Of all the roles I expected to play as a deicide operative, “wizard” was not high on the list, but here we were. Roel was already cured; I’d extracted the poison with the medical translator as soon as we’d gotten its signature. But of course my social obstacles were based on the perception of her sickness and my supposed complicity in that. So now I was also going to pretend to cure her.

In service of my plan—which I was going to continue claiming ownership of, despite the occasional assist from the rest of the team—I had set the translator to vent the translated poison all over Roel’s room. Val had to help me with some of the math, but I managed to split it into intentional harm and illness. The translator wasn’t optimized to handle Meris’s blessing of stealth with any kind of efficiency, so after some discussion we left it in Roel’s system. The poison it was supposed to hide was gone, so it would naturally fade into the etheric noise over time. Roel might have lessened stage presence or something for a couple months, but those are the kind of tradeoffs you make when you’re doing medicine in the field.

Now that Roel was ready to wake up, I set my pulser to maximum and made sure she wouldn’t.

“Sorry, kid,” I told her prone body. “Gonna need you to sit tight for a bit.”

I’m pretty sure she’d have volunteered for it if she knew all the crap I was going through, so I didn’t feel too bad about it.

The end result was that Roel was perfectly fine, but now the sense of her impending death by poison was palpable when you walked in her room. Perfect for what I needed to do, which was get people freaking out.

Step two, I told Kuril that I was going to ask around to see if anyone had information on the weird blood-and-spit thing Lirian had done before stabbing Roel.

“I don’t want to miss something important,” I said. “That’s the problem with the fucking Cult of Silence, there’s one more piece of bullshit you didn’t expect.”

“You sound familiar with them,” said Kuril.

“Let’s focus on Roel,” I said. Someone in her expression told me her patience for my mysterious past wasn’t unlimited, but I just had to dig myself out of this hole right now. I could worry about the cracks in my cover afterward. I had a month or so before this all came to a head, maybe more if Lirian went away and all this crap stopped being so salient.

“I’ll send a message to the Oathkeepers,” said Kuril. “If Lirian’s done something like this before, they would know.” I’d never been too conscientious about remembering to put “Lady” in front of Lirian’s name, whereas Kuril was usually the very soul of conscientiousness. That had ended as soon as Roel had gone into the coma.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to the staff.”

“I’m sure they would have come to me if they knew anything,” said Kuril. “It’s been three days.”

“Uh, yeah, about that,” I said. “They’ve, uh. We’ve been giving you space.”

Kuril’s expression stiffened, anger widening her eyes. “And why have you been doing that?”

I drew in a breath as I realized I’d just told her that everyone had noticed her humiliating lapse of composure over the last couple of days. “Uh, out of respect?” I tried. That didn’t improve her disposition. “Uh… sorry, Kuril. I didn’t think. It’s been hitting all of us pretty hard.”

She sat in rigid silence for a few uncomfortable moments.

“Some of us more than others,” she said at last. There was an unspoken accusation behind her words that had my heart sinking and my bile rising.

“Okay, that does it,” I spat. “Where the fuck is Hadalce? I need to beat all the slander out of her. I’m literally trying to fix Roel right now, how is this supposed to be manipulative?”

“The city of Sargaos fell to thirty doctors,” said Kuril. “The Stranger’s claws are ever welcome, as they say.”

I’d never heard that story and I couldn’t really follow the aphorism, so I wasn't sure how to respond. Also I was reeling a bit from the realization that Kuril was suspicious of me, but that was completely beside the point, thank you. I breathed out sharply and dropped back against the couch.

“So what, am I on trial now?” I said. “I thought you were going to adopt me. What happened?”

“I told you not to cause any blood magic scandals,” Kuril said.

“That’s a rug pull,” I muttered. “Okay, forget about the adoption. Roel. If you don’t trust me after everything I’ve done, then hire a fucking priestess. I’ll tell them about the method I know and they can do it if theirs doesn’t work.”

Kuril bit her lip. I tried to press my advantage.

“Look,” I said. “Let’s get something straight. I saved both your lives.”

“You did,” she admitted. “I’m sorry, Ajarel. It’s hard to know what to think right now. I never should have read Roel’s whisper stories. They’re full of things like two whispers pretending to feud so one of them can insinuate into the victim’s home. You need to build relationships with the rest of the House to stop these rumors from festering.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, trying to pretend like I wasn’t suddenly full of adrenal lightning. “Look, I know things look kind of bad right now, but I’m going to try to claw my way back into everyone’s esteem. And we don’t have to do the adoption until then, if you think that would be better. Let me ask around about the knife thing. I think it’ll help.”

“No, no,” said Kuril. “The seemingness of the process is less important than the process itself. The sooner you’re part of the House, the sooner you can take on more responsibilities.”

“With respect,” I said, “have you also been disregarding optics in your dealings with the other Houses?”

Kuril hummed in thought, slowly tapping a charcoal stick against her desk. “I confess, your dull manner makes me forget you’re this sharp.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“You cut deeper,” she countered, but with the comm translation I could tell that what she meant was I forgive you.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It was the truth,” said Kuril. “Allowances must be made—something the other Houses would do better to respect. Go talk to the House, Ajarel. But promise me you’ll wake Roel.”

“I will,” I said. “If I seem like I’m not concerned about her, it’s because I’m confident this will work. I just want to do due diligence first.”

The engineering terminology seemed to win me some points. Kuril gave me a weary smile in dismissal.

*

Delain knew of a Merisite ritual involving stabbing someone with your bodily fluids. She’d been there the night of the attack and had seen me wake up Kuril, so there wasn’t any doubt in her mind who was at fault here. In her mind, the mingling of blood was supposed to exert mental control over Roel, and Roel was still asleep because she was fighting it. I asked her to ask around, see what she could find from the other attendants. She said she would.

Peres, the forgemistress, knew me from my time helping Roel in the workshop. She was a little more standoffish than Delain, since we hadn’t interacted at all outside of workshop stuff, but she was willing to hear me out. Weathered, observant, hair bound in a Sisterhood-approved wrap, she patiently listened but didn’t have anything for me. She thanked me for trying to help Roel. I asked her to let me know if she found anything out.

I wasn’t expecting anything useful, mind you. If I picked up more intel that’d be great, but the important thing was to be seen asking questions, reaching out. Working on getting her better. I had some occult clout after the whole pulser thing, so I could be trusted—for those willing to trust me, which wasn’t everyone.

Hadalce wouldn’t speak to me. Hopefully I didn’t get stabbed again; I got the impression she was just waiting for an opportunity to do some malpractice. She wasn’t the only one, and I later found out one of the others—Belainel, who was apparently in charge of cleaning my room while I was out—was one of the main vectors of rumor against me. I’d have to do something about that later.

But the real problem was the ones who were trying too hard on my side.

“Can you teach me blood magic?” asked Alourain, one of the cooks, when I pulled her aside.

“What?!” I said. “Fuck no. First off, I don’t know any.”

“Right, of course,” she said, nodding rapidly.

“I’m going to pretend you meant that. Second, that shit’s addictive. You’re like seventeen, you’ll fuck up your whole life.”

“I can handle it!” Alourain insisted.

“Like hell. If they have to bring a priest to clean you up afterward, that means it’s messing with your soul. If you want to mess with soul stuff, you need to wait ten more years, minimum. Hopefully by that point you’ll be smart enough not to mess with soul stuff.”

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You’re younger than twenty-seven.”

“Yes, and that’s fine because I’m not doing blood magic.”

She considered me with what I assume was supposed to be a piercing gaze.

“Look, kid,” I said. “They told me you were really into the occult. Do you know anything that might be useful for counteracting what Lirian did to Roel? I can’t bring her back unless we all work together.”

“You think Lirian was doing blood magic?” Alourain asked, leaning in conspiratorially. “Maybe she serves Meris and Alcebios!”

I belatedly made a circle with my thumb and pointer and pressed it over my heart. It was a superstitious warding gesture meant to protect against the madness of Alcebios. As a pretend Estheni my reaction wasn’t truly reflexive, which Alourain took as hesitation.

“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me,” she said.

“Your lack of survival instinct is kinda just impressive at this point,” I said. “Alright, kid, you wanna know a secret?”

“You can trust me!”

“In that case…” I said. I leaned closer, pulling an amulet out of my shawl—a tree, the symbol of Kives worship, as would befit a graced claiming descent from her. “Get wrecked, squirt.”

Alourain’s face fell. “I have to get back to work.”

“Tell me if you hear anything useful!” I called after her retreating back.

A passing attendant paused to give both of us a look.

“Kives!” I said, waving the tree at him. “Not Alcebios! People need to stop spreading dumb rumors!”

He pressed thumb and forefinger to his heart.

“It is as my lady says,” he said, and scurried away.

*

All cultures have a tradition of magic and ritual. The world is complex, which is another way of saying it’s chaotic but you can project patterns onto the chaos to make it feel more navigable. We’re hardwired to find those patterns so we can function. They help us predict what the world will throw at us next, allowing us to have some control over our lives. That’s why Earth invented science, with all the magic of replicating results and well-tested theories. Without control over your world, you die hungry and unhappy. Science lets us be something more than savages dying of preventable disease.

But of course science is only the perfected form of the human tendency to pattern-match. If you don’t have access to science, you use its imperfect form, superstition. Little behaviors or categories that worked for someone once and persisted for generations because no one bothered to try replicating it. The important thing about superstition is the placebo effect, the verisimilitude that convinces everyone that there’s real weight behind it.

So I started with props. We moved Roel to the middle of the room, placing twelve candles around her. They helped me hang my tree amulet from the ceiling over her head. At each corner of the room I had them place a bundle of the barley-like grain they used here—representing life and growth. I wore the wispiest clothing at my disposal and had them do my hair in braids like a priestess of Kives.

Next, I used my hand amplifier to project an aura of hope, mystery, and power. I incremented the output by degrees as we set up the ritual, leaving room to spike the output as soon as I started speaking.

In attendance were people from the House—gardeners, blacksmiths, janitors, soldiers. Hadalce was there, of course, making sure I didn’t do any blood magic. And of course Kuril was watching me expectantly. Showtime. I’d had Val and Abby looking over religious texts to come up with a suitably impressive script, and the resulting “spell” took about ten minutes to perform. That should be long enough to seem legitimate without giving people too much time to criticize me.

“Grandmother Kives,” I began, streaming the script over my comm. “The child before us has a future yet unfulfilled. The work of a goddess can only be undone by a goddess.”

As I paused for effect, Roel yawned.

“My leg hurts,” she mumbled.

Cheers went up behind me. Kuril knocked over one of the candles as she dashed to Roel’s side, holding her close. I blinked. What just happened?

“Abby’s going to have to write you up for prayer,” Markus said jokingly.

“She fucking approved this,” I subvocalized.

A hand touched my side.

“Thank you,” Delain told me. “I was worried it would come to nothing.”

I forced a rictus smile onto my face.

“There was no reason to worry,” I said. “All according to plan!”