Ch.6
The Kobold lunged and I killed it before it finished the motion.
That was new. A week ago I'd have had to read the lunge, step, time my cut. Now I was inside its guard before I'd consciously decided to move. The knife went in under the jaw, the Kobold folded, and the magic stone popped out of the dissolving corpse before I'd finished wiping the blade.
Liaris Freese. It had to be. The training with Ais was building the technique but the raw stats were climbing on their own. My arms didn't tire as fast. My footwork was crisper. On Floor 4, I'd killed a Frog Shooter by sidestepping its acid spit and closing the gap in two steps instead of four. The body was changing.
I farmed until late afternoon, pulled fourteen stones from Floors 3 through 5, and went home.
The church basement was empty. No Hestia, no dinner on the table. The couch was neatly made. Her shoes were gone from the bottom of the stairs.
I sat on the couch, ate dried rations from my pack, and waited. She didn't come back. I fell asleep sitting up and woke to the door opening just before dawn.
Hestia came down the stairs looking like she hadn't slept in two days. Her hair was loose and unwashed, the twin-tail ornaments stuffed in her pocket. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She walked past me to the kitchen and started boiling water without saying hello.
"Where were you?"
"Visiting a friend."
"For thirty hours?"
She didn't turn around. "It was important."
I knew what she'd been doing. The dogeza. Thirty hours on her knees at Hephaestus's door, forehead on the ground, begging for a weapon she couldn't pay for. I'd watched this scene play out on a screen in another life. She'd done it for me, and she wasn't going to tell me.
"Okay," I said.
She looked over her shoulder. Her eyes were searching for a follow-up question. I didn't give her one.
"I'm going to training," I said. "There's food in my pack if you're hungry."
She turned back to the kettle. "Be careful."
I left.
Two days passed. Training with Ais at dawn. Dungeon farming until dark. Hostess for dinner. Home. The routine was holding, and my body was getting stronger. Every fight, every spar, the gap between yesterday and today was visible.
Hestia recovered. She didn't mention where she'd been and I didn't ask. She started coming home with groceries she couldn't have afforded on her part-time wages, which meant she'd taken on extra shifts at the street stall, which meant she was working herself harder than before. I didn't push.
On the third evening, she was waiting for me when I came down the stairs. She was wearing her white dress with the blue ribbon, but she'd done her hair differently, a braid woven into one of the twin-tails, and she was holding two things: an invitation on heavy cream-colored paper, and a nervous smile.
"There's a party," she said. "A god's banquet. Ganesha is hosting. All the deities attend." She held up the invitation. "I need a date."
"You're asking me?"
"You're my only member. Who else would I ask?"
Fair point.
The God's Banquet was held in a hall near Babel. The noise reached me from two blocks away, music and laughter and the particular quality of noise that happens when a room full of immortal beings decides to get drunk at the same time.
Inside was gold. Gold light from chandeliers, gold trim on the walls, gold thread in the curtains. The guests were gods and goddesses in formal attire and their senior Familia members in whatever passed for dress clothes. The air smelled like wine and perfume and a sweetness I couldn't name, pressing against the back of my throat. Divine presence. Dozens of gods in one room, and the ambient pressure of their collective existence was a physical thing.
Hestia clung to my arm as we entered. She came up to my elbow in her best dress and her face was flushed and she was scanning the room for the food table with barely concealed urgency.
"Behave," she said, which was rich coming from the goddess who was already drifting toward a platter of shrimp.
I let her go and stood near the entrance, taking it in. The room was enormous. At the far end, a stage with musicians. Dance floor in the center, mostly empty this early. Tables along the walls loaded with food and wine. Groups of deities clustered in conversation, their Familia members orbiting them like satellites.
Then the weight hit.
It came from across the room. A pressure on the front of my skull, like standing at the edge of a high place. I turned toward it and found her.
Silver hair, long and loose. A dark red flower pinned behind her left ear. Grayish-blue eyes in a face so beautiful the word didn't cover it. She was standing with a group of gods, holding a glass of wine, and she was looking directly at me. Had been looking, maybe, before I'd even turned.
Freya.
She was seeing my soul. I knew that much. Her Discerning Eye, the ability that had made her obsessed with Bell Cranel's transparent spirit. She was looking through my skin at what was underneath, and whatever she found had her full attention.
I met her gaze across the room and held it.
Her mouth curved. A slow, small smile that promised everything and committed to nothing. Then she turned back to her conversation and the pressure eased and I could breathe again.
A hand clapped down on my shoulder. Hard.
"Well, well." The voice was bright and loud and belonged to a goddess in a tailored black tuxedo with red hair pulled back from a sharp, narrow face. Her eyes were shut in a permanent squint that managed to see everything anyway. "If it isn't the tomato kid."
"Word gets around," I said.
"Word gets around when you stand up to my Bete in a packed bar and tell him to his face you were the kid he was mocking." She squeezed my shoulder. "That takes balls. I like balls."
"Phrasing."
She cackled. Head back, mouth wide, loud enough to make people across the room turn. "Oh, I like you. Hestia's kid, right? The rookie?" She leaned in, eyes still shut, voice dropping. "You're interesting. I don't say that a lot."
"I'll try not to let it go to my head."
"Too late." She slapped my shoulder and turned away, already scanning the room for her next target. Over her shoulder: "Come find me if you get bored. I throw better parties than Ganesha."
A voice from across the dance floor: "Bell!" Tiona, waving with both arms from beside a punch bowl. She was wearing a red dress that didn't quite fit her frame and she looked thrilled about it. She pointed at me, said something to the woman beside her that I couldn't hear, and went back to drinking.
The woman beside her turned.
Green dress. Long, simple, no ornamentation. Golden hair loose over her shoulders instead of tied back. Gold eyes. The face from the wall, the face from the corridor, but stripped of armor and context and standing next to a punch bowl.
Ais Wallenstein in a dress.
She was standing there holding a cup with both hands and looking at me and I forgot what I was doing for half a second. My eyes went to the line of her collar, the green fabric against her skin, the bare shoulders I'd only ever seen under armor. My composure cracked. One beat, and then it was back.
She saw it. Her chin dipped a fraction, the smallest possible acknowledgment, and she looked down at her punch.
I walked over.
"You clean up well," I said.
"...Thank you." She held the cup tighter. "Tiona picked the dress."
"She picked right."
Ais looked at me. At the cup. At me again. "You look..." She started the sentence, lost the word, started over. "Different."
"I'm wearing a shirt that doesn't have blood on it. That might be it."
The corner of her mouth twitched. Barely. But I was learning to read those.
The music shifted. Slower, couples moving toward the dance floor. A Far-Eastern god with dark hair led a girl in a purple kimono onto the floor, and they moved together with the easy grace of people who'd trained for this. Takemikazuchi and his Familia member. The girl, Mikoto, had a hand on her katana hilt even in her formal clothes. Old habits.
"Do you dance?" I asked.
Ais looked at the dance floor. Looked at me. "I've never..."
"Me neither. Want to be bad at it together?"
Her mouth opened. Closed. She set her punch cup on the table.
"Okay."
We walked onto the dance floor. I put my hand on her waist and she put her hand on my shoulder and we stood there for a second because neither of us knew what came next.
"I think we move," I said.
"Which direction?"
"I have no idea."
We moved. It was bad. My footwork, which had been improving under her training, apparently didn't transfer to dancing. I stepped on her foot in the first ten seconds. She didn't react, because she was Level 6 and my foot on hers probably felt like a leaf landing.
We figured out a version of it. Small steps, no turns, swaying more than dancing. Her hand was light on my shoulder and mine was on her waist and the green fabric was thin enough that her warmth came through.
"This is my first dance," she said. Quiet. Looking at my collar instead of my face. "With anyone."
"Mine too. In this body."
She looked up. Head tilt.
"I mean, I've never danced at a formal event." Quick recovery. "Not my thing."
She accepted that. Or let it go. With Ais, the difference wasn't always clear.
The music swelled for a turn and I pulled her closer to compensate. Her body moved with it, muscle memory from combat translating just enough to follow the redirect, and for a second she was close enough that her hair brushed my jaw. Her breath caught. A tiny sound, almost nothing. She didn't pull back.
Neither did I.
We stayed that way through the rest of the song, close enough that her breathing was warm against my collar, her hand on my shoulder, mine on her waist, and when the music stopped we stood there in the pause between songs and neither of us moved.
Then Tiona yelled "GET IT, BELL!" from beside the punch bowl and the moment broke. Ais stepped back. Her cheeks had the faintest color to them, barely visible in the gold light.
"Same time tomorrow," she said. "At the wall."
"I'll be there."
She walked away. Tiona intercepted her at the punch bowl and said something that made Ais's ears turn pink.
I went to find Hestia. She was at the shrimp table with a red-haired goddess in an eyepatch. They were talking close, heads together, and Hestia's face was tight. When she saw me coming, she stepped back and put on a smile.
"Bell! This is Hephaestus. She's an old friend."
The goddess with the eyepatch looked at me. Crimson eye, sharp face, neck-length red hair. She examined me like raw material, measuring grain and tensile strength before deciding what to make. The eyepatch sat over her right eye, and the skin at its edges was slightly uneven. I didn't stare. She noticed, and her mouth relaxed by a fraction.
"So you're the one she won't shut up about," Hephaestus said. "You'd better be worth it."
Hestia's face went red. "Hephaestus!"
"What? You kneeled on my doorstep for thirty hours. The boy should know what he's worth to you."
Hestia grabbed my arm and pulled me away. "We're leaving. Bye, Hephaestus. Thank you. Goodbye."
On the walk home, she didn't let go of my arm. The streets were dark and the music from the Banquet faded behind us. She was warm against my side and her grip was tighter than necessary.
"She shouldn't have said that," Hestia muttered.
"The dogeza?"
She went stiff. "You knew?"
"I knew you were gone for thirty hours and came back looking like you'd been hit by a cart."
She was quiet for a block. Then, small: "I can't tell you what it's for yet."
"Okay."
"But it's for you." Her grip on my arm tightened. "Everything I do is for you. You know that, right?"
I looked down at her. Four foot seven, debt she'd never pay off, bags under her eyes she'd tried to cover with makeup that was wearing off. She was looking up at me and her blue eyes were fierce.
"I know," I said.
She leaned her head against my arm and we walked the rest of the way home.