Siris felt a sense of grimness as he watched the people approach, looking at him with awe, hesitance, expectation. Why should this adoration bother him? He’d been raised as the Sacrifice. He was accustomed to notoriety.
Except . . .
The Dark Self – it knew what to do with followers.
Siris had never been trained for leadership. He was a solitary warrior, a Sacrifice sent to fight and to die. The only part of him that knew anything about leading others was that buried part, those instincts he didn’t fully understand.
It responded to the devotion these rebels showed him.
“Well done,” he said to Isa, then smiled proudly at those who had come. “Well done.”
DEVIATION
THE FIFTH
THE RAIN had grown worse by the time Uriel reached his car. It pounded him as he worked to get the door open, briefcase in one hand, umbrella in the other. He climbed in, the car starting on its own. The two-seater vehicle was intended primarily for commuting. Practical. The numbers made sense.
Adram didn’t drive a practical car. He drove a car that growled when you started it. He bragged about it frequently, talking about how he worked on it himself, tweaking the engine. It didn’t even drive itself – it was old, and considered a classic. That made it exempt from the legislation requiring all cars to have a self-driving mode in case of emergency.
Uriel’s car didn’t growl as it started. It hummed pleasantly, and Beethoven – “Romance for Violin and Orchestra” – started playing as Uriel shook the umbrella and pulled it into the car.
“Hello,” the vehicle said in its sterile voice. “Road conditions are reported dangerous. It is strongly recommended that you engage self-driving mode.”
“Like I’ve ever used anything else,” Uriel said. How could he work on the way home if he had to pay attention to driving? He’d purposely bought a car where you had to fold out the steering wheel if you wanted to drive yourself. He tapped on the display, telling it to drive him home, and then blanked the windshield, which tried to show him news stories. Mary’s work again.
Uriel settled back for the drive as the car pulled out of the parking lot – his was one of the last there, other than Mr. Galath’s limo – and took him through the rain to the freeway. He opened his briefcase and tapped idly on the display inside, retrieving some company health insurance reviews he’d been going over. But found himself too distracted to work.
Mary probably won’t even be there when I arrive, he thought. In this weather, she’ll have gone to get Jori so he doesn’t have to ride his bike home.
A surprise, perhaps? Maybe he could pick up dinner. She often got Thai for him, even though she didn’t like it much. Had she put in the order already? He looked up some places, trying to find which had the best deal, until his car pulled through the splattering rain up to his house. It stopped at the curb.
The curb?
Uriel looked up, frowning. Why was there a car parked in his place on the driveway? A bright red car, bulletlike, old-fashioned and dangerous . . .
Adram’s car.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
SIRIS BECAME a leader.
It happened just like that. He gave his Dark Self a little freedom, and it transformed him.
When Isa introduced him to the troops, he knew to nod and commend them on their bravery. He knew to ask the captains if their men were being properly fed, if they needed new boots. He knew to bolster the men with compliments, rather than pointing out that they looked half-trained, that a third of their number saluted with the wrong hand, and that their uniforms didn’t match.
Isa, at his side, relaxed noticeably. “You’re good with them, Whiskers,” she whispered. “A regular dominatrix.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Where did you get that word?”
“I read it.”
“What kinds of books have you been reading?”
“Whatever I could find! Not enough people read out here – most of them are illiterate. It’s not easy to find books. I read it, and assumed it meant dominating, commanding . . . like a leader, right? No?”
He smiled. “Not really.”
“Stupid language.” She dug out her notebook and made a notation.
Once the inspection was done, they followed the captains to the rebellion’s version of a command center – a log cabin with maps on the inside walls.
As they entered, one of the men asked Isa where to find the latest scout reports, and she just shrugged. “Why are you asking me?” she said. “Talk to the scouts, dimwit.”
Siris smothered a smile. She was hardly a natural leader – while she was clever, she did not know how to deal with people. Not without insulting them a few times, at least.
The commander of Isa’s “troops” was a weathered, white-haired woman named Lux. Those scars on her face, and the way she scowled perpetually, made her seem part daeril. She hadn’t come to meet him with the others; instead, she looked him up and down as they entered the command center, then snorted.
“Hell take me,” she said. “You really are one of them.”
“You can tell by looking?” Siris said.
“You all look like teenagers,” Lux said. “Pampered teenagers with the baby fat still on you.” She turned toward the maps on one of the walls. “Eyes are wrong, though.”
Curious. She had seen Deathless without their helms or masks on, then? Siris filed away the information. “Too old?” he asked, stepping up beside Lux. Isa joined them.
“Yeah, you know too much. But the greater part is because you’re just too damn confident. I’ve never met a boy your apparent age who is so sure of himself. Arrogant, yes. Confident, no.”
He didn’t feel particularly confident – but the Dark Self was. And, he supposed, she was probably right because of it.
“You’ve had combat experience,” he said.
“Served under Saydhi during the Broken Cliffs campaign. Heard you offed her.”
“I did.”
“Permanently? Gone for good?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not supposed to be possible,” Lux said, still looking at the maps.
“It is now,” Siris said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I killed her, and you realized that they could be fought.”
She eyed him. “Know too much,” she said under her breath. “Yeah, definitely one of them.”
And, startled, he realized that he did know too much about her. Not this woman specifically, but her type of person. He had lived for a long, long time. Buried deeply within him was an instinctive understanding of someone like Lux. She’d always fought for Saydhi loyally, counting herself lucky at least to not be one of the poor sods who had to work the fields.
That had built in Lux a certain guilt, perhaps even a resentment. She was happy to not have a worse life, but felt that she profited from the sacrifice of so many others. When Saydhi had fallen, it had come to Lux like a moment of revelation and light. The Deathless could actually die. They weren’t gods.
Siris would bet she had resigned her post that very day.
“What kind of training do your soldiers have?” Siris asked.
“As much as I could give them in six months,” Lux said. “We have done a few raids on the God King’s thugs, killing everyone involved and leaving signs to make it look like wild daerils were behind the attacks. He sent troops and wiped out the nearest batch of those, though, so if we try it again we’ll need a different cover.”