder whether they had been unnerved by the meeting as well.

She dismissed the thought almost as soon as it came. Kin did not get unnerved, and despite their presence on her trail, Karma could still rather accurately be described as alone in the hallway.

As she turned a corner, her senses were brought back to the moment by the presence of a stranger staring right at her.

The man was short for an Olympian, though tall for a Unixian, and had cropped brown hair. His eyes were a light hazel, his face marked with scars and slightly discoloured by aged soot and traces of dirt. It gave him a weathered appearance, though Karma doubted he was over twenty.

A musket was slung over his back, and a pair of pistols were clearly visible strapped to his side. Karma found herself marvelling at how he’d managed to get inside the Crux.

He wore the uniform common to all Olympian colonists, and as Karma studied it more closely she recognised it as the specific colours of those placed in Wrath. Yet the way it hung across him, all baggy, untucked and uneven, was wildly inconsistent with that.

Before Karma could request an explanation for such a bizarre paradox, or even speak at all, the man opened his mouth and confronted her with an accent so alien it took her all of ten seconds to place it.

“Are you Karma Alabaster?”

The question was, perhaps, more surprising than it should have been. Most of the people Karma met knew who she was beforehand, and those who didn’t at least knew enough of her reputation not to ask in such a brazen way.

Not one to back down, she kept her confusion to herself as she answered.

“I am, might I ask who you are?”

The man seemed to hesitate a moment before answering.

“The name’s Locke, I’m your bodyguard.”

Karma’s heart sank. This was who her father had sent to watch after her? A Wrathman? She fought to beat back the emotion from her face.

“I see,” she managed to force out. “I was informed you would be arriving some days later than this.”

The man shrugged.

“I heard something about Bermuda blowing up, decided to fork over the extra stars for a trip by skyrunner rather than boat.”

It took her a moment to translate what he was saying in her head, thankfully Wrath’s dialect had apparently changed little in the few years since she’d been made to memorise it.

“I see.” She said, “Well then, I suppose I should welcome you to Bermuda.”

Once again, the man merely shrugged.

“If I’m being honest I don’t really care what you do, as long as it isn’t kill yourself. I still get paid either way.”

He tried to mask it with lethargy and disinterest, but Karma could hear the hostility and bitterness in Locke’s voice plainly. Her first instinct was to respond in kind, but she didn’t have the energy for such things.

Instead, she began walking around him.

“Very well then,” she continued, acting as though she hadn’t noticed the emotion in his voice, “come with me. I have work to do.”

Compared to the spectral gliding of the Kin, Locke’s footfalls resounded from the walls like hammer blows. Karma knew the moment he fell in step behind her, and after leading him the first ten paces she spoke over her shoulder.

“Did you see the state of the city on your way here? The damage, I mean.”

“Some of it. Can’t imagine what caused it all, unless someone made the mistake of storing a million kegs of gunpowder under a few city blocks.” He paused, then added. “After inventing a way of storing a few million kegs of gunpowder in a space that small, that is.”

So he’d seen the ravine then.

“I’ll give you the short explanation if you don’t mind. A Demigod was attacked by another, their fight resulted in both his death and the collateral damage you saw outside. Currently the only suspect is a butcher named Bob Danielz, but the evidence pointing to him is suspiciously clean so I’m investigating further. Your thoughts?”

Locke paused a few moments before answering in a hollow, stunned voice.

“Two people did that? By accident?”

Karma should have expected as much. Any man who carried a musket and wore powder stains on his face was one to whom the power of an Immortal, let alone a Demigod, would be nigh incomprehensible.

“They did,” she replied, patiently. “But on to the matter at hand, I have reason to believe that Bob Danielz was merely framed. That opens up a few possible avenues of investigation.”

“I suppose you’ll be speaking to him first, then?” Locke asked. Karma allowed herself to be silently impressed by the sudden lack of shock in his voice.

“I will.”

She began making her way up the stairs, to her quarters.

“Though I need to set some affairs in order first, send a resonance message to Olympus, among other things. Can I trust you to ensure nobody murders me while I’m busy doing so?”

She took the Wrathman’s grumbling as a sign of assent.

***

Flint had decided that he really didn’t like the Princess. He couldn’t exactly put his finger on why, though plenty of individual things about her irritated him.

She spoke as though her every word was a command, like immediate and unquestioning obedience was something she had been promised rather than something to seek. It was the attitude of an officer who had been handed command.

As she headed into her room, leaving him to stand beside the door, he realised what the truly niggling thing had been. The Kin stood like statues next him, eyes to the front and bodies as animated as paintings.

He’d heard plenty of stories about their lethal efficiency, stories painting them as twelve-foot monsters wearing armour that could stop a cannonball and wielding weapons with enough strength to knock down a castle wall.

Somehow, finding them to be only eight feet had little impact on their impressiveness. It probably helped that the tales that their entire bodies were encased in metal plate had been true.

Flint wasn’t a mystic, and yet he imagined he saw something in the protective apparel that no user of magic would. Pure antimagic, emitted from the bodies of the wearers, then channelled through the steel like steam through a pipe.

For all their training and enhancement, what made the Kin deadly was that they were pariahs, like him. Taken in and stripped clean of all individuality and personality. Turned into the perfect soldiers, even at the cost of leaving them no more humanity than a guillotine blade.

He felt a tingle run down his spine, turning away from them as he waited for his new charge to reemerge from her room. Karma Alabaster had been remarkably comfortable around the armoured giants, given their origins. He wondered whether she had actively condoned the methods of their creation, or simply didn’t mind benefiting from them.

It didn’t matter much to Flint.

When the Princess finally came back out, she had changed clothes. Strips of pale cloth seemed half-tied-half-wrapped around her, taking the shape of sleeves and shawl alike as they clung to her.

Much of her was left uncovered, including the entirety of her stomach. Flint couldn’t help but notice the impressively defined abdominal muscles the woman had, though his attention quickly shifted to taking in the rest.

From her waist the fabric hung down to just a hair above her knees, akin to a skirt, though it seemed coiled and tied rather than sewn into a single strip.

To top the entire get-up off, she wore a pair of shoes which more closely resembled stilts to actual footwear, adding at least two or three inches to her height. She had already been a full hand taller than Flint, with the addition of her absurdly high heels the difference had widened to half a foot.

It seemed to Flint that her clothing was the farthest thing from practical. Alabaster clearly didn’t expect to actually be attacked, as there wasn’t a chance she could have moved in any meaningful way while wearing what she was.

Nevermind fighting assassins, it wasn’t even fit for fighting the cold. Surely she felt a chill, having grown up in the sand-blasted heat of Olympus. With how thin the fabric was, Flint imagined he could have checked simply by glancing at her chest.

Thankfully, his good sense defeated his curiosity.

“I don’t suppose you’re wondering why I didn’t ask what your scale is?” The Princess asked, almost dispassionate.

She set off down the corridor, and Flint joined the Kin in following her as he answered.

“I didn’t, no. Would you like me to guess?”

He could’ve sworn he heard a light, laughing exhalation from the woman.

“No, I was just curious how attentive you were. The reason, mister Locke, is because I don’t particularly care. I hardly think I need more protection than I’ve already got in the form of my Kin, and frankly you could be an Immortal and render me no safer from the streets.”

Flint grunted in response. He’d been worried that, as a trench-soldier, he’d be wholly out of his element on bodyguarding duty. The fact that he was stuck protecting and taking orders from a world-class bitch restored some semblance of normality to the work, if nothing else.

Besides, her not being interested in his magic was a good thing. He’d found those who prized it even more than usual tended to have a far stronger reaction to finding out what he really was. Among his greatest concerns coming to Bermuda had been finding himself in the employ of such a person.

Alabaster led them around another corner, her steps acting as some kind of timer for the agonised silence enveloping them. Finally, as they reached the stairs once more, the woman spoke again.

“So Wrathman,” she began. “What exactly made Lord Hercules decide you were best suited to protect me, where he deemed a pair of Kin insufficient?”

Before he could stop himself, Flint blurted out his answer.

“Maybe he wanted someone who could think for himself. A mistake, mind. I’m just about ready to blow my brains out just listening to you.”

Immediately the woman halted, then slowly turned to affix him with an amber-eyed stare. Flint hadn’t noticed her eyes before, the way they seemed to almost glow in the light, like pools of molten gold.

He didn’t let his gaze waver, though. Once you met someone’s eyes on Wrath, you held them. After a few seconds, their silent staring contest came to an end as Alabaster spoke.

“What scale are you, soldier? Because you seem far too cocky for a mystic weak enough to benefit from guns.”

Flint felt his mouth go dry. This, he supposed, was what one might call the “moment of truth.”

“I… I think it’s easier if you check for yourself, sir.” It was an effort on his part not to simply mumble the words in place of speaking them, and after they left his mouth the Princess affixed him with a gaze that seemed to render him a fresh, ten year-old recruit before his drill sergeant again.

“Very well,” she replied, stiffly. A look of abject concentration washed over her features, the look mystics got when they were extending their senses past themselves to examine the magic of things around them.

As he’d expected, she practically recoiled a moment later, taking a step and a half back as she stared at him like he was a rabid dog. Eyes wide, the woman’s voice came out as a remarkable furious whisper.

“You’re a pariah?” She demanded. Flint shrugged.

“I suppose so.”

The woman shook her head incredulously.

“No, you aren’t. I can still feel my magic and I’m barely five feet from you. It isn’t even slightly diminished, you aren’t outputting any sort of null field.”

Flint was used to such a response. For most, pariahs were raw, uncontrolled things whose “abilities'' were more akin to a consequence of their presence than something they could do at will. Their very existence weakened magic around them, the closer they were, the more it was weakened.

For most, that was. In Flint’s nineteen years of life, he had discovered that he was far different from most.

“I can reign that in,” he answered simply. “Or change its shape. Extend it, contract it, squeeze it in at the sides to add more range at the front, that sort of thing.”

He grinned at the look of surprise on the woman’s face. Flint wasn’t a sadistic man, but there was a certain mischievous joy in eliciting such a wide-eyed, wondrous stare from one as clearly intelligent as his current commander.

“But that’s impossible,” she breathed at last. Flint replied with another shrug.

“Apparently not.”

The Princess began to chew a plump lip, quickly stopping as she realised she was doing it.

“What else can you do?” She asked. If Flint wasn’t mistaken, there was some real interest in the question.

“I can move magic around,” he replied. At the change in her face, he quickly elaborated. “Not well, or fast, but I can shift it. It’s sort of hard to explain, though…”

She arched an eyebrow.

“Try me.”

Suddenly feeling the atmosphere shift uncomfortably close to that of a soldier being given a dressing down, he hastily obliged.

“Uh, you know how antimagic sort of… repels magic?”

The woman nodded, and Flint silently basked in relief at not needing to explain that of all things.

“Well since I can alter the shape of my, uh, null field, I can use it to sort of… squeeze magic in certain directions. Basically I can move it from one container to another.”

The Princess didn’t seem particularly impressed.

“I see,” she answered flatly. “I suppose that could be useful in certain situations…”

Ordinarily, Flint liked to consider himself quite a secure man. Certainly not one prone to showing off. However it seemed that being underestimated by the most beautiful woman in several hundred leagues made something snap in him.

“You’re forgetting something,” he grinned. “People are containers too. Even ones without magic... or ones with absolutely no magic at all.”

It took her a moment, but when she came to understand what he was saying, Alabaster’s eyes practically inflated.

“That is useful,” she muttered. A grin began to spread across her face, and she turned to walk once more. Flint followed, listening as they began to descend the stairs.

“And what are the limits of this magic... Shall we call it magic direction?” She continued before Flint could answer. “Regardless, what are the limits of it? How much magic can you move at once, and can it be from any source?”

It took him a few seconds to pick apart each of her questions to answer them all.

“I need to be close, for a start. Twenty feet most of the time, twenty-five on a good day and ten on a really bad one. Also I can’t move magic belonging to other mystics, or at least not while they’re using it for their abilities.”

The woman grunted at that, chipping in.

“That makes sense, mystics can move magic directly. I’d be very surprised if your trick could supersede that. Continue.”

Burying his annoyance at seeing his ability referred to as a trick, he did as instructed.

“Well obviously the most important part is that I can also absorb the magic, which makes me stronger, faster and all that. I’ve been told it’s similar to a physical enhancement ability, though it doesn’t last very long.”

“And you can absorb magic from sources such as arcstock crystals?”

Flint responded in the positive, and the Princess continued.

“That could be useful, I’ll have to procure some for you to use then. Do you have any already?”

Instinctively, he wanted to hide his crystals from the woman. It was the same instinct that told him to always keep a knife in his boot and a spare powder charge up his sleeve. Not one which would be wise to obey when dealing with a princess, he decided.

“I do,” Flint answered. “Seven. They’re low-grade, but they get the job done.”

“Excellent, keep them on hand. As I said, I doubt there’ll be any trouble, but it’s best to be safe.” She paused, and when her voice rang out once more Flint heard a smile in it.

“Besides, I’d quite like to see what you can do.”