It had only been probably twenty minutes before that peace was disturbed by the sound of voices approaching the ship. Absently, Leta glanced down into the bay as Fiearius and Quin strode up the ramp in such deep conversation they didn’t appear to notice her.

“–can’t sway to them,” Fiearius was saying, sounding both angry and tired. “They’re gonna keep trying to push us out, but we need to stay strong on the Ascendian lines. No matter what.”

War talk, Leta realized at once and felt far less bad for overhearing. She decided not to disturb them and leaned back against the wall to return to her book. Despite the intention, however, she couldn’t help but listen to the scene going on below her.

“Easier said than done, sweetheart,” replied Quin as she trailed after him. “You ain’t out there with these fuckers.”

Fiearius slowed to a stop in the middle of the bay to look back at her. “Wanna trade?”

“You mean, do I wanna hunt down the clandestine leaders of our enemies and murder them in their sleep?”

“Who said they were sleeping?” Fiearius laughed.

“I’ll pass regardless. Sounds like dirty work. Commanding a great fleet on the edge of triumphant battle?” Quin sucked in a breath between her teeth, impressed with her own accomplishments. “I think you and I can both agree that’s where I belong.”

“Wouldn’t trust anyone else with it,” Fiearius agreed.

“Which of your little Council is next anyway?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Leta saw Fiearius frown as he stepped further into the bay to lean against a stack of crates, crossing his arms over his chest. “We’ve got a lot of information about the Synechdan Councillor, but I’ve yet to garner a hint of where he could be. The Ellegian I know next to nothing about except where they are. Ellegy. Which is all well and good except that there’s no way we can get there. Fortified as the gates of the dov’ha themselves. And then there’s the Satieran. Who is,” he sighed, “entirely a mystery.”

Quin made a tutting noise with her tongue and leaned up against the crates beside him. “Stalemate then?”

“For the time being.”

She nodded her head slowly and then a mischievous smirk pulled across her face. “Guess you’ll have time to make the annual Carthian fundraising gala this year then, huh?”

And now, Fiearius groaned loudly. “Please don’t remind me. I still need to find an excuse to get out of that.”

“You’ve been excusing yourself every year.”

“So have you!”

“Sure,” Quin laughed, “But I ain’t the great admiral, am I? No one could give a shit if I show up. Fact, they’re probably happier that I don’t. Can’t screw things up for ‘em.”

“If I do go, they’ll probably quickly feel the same about me,” he grunted.  The bay lapsed into silence for a moment and Leta briefly considered jumping into the conversation lest she continue to eavesdrop. Besides, she too wanted to know if Fiearius really would attend the fancy Carthian ball this time around. She’d been to several and frankly, she couldn’t imagine the man there. Just as she was about to say so, however, Fiearius picked up the threads from earlier.

“Anyway. Keep our people right up there with them on Ascendia. It’s important.”

“Carthis is still gonna keep pushin’ us out,” Quin remarked, admiring her fingernails absent-mindedly.

“Of course they are,” Fiearius growled. “Because they know if I’m watching I’m not gonna let them pull the same shit they managed on Vescent.” Internally, Leta felt a small swell of — what? Gratitude? Appreciation? Perhaps admiration. “Well fuck ‘em, I’m not just gonna stand by and allow these pieces of shit to take over the Span. Stay in touch with the local rebellion. I want them a part of this. It needs to be their victory so when it ends, they’re left with the major stakes.”

“Will do, my captain,” said Quin.

“And we’ll do the same with Ellegy when it comes to it,” Fiearius continued to mutter, his stare focused on the floor. “And Satieri…”

His voice trailed off and again the bay grew quiet and again Leta thought she should make her presence known. Accidental as her overhearing this conversation was, she nonetheless felt like an intruder, which was a feeling only made worse by what happened next.

“You alright, darlin’?” Quin asked suddenly, looking over at Fiearius, a crease of worry marring her brow.

Fiearius didn’t look up at her as he released a heavy sigh and mumbled, “ I’m fine. Just — got a lot on my mind.”

Half-fascinated, half-weary, Leta knew she should have looked away when Quin pushed herself from the wall and turned to face Fiearius fully. She definitely should have looked away when the woman placed one hand on his jawline and the other slid around to his behind. And she wished she’d covered her ears when she said, in a voice that let everyone listening know exactly what she meant, “Well why don’t we go take those things off your mind, hm?”

Fiearius let out a breathy chuckle and seemed to relax against her. “You can try,” he mused back, looping his own arms around her waist.

“That a challenge?” asked Quin.

“If you’re willing to accept it.”

“Oh, honey, I’m willing to exceed it.”

Leta’s common sense finally caught up to her and she looked away, forcing her focus back onto her book where she read the same five words thrice without ever registering them. Even without visual confirmation, she knew that he had leaned down to kiss her and that she had kissed him back and she could practically hear the look of adoration on Fiearius’ face when he said, “I missed you.” She’d certainly heard it enough times herself.

“Don’t you get all sentimental on me, Soliveré,” was Quin’s response before she apparently stepped out of their embrace and thwapped his side affectionately. “Now why don’t you go get whatever it is we had to come back here for, hm? Got a bottle of the good stuff I stored back in your fancy admiral’s lounge I think we both deserve.”

“Sir, yessir,” was Fiearius’ laughing response as he too pushed himself off the wall and headed off into the ship. Quin, after a moment, sauntered after him, leaving Leta alone in the silence of the cargo bay once again.

She couldn’t remember exactly what Fiearius had said about his relationship with Quin. That they were friends, that they were allies and that they simply took comfort in one another every so often. But Leta knew Fiearius better than that by now. She knew the tones of his voice, the meanings of his actions and the looks he gave. And after that display, she knew that whatever he’d said was going on with Quin, he’d certainly misrepresented it.

“Please, girl, I need you to meet me halfway,” Leta begged as she pulled another awkward turn. “A quarter of the way?” To her left, Javier was staring at her as though she’d gone mad. Perhaps, Leta thought, she had. “Give me an inch?”

The next turn, sharper than the last, sent the underside of the ship smacking into the wall. “Oh come on!” Leta shouted, forgetting herself. “Do you just not like me or something? Did I do something to you? Is it because I left? Look, if this is about all those times I called you junk, I meant it in a nice way!”

“Leta–” Javier started.

“Well I’m sorry!” she went on, ignoring him. She was barely paying attention to what she was saying anymore, focused mostly on not getting them killed and letting her mouth do the rest. “I’m sorry I called you junk. But acting this way isn’t doing anything to change my mind, you know! I’m sorry you hate me, but I need you to work for me now, okay?”

“Leta we’re running out of canyon!” Javier interrupted finally and she realized, in horror, he was right. Up ahead, the walls started to close in, coming together in a single cliff wall directly in her path. Behind the ship, their pursuer noticed as well and started a barrage of weapons blasts that zinged by them. She was clearly tired of messing around.

So was Leta.

“If you won’t do it for me, do it for Fiearius,” she demanded, feeling a streak of panic mixed with mania topped with reckless abandon as she hit the forward thrust and plummeted straight towards the dead end. She ignored Javier’s look of absolute terror.

In fact, Leta ignored almost everything. Her vision focused in on only the wall ahead of her. The sounds dropped away, the blasts of shipfire fading out, Javier’s heavy breathing vanishing and as she seized the controls, readying herself for this final move, all she could hear was the gentle hum of the Dionysian. Under her breath, she pleaded, “I like him too, girl, and he likes us. So what do you say we all make it out of this together, huh?”

Surely it was her imagination, but she could have sworn she felt the constant shudder of the ship alter its rhythm.

Either way, when she yanked back the thrusters and slammed them to the left, she definitely felt the Dionysian respond in a way she hadn’t before. She didn’t fight, she didn’t resist, she just smoothly turned directly onto her side to glide through the last few hundred feet of the canyon before turning her nose up and sailing back into open skies.

Leta was too in shock to hear the noise that followed. She was staring at the controls in her hands in disbelief. How had that worked? Why had she even done that?! What–

“Oh my god, it worked!” was the first thing that made it through Leta’s haze. Javier had jumped to his feet and was bouncing up and down in front of the console. “I can’t believe it — it worked, it really worked!”

Suddenly feeling like she’d spent the last ten minutes as someone else entirely now just settling back into her actual body, Leta stiffened in her chair and blinked herself back into concentration. “It did?” she asked seriously, leaning over to glance at the screen. True to his words, the second dot that had been chasing them was gone. “What happened–”

“You didn’t hear it? That explosion?” Javier asked through a delirious laugh, falling back into his seat, overcome by relief. “That was her stupid ship catching on the edge of the canyon. Couldn’t quite make that angle, could she?” He patted the dashboard affectionately. “Not like us. Amazing flying, cap’n. Absolutely amazing.”

Leta smiled at him, though a little shakily. “Good job, girl,” she mumbled. “Good job. Let’s get back before your other captain finds us gone.”

——————–

Fiearius’  jaw had clenched shut at the question. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have an answer. No, as a matter of fact, he didn’t truly know why the Council had chosen him for Verdant and that must have been obvious on his face because after a moment, Palano, horribly, smiled.

“No? Never figured it out, have you?” she asked. “Being Internal Affairs Prime? Is that what you thought? A good murderer doesn’t make a good Verdant, Fiearius. It’s something much deeper than that. It takes what we would call ‘moral flexibility’. And you.” She leaned back against the desk again and pointed at him. “Are one of the most morally flexible individuals I’ve ever seen.”

Fiearius wanted to be done with this conversation. He wanted to just shoot the woman and end it now, before she put whatever poison into his head she was dangling over it. But for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. For some reason, he had to listen. He had to know.

“It means you don’t inherently cling to the comforting belief that there are universal rights and wrongs,” she explained patiently. “Your set of morals changes constantly, seeming to depend on those you respect around you. Your parents, your friend, your wife, your brother. Your doctor.” She raised a brow at him knowingly.

“You pretend to agree with these other moralities, for their sake, which I understand entirely, I’ve done the same, but I think you and I both know it’s a lie.” She pushed herself from the desk and sauntered towards him slowly. “There is no black nor white. You know that the universe is more complex than that and you question it always, it’s obvious to anyone watching. It is that questioning, that curiosity and that freedom that makes a truly great Verdant. What you have, Fiearius, is a gift. That is why we chose you. Because you. Whether you want to believe it or not.” She stopped a few feet away and reached out to prod him in the chest with her index finger. “Are a lot like us.”

More than ever now, Fiearius wanted to draw his weapon and silence her. He didn’t want to hear this, any of it. It would be so easy to end it all and walk out of here and forget any of it ever happened. But all he managed was to growl, “I’m nothing like you.”

“Oh, but you are,” Rebeka laughed, shaking her head. “You care about people and ideals so much, so strongly, that you’re willing to work in the shadows to protect them.” She clasped her glass in both hands and, looking up at him with a blend of admiration and pride, sighed. “You would have made an excellent Councillor.”

It was Fiearius’ turn to scoff. “A Councillor? Sure, if I survived being your damn Verdant.”

Rebeka tilted her head at him, seeming perplexed. “Of course you would have survived. You were far too valuable, we would have kept you alive at all costs.”

“Sure,” Fiearius mused with a grim smile. “I’m sure you told that to the last Verdant too. You know. The one you forced me to murder.”

The woman continued to stare at him in a strange daze for a long moment until finally, some sort of epiphany rose through her cheeks. “Oh, Fiearius. Fiearius, no. No, no no.” She smiled at him sadly. “He’s not dead.”

Fiearius felt his heart stop in his chest. “What?”

“Oh I know it looked like he was,” she explained hurriedly. “But he’s alive and well, I assure you. We wouldn’t waste talent like that.”

Wasn’t dead? The previous Verdant, the man Fiearius had killed with his own weapon, shot straight through the chest, not dead? It couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense. “But the chip –” he realized. The Verdant chip that had transferred its data into his wrist the moment the bullet landed. “If he didn’t die — how did I get it?”

“Well, he did die,” Rebeka answered as though this were all very obvious and dull. “Just long enough for it to pass over. It’s a bit complicated.”

“Complic–” Fiearius began, but suddenly his shock started to wear off. He could still see the image in his head. It was one that haunted him always. The Verdant in a pool of blood on the cold cement floor under the flickering warehouse lights. Beside him, two more bodies. A woman. And a child. The shock was replaced by a fury that roiled through him like his blood was on fire. He took a sharp step towards Rebeka, his eyes fixed on her in a rage. “That man–that man killed my son.”

Rebeka’s calm faltered momentarily as she stumbled backwards. “Ah–yes,” she admitted quietly. “That was an unfortunate turn of events.”

“Unfortunate?!” He took another step towards her. “Unfortunate?!”

“Fiearius–” Rebeka began hesitantly, but she was silenced when he seized her wrist and dragged her back towards him, more rough than necessary.

“Where is he?” Fiearius growled under his breath. She looked up at him, reflecting — what was that? Pity? — in her expression. But she said nothing, she gave no answer so he yanked her closer and rammed his gun into the crook between her chin and neck. “Where. Is. He?!”

Rebeka flinched as he twisted the cold metal against her skin, but her eyelids flicked back open to stare at him sadly as she whispered, “They were right, weren’t they? They were right all along. Aela never told you…”

The words were enough to give Fiearius pause. But before he could even begin to question what that meant, what Aela had to do with any of this, he heard his name called out from across the room.

Perhaps it was foolish. Perhaps he shouldn’t have looked back. As soon as he did glance over his shoulder to find Dez at the base of the ladder, rifle in hand, the gunshot went off, warm liquid splashed his skin and the body attached to the wrist he still held aloft went limp.

It took Fiearius a few long moments before he was able to release his grasp and allow Rebeka Palano to slide to the floor against her magnificent, blood-stained desk. It took him another few moments to realize Dez was speaking to him, standing beside him, shaking his arm to get his attention. What he said, what he wanted, Fiearius couldn’t begin to care. All of his thoughts were focused on one thing.

What had Aela never told him?

“We always thought you were special,” she continued, swirling the liquid in her glass in slow circles. “Meant for great things. Though. I suppose if we knew it would come to this?” A humorless chuckle filled the room. “Well, we probably should have left you there, hm?”

Fiearius didn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. This was stupid. He hadn’t come down here to listen to some old woman monologue about her life’s choices. He had a job to do and even if she wasn’t stalling in hopes of being saved, even if she simply wanted to have a casual chat with a man whose life she helped destroy, he didn’t have the time nor patience for this. She didn’t deserve the monologue. She deserved an end.

But just as he resigned himself to lifting his gun again and firing it off before she had a chance to argue, she said something that stopped him.

“I don’t regret it, though.”

Fiearius looked over at her, curious, despite himself.

“Regret recruiting you,” she elaborated. “Or promoting you. Any of this.” She waved her hand at the room around her. “I do regret how many people were caught in the crossfire. Some of them more than others.” She caught his eye with a look so heavy with meaning Fiearius had to look away. “But overall. This? It’s the right way of things, I think. I don’t regret it.”

Fiearius wasn’t sure how to respond. Or if he even should. He’d thought many things of the Society Council over the years. He’d developed unshakeable beliefs about who they were and what they were like. He knew, without a doubt, that they were devoted to their empire. That they would defend it until the bitter end. That they would all be irrational, insane monsters like the Vescentian Councillor Leta had faced in Fall’s End.

And yet here was the Ascendian Councillor telling him, in no uncertain terms, that she was glad he had devoted himself to destroying what they had built. And suddenly, he had to know.

“Why did you do it?”

The question had been burning in the forefront of his mind for days. Ever since he had broken through Ren’s code and uncovered the name and history of the woman before him. Rebeka Palano glanced up at him curiously. “Why did I do what?”

“You were elected to Ascendian office. You were popular with the public, with the legislature, you had plenty of power as it were. But you faked your own death, abandoned your family, your friends, and for what? How could you sell out your own people to the Society? How could you sentence them to that?”

Rebeka’s head tilted against her shoulder as she regarded him. “Sell out my people?” she repeated, turning the words over on her tongue. “I didn’t sell out my people. I saved my people.”

Grasping her glass, she rose to her feet and strode around the desk to lean against it. “You were just a child, Fiearius. I’m sure you weren’t attuned to Span-wide politics at five. But thirty years ago? Ascendia was dying.” She shook her head and took another long sip from her glass. “Not physically. Our terraforms have always been amongst the most stable. But our economy? Our job market? Tanking. If we’d continued down the path we were on? Unemployment would have peaked within three years. Hundreds, thousands of families would have lost their homes. We didn’t have the resources to compete with giants like Exymeron and Ellegy. We’re a small cluster. And we were failing.”

Reaching behind her, she grabbed the bottle of liquor and tilted it towards her glass again. “Now I tried to do what I could in office. I wanted nothing more than to fix my homeworld and I did everything in my power to make that happen.” She drank a long sip of the liquor and hissed a sharp breath afterwards.

“But there’s only so much you can scrape together from nothing. And after three terms with no progress? I could still look out of my bedroom window and see people starving in the streets. I was left with two options. Hand control over to the gangs, take black credit bribes and become the next Archeti to be left to rot. Or reach out to the Society. An organization that had managed to take Exymeron from dried up to the most successful cluster in the Span. The organization that had saved Ellegy from the brink of bankruptcy after the war. The organization that had the resources to save my people.” She drank deeply again. “You can see which option I chose.”

It was big talk, but Fiearius was unimpressed, shaking his head before she’d even finished. “And how exactly have you saved your people? Sure, they have jobs and homes, but at what cost? They vote now for powerless figureheads who couldn’t give a shit about them. They fund a government not devoted to them, but to some empirical dream of controlling the Span. Living in constant fear that someone — someone like me — might show up and murder them if they make a wrong move? Say the wrong thing? How is that saving anybody?”

Now, Rebeka scoffed. “Don’t be naive, Fiearius, you know better than that. There is always a price.”

“A price your people didn’t agree to pay.”

“Because they wouldn’t have dared,” she snapped suddenly, straightening herself up. “It wasn’t an easy choice, but someone had to make it. Someone had to do something and I was the only one willing to make that leap. You think I wanted to die? To leave my family? My daughter? I had to make that sacrifice because no one else would.” She slammed the empty glass down on the desk, hard.

If she was trying to intimidate him, it wasn’t working. “And you want credit for that?” he barked. “You want a pat on the back for taking a personal hit in fucking everything up?”

Rebeka narrowed her eyes on him, seething with anger for a long moment before suddenly, it broke and she, of all things, laughed. “That’s very bold coming from you, admiral,” she mused, venom in every word. Fiearius glared back at her silently. “Passing judgment on me. You do know, don’t you?” Her brows lifted and her lips pursed in vague amusement. “You do know why we chose you for Verdant. Don’t you?”

———————

Of all the senseless things Leta had done in her life, this was probably the worst of them. The Dionysian’s bridge was filled with a mighty roar and shudder as the ship scraped against the cliff face before pulling around the corner of the canyon. It was less of a canyon, Leta had found, and more of a ravine. Steep rock walls cut through the grassy plains like a crack in the planet itself. It wound its way across the surface in sharp turns and jagged curves. It would have been the perfect place to lose their pursuing ship. If their ships had been reversed…

“Give it up,” called the original pirate’s voice over the COMM. “You’re just gonna crash my valuable merchandise. Land her, now, and maybe I’ll let you walk away with your life.”

Leta growled under her breath, but didn’t answer, instead clenching her jaw and yanking the ship controls in an attempt to make an abrupt turn around a stone pillar jutting out of the canyon floor. The Dionysian barely avoided nose-diving into the nearest cliff-face and Leta heard the heavy thump of debris falling onto her hull.

Javier, still in the co-pilot’s seat, let out a shriek, followed by a cough and a more ‘manly’ groan. “Leta–” he began as the ship tumbled around another bend.

“What?!” she snapped, her teeth bared as she pulled the next one even closer.

“Leta, this isn’t–” Javier gripped his chair arms and held on for dear life. “This isn’t working. She’s way more agile than us. She’s still right on our tail!”

A blast of red zoomed past the window and, up ahead, a canyon wall took the hit, sending rocks and rubble flying.

“Yeah I noticed,” Leta growled, slamming the brakes and tilting the ship upward to avoid them. She managed, but only barely and winced as another screech of metal against rock filled her ears.

The Dionysian was a clunker, she knew that. Paired against that fighter, it was obviously less equipped for fancy flying. But even so, it had never seemed this clunky before. Did Fiearius just make it look easy or was she doing something that wrong? Either way, if it didn’t shift soon, it was going to get them killed.

“Maybe–” Javier started again, though he looked like he was about to vomit, “Maybe we should consider other options?”

“Happy to hear them,” Leta answered. Another shot flew past them, only narrowly missing. She got the sense that the pirate was just toying with her now. Playing with her prey.

“Well. We could land?” Javier suggested carefully. “And have Eve just shoot her?”

“Not if she stays in her ship and uses it to shoot us,” Leta pointed out. She glanced sideways at him just briefly to mutter, “That’s what I would do anyway…”

“Well we can’t shake her.”

But they could, Leta knew somehow. If it had been the ship’s usual captain at the controls, they could do it. She’d seen Fiearius do it. He’d had taught himself to fly this ship, he’d told her as much himself. He had no special training, more experience perhaps, but she refused to believe that she was incapable of even coming close to the kind of maneuverability he managed. So what the hell was he doing that she wasn’t?

The answer appeared in her mind a moment later as she plowed the ship ungracefully around another the next corner. And it was ridiculous. There was no way it would work, no way that that made a difference. It was completely illogical.

As another shot from the fighter nearly landed itself right on the ship’s side, however, she was willing to try anything.

“Come on, girl, work with me,” she growled under her breath, feeling stupid. “Help me out here.”

Fiearius often referred to the Dionysian as a woman. A woman that was stubborn and complicated and needed constant attention from him. It was metaphorical, obviously. There was nothing truly alive about a spaceship, and yet, sitting at her controls now, Leta couldn’t deny that flying her felt a bit like having an argument.

So it was worth a shot.