Page 8 of Xerxes Ascendant
Akira
“What is this about, Omicron?” Master Rho asked brusquely, the irritation in her voice reflecting the prevailing mood of the room. It seemed Akira wasn’t the only member of the Coterie disgruntled at the meeting’s lack of notice: Nu was letting out loud, put-upon sighs, while Lambda’s fingers hadn’t stopped drumming on the table since his breathless arrival.
“I appreciate we all have other things to attend to...”
“Yes,” said Sigma, cutting sharply through Omicron’s placating murmur. “We do. Including keeping this fucking city in the sky.”
She’d been overseeing the generation of the new shields, Akira knew, a critical task necessary for keeping the harmful radiation out of Xerxes. The original shields had been damaged but otherwise held when the two parts of the city separated, yet were now being stretched dangerously thin trying to cover all of it at once. Sigma’s direction – and the credits paid to the Engineers to work overtime on the project – would hopefully mean one less way for Xerxians to die.
The other Masters each had their own work to do. Rebuilding key infrastructure, keeping critical goods on themarket, reconnecting electricity and water. Not that any of the Coterie would lower themselves to manual labour, but it was their instruction, credits, and leadership that was keeping Lower Xerxes functional.
Over these last ten days, Akira had felt some of the pride he’d lost in his organisation begin to resurface. They were helping people in tangible ways, and while there was naturally self-interest in the acts – favours racked up, appreciation secured...and of course, their own personal desire to survive – they were doing actual good for the city. Akira himself had been working with the trade guilds to facilitate important repair services in exchange for the tradesmen receiving assistance in turn: a complex web of reciprocated benefits where no credits exchanged hands but a single repudiated promise could bring the whole thing crashing down. It had required him to bully and shout at a lot of people to keep them beholden to the deals they’d made, which suited his current mood just fine.
“It’s about one of us,” Master Omicron said quietly. “And whether a Master has been lying to this Coterie.”
That made the whole room cease their grumbling and turn to him, stunned and perturbed.
Omicron cleared his throat. “Come in.”
The door to their meeting room opened with a soft click. Theta appeared, his silver hair neatly brushed and swept over one shoulder, and his mouth stretched in a genial smile.
“What ishedoing here?” Akira hissed, kicking back his chair and standing. He snarled his next words out to Omicron, who from the shocked faces around them was the only one to have known what was coming. “I told you what he did that night!”
“You told us,” Omicron conceded with a brief dip of his chin. “And we believed you, Epsilon...at least in the absence of any contradiction. But Master Theta tells a different story.”
Akira stared at him, unable to look at the man filling the doorway. His fingers itched for the gun that had been taken from him in the frisk search on his arrival, desiring to inflict even half the terror Theta had caused him when he’d gone after Kyle.
“He sold us all out to Mackenroth! Attacked me and my staff in my own House!”
“Indeed,” said Tau coldly, getting to his own feet to stand at Akira’s side. “And why does the traitorous cockroach surface only now?”
“He was afraid,” Omicron explained with pointed accusation towards Akira. “He’d learned how you’d spoken against him, Epsilon, and feared we would have him killed on the spot if he showed his face here.”
Theta didn’t look afraid. In fact, from the corner of Akira’s eye, all he could see was smugness. Whatever line he’d fed to Omicron, it had landed well: the other Master was entirely in his thrall.
“He came to me privately, and disclosed the truth of it,” continued Omicron in that pompous way of his that tolerated no dissension. “How there were no mystery men with you in House Epsilon that night, no plots, mayors, conspiracies. Just you, Theta, and Mr. Randall.”
“Bullshit,” Akira snapped. “There were five other men!”
“Ah, yes. Which you single-handedly fought and even managed to subdue one of these terrifying thugs, againstsuchodds. And yet you have not been able to provide any evidence they ever existed.” Master Omicron’s scathing gaze dragged down Akira’s ill-fitting and dirty overalls, his lip curling in disdain. “Tell me, Epsilon, is it true you were intoxicated that night?”
Akira saw Tau’s head turn towards him.
In judgement. Doubt.
“What evidence do you expect?” Akira demanded. “House Epsilon’s cameras do not store footage. The bodies of the men who died were consumed by the rubble. Is the fact that Kyle is lying in afucking comanot enough?”
Theta clicked his tongue in false sympathy. “I know how close you are to Randall,” he murmured, nauseatingly sweet, “and I offer my sincerest wishes for his recovery. But the boy’s injuries, when so many were killed in Xerxes’ collapse, is hardly proof of your exceedingly personal and hurtful lies. If I’d appreciated the extremes you were willing to go to in order to escape your debt, my dear Akira, perhaps I would have hesitated before loaning you the million credits I now find myself short.”
Akira hissed out an enraged breath as the room erupted into unsettled murmurs. It was shameful to have had to borrow money when he held the rank of House Master, and not something he’d ever wanted the Coterie to learn. It looked like financial mismanagement, even though House Epsilon was operating perfectly well and it had been Akira’s choice to divert his personal funds to ensuring his family’s safety and comfort, rather than building up a hoard of credits on which to sit and do nothing.
And then there was theothermillion credits he’d spent in the length of a heartbeat for Kyle, and he was lucky Theta didn’t know the details or he’d be wagging his tongue about that, too.
It was clever. Very clever.
With that one disclosure, he’d not only undermined Akira’s character but also given him a plausible motive for attempting to ruin Theta in turn. Xerxians did much shittier things for fewer credits every day, and Akira was hardly known for being forthcoming.
Even though he was still paying the credits off: even after what his ex-Master had done, he hadn’t missed a singleinstalment. Mostly out of fear that the older man would do exactly what he just had, in exposing Akira’s shame.
