Humanity's #1 Fan

Have you sold either of your sisters yet?

Dazel asked the question matter-of-factly as Ashtoreth waited for Sadie to finish her teleportation circle. Kylie had already left, taking to the air once Ashtoreth explained where the men were and what they'd found.

Ashtoreth scowled. Did Sadie tell you guys about that?

No, Dazel said. Why would Sadie know that you're going to sell your sisters?

Because… look, it doesn't matter. How do you know?

Because you never brought it up, obviously.

What? How is that obvious?

If you know the shape of the sea, then you know the shape of the island.

Ashtoreth regretted that Dazel wasn't nearby. She very much wanted to fix him with a look that said both that she was very confused, and it was all his fault. I am not a clever archfiend, she told him.

Sure you are. It was always going to occur to you to sell your sisters, yeah? And if you weren't going to do it, you'd have made that clear to the others to… I don't know, farm some morality points. When you never mentioned it, that meant you were going ahead with the more reasonable plan.

Farm morality points? she asked incredulously.

You could've prompted an argument with me about it anytime, said Dazel. Made sure to be within Frost's earshot—you know.

I don't know what this says about how you see me, Dazel, Ashtoreth said with a note of reproach.

That I think you're competent? Look, none of this matters anymore. The situation's changed.

I'll say.

In front of her, Sadie stepped away from her circle and eyed it suspiciously. "Is that right? That's right, right?"

"That's right," said Ashtoreth. "Let's go."

She took Sadie's hand a moment later, and they warped to one of the two levels that were completely devoted to trading slaves. Stepping off the circle, Ashtoreth quickly spotted Frost and Hunter and they made their way over to them.

Are you guys sure it's one of my sisters? Ashtoreth thought at them. Because archfiends like me come in generations. My father's got plenty of used-up progeny spread across the cosmos, especially when it comes to the girls. The only ones I actually count as my sisters are the ones I grew up with.

Dazel appeared over Frost's shoulder, then flew down so she could grab him and hold him against her chest like normal. It's Haddad, he said. "I'm sure."

"Show me."

They led her through the bustling streets, turning several times until a huge structure made of dark, uniform stone loomed ahead of them. At first Ashtoreth had no idea what it was, but then she caught sight of the runes inscribing two glowing panes of glass that had been set above an entranceway: they advertised fights. An arena, then.

Laid out before the arena's grand entrance was a small plaza, and in the plaza were a multitude of what Ashtoreth guessed to be their pit fighters. Each of them was enclosed by a black circle set into the paving stones. None of the passerbys came close to crossing any of these circles, and Ashtoreth had to guess that they marked where all manner of invisible defenses made to keep the fighters inside had been laid.

"There," said Dazel, pointing with his tail.

Ashtoreth looked over and gritted her teeth. Haddad was sitting cross-legged in the middle of a circle that had been drawn on the ground in black paint, eyes closed, seemingly meditating, easily spotted by her buttercup-yellow bob of hair.

"Okay, you see her?" Dazel said. "Because I really don't want you to—Ashtoreth, come on."

She drew closer to the circle, tilting her head as she stared at her sister. She felt a strange mix of satisfaction and guilt. She hadn't done this to Haddad… but she'd been about to do it to Freyr.

She'd been right to want to do it to Freyr, too. She was sure of that.

Finding her here was good, in a way. Earth wouldn't need to worry about her, after all. If she weren't here, she'd have been back on humanity's homeworld at this very moment, butchering the people there like beasts.

Suddenly, Haddad opened her eyes and stood, her graceful motions making it so that she seemed to flow upward out of her sitting posture. She took a few quick strides toward Ashtoreth, stopping suddenly as she reached the edge of the circle.

Her silver eyes met Ashtoreth's, but there was no recognition in them. Instead she only cocked her head. "Move along, elf. You couldn't afford me."

We should go, Dazel said. You should have as little contact with her as possible.

Ashtoreth only stared into her sister's eyes, her expression mute. Haddad was probably the easiest out of all of them to manipulate. Apollo had probably found it trivially easy to betray her.

And yet… for what? Ashtoreth's restrictions meant that Apollo couldn't get back to Earth.

She was really running away, then. She'd come to Arc Enival for the same reason that Ashtoreth's crew had: of all the outer markets, this was one of the furthest from Hell.

"Something's bothering you," said Haddad. "I can tell. Did I kill someone you know, elf?" She smiled. "Or are you simply enraptured by the sight of a superior being?"

What were Haddad's days like? Did she just sit out here with no privacy, getting gawked at by everyone who walked by? Would her owners force her to fight in the arena until she was either killed, or someone bought her?

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"Does it speak?" Haddad asked. "Or only stare? Tell me, little elf—of all the goods on display, here, why come to me?"

Haddad's entire life had led to this. She'd gone through everything that Ashtoreth had, and probably had a harder time of it. All so that her story could end when Apollo betrayed her and sold her into a prison that she was almost certainly never going to escape.

Ashtoreth, Dazel said urgently. You have nothing to gain here. Be reasonable.

He was right. She turned from her sister and began to walk away.

Haddad spat on the ground, then returned to her meditation.

"Hey," Frost said in a low voice, falling in beside her. "You okay?"

She felt a pang of guilt. Would he be asking her that if he knew that she'd wanted to do the same, or worse, to Freyr? "I'm fine," she said. "But… look, we've got to talk about this."

"I agree," said Frost. "Urgently. We need a group meeting."

Ashtoreth looked down at Dazel. "Let's get far away and you can give us a silence spell," she said. "I'd rather not have to use thought speech to have this whole conversation."

"Sure thing, boss," Dazel said. They walked down a few streets to put some distance between them and the arena, then found a blocky stone table to sit at in the middle of little square with a plinth at its center.

Dazel detached and rose away from her to start drawing runes in the air.

Frost looked over at her while Dazel was drawing his runes. I don't trust him, Ashtoreth.

We'll talk about it.

The cosmos is too big for a coincidence like this to be a coincidence. He brought us to her almost immediately.

Ashtoreth frowned. Dazel had likely brought them through the slave markets to see if he could spot a good place to sell Freyr or Yama. But even then… it was a little suspicious.

What if Apollo was still here? What if they'd been traded to her, somehow?

She shook her head. That didn't even make any sense, not for Dazel.

We'll talk about it, she said.

"There," said Dazel. "We're good."

"I don't trust you," Frost said.

Dazel dropped down onto the table in front of Ashtoreth. "You don't say."

"You shouldn't have wanted to make a stop through the slave markets anyway," Frost said. "But you practically beelined it here. What's that about?"

"I told you, places like this are a good spot to start looking for a soulweaver," Dazel said. "Soulbinding and slavery go hand in hand, for the obvious reasons."

Ashtoreth winced. He'd almost certainly been looking to get her a good deal on one of her sister's, but at least he wasn't saying as much to Frost.

"And so you just happened to take us to exactly the place you'd need to be—in a city of millions—to find this? First thing? There's a whole other level for slaves. This was unbelievably fast, Dazel."

"Are you accusing me of anything beyond a coincidence?" Dazel asked. "What's my plan here, exactly?"

"I don't need to know exactly what you're planning down to the last detail to see that something's up," said Frost. He turned to Ashtoreth. "You can't possibly not see how crazy this is, Ashtoreth."

"I don't know," she said uncertainly. "It's… plausible? If Apollo sold her to run away, she'd have wanted to do it someplace far from the influence of Hell, like this. And we still don't know how she got away from Earth… maybe she had some way of getting here, too, even though it's through Eldunar territory."

"You think Apollo did this?"

"Definitely," she said. "It's crazy, but… I think her exit strategy must have always been to buy her way out with Haddad. I got too many wins, and Apollo's not stupid. Better to spend a lifetime trying to hide from my father than be stuck on a planet I've already won."

"And that works?" Hunter asked dubiously. "You guys can just… run away from home like that?"

Slowly, Ashtoreth shook her head. "My species was designed. Me and my sisters most of all." She sighed, leaning back in her chair and looking up at the cavern-roof kilometers above them. "No, I don't think she'll be able to keep our father from finding her. We don't even know what methods he uses. But what other option did she have? Apollo is probably the one sister I would never have trusted."

Frost ran a hand through his hair. "And you're absolutely certain, Ashtoreth, that there's no way she's working with him?" He jerked his head toward Dazel.

"Dazel wasn't even specific about this particular outer market," she said. "The Eldunar picked it. And sure, he could've guessed it might be this one, but… why would he make sure I found her before we got the soul map? Why would he be the one pointing her out to me at all?"

"Thanks, boss," Dazel said. "If it helps at all, Frost, this puts me on edge, too. If Apollo came through here, then quite a few of the higher-ups might know Ashtoreth is the monarch, even if they don't know that she's here."

"That doesn't help," said Frost. "I'll know you're not planning something today when tomorrow comes and nothing happened." He turned to Ashtoreth. "If you're choosing to trust him… let's just do what we came here to and leave as soon as we can."

"Oh, for God's sake," said Dazel, causing Ashtoreth to wince and then scowl at him. "Look," he continued. "You don't have to trust me, but you can trust your own brain, right? You saw one unlikely coincidence and it confirmed your suspicions despite it making no sense whatsoever."

"No sense?" Frost said. "No sense to see as you as intelligent and manipulative, huh Dazel?"

"Stop it, both of you," Ashtoreth said. She groaned. "Listen, Dazel… let's just be infernals about this, all right? It's only another day or two."

He let out an exasperated sigh, but said nothing more.

"They don't trust you, they don't need to trust you, they have an admittedly pretty good reason not to trust you… and you're going to get your half of the bargain anyway. It sucks, but we can manage it, yeah? One last compromise before you're free."

"All right, all right!" he said. "I didn't disagree with you, if you hadn't noticed."

"Look," Frost said. "If we're going to go ahead as planned… then can we please just get the fuck out of the slave quarter? I'm not going to last another hour in this place, Ashtoreth. That little platform over there is for selling people on."

"Sure thing, Frost," she said, standing. "I've got a meeting with an elder tonight. Let's rush our sales to get Dazel his soulmap, and if we've got that done before the meeting, we'll figure out whether it's worth it to go or not. It might make sense just to leave, even if that means we can't buy Sadie any gear."

Frost looked tired and frustrated, but he didn't disagree. "All right," he said. "I suppose that's as much as I can expect."

"Great!" she said. "No sense sticking around here, then. Let's get to it!"

On the table in front of her, Dazel let out a long, relieved sigh.

You okay? she asked him as they all stood and he flew back into her arm to be held against her chest.

No, I'm not okay, he said. I need it, Ashtoreth. You have no idea how long I've waited. None of you have any idea what I've been through. He mashed his face against her abdomen. I have to be free. I don't care about your sister, or Frost's paranoia, or anything else—not today. I need it.

She reached down and pet him behind the ears. I'll hold up my end of the bargain, Dazel, trust me. Soon.