Larian, representative of the Eight-Man Empire, collapsed to her backside as soon as Northstrider appeared. She looked exhausted, and she stretched her bow across her knees. “Which one of you pushed the Phoenix our way? Let me know now, so I can carve your name into an arrow.”
Sha Miara, sheathed in rainbows, stood at the side of Reigan Shen. Ordinarily, Northstrider would see that as a bad sign.
Now, Shen stepped forward and surveyed them. His white main was slick and styled, and he looked completely at ease as he surveyed them. He must have seen their obvious anger, because his lips crooked into a humorless, tilted smile. “I warned you.”
“You think this is time to say ‘I told you so?’” Malice asked.
Sha Miara stomped her foot and the space around them trembled. “Which one of you killed the Silent King? We had almost driven away the Dragon!”
“Wei Shi Lindon did it,” Emriss said with a sigh. “He went too far.”
“Wei Shi Lindon Arelius,” Shen added.
Northstrider felt that entirely too much time had been wasted already. “Even this morning, any of us could have killed him whenever we wished. We were complacent. Now, he will only grow stronger. We have to strike while the window is open.”
“Do we?” Larian asked. She pointed one gold finger skyward. “You want to go best-of-three rounds with the scythe-man from the sky?”
“They won’t take revenge for anything we do within the bounds of our world’s Fate,” Sha Miara said confidently. “They cannot interfere to such a degree.” Northstrider heard the voices of her predecessors in her. For a moment.
Then she added, “…can they?”
“It seems the Abidan’s oath of noninterference is worth only as much as they decide it is,” Reigan Shen said.
Malice looked coldly into the distance. “We cannot allow this to continue. It’s a humiliation for all of us.”
Reigan Shen prowled forward like the lion he was. “You were late to see that we have a common enemy. But not too late. We can still strangle him out, we merely have to grab him by the neck and squeeze.”
“We should kill him,” Northstrider said. He could take Dross from Lindon’s spirit.
When he thought about how much time and energy he’d wasted on the two of them, his blood boiled. Lindon had taken his good grace and then spat on him.
Reigan Shen pointed a finger at him. It glistened with rings. “If we have to, we should. But I, too, am…not eager to risk a visit from Eithan Arelius. Let us instead back Lindon into a corner. Take from him until he cannot remain in this world any longer.”
Northstrider’s oracle codex spun out the possibility, and he saw it. He nodded. Malice’s lips twisted in distaste, but she nodded too.
The others weren’t so quick. Larian raised a hand. “Let me see if I understand our options. We kill this kid, and Ozmanthus returns from beyond to kill us all. Or we make the kid’s life a nightmare of misery, then he advances, and then he returns from beyond to kill us all.”
“Then let us do nothing,” Reigan Shen said. “Let us remain static and separated, focused on our own pursuits, until Lindon drives us from this world and ruins everything we’ve built. Or he fails in the process of doing so and breaks what he is attempting to save. Are those possibilities more palatable to you?”
“Sounds to me like we’re stuck between a snake and a tall cliff,” Larian said. “Or, I guess more appropriately, caught between one Dreadgod and another.”
“No, we are not!” Shen snarled. “If we continue bickering with each other, this boy will become a knife to our necks. But if we act together, he is a human boy carrying a weapon too big for him.”
Shen reached into a case at his pocket and pulled out a binding: a curled shell of white madra. It hadn’t truly been replicated into this space, so Northstrider didn’t sense anything from it, but he knew what it was.
The core binding of Subject One.
Reigan Shen’s trump card.
“We can win,” the lion continued. “But we move decisively, and together. We leave no possibility of failure. Are we agreed?”
Northstrider was the first to nod.
One after the other, the others all indicated their agreement. Except one.
Emriss had been frowning into the middle distance, clearly troubled, but she finally spoke up. “There is one factor we haven’t considered yet. The Dreadgods are self-aware, for the moment. What will they do now that another of their kind has been slain? Will they take vengeance, or will they see Lindon as a replacement for their brother until the Silent King is reborn?”