Page 110 of Daughter of No Worlds

“I did not agree to any of that.” I stood, placing my palms on the edge of the desk and leaning, forcing Zeryth to look up at me. “And it is far too vague.”

After that whole display with Nura, I expected to trigger some kind of reaction in him. But it didn’t. He remained unaffected. “Fine. What would you prefer?”

“We go to Threll first.”

He blinked. If he was taken aback, that one blink — one momentary pause — was the only sign. “We are on the brink of war. The Syrizen will never spare the support to go with you, and we can’t spare the time or resources to start a whole other war in Threll.”

“I understand. If this weapon is as powerful as you say it is, I only need a little bit of help for this trip. Then I will make use of their full support after our work in Ara is complete.”

Another blink. “You’re saying you want to go twice.”

“Yes. I want to get my friends now from the Mikov estate. And then, later, I will return with an army to work on a much larger scale.”

I said all of this as if the very idea of doing anything else was ridiculous.

There was a brief silence.

“We will need to test it out,” Nura said, at last, to Zeryth. “She’ll need to learn how to use it. We can do that in Threll. With the help of the Stratagrams you laid out, we could get there quickly.”

Zeryth nodded, raising his shoulders in a hint of a shrug. “That is fair.”

Should I be concerned, I wondered, that he seemed so unconcerned?

He lifted the pen, but again, I stopped him.

“Wait. Make a list.”

“A list?”

“Yes.” I straightened, crossing my arms. “We are going to be very,veryspecific.”

“If it makes you more comfortable,” Zeryth replied.

He dashed off, in beautiful script:

1.

Then looked at me, raising his eyebrows expectantly. “Where shall we begin?”

* * *

I leanedon that desk and dictated my terms until my wrists began to go numb. I specified every word — forced him to cross out phrases that I determined to be too vague, deliberated over each letter, defined every time frame to close each possible loophole.

I knew that I was giving up something valuable, or at least, certainly more valuable than they’d like me to believe. And I would have been lying if I said that I wasn’t choking back terror and uncertainty. But I focused instead on my straining fingers, painstakingly beginning to claw a grip around what I had come to Ara to do.

A blood pact could never be broken. The terms must be fulfilled. And if I was very, very careful, that meant I could ensure the safety of my friends and the fulfillment of my goals with one piece of paper. If I could do that, I didn’t care what happened to me.

I defined the length and goals of my initial travel to Threll, specified that Serel needed to be recovered, that the search for him would continue when I had to return to Ara if I failed to find him during my two week training period in Threll — though I swore to myself that would not happen. I defined the number of soldiers who would be sent with me to Threll after my time in Ara was over, how long they would stay there, that our mission would not be complete until the Threllian Lords were removed from power.

Finally, I straightened, masking a wince as a shock of pain encircled my stiff wrists. “And,” I said, “I want Vos provided for. For the rest of his life.” I paused, then rephrased. “I want Vos to receive one thousand Lys per month, for the next eighty years. And, he will have a home given to him, and all healing care and medicine that he may need.”

“That’s a significant amount of money,” Zeryth observed, but he wrote down my words exactly without further complaint.

I paused at the window, looking out over that beautiful ocean. The sky had begun to tint orange, the light growing more intense and dazzling as the afternoon began to give way to evening. It had been hours. A thought crossed the back of my mind, something mournful settling in my stomach.

“Is that your full list?” Zeryth asked.

“One more.” One of the most important. I didn’t look away from the ocean. “Maxantarius Farlione will be released from the Orders. He will be released from all pacts or agreements or… any contracts. Anything at all that binds him to you.”

---