Tisker shook his head, while Sophie looked at her expectantly.
Dug growled low in his throat. Talis already knew that he knew about the Veritors.
“We should have killed him,” he muttered. “If that is the adders’ nest we have kicked over, we should turn around and sink them before they can make their repairs.”
Partly, Talis agreed with Dug. Partly. Though her inclination was more along the lines of tossing that ring over their railing and putting Cutter skies behind them for good. But that would leave them having to avoid the two largest territories of Peridot, and she was in no rush to narrow their market.
Something stronger than coffee was definitely in order. She went to the liquor cabinet built into the starboard bulkhead, pinched the rims of four glasses with one hand, and grabbed a mostly full bottle of dark spiced rum by its neck with the other.
“Who are the… Varistors of the Lost Codex?” Sophie looked to Talis for an explanation as Dug’s humor worsened.
“Veritors.” Talis returned to the table and placed the glasses down, then unstoppered the rum and poured herself two fingers. Tisker and Sophie filled their glasses in turn while she seated herself again, putting her feet up on the trestle of the table and sliding into a slouch against the back of her chair.
Staring at the dark brown liquid in the bottle as if he was watching a scene play out in its distorted highlights and shadows, Dug slipped into a gloomy silence.
Talis took a sip of rum to delay the explanation. It burned her tongue and throat, and she gave it a moment, feeling the fire trace a path down her gullet, ignoring how Tisker and Sophie leaned forward as if to drag the story out of her. The threads of her suspicions were braiding into a cord, still too fragile to tug.
She made them wait while she drank the rest of the glass. Tisker poured her another, an offering in exchange for finally getting to the damned tale. She sighed and crossed her ankle over the opposite knee. Ran her thumb over the well-worn texture of her leather boot and traced the hammered pattern in the brass clips as she began to talk again.
“They’re a secret society of Cutters—well, they’re a cult, really. Far from the first mortals to figure out how the gods’ alchemy works, but they are the first to want to wield it like a weapon.”
Tisker chuckled, still not taking in the gravity of the situation. “What, like Fens Yarrow? Those idiots will get caught like he was, and be cinders before they even figure out which incantation to use.”
“Would I waste worry over that?” Talis rested the glass on her knee and turned it with her thumb and forefinger, staring at the signet ring on the table again. “Half-cocked fools running around trying to set themselves upon a throne? The gods can deal with that; we’ve all heard those stories. The Veritors are different. They’ve been around a long time. Ages ago, like the name implies, they read some Pre-Cataclysm text and got the notion that Cutter folk are the only natural race on Peridot. They want to kill the gods, and the other four races with them. What makes me worry is that they’ve got connections, and smarts to make up for lacking sense. Plus they’re bankrolled by fatcrats and can recruit with the promise of elevating anyone to such circles. Anyone who’s Cutter. You hear anything about some new Imperial decree to suspend foreign work licenses, or to push Cutter territories around Nexus even farther despite our standing border agreements with the Bone and Rakkar, and I’ll bet their influences are behind it. My guess is—and Hankirk made it all but explicit—they’ve implanted themselves in the top levels of Imperial fleet command, too.”
“You must be joking, Cap. That’s a nice conspiracy.” Tisker’s eyebrows were way up, and he looked ready to laugh the support beams down from the overhead. He’d reached the bottom of his first glass of rum, so really it was a wonder he hadn’t laughed yet. She knew how it sounded.
But she pressed on. “There’s more than one reason I left the academy before I committed to five years indentured.”
“Thought you said all the rules didn’t suit you?” Sophie asked.
“Well, sure, I said that.” Talis smirked. She could still remember that conversation from two years back when Sophie had joined them. She and Dug had discovered the young imp aboard a colony ship where she was apprenticed to the engine master, lost amid a gaggle of other young wrenches-in-training and bored out of her freckled skull shoveling coal, waiting for a chance to really get her hands into an airship’s engine. Talis had been competing with another interested captain to win Sophie over, both of them in dire need of a wrench with her kind of natural talent. Talis had just bought Wind Sabre and couldn’t match the pay the other captain was offering, but tales of her adventures outside Cutter skies had given her the edge. The financial security of a ponderous water trawler couldn’t compete with the exploration and excitement that Sophie craved. “The theory that the Empire is in thrall to occult fiends who want to kill the gods and commit quadruple genocide didn’t seem entirely relevant at the time.”
Tisker laughed again, but it was uneasy. “Aye, and I might’ve snuck onto another ship had you warmed me up with that line.”
“But if they’re a secret cult or whatever, how’d you find out about them?” Sophie looked at Dug. She wanted his part of the history, too.
But Dug remained silent, staring at that bottle. Talis knew well which memory had snagged his thoughts, so she continued before Sophie could ask him again.
“Hankirk was always trying to best me or impress me, back in training. I should probably mention that I had a brief fling with the pompous button shiner.”
She braced herself, knowing how that would
