Only Villains Do That

“D-did you just say...” one of the street soldiers stammered.

“Fuckin’ lunatic,” muttered another.

Cauth pivoted to face me fully, his battleaxe braced in both hands, ready to swing, though the look on his face told me he knew his chances against me in a fight. His voice was tense with it.

“For real, though. Who are you?”

“I am…a man of wealth and taste.” They couldn’t see me grin beneath my mask, but I like to think I expressed it with my insouciant saunter as I strolled closer to them. My very presence abruptly reversed the dynamic in the room, with the thugs clutching defensively together the way the cornered prostitutes had been a moment before; Minifrit’s girls now began to spread out around the walls, either deliberately or unconsciously moving to encircle the predators who had abruptly become the prey. “And what’s puzzling you is the…nature of my game.”

“That’s for damn sure,” commented Nierit, one of the Alley cats whose sardonic humor I had come to enjoy during my visits.

“Now, I’m sure you all have many questions.” Public speaking wasn’t my forte, exactly, though performing experience had long since cured me of any hint of stage fright and I’d gained a little practice on Ephemera. I had a sense of rhythm and timing even when not singing, but beyond that, my best idea for physical presentation was the broad gestures I’d seen from certain preachers I’d seen on video, a blend of American televangelists and one of those quasi-Christian cults from Korea. It seemed to work okay; I definitely had everyone’s attention. “I have only one.”

“Yeah, yeah, the price thing,” muttered one of the only two female thugs with Cauth. “We know, we’ve heard it.”

“Oh, I think I have enough of a picture now to tell me who has paid the price,” I said. “No, this is a deeper question. A challenge, and one I want you all to really think about.” Pause for dramatic effect. Spread hands in a TV preacher gesture, then resume speaking at a lower pitch but subtly louder volume. “What would you do…if you knew you could get away with it?”

“Nobody’s getting away with shit,” Cauth stated, still all but vibrating with barely restrained tension. “You’ve had your fun, Healer, but you’re already in deep shit. Lady Gray’s dealt with more powerful enemies than you. Whatever you’re thinking about doing next is only gonna make it worse. I suggest you back off—”

“Pardon me, my good fellow,” I interrupted in my kindest, politest tone, at which I was admittedly a little rusty. “You seem to have misconstrued the situation. Allow me to clarify.”

Immolate.

By this point I was almost… No, I decided, watching the leader of the street toughs scream as he dissolved in fire and his crew scattered away from the blaze, I couldn’t say I was numb to it. This was still hard to watch, and harder to live with the reality that I had done it, on purpose, to another human being. But it was definitely not as hard as it had been…as it should be. Not to mention the rest of tonight’s work; I was pretty sure I’d killed at least one person and definitely left quite a few more badly injured, not to mention the several I’d subjected to this grotesque torture. Thinking back to my first day, to the shock and sick terror of duking it out with Harold and Kasser, the way I had nearly lost my lunch after provoking Aster to execute Rocco…

Ephemera was leaving its mark on my soul. You can’t survive in a violent place without becoming a violent person. And while most—not all, but most—of the people I’d hurt or killed had richly had it coming, I found that I very much resented it, even more than being stranded here. I’d never claimed to be a saint, but I was having to become a measurably worse human being just to get by. That was a bitter thing to live with.

While looming over Cauth’s unimaginable suffering and mulling the implications, I did step forward to pick up his dropped battleaxe. I had a use for that, come the next stage of this confrontation. Apart from that, making a passive demonstration of my serene comfort in dealing out fire and agony suited the impression I needed to cultivate here.

It really said it all that the rest of Cauth’s men didn’t even try to retaliate. They’d pivoted amazingly quickly from menacing the girls to trying hard to look harmless and innocent.

Not that that was gonna help them.

“You threatening me with Lady Gray’s wrath is pure comedy,” I said calmly once Cauth was once again lying on the floor whole, hale, and faintly smoking. “I will deal with her soon enough, and believe me, she doesn’t know what she’s fucking with any more than you do, boy. No, your previous plan was the best one you had. I was not inclined to kick up a ruckus in Miss Minifrit’s establishment. But you had to go and ruin her setup, didn’t you? And now, here we are. Just you, a large group of the people whose livelihood you just ruined, and me. And you know what that means?”

Very slowly, I leaned forward, enjoying the way several of the bandits edged further back from me. It was now they who were pressed against the walls; when they’d fled from Cauth’s pillar of fire, the prostitutes had likewise bolted and were now clustered around Minifrit, behind me in the doorway. I spoke straight from the diaphragm as if in a concert hall, my voice deadly calm even as it thundered through the barn and echoed off every wall.

“I. Own. You.”

There were two beats of silence, and then one of them started very softly crying. How precious.

“Not as funny when it happens to you, is it?” I drawled at the individual in question. He tried to hide behind one of his compatriots, who angrily shrugged him off.

“You’re not gonna save the world,” Cauth rasped, stumbling up to his knees and glaring pure hatred at me. “That’s not how the world works. Doesn’t matter how much power you’ve got, the world eats idealists like you.”

“That’s the first correct thing I’ve ever heard you say,” I replied. “Save the world? Please. Worlds are not for saving. I realize you people don’t have a basis for comparison, but this world in particular is a broken wreck with nothing on it that could be salvaged, even if anyone had the capacity. You call me an idealist? Well, maybe. I wasn’t sent here to fix anything. I have the power to heal whoever is right in front of me, and to destroy… Well, a great deal more than that. I help wherever I can, and if that makes me an idealist, then that’s a sad commentary on the state of ideals.”

I moved while I spoke, ambling to one side at a languid stride that I hoped would continue to resemble an active preacher pacing behind his pulpit, though the real purpose was to shift my view so that everybody was once again in sight. They were now divided down the middle, the Alley Cat’s girls on one side and Lady Gray’s men on the other, with the distance between them now my invisible podium. Aster, displaying a knack for showmanship, had placed herself on the other end of the no man’s land, sword at the ready.

“And when salvation is off the table, when there is nothing left but destruction, what is there for us to do, but point it where it best belongs? Nothing that’s wrong with this city, or this country, or this world, is anything that just happened. You all live in misery and squalor because someone decided it served their desires for you to do so. It didn’t have to be like this! All of this could have been avoided. Well, it’s too late now for us to escape the fate of short lives and violent ends, so I mean to turn the full force of my disappointment on those who are at the root of all this misery. From your precious Lady Gray, to the Clans of Fflyr Dlemathlys, to the churches and kings and the very goddesses themselves!”

At some point, my act had faded away, leaving behind something…more. I felt it taking over, driving my voice to a greater speed and higher pitch, a simmering rage I hadn’t even realized I was carrying now bubbling to the surface and starting to spill over as I articulated what was actually wrong with this whole fucking planet, and what little could still be done about it.

“I’m not going to promise you anything fanciful like liberty, and certainly not justice. Realistically, not even life, because who knows what’ll happen to any of us tomorrow? What I promise is some god damned punishment.I intend to watch everyone who laughed while we suffered bleed, burn, and spend their last moments of existence in pure regret for what they’ve done to us all.”

To my amazement, I could see from the expressions of my audience in Firelight’s glow that I had swept up a lot of them—and not just the Cat’s employees, but even several of the thugs I was actually threatening, a fact they seemed to have forgotten. Minifrit was watching me with narrow-eyed calculation, but nearly all the faces of her girls were alight with a combination of fury and hope that mirrored what I was feeling.

It was time.

“I’ve been hearing rumors that I’m the Hero. I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. It wasn’t Sanora who brought me here.”

Reaching up to my face, I grabbed the strip of fabric covering my mouth and yanked it free, shrugging back the hood in the same motion. At the signal, Biribo buzzed out of hiding, doing a complete spin around me before coming to hover at my shoulder.

“I am the Dark Lord Seiji, and I mean to burn this entire motherfucker to the ground.”

Now that the moment was here, after that speech, it was almost anticlimactic. No, I realized; this wasn’t the climax. This was the final moment of tension before everything plunged one way or the other at a speed that nobody would be able to stop or control. Breaths were drawn in, eyes widened, faces creased with such a variety of expressions I couldn’t even parse the whole.

And I realized, nearly too late, that it would be a mistake to simply wait and see what happened. If I was going to keep riding this crazy horse, I couldn’t relinquish the reins.

“Kastrin.” She was already staring at me with a kind of immobilized frenzy. I couldn’t even interpret the expression on her face, but at the moment I was thinking of other looks I’d seen her throw over the course of the night, and decided to play a hunch. “The one who beat you up. Is he here?”

She twitched, physically, and jerked her head around to stare at Cauth with the same expression of vicious hatred she’d shown him earlier. Her lips drew back in an animal snarl; from deep in her throat came a rattling hiss like an angry leopard.

“Well, he has no power now,” I stated. “There is nothing he can do if I decide not to let him, and no one who’s capable of avenging him. Not against me. So I will ask again the question I posed to everyone: If you knew you could get away with it…”

I extended my arm toward her, placing the haft of Cauth’s own battleaxe within her easy reach.

“What would you do?”

Kastrin’s fingers closed over the shaft, slowly, at an almost dreamlike rate that belied the intensity of her expression.

Cauth tried to draw himself back upright, bracing his fists. “Don’t you even fucking think about it, bitch. A borrowed weapon doesn’t make you anything more than a little whore.”

Slimeshot.

He went down with another howl of agony, this time not accompanied by the roar of flames but by the brutal crack of his knee breaking right where I’d just fired a slime into it from two meters away.

“Oh, don’t complain to me,” I said, as disdainfully as I could manage. “You’re a smirking little slime who needs to beat up prostitutes while hiding behind Lady Gray’s skirts to feel like a big man. Let’s face it, you were always going to die on your knees.”

The sound that emerged from Kastrin I can only describe as feral. It was a scream and a roar, the noise of a mountain lion promising someone’s painful end. The axe was so big she visibly had trouble lifting it, but she managed on the strength of sheer rage. Surging forward with the weapon arcing overhead, she brought it down on Cauth from above.

It was a terrible swing; the blade wasn’t even aligned properly. Half-kneeling on his one good leg, he had no chance of dodging and reflexively raised one arm to block it. I heard his forearm break, then saw a spray of blood as the misdirected blade bit into his flesh at an awkward angle. Cauth bellowed in pain, even as Kastrin howled again in pure animal fury and raised the axe once more.

The spectacle of it was brutal, ugly, the furthest possible thing from a clean beheading. She had no idea how to wield the battleaxe and was just barely strong enough to try, and he was in no shape to evade or defend. Kastrin simply brought it up and down, again and again, bludgeoning as much as slicing him. But she was, after all, bludgeoning him with a heavy axe. Messy and drawn-out as it was, it didn’t take long for her to find his neck.

Once his yelling was cut off, hers faded rapidly. Kastrin was splattered liberally with blood; the pool of it spread out continuously from Cauth’s mangled corpse, the coppery stink of it filling the barn. She stood there, hunched over him, with the bloodied weapon resting against the floor. All around was silence.

I stepped forward, my boots squelching in blood, and gently took the axe from her. She relinquished it without resisting.

“You swing that thing like you’re beating a rug.” Kastrin looked up at me, frowning, and I gave her a smile. “That’s okay. Technique can be learned, after all, and I have the perfect person to teach you. What matters is the will to strike. I bet you can remember a time when this pile of meat seemed invincible, totally beyond your power. Well, there he lies, reduced to an object lesson. They’re all just meat in the end. Lady Gray, the Archlord, the King, all of them. Their power depends on you not realizing how very easily they can die.”

Chest still heaving with exertion, she finally raised her arm to scrub blood away from her lips with one sleeve. “We have to get to them first. Lord…Seiji.”

I patted her shoulder. “Yes, that’s the part that takes some doing. I’m working on it.”

“I’m in.”

“Uh…scuze me?”

I turned and raised an eyebrow at one of the thugs, who had timidly addressed me. He swallowed visibly, but continued.

“You’re, uh…recruiting, right? Isn’t that the point of this?”

He stopped, staring expectantly at me. I tilted my head slightly, staring expectantly back.

“Because,” he said after another moment, “if it’s between a Dark Lord and Lady Gray—”

“Jakkin, you scuttling little crawn,” someone else growled.

Jakkin, why did I recognize that name? Oh, right, he was the twitchy one who’d handed over Minifrit’s papers when I threatened them, to Cauth’s loud disapproval.

“Well, that remains to be seen,” I said aloud, then turned toward the women gathered around Minifrit, pointing at the opportunistic thug. “I promised you punishment. Does anyone have an outstanding grievance to settle with this guy in particular?”

Jakkin hunched his shoulders as a stir went through the women.

“Eh, Jakkin’s a decent enough sort, as men go,” said Melityn after a pause. “I never heard of him hitting anybody. Likes to do butt stuff, but that’s not a crime. He’s even gentle about it. Fairly.”

“I’ll argue against that,” Iredi countered, causing Jakkin to freeze and go wide-eyed. The second prostitute stepped forward, leaning one elbow on Melityn’s shoulder and giving him a long, cold stare. Then she smirked. “It’s more like…I get the impression he would be gentle if he had the slightest fucking idea how women’s bodies worked.”

That prompted snorts of laughter and caused Jakkin to hunch his shoulders in mortification.

“Hell’s bloody revels,” one of the other bandits muttered in disgust.

I just nodded at the target of all this mockery. “Congratulations, Jakkin, and welcome to the Dark Crusade. Ladies, my question stands. Since Lady Gray has so thoughtfully sent us a veritable buffet of offerings, consider this evening’s events and your own longstanding knowledge of these…individuals. Who else here needs to be punished?”

That alone caused one of them to make a break for the door. He went down with a distinctly girlish shriek when I nailed him in the leg with a Slimeshot. I was rather proud of that; my first try against a moving target, and it was a flawless hit. Of course, it was practically point blank range, but still.

“Why, hello, Dasker,” Adelly drawled, grabbing the axe from me without asking. Hefting it with far more expertise than Kastrin, she strode across the room toward him while he tried to crab-scuttle backward with one broken leg, whimpering. “Aw, what’s that look for? After all the fun we’ve had together? You remember the fun, right, Dasker? Where’s that knife you like so much, Dasker?”

“Wait,” he blubbered, trying to ward her off with both hands upraised, “don’t! I’m sorry, I—”

It was clearly not Adelly’s first time handling a weapon like that. Her swing took one of his hands entirely off and bit deep enough into his neck to reduce all his protests to gurgling.

“Well, look at that,” she sneered, yanking the akornin blade out of his throat and causing his head to tumble sideways, partially detached. “He was right all along. You can drown in your own blood.”

Another woman was already stepping forward, wearing an expression of resolute fury. Adelly held out the axe and she grabbed the haft in passing as she strode toward the remaining thugs, who collectively retreated from her.

It occurred to me that all this was getting rather more bloodthirsty than I’d expected. I had thought I’d have to do a lot more entreating, goading, and general rabble-rousing before I moved most of these women to go on the attack, but it seemed I had underestimated the amount of barely suppressed anger there was just below the surface. It was more like I’d let a wrathful genie out of a bottle.

“Ridd!” barked Sicellit, the woman who currently had the axe. “Don’t you try to hide, you sad little crawn, I saw you back there.”

As she approached, the two nearest thugs to her target roughly shoved him forward, blatantly offering him as a sacrifice to the prostitute’s wrath. He landed on his knees, looked over at me, then up at the armed woman looming over him.

“Celly,” he said, tremulously but clearly trying for bravado, “come on, it was just… It was your job, yeah? We all gotta—”

The man actually flinched as she moved forward, but Sicellit just knelt on one knee in front of him, holding the axe off to one side, upright with its butt on the floor.

“I just want you to know,” she said, her voice quiet yet clearly audible in the suspenseful stillness, “that I forgive you. For all of it. Because I am better than you.”

She held his gaze for three more heartbeats, then stood and stepped to the side.

Ridd let out a sigh of relief, not noticing that another woman had taken the axe from her until it came down in a swift arc that separated his head from his shoulders far more successfully than Adelly had managed with Dasker. Blood sprayed across most of the remaining clear area.

Menytin straightened up, then raised the battleaxe to rest over her shoulder, heedless of the gore dripping onto her dress.

“I’m not, and I don’t,” she said, directing a cold smile to the rest of the bandits.

“Long overdue as this is,” Minifrit commented, taking a delicate step backward from the expanding pool of blood, “I am increasingly glad it did not transpire in my place, or anywhere we might be responsible for cleaning up.”

“Sorry about the mess,” I agreed.

Adelly let out a scornful laugh. “Women aren’t afraid of the sight of blood, Lord Seiji, lowborn women least of all.”

My reply was cut off by a sudden choking gurgle; I turned just in time to see one of the only two female bandits buckling to her knees, clutching a ruined throat from which blood was pulsing. In the next second, the man next to her gasped and also pitched forward.

As he fell, the other female bandit yanked out the dagger which she’d plunged into his heart from behind. The remaining thugs retreated from her, several brandishing weapons, and Aster also raised her sword to a ready position.

“Rapist,” the woman declared, pointing at the man now gasping his last, then at the twitching woman failing to do likewise. “Sadist.”

“I think you misunderstand,” I said. “If you are trying to curry my favor—”

She barked a harsh laugh and threw her bloodied dagger to the ground. “Fuck you, Dark Lord. I’m not stupid. After this night’s work, either you kill me or Lady Gray does. I just had business to settle with those two first. There’s others I’m sorry I won’t get to finish off, but fuck it, you can’t have everything. Now I’m sure your pet sluts are gonna tell you all about how badly I deserve to die, so let’s get on with it.” Folding her arms, she lifted her chin, staring defiantly at Minifrit. “I ain’t about to beg. Hell’s revels, I hope some of the rest of you fuckers can find your balls. Be a fucking joke if I’m the only one in this whole crew who can die like a man.”

I regarded her curiously for a moment, then turned to Minifrit.

The madam had her omnipresent pipe out and had actually stuffed and lit it at some point during the proceedings; the cinammony smell of whatever Fflyr smoked (it wasn’t tobacco and I have no idea what marijuana smells like) was actually a relief, what with the stink of death in the air. Aside from the blood, it turns out that corpses immediately lose bowel and bladder control.

“Jadrin,” Minifrit said, blowing a streamer of smoke in the woman’s general direction. “She never worked for me, but she was employed at three brothels over a grand total of two weeks. They all kicked her out for fighting, with patrons and other girls. Working under Lady Gray has been a much more suitable application of her…talents.”

“I don’t have a problem with Jadrin,” Adelly piped up. “She doesn’t pick on Alley cats the way most of the women who work for Gray do.”

Jadrin squinted at her. “Didn’t I punch you once?”

“And I punched you right back,” Adelly retorted.“Most of ‘em use weapons.”

“Jadrin’s cool,” added Ennid, the youngest girl in Minifrit’s employ, who as usual was partly hiding behind the madame. She found enough spine to lean out and speak up, though. “She sent me to Minifrit’s place when that old harpy Magdid tried to rope me into working for her. I’d probably be dead by now if she hadn’t butted in.”

“Well, well,” I said, turning back to Jadrin, who looked utterly bemused by this turn of events. “What do you say? Want to help me bring this country to its knees?”

She met my eyes, and her gaze sharpened into something like hunger. “Will I get to kill highborn?”

“Provided you can follow orders? As many as I can arrange. I won’t promise the pay is as good as—”

“Fuck that,” Jadrin interrupted, her gaze growing downright avid. “I’ll follow orders, do whatever you want, spread my legs for you or whoever you say. As long as I get to fuck up Gray and the Clans, I am yours.”

Well, this was a surprising acquisition. But to judge by the nearly fanatical expression on her face, she was the living embodiment of the rage against the system I had come here to weaponize.

“That won’t be necessary. Just as long as you strike when, where, and whom I tell you, there will be plenty of blood to spread around. I’m not going to have you upsetting my plans or causing a problem within the organization, however.”

She grinned broadly, and I thought I discerned more than a slight glint of madness in her eyes. “I am in, Dark Lord. Far as I give a shit, Virya’s just as good as the other one.”

So, Jakkin and Jadrin. So far, he seemed borderline timid, another of those types who’d fallen into a life of crime due to bad luck and not being good for much else. And she… Well, it looked like I’d picked up another Donon and another Sakin.

Great.

“If I might suggest a change of approach, Lord Seiji?” Minifrit drawled. “I’ll remind you that all of these cretins were just complicit in depriving all of us of our home and livelihoods. Rather than spending half the night judging each of their sins one by one, may I suggest we presume them guilty, and ask whether there are any others on whose behalf one of the girls will speak out?”

“Now, that’s a fine idea,” I agreed. “I appreciate your good business sense, Miss Minifrit. Well, ladies?”

In the ensuing silence, something was softly dripping.

“Listen here,” one of the remaining thugs snarled, brandishing his club. “We’re not just gonna line up quietly for you to butcher like sheep!”

“I respect that,” I said, nodding to him. “Immolate. Aster, if you would assist me, please?”

I was probably going to have nightmares about this. To be honest, part of me hoped I did. I was beginning to be bothered by how little I was bothered by all the murder.

Minutes later, we retreated outside the broken-down barn—or was it a warehouse? Oh well, didn’t really matter—to enjoy the fresh air. It really stank in there by the time we’d finished. Aster and I were both splattered with blood, as were several of the Alley Cat girls who’d insisted on participating. I gave everyone a quick Heal on general principles. Goddesses only knew what sort of plague was percolating in that ichor.

“So,” Minifrit said, turning to fix me with that piercing look of hers. “I have to admit, Dark Lord was not one of my theories.” Her eyes cut to Biribo, then back to mine. “I suppose it makes sense you don’t start off at the head of an empire of monsters. Everyone must work their way up from the bottom. I see what you were doing, now; I could more or less tell the shape of it weeks ago, but there remains a question whose answer I still do not understand.” She paused to take a long draw from her pipe and blow it out slowly, and I allowed her to do so without interruption because I sincerely admired her command of dramatic timing. Game recognizes game. “Why whores? There are more lowborn in Fflyr Dlemathlys who would turn on the regime than not, if they had the backing of someone who could actually pull it off. Just off the top of my head, the agricultural serfs alone have just as must resentment, and significantly more muscle.”

And if I’d known about the agricultural serfs when I started out, I would probably have aimed for them instead for exactly that reason. Still, I did have an answer to her question, which remained true even now. I prepared to give it, waiting for her to finish her little parting shot, as she liked to do.

“If you have ideas of building yourself some manner of harem, I suggest…”

Groans of pain, screams. Eyes filled with desperate hope, or too beaten-down and weary to be filled with anything. The smell of rot and disease, sores and bruises barely visible under the dim blue whorehouse lamps—

All this flashed across my vision out of nowhere, causing me to physically jerk. I don’t know what Minifrit saw on my face, but she broke off speaking, her eyes wide in the first expression of unguarded surprise I’d ever seen on her.

Fuck. I didn’t know why this kept happening, but I needed to get it under control somehow.

“I am, as you pointed out, just starting off,” I said, covering as smoothly as I could manage. “Whores may or may not have more reason than others to resent the system, but no one else is treated with as much unjustified contempt. Anyone who might have the power to stop me at this early stage would laugh at the idea of you as a real enemy. Their arrogance will be the knife I slip into their hearts, and you ladies the hand that wields it. If, that is, you will join me?”

Off to the side, Jadrin folded her arms and made a thoughtful face, nodding. Jakkin just stood there looking confused.

Minifrit regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to gaze at her assembled charges, raising one eyebrow.

“Champion of Virya, though,” Sicellit said after a pause. “I mean… It’s not like we’ve got anywhere else to go, now. And after that little taste, if you can give us the opportunity to spread some more punishment around, I for one am sorely fucking tempted. It’s just that…Virya? None of us are paragons of virtue, Lord Seiji, but I don’t think any of us have ever thought of turning against the Goddess.”

“The, uh, other goddess,” Iredi clarified.

Adelly snorted. “Fucking Sanora, what’s she ever done for any of us? The Radiant Convocation’s just another thing that kicks people around and demands taxes. At least the Kingsguard don’t give pompous lectures about how living in misery and squalor is our divinely ordained place. It wasn’t the Hero who came to Cat Alley and offered us healing.”

“I’ve met both goddesses,” I informed them, “and I am here to tell you: whatever horrible things you’ve heard about Virya don’t even begin to cover it. She’s a fucking monstrosity and if I could stab her in the heart I would be doing that right now. What, were you expecting a surprising revelation about the goddesses?” I asked, grinning bitterly at their surprised expressions. “Well, good, because I have one: Sanora isn’t any better. Ephemera and everything on it is just…toys to them. All of it. Spirits and Blessings, artifacts and scrolls, dungeons and miracles, the stupid fucking coins. The goddesses are immortal, all-powerful, and bored. The great struggle of good and evil is just a game they play.”

A moment of weighty silence hung over the small crowd after that pronouncement.

“Well, that makes way too much fucking sense,” Nierit muttered at last.

Minifrit indulged in another long drag, then blew a stream of fragrant smoke skyward. “So. A short life and a violent end… Or a short life and a violent end, plus the chance at a little revenge? Well, girls, what do you say? Up for a career change?”

I studied the assembled faces as carefully as she did. Not everyone was fully enthusiastic about this, I could tell. Adelly, Kastrin, and a few others seemed to be veritably chomping at the bit—Jadrin was among those. But at worst, the girls were uncertain, watching Minifrit to follow her lead. No one seemed openly apprehensive.

Dear god, I’d just cost these women their home, made them watch an all but literal bloodbath, and now offered to recruit them into a doomed guerrilla army, and not a one of them seemed particularly reluctant. How badly do you have to ruin your citizens’ lives before they’re this willing to turn on you? Fflyr Dlemathlys urgently needed to be scoured off the map.

And now, I was a big step closer to doing it.

“I assume,” Minifrit said dryly, “you have a place for us to stay, now that we have lost ours? Your evil lair had best not be some manner of dank goblin cave, Dark Lord.”

“Oh,” I replied, grinning, “I can offer you a little better than that.”