Amo shook their head. “You can’t quit. That’s not how this works.”
“The fuck it’s not.” Bitterness weighed on her words. “I quit the war. I’m done with you and the others in that stupid little fish shop. I have something here. Peace. A home. I’m not sacrificing that for Pharaul.”
“What are you talking about?” Amo could’ve kept the frustration from sharpening their voice, kept it from pulling down their brow, but they let it in. “Nothing you have here is real, Indirk. It’s a cover. Your home is back in Pharaul.”
“I don’t have a home in Pharaul,” Indirk spat. “I don’t have a family. I don’t even have you!”
An ache rose in Amo’s chest, and they took an extra breath. “Of course you have me.”
“Then why the fuck are you so surprised?” Indirk paced, steps small, head swaying heavily. “If you were paying attention you would’ve seen this coming. Here in Gray Watch?” Her voice grew louder as she spoke. “I am Indirk Correlon. I have a job, a career, where I’m safe and respected and good at what I do.” She bundled her hands into shaking fists. “I have an apartment in a nice part of town with a landlord that I get along with. I have a pet. I have friends!” She punched at the air and shouted, “I have a fucking retirement account at the tax office! What the fuck do I have in Pharaul?” and she turned on Amo with a bitter, angry chuckle, “A room in my foster mother’s house? A military pension that’ll pay just enough for me to die alone in some dismal flat?”
Amo stood their ground, keeping their tone stubbornly calm. “Your mom said you could be a candidate for the Seat of the Warmaker in a few years.”
“So, what, I maybe get to be a politician before I die? Does that sound like me?”
Amo eyed the churning shadows. Still, just birds. “No. It doesn’t.”
Indirk suddenly swept toward Amo. “Look at my hands.”
Amo flinched back. “What?”
She lifted her clawed hands and shoved them in Amo’s face. “Look at my hands! Look at how old they are!”
“What do you…?” Amo tried to retreat, but Indirk kept up, and Amo did look at her hands. It wasn’t something they’d ever really done before, eying the definition of tendon and vein, the lines on the knuckles. It was true that she did not have a young woman’s hands. Really, she had the hands of an older woman, but still, “What do you want me to see?”
“They’re withering. My death is setting in early.”
Amo knocked her hands away from them. “You’re being paranoid.”
“It’s a fact.” Indirk turned her back on Amo, pacing away and rubbing her hands together. “They ache. They’re not healing right from the other night. I knew it would happen. It’s a price the Green Voice makes us pay, children of the Laines who don’t stay close to the Deepwood, who banish the Voice from our blood. A choice I made when I was too little, just a little girl who couldn’t imagine ever being old.”
Watching her, Amo thought about Phaeduin. Amo had watched carefully as the old alpin had taken off his armor to clean the blood from it. Even just in the time they’d spent in Gray Watch, Phaeduin had aged so quickly, his gently blonde fur going white and thin, his body narrowing, his cheeks and brow sharpening upon his face. It wasn’t something one often watched in real time like that. Once an anthral’s death began to set in, it didn’t take long. Phaeduin would be dead before the end of the year, and they all knew it, Phaeduin best of all.
Amo looked Indirk over. She’d been young for so long. Still acted young. Amo hadn’t thought, ever, about how long either of them had been alive. How long had they been serving in the Pharaul’s spy corps? Had it been a decade? Longer? Amo could’ve started counting years, but they just said, “How long do you think you have left, Indirk?”
“A couple years,” Indirk said, resigned. She shook her hands to either side. “This is just a warning sign. I’ve probably got two or three years before it really starts to set in. I don’t think I’ll be lucky. Not like you, never looking like your age at all.”
Looking down at their own hands, at the close black gloves that Sgathaich had conjured for them, Amo knew that beneath that their hands were still as youthful as they’d been when they’d started. It wasn’t luck. Amo had always known they’d outlive Indirk. Maybe, Amo wondered, just maybe, they’d actually lost track of time. Had they really paid so little attention?
“I’m not ready to be done,” Indirk was saying. “I never even got the chance to start. I want to have fun. I want to fall in love. I want to feel safe. Maybe I want to have some kind of family in a little apartment and just… Have the things I never had. Just small, normal things that everyone else gets to spend their entire lives with. Just for a little while before I die. Why should I give that up? Why should I offer what little life I have left to this war?”
Amo watched her. Indirk wasn’t weak, or small, or thin, and she was not yet old, but she moved like she thought she was. She grabbed her hands together in front of her, and her head lilted, and she took small careful steps. Maybe she was just in pain because she’d been hurt. Maybe she felt something inside the depths of her, in a place that Amo couldn’t see. “You make a good argument. You know if I could give you those things, help you live the life you want, I’d do it.”
Indirk looked over her shoulder at Amo, seeming disbelieving, though she said, “I know.”
“You know the others will go right to protocols, though. If one of us tries to go over to the other side… If a spy tries to quit…” Amo eyed the emptiness of the plaza around them. “If Nymir or Phaeduin or the others find out, Indirk, they’re going to be under orders to kill you.”
“I’m not afraid of them,” Indirk said flatly, keeping a careful eye on Amo. “They can’t stop me.”
“Hm. You could turn them over to Gray Watch if they tried. Make a deal with the Admiralty. Tell them all about all of us in exchange for this little life you want.”
Indirk looked away, pondering. She actually pondered it. “I’m not going to do that to you, Amo.”
Nodding, Amo said, “Indirk. You’d know I’d sacrifice for you. I’d fight for you, help you hide a body, help you kill anyone you want to kill, even if it was Phaeduin or Nymir. I wouldn’t even ask why. I’d die for you if it ever came up. I want you to be happy. Really. I’ll do whatever I need to do to make that happen, even if that’s getting out of the way so you can find some new happiness without me in the picture.”
Letting out a held breath, Indirk relaxed some. She chuckled a little. “Sorry for being so nervous.” Her hand had been in her pocket, resting on her pistol.
“But, Indirk.”
She straightened, turned, gaze wide.
Amo eyed her so flatly, said so simply, “I’m not going to sacrifice Pharaul for you. If you know me even a little bit, then you know that. This is bigger than us. I want you to be happy. I do. But Gray Watch is trying to burn Pharaul out of existence. So…”
Indirk breathed deep and tried to turn to face Amo, but felt some new pain cinch around her chest. It paralyzed her. “Amo. Don’t.”
“I’m sorry. I came here to make sure that this city falls. I came here to tear it down.” Amo looked Indirk over, seeing her pose, seeing her pain. Amo waited to feel their own ache, to see if their fear would win out, if the pain of betrayal would force them to change their mind. But it didn’t. So Amo said, “I’m going to be the end of Gray Watch, Indirk. Even if that means I need to bury you.”
