"You know, it really is quite beautiful down here."

"Beautiful," Varis said, turning to look at me.

I looked out and around at the vista all around us. There was faint illumination from the massive antigrav plates up above, holding Imperial Seat aloft.

There were also lights that twinkled off in the distance. No doubt from other bandit camps and places where people came down here to live. It created a sort of perpetual sparkling twilight with the glow of the antigrav up above providing a faint pulsing that was barely even there.

Like it was something I hadn't recognized before I had the whole chip implant thing with Arvie. It was definitely something I picked up on now.

"I mean, I'm not saying I'd want to build a summer home down here," I said. "But it really is kind of beautiful in its own strange way."

"I think you're the first person I've ever heard to describe the Undercity as beautiful," Varis said, staring at me like I'd lost my mind.

"Yeah, well, I have an appreciation for beautiful things," I said, winking at her.

She stared at me. I stared back at her. I suddenly got the creeping feeling from the link that I'd totally said the wrong thing and put my foot in my mouth based on the feelings coming through the link and the way she was looking at me.

"Was it something I said?" I asked with a shrug.

"Did you just compare me to the burnt-out ruins of a city that's been destroyed by nukes multiple times over?"

"I did nothing of the sort," I said.

"It sounded an awful lot like that's exactly what you did," Jeraj said, hitting me with a wink of his own.

"I don't need any help from you, thank you very much," I said.

"You never know," he said, pulling his sword out and swishing it around a few times. "You very well might need some help from me when all's said and done."

That earned us a nervous glance from Redaln. He was the livisk with the big shoulder pads. He glanced over at us as Jeraj said that. His eyes came to rest on the sword whipping through the air. Like he was imagining what it would feel like to find himself on the business end of that sword.

I wasn't looking forward to finding out what it would feel like to be on the business end of that sword because he was waving it around without thinking about what he was doing, and I'd already established a whole bunch of different abilities that would help me recover from that kind of thing. I eyed it warily as well.

"Could you maybe watch about flailing that thing around?" I asked. "You're going to put somebody's eye out."

With a little flourish, Jeraj quickly put the thing back into his sheath. He stuck his tongue out at me. Which seemed very unbecoming of a prince consort, but whatever. It was nice to know that at least some of the livisk had a sense of humor.

"Everybody's a critic," he said, rolling his eyes at me.

"Sorry, I just don't want to get accidentally stabbed," I said, grinning at him.

I turned to Olsen. "Are you sure this is the direction we should be going in?"

"Am I sure?" he said with a shrug. "Not really. Do I think this is generally the same direction we seemed to be going whenever it felt like we were getting close to the Spider and her lair? Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything."

"Yeah, I totally get it," I said. "But you're the man on the ground here, so I want to make sure we're at least sort of going in the right direction."

"Out of curiosity, what would you do if we weren't going in the right direction?" Olsen asked, seeming to pick up that I was using this as a conversation starter in front of the livisk as much as I was using it to try and get information.

"Well, I think that whoever betrayed us to bring us to someplace where we were being ambushed, or whatever, would be the first person to die at the very least," I said. "And I have a prince consort right here who can kill somebody very quickly and in a very messy way."

Again, the sword came out, and again Jeraj did that flourish. I turned and hit him with an irritated look, and he grinned and shrugged. He knew that was his cue to go ahead and do a little flourish and not get chewed out.

"Anyway," I said, "I just want to put that out there into the world. Maybe we might get betrayed, and maybe some of us might die, but whoever betrayed us would definitely die."

Again, Redaln glanced over at me and seemed exceedingly nervous. I wondered why he was so nervous. Was that just jitters because he knew I might kill him at any moment? Or was it something more?

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"Is there anything you would like me to do, William?" Arvie asked.

"Just stay frosty," I said in the mental link.

"On it," he said. "I wish I had more probes I could send out ahead to do some scouting."

"Yeah, well, that's the problem with coming down here with a minimal force because we wanted to try and keep things on the down low," I said through the mental link. "It means we have to improvise when the people we had down here with guns got separated from us."

"Definitely not your most shining hour," Arvie said.

"Thanks for the reminder," I said. "But we'll have to try and make something out of it."

"Indeed," Arvie said. "Do you think they'll hold to their bond?"

"Isn't that the livisk way?"

"It's a thing amongst the nobility and the warrior caste you have experience with since they're the ones you fought, but there's not as much known about livisk who have moved down to the Undercity."

"Like you're saying they might give up on all that honor bullshit because they came down here and checked out of livisk society," I said.

"Exactly," Arvie said.

"Something to keep in mind," I said, glancing at Redaln.

I pulled away from the mental link. Arvie tended to get annoyed if I spent too much time talking to him through the implant, for all that it felt like it was getting a little easier every time I had a mental conversation with him. I didn't think I was up to going out and taking on a bunch of fighters at the same time like I had earlier. But I wasn't as wobbly on my knees as I'd been even a little while ago, so that was something.

We were walking across what looked like the remains of a building that had fallen down almost horizontally across a massive dark chasm. It provided a convenient bridge over said giant chasm that seemed to go down into infinity. Eventually we'd have to hit bedrock or one of the lower levels of the city, though I didn't want to go for a swan dive to test that out.

Which had me thinking of something.

"You know, we never did get to see those Ancient ruins that were supposedly at the bottom of the reclamation mine," I said.

"What's that?" Varis asked.

"Supposedly there were Ancient ruins down at the bottom of that reclamation mine. Didn't somebody say that at some point?"

"I think so," she said. "But there are a lot of reclamation mines that claim they have Ancient ruins down at the bottom. It's sort of a thing overseers do to try and make their facility seem far more important than it actually is."

"I see," I said. "So it might've been so much bullshit."

"If the empress was so casually willing to blow it up, then yes. It might've been so much bullshit."

"Then again, the empress has shown herself to be really incompetent when it comes to stuff like that," I said.

"Not when it comes to Ancient ruins," Jeraj said. "She's very serious about that, and about trying to squeeze everything she can out of the reclamation mines that actually have access to that stuff."

"So the question becomes whether or not she would be so angry with me that she decided to blow up a golden goose like that," I said.

"I can see somebody getting that mad at you," Rachel said, hitting me with a wink.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, XO," I said.

"One of my jobs is to take you down a peg when you seem like you're getting too big for your britches, Captain," she said.

"I really like this Rachel woman," Varis said, leaning in and letting out a stag whisper.

"Yeah, I figured the two of you would get along just fine," I said.

I took another step and my legs went wobbly again. I stumbled, and that earned me an irritated glance from both Rachel and Varis. Like both suspected I was still trying my best to hide my implant-related issues.

"I'm fine, I promise," I said.

At least I'd be fine as long as we were walking right down the middle of this building that had been knocked on its side. If this was a narrow thing where one false step might send me hurtling down to the very lowest levels of the Undercity then I might've been more willing to ask one of them for help.

But I wasn't in that kind of danger. So I let my ego get in the way and kept walking even though I was still a touch wobbly.

Finally, we reached the end of the building. Some of our new livisk friends were moving down inside it through some of the windows in the side that'd been blasted open at some point.

My eyes narrowed. I didn't like it. Moving into a choke point like that seemed dangerous.

"Everybody stop," I said, holding a hand up in a fist.

That earned me some looks from the livisk outlaws, who all turned and stared up at me. A couple of them shared nervous glances with Redaln, who nodded to them. They only loosened up with that nod.

That was a problem. Livisk were supposed to be deferential to a fault to anybody they saw as their superior. Which should be us after all that bullshit saluting.

If they were looking to him for command advice? That meant they were still taking orders from him. Not us.

"Arvie, I need you to do something for me," I said, again brushing against the artificial mental link.

"You really shouldn't be talking to me this much via the implant," Arvie said. "Don't think I don't see the way your legs are wobbling and you're trying to pretend you still have the ability to walk unaided."

"Yeah, I know I need to take a rest at some point, but I think these assholes are up to something."

"You really are pushing yourself too hard, William," Arvie said.

"Because if I don't keep pushing myself, I'm going to be dead," I said. "We're all going to be dead."

There was a pause from the computer. A pause that was long enough that I could sense it even when my mind wasn't racing at the speed of computer.

"I did that pause on purpose to get your attention," he said.

"Really?" I said.

"Why do you sound disappointed?" Arvie asked.

"Because it takes all the fun out of getting you to pause like that if you know I'm trying to get you to pause like that and you start to do it on purpose," I said.

"My apologies, William. But I wanted to get your attention so I could make a point."

"And what point is that?" I asked.

"The point is you have other people all around you who are willing to help you out. Me, Olsen, Rachel, maybe Jeraj, and especially Varis. So why don't you start taking that help instead of trying to pretend like you have to do everything on your own?"

"I mean, I feel like I've been doing a pretty good job of things," I said.

"That might be so," Arvie said. "But you can't be everywhere at once trying to take on the empress. You need to delegate more when you find people you can trust to delegate to."

"Right," I muttered, pulling back and out. I looked around. Arvie was right. I looked to where they were gesturing for people to move down into that building. Only nobody was moving because I held that fist up.

"Something's wrong about this," I said. "It's a trap."

I even said it in the classic tone. Everybody was immediately on guard. Especially Olsen's people. They brought their weapons up just in time for the livisk who'd supposedly sworn allegiance to Varis on their own personal honor to break that personal honor by bringing up their own weapons and opening fire.

Shit.

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