Thessia | Parnitha System | Athena Nebula | 2180

(Definition of terms at the end of the chapter)

Tevos cannot stand being inside a ship she can't see out of. She knows it's beyond ridiculous-what good will her eyes do?-but it's something she needs. She told the pilot she was up here to sign off with the Nefrane's captain but she's not sure her feet will work.

"Citadel-One, you are cleared for launch. Pleasure having you aboard, Councilor. Goddess light your path."

She presses a finger to her omni.

"May the rains be gentle, the fires warm and the hunts easy, Captain."

The pilot of Citadel-One detaches the ship from underside of the Nefrane's hangar and taps the thrusters, passing between two Sunfish fighters which angle their flattened hulls to let the larger corvette slip between them, sliding out of the atmosphere containment field and performing at least four maneuvers with two flicks of her gloved fingers and intimate familiarity with ships, mass effect, and momentum.

"You're welcome to have a seat, Madam Councilor. Soon as I ping the Exclusion Zone, we're going to be moving slow. Twenty, thirty minutes at least to these...coordinates...inside..."

The pilot forces a cough. She glances from her controls, to the etching glass map Tevos scrawled out, and back. She soon decides against digging. She's seen Tevos' face and any huntress worth handing a rock and a stick-let alone training as a pilot-knows that Officers of The Thirty conceal their identities at any cost. A name and a face cannot be paired with the office she holds.

So the pilot doesn't ask.

"Taking the hint and flying the ship, ma'am. But feel free to have a seat. Once we hit atmo, not much more to see than being on the ground."

"I'm fine," she replies, her voice stiff and fast as an arrow.

"It's a marvelous view. If you're not using the stateroom, let me reconfigure the internal barriers," the pilot replies, accepting and honoring her quirk without commenting on it. "Better to protect you and your daughters than your luggage, don't you think?"

The mention of Liselle and Lycoris loosens the knot in her back, but does not banish it.

The pilot nods at Thessia.

"That's why we both took the job, ma'am, isn't it? Keep her safe."

"Yes. Goddess, she's beautiful. I never have gotten used to seeing Thessia like this."

Thessia sparkles below them, the massive Tescani continent sprawled pole to pole, wrapping the seas around it rather than the seas wrapping around the land, taking half the planet for itself and leaving the other to the Great Ocean.

Just past the pilot's helmet and falling into night, Anerzesa swallows the top third of the continent, half of it in darkness with a few pinpricks-the cities large enough to be seen from orbit-with the wild, little-settled spaces forming the bulk of the Republic. The lands of T'Reve are in the east and T'Lessa in the west. The city of Revan that she must protect lies as far north and as far east as bare soil and open water reaches, with the Citadel's walls touching the sea to the east, ice to the north, and the rest of the city to south sheltered from the glacier's grind. The lights of Revan's sister city Lessana far to the west are kept dim, to protect migrating birds. To the south, Armali's lights are like a bonfire across the middle third of the western shore. Serrice's city limits are outlined with precision by the welding pits of her shipyards and the entirety of her lands is well-lit and dotted with smaller cities that feed her.

Nestled in a craggy gash in dirty-white mountains is Sonalere, the fourth pillar of Western Tescani and the southernmost city that has a port that's open from ice year-round.

Straight ahead, Ulee and Inens share the center of the continent and the Entean peaks, with Ulee claiming the plains with their mines and farms and ore-rich hills west of the mountains, and Inens claiming the forest and grasslands east. Between two forks in the mountain range, Kessil keeps ancient ways around the comet-crater lake the locals call Athame's Warning. The Kendran trade cities dating back to oars and sail break up Inens' borders just before they reach the sea, like a string of beads on the coastal mountains, each one a curl of buildings around a natural harbor.

Dassus hums with activity with VI-piloted eezo freighters snaking up long, even lines to the ships they will load, all manner of vessels sharing an orbital channel so crowded that it nearly hides the grand city entirely and breaks up the outline of the eastern shores.

Attena holds the fertile crescent on the rain-misted southeastern shore, speckled with marshes that spill into deep lakes, and separated from Inens' grass by a desert and thick rainforests watered by the storms.

Ressent's narrow strip of land-flat, grassy, dry-blends northern Tescani into the Southern half, with Tauvos laying claim where grass becomes pines and mosses, while the Nartin are content with only their ice.

The pilot weaves between fighters, other corvettes, picket ships, and tenders that buzz around the Nefrane like moths pollinating a flower.

Visible as a violet dot atop the white splotch of the Majesan continent-brutal, stormy, and thinly inhabited-Monarra's coastal cities could be mistaken for flecks on the glass-is the Cybean. The unique battlecruiser's engine panels have been unfurled, and space-suited scientists are clambering over the drive core, trying to discern precisely what model was accidentally installed and how the cruiser ended up with the power output of a dreadnought. Twelve updated barrier generators arranged in drydock frames for each vessel are being spot-checked by technicians, and long gun nacelles are being finished at the other end of the shipyard, Silaris-clad and angled to slide into the space-frame.

Three later Cybean-class vessels awaiting retrofit face outward, protecting their clever older sister while she sleeps so they can learn to imitate her.

"I'm actually qualified to fly that," the pilot quips.

"Helm it, I suppose. Battlecruisers don't dance like a Valyhawk."

Tevos fusses with the sleeve of her gown.

"And what fun is life without dance?"

"Not much! Bondmate is an elcor, so dancing isn't exactly on the table."

"One must never underestimate a taele on the cusp," Tevos babbles.

"You're telling me!" the pilot chortles. "Rueful admiration: I swear my daughters were born with stims for blood."

Tevos forces her feet away, hoping that she can stop panicking by checking in on Liselle in the ship's greeting area.

Goddess cast shadow over the wardrobe expectations for a successful matron. Floor-length, somber, gently corseted, skirted, and un-decorated by ruffle, embroidery or anything but the body within. These are matriarchal fashions. She won't belong in them for two centuries, perhaps more.

Aria would blind in this, with her larger-than-life frame cradled by curves generous as the seas. Then again, that's sort of the point of Aria's style, Tevos supposes; Aria has fully embraced the idea of hotness over beauty, her stance, her motion, her hungry eyes and ever-flirting lips. Tight clothing and arresting motion replacing the latest fashions or the smoothest words. Aria was hot long before the turians and quarians stole that term from the humans.

Hottest being in the galaxy. As her bondmate, Tevos might be biased, but she could likely get a vote through the forums on maidens alone if she could just find a way to post it slyly.

She, on the other hand, does not have the hips for this and wouldn't have the bust if she nursed two more daughters in the next decade. Her tailor is beyond reproach-and the most delicious source of batarian gossip-but there is nothing to be done.

"You look great, ainthar," Liselle says without looking up. Tevos sucks in a ragged breath. Ainthar. Inspiration. As if she could have inspired her from the depths of Aria.

"Your mom's idea, wasn't that?"

"Just her observation that you could be. No one knows how long you have been together. Pretend you raised me and bonded later. Prevents questions. I asked. Nyreen agrees with it...except you have to play rockball with us next time."

Oh, Goddess. Who throws a ball standing on a sloped pile of boulders, in gravity…for fun?

"Hmm."

Liselle grins, well aware that she's right. Simple, direct deception will do, and goes back to her tutor's work on oration, seduction, and salarian cultural quirks.

The Thirty know of Lycoris. How could they not? One of their own, on the Council-rare enough, they prefer minor clans or clanless for the role-and some great secret love and birthing her first? She flew to the Student's Hall, as is custom, for the recording of a new Daughter. Aria was a shadow most of the guards never saw-never wanting to allow what was hers out of her sight-and old friends from every house present stopped by to comment on Ly's eyes, or her attentiveness to nearby elders even with her fists in Tevos' dress and pulses of biotic energy running down her arm to quiet her.

Benezia had already given her praise by vid-off with that turian on some mad quest to either tame or slay the galaxy's horrors, as is the T'Soni way-and blessedly few of the matriarchs that Tevos did not want to see were in attendance that day. She collected many new names and faces: Maidens attending the hall to speak and not to listen, wide-eyed and trembling with gratitude, late-joining matrons, and even the newly-elected B'Kapaesii representative for the colony at Hyetiana.

Even old Akkru K'Teyen chimed in, thus disproving the theory that she was in fact dead and just stayed in her chair at the Great Table, far too sturdy and wise to rot. She rapped her palm down on a T'Van maiden's greedy fingers as they snuck towards a bowl of sweets, then the hulking matriarch rose like a primeval spirit-she is formidable at fourteen hundred-counted a few from the bowl into her big palm, and came over to offer crumbs on her fingertip.

Lycoris nipped her-toothless, but still-and while a sputtering Tevos dumped her brain upside down and shook it hoping to find an apology, the matriarch laughed. Akkru laughed as loud and harsh and honest as the krogan bondmates her family-Akkru included-take along with their asari. She pronounced Ly a lovely baby and a 'good mean pup' and lumbered back to the table to split the bowl of ajahe juice puffs with the properly chastened-and suitably awed-initiate from T'Van whose mother had no doubt lied and said that the massive, dusky-scaled and black-clad matriarch was statuary or some nonsense.

Tevos watches her girls. Lycoris turns in her basket, yawning without waking and drawing a soothing thumb along her crest and a chuckle from Liselle. She is the darling of the moment, the newest of their brood. Most of the matron daughters are bonded and mothered, and the maidens now are cousins and nieces, by and large, the direct daughters are either centuries from wanting to court and bond or embarrassed for options.

She will be the youngest for some time, barring any early-maiden feats of sexual athleticism from the younger T'Soni. Hopefully not. By all accounts, Liara was born with a matriarch's grimness. She is a T'Soni though, and Goddess alone knows what a bored T'Soni might do. Tevos remains short a lamp from Liara's earliest tangible biotic episode. Benezia ran out and gleefully asked the dazed elcor diplomat outside if she could take her picture with him. "Flattered: Yes. Concerned request: But under shelter, please. That hurt."

Lycoris is known.

Liselle is new. Liselle is her surprise for The Thirty.

"Goddess!"

Liselle's head jerks up, her textbook flung onto the seat beside her, one hand at her thigh, near one of Goddess knows how many weapons secreted away, and the other hand stretched over Lycoris' crib, crackling with biotics to shield her.

"Not that. I forgot to look at your outfit. Stand up, let me look at you."

"I must look the part, mustn't I?" she sighs.

She smiles white and toothy as a shark, stands, smooths down her dress.

Archetypically maiden: It has freedom to move, dance, and entice. Misbehave. 'Energy over assets,' Aethyta once huffed, pointing at a maiden and matriarch on the Presidium. The dress has no bodice, and only the clasps tighten it. The hang comes from gravity more than anything.

"Stand still."

"Feels weird," Liselle huffs, eyes on the ceiling as Tevos tilts her head up. "I'm not a prizefighting varren. We're all asari here, right?"

"The Council is mostly pureblood, yes. Some bondmates, of course, children from marriage or adoptions. A dozen turians between bondmates and including the bond-children, perhaps two dozen. Three krogan pups, where triads with two krogan had the luck."

"Right? Asari. Fancy asari. Bonding ceremony before eye contact asari. So I don't have to look...sexy."

Is she a maiden? Likely. She's nearly seventy. Liselle never talks about that, so either she isn't interested yet or she doesn't want her mother involved...

"Lissi," she murmurs, rubbing her shoulders.

"The Thirty are not shy about..."

"Purebloods?" Liselle whispers. "I'm ninety-five percent sure the word doesn't bite. Ninety-three, for sure."

Tevos chuckles.

"Two things spring to mind: You are not pureblood, daughter dear. Though you might seem it to others, especially in The Thirty. Between ourselves and the other clans who bond elsewhere, we can compare. We learn to see the differences. You do have the build and the face. Your mother's lineage is simply that strong."

"Families in The Thirty have more purebloods than the Peeresses or the clans. By far. We don't announce it but we also don't hide it. The asari know our clan names. Anyone who follows bonding notices and tabloids would see the pattern. Last I looked at the registry, all the officers have either an asari bondmate or an asari bondmate along with alien bondmates."

"Fascinating," she replies, keeping her chin up for no reason other than to seem put out.

Sarcasm won't hide that, little one. You jumped when you put it together.

"Turn around for me, let me see the whole thing," Tevos instructs.

Cut-outs on the collarbone and the back of the neck hint at-but don't offer-cleavage and just barely cover the fork of the spine. It's certainly a dress that could be seen as tawdry, loose enough to get hands inside it, caress the spines at both top and bottom with the pop of a few clasps. Being clasped and belted only increases the aggression, and the low positioning of the belt is all but phallic in implications, the indication being that of not just a maiden on the prowl, but a pureblood maiden at that and one not shy to admit it.

"Liselle?"

"Yeah?"

"Speaking of purebloods, did you know...that the popularity of trousers and belted fashions rose with the discovery of krogan and fell again, before returning with the discovery of humans, just recently?"

Think on it, clever daughter mine. What do krogan bondmates do to us that salarians and human females do not? What are human females accustomed to?

"Ah," Liselle replies, more a pop than a word, quite dark in the cheeks now. "So belts imply...who...right."

"And..." Tevos chuckles. "There have always been purebloods who kept to it."

"Can't imagine why," Liselle quips. She wrinkles her nose. "So I'm supposed to look like I want someone to tackle me, yank my dress up and cram my crown into her azure?"

Tevos smiles.

"Not one eye would blink if you came out of this gathering with an encounter or two, or even something serious. Some have met their siame within The Thirty, as maidens."

"You're joking."

"How much has your mother told you about The Thirty? Wait!"

Tevos holds up a hand.

"A summary, please. I'm sure some of it was quite colorful."

"Without the swears? Wow. Going to take a while to boil it down," Liselle jokes.

"Lissi."

"Fine. Besides complaining, or talking about a person she didn't like? Really just made it sound like a bank or a monastery. Somewhere people went when they were afraid to live."

"I can assure you, it's not," Tevos huffs, smoothing down one of countless silk petals on the dress. "After the business is done for the day, we relax. Of all our faults, moderation is rarely one of them."

She lifts Liselle's hand and pats it.

"Thank you, darling. One last torture, I'm afraid. Step back so I can see what your dress communicates, not how it looks. Not the dress, the signals."

"Communicates that I'm wearing clothes," she huffs. "It signals that my bits won't get cold."

Tevos ignores her.

Off the shelf made sense, they all agreed-Liselle is not likely to suddenly become an aficionado of dresses-and Omal'te could conceal the fact. Tevos fully believes the over-cheerful and talkative seamstress could outfit a dalatrass using just some thread and rags.

Petals and petals of gauzy silk cascade from shoulders to waist and the protective weaves they conceal are transparent too, layering glacial blues and purples of Anerzesa atop the actual silk: A tangle of yellow, red, and orange.

Armali blaze.

On the street, this would not merit a glance: Whenever asari fashion is not Kendran by weight of the popularity of the design houses, it is leather, silk, ravion-wool, anything in Armali blaze for its sheer luxury and implied opulence. Every maiden who must attend parties likely owns a dress like this, and in Armali blaze.

But The Thirty will notice. To them, this dress might seem like a disguise, like her Houses' colors might melt and reveal Liselle T'Amal under it all. Tevos shocked herself, the implications not having hit until when she got home. She had selected a dress that put Liselle in her mother's House colors, with hers outside them. Tevos fretted but Aria scoffed, waved Lycoris' tiny hand in a dismissive flick, and sprawled back on the couch with her daughter's crests tucked under chin. She opined that it would be a dress that destroys The Thirty.

Tevos merely gave Omal'te a color palette and designs for the clasps and belt. She could see her forming an idea with a single pass of four keen eyes over the silhouette cast by a trembling Liselle-Turn, please? That's good, love. Hold. Now, arm above your head? Curl your wrist, like you're bowing. Oh, she is marvelous!-she had been complaining all day that dressmakers as a concept and being looked over nude even as an outline in a shadowbox were new experiences for her. One day and three stores for the outfit to claim a Daughter is unheard of, unless she is too young to be out of robes.

Omal'te is a gem.

"You look like you're mine," Tevos murmurs. "Good."

"Imagine my confusion as to whether absolute strangers or you were my family!"

She strokes one of the most brazenly House T'Reve adornments: White quartz clasps cut like icebergs that cross left to right, each one cinching the sides in just slightly as they close the gap. Tevos notes that no fewer than four at the bottom are open, baring purple flesh and fissures of muscle from hipbone to navel.

Tevos huffs.

"Lissi."

"Oh, fine."

"Here, let me. My angle is better."

She does the clasps up, fingers stilling around the last. Black quartz, not white. Formless, half-spherical-blank-a deliberate inclusion of nothing that indicates that another family has claimed Liselle in secret.

"Belt's crooked."

"S'not," Liselle insists. "It's straight."

"That's the problem. Left side," Tevos instructs, patting well above her hip. "Slanted down to right. Just above the line of clasps. It should call attention to your breasts and your hips, as it crosses."

"Fuck a pyjack!" she hisses. "She said straight and under. I knew she was messing with me."

"Oh? Who's she?"

"S'not important," she insists, her cheeks darkening from purple nearly to black.

"Your color disagrees, beloved daughter. But I can wait for you to come to me."

She taps on the buckle of the belt: Chromed steel cut in the outline of the warp-sword Lament.

"Goddess," Tevos sighs. "Still not used to seeing that monster again. Let alone on my daughter's hip. So heavy. I think sparring with Lament is why I chose to become a diplomat," she jokes, glancing at the leviathan-bone handle peeking through the lowest silk.

At the last equinox of Kurinth, Tevos and Aria took Liselle to the rocky beach in the shadow of the T'Reve citadel, waded into the ocean with her and each gave Liselle warp-blades from their house. No matter how this meeting goes, on that night under auroras and slow-drifting snow, Liselle was made a Daughter of The Thirty.

It was a more combative way of announcing Lissi's status than Tevos would like, but effective: When they returned, heads turned on the Presidium, asari who had never noticed Liselle's presence before saw old titles, old families, old ways.

Lament hangs on Liselle's left hip-the sun's side, the Art's side, the honorable side-proudly proclaiming her the Heiress. Leviathan bone reinforced with steel before being eezo clad. Brutishly heavy. A long blade tipped with a fat, thickened hook at the tip. A blade made for hunting first and war second. Long enough to give distance from the beast, but light enough to fast-step away to dodge fang or claw, handled like a scythe for leverage, and capable of cracking a shark's skull, even unenergized by the wielder's biotics.

Strapped to her right thigh-night's side, knife's side, secret side-hangs a pair of matte-black scabbards of unadorned metal with a generous loop of void-black chain between them. Modern, and likely sturdier than most through the ages, but no doubt the least exciting sheath the Feathers of Fire have ever resided in. Whip-daggers are difficult to train with; like using two knives and a whip at once but exceptionally lethal in the hands of a nimble and aggressive huntress. The Feathers were lavished with attention, detailed and decorated as meticulously as Armali's palaces and are cored with spent eezo from the excavations to build Armali's center. They were edged with refined eezo laced with impure strands. Rather than blue, it sizzles with fiery yellows and reds when excited. A weapon rare in form, and unique in color when lit.

As opulent and flamboyant as Armali and her people, the Feathers are celebrated in songs, paintings, and sculptures all over the Republic. Curious that they were never officially reported missing from House T'Amal vaults. It's the sort of thing to publicly condemn and garner sympathy from. Hardly embarrassing enough to cover up.

Goddess be praised that dueling and sparring with live blades is long abandoned. Tevos knows her little girl fights like the Omegan she grew up as: Careless of style, fast and hard. She would draw the right weapon for the task without a thought to the political shockwaves.

She strokes Liselle's cheek. "One way or another, a day will come when you will make all of Thessia look up and gasp. How goes your reading?"

"Actually, I'm not so sure. In terms of my education..." Liselle trails into a sigh.

"Tutors were hard to come by on Omega, I assume."

"So was good comm signal. I got it in," Liselle sighs, tapping her finger to her temple. "But slowly and mostly from books. I'm catching up on five years."

As soon as they agreed on Liselle and Lycoris entering The Thirty, she brought in the usual tutors quietly through Benezia, the fourth soul to know who Liselle was. Nezzy's always good with secrecy and never too cruel when such massive favors must be repaid. Liselle cannot be seen to be the daughter of two of The Thirty, not yet, not as things stand with Aria's family. Her disappearance has left the richest family on Thessia without a clear, credible heir for almost nine centuries. Either her return or the reveal of Liselle's parentage–-and one would surely lead to discovering the other-would turn The Thirty into a shouting match. With their mood, they set that of the Peeresses, the clans, the clanless matriarchs, and the asari.

Strange that no one has made the connection between the famously handsome and irreverent Heir of Flame that disappeared nine centuries ago, and the warlord of Omega. Even then a schemer, Aria fled the night after her maidenhood rite of passage and thus had affirmed her rights as the heir, but the night before her house duties were bestowed. Left a pack of disappointed suitors. How curious then, that a warlord who soon arose, seeking to build a federation or empire or something from the galaxy's scraps. As suited to the ruling part of ruling Omega and the Terminus as she was to conquering it.

A maiden groomed to lead a nation went missing from an old place and a scant four decades later, a queen rose in a place that never had any leaders at all. Tevos has never felt the need to ask and perhaps reopen a wound, but she thinks it was not responsibility or challenge Aria feared, and certainly not having a legacy. She feared lack of choice in which and where.

Every matriarch on Thessia might be blue-violet colorblind, given how long the ruse has gone on and how few asari of any status have Aria's ajahe fruit complexion and scales so smooth.

"Do I look like all the right things?" Liselle asks.

Tevos goes on tiptoe and kisses her cheek.

"You're my daughter, so yes. But the dress is perfect too."

Liselle sweeps the skirt under herself as she settles back on the couch.


"You sure, ma'am?"

"I am certain, Huntress Xenfal. Sensors off, camera and cockpit facing away from the facility on approach and exit. I have separate transit out. Stay in-system. You'll have a couple of hours' warning before I'm ready to leave. Until then, consider yourself off duty."

"I...of course. Thank you, ma'am, for remembering my name. Feel like I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't mention that's a fifty-meter drop. In the mountains. With cross-wind. I do not want to be the first Citadel-One pilot to splat a Councilor on a landing pad."

"Good thing I excelled at gymnastics," Tevos jokes. "You won't be."

"Well, now I wish I could watch. Be careful, ma'am. And good luck with...whatever Goddess-shadowed nonsense you're up to."

Liselle checks the straps on her knives, draws the shawl around her shoulders, taps her sister's nose, and then seals Lycoris' crib.

"I'm sure you want to, little fish. But when you're older."

Tevos spins.

"You will not be teaching your si-oh, Goddess. It's like I don't know who raised you," Tevos mutters.

Liselle looks ready to dissolve into giggles.

"Liselle Nyreen Aria T'Reve T'Loak, listen to me. You will be careful when teaching your sister anything dangerous."

The intercom blinks three times before the pilot opens the channel. Polite, discreet, and beyond skilled. She will have to ask for Huntress Xenfal to be assigned to Citadel-One permanently.

"We're over the pad now, ma'am!"

Liselle hoists Lycoris' crib onto her shoulders, secures the straps, checks the buckle, and hits the button for the door. Mountain air blasts through the cabin. With a grin and a salute, she leaps, back-flipping twice before calling on her biotics.

Tevos springs from the shuttle, calling upon her own gifts to lighten herself. The pilot was right. Crosswind is going to be a problem. She's not much heavier than a feather and feathers blow away in the wind. Liselle seems to have solved this by lunging at the platform feet-first like she's making a flying kick to a krogan's skull, using a lash she's wrapped around a landing pylon to pull herself down.

Why didn't I think of that?


Inside the hall, three maidens pile against the nearest window like malyk cubs crawling over their mother. One of the as servants-a taele who is both too young and distantly separated from her family's Officeholder to participate-spotted the ship passing over and left a note on the tray, under the wine bottle.

"Kiva! Quit it, you're taking up the whole window."

"Not my fault you're so short, Dyen. You sure your father wasn't a volus?"

"Goddess, shut up, both of you! I'm just here to see Lycoris."

"Uh huh, Neata. Totally not because some daughter our age is about to be inducted in secret by the Councilor. Absolutely not angling to get fucked into a little blue smear on the stone. I totally believe you."

"Must you be so crass? Besides, it's hardly like a T'Van can just get invol-oh."

"Apologies, Justicar. I forget how sex was banned in Arm-oh, wow. She's good. It's like watching a malyk pounce on a grouse without disturbing a feather."

"Did she just crack the landing pad? Bet she fucks like a malyk, too. One moment I'm dressed, I hear a growl behind me, the next moment my dress is in scraps and I'm face down."

"Absolutely. Do you see how tall she is? Goddess. She could...like a snake...I'd...all wrapped up...never get loose..."

"Breathe, Neata. She's not going to spare you a look if you're passed out."

"Shit! The Councilor saw us! Try to look..."

A shadow falls across the window and the wall to either side. Twice as broad as any of them, and tall enough to cover the window. Unmistakably the great, ancient, krogan-fathered Akkru K'Teyen, co-Protector of Monoi. The only other matriarch as frightening would be Aethyta T'Vasir, and she tends to stick to shadows and corners.

"Presentable would suffice," she rumbles. The ancient matriarch's voice is like rocks tumbling down a mountainside, echoing in the stone hall.

"Apologies, Matriarch K'Teyen. Prosperity, wisdom and health to you. How are the crops and herds on Lusia?"

"I am well, Kiva, thank you. The ravages of age seem to find me as frightening as your friends do."

"And the family was blessed with a pup this winter. My niece was so elated. Tried for a century and lost all the others. Goddess take the genophage. And ladies, mind Kiva's example just now. Maiden Dantius did not protest, nor did she deny making her error. She displayed politeness, chose a proper topic, and showed interest in my House's affairs. But do fix your dress, Kiva dear. Esteem is lost when you spill your breasts out all over the dining table. Personal experience."

"Really?" Neata exclaims.

"A story you might earn...one day. But a story for another time," the giantess and reigning maiden-herder of The Thirty jokes.

"Go back to the parlor. This is a somber moment. Claiming a daughter from an anonymous bondmate..."

She huffs.

"Stormy seas or quiet and there's no way to know yet. We socialize after the ceremony, fast-fish."

The matriarch is gone as silently as she arrived.

Outside, heating pylons light up along the path indoors. Black clad, black-helmeted huntresses in T'Reve and unmarked armor approach the figures in the distance, salute, and take up flanking guard, two to a side.

"She gone?" Neata whispers.

"Think so," Dyen replies.

"Group effort, right?"

Kiva glances at the tall form of the stranger. Alert as the soldiers beside her, hand on hip in easy reach of the knives hidden in the plain scabbard on her muscular thigh. She can just imagine her in huntress leathers, or a racing pilot's skin-tight suit.

"She looks like she can handle all three of us. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"Agreed."


Liselle feels more like she's entered a back alley on Omega than that she's striding through the halls of power. The marble cladding over the hand-chiseled bedrock says one thing, the giggles and silk-clad shadows flitting in and out of parlors and bedrooms along the main hall say another.

"Ainthar," she whispers, surprised she remembers the ruse. "Help."

She only gets a near miss-pat on the shoulder. Her mother is far too engrossed with soothing a gleeful Lycoris who seems to want to drop from a spaceship in a blizzard again and checking in with Aria over vid-link.

Tevos' second attempt connects and a family meld flickers between them.

There are many maidens here your age, or a bit older. You're new, mysterious, and you have your mother's looks. It's flattery, Lissi, not an ambush. Take it as such.

I'll try.

Her mother turns back to her omni and her call.

"You sure you'll be alright, Aria? It's been years."

"Pet, it's Armali. I grew up here, and I loved sneaking away from my protectors. Just because I haven't been here recently doesn't mean I don't remember the place. I remember most of the worst alleys. I could make my way blind through this eezo-paved monument to self-importance. The old districts never change much. Shop owners change, but not the shops, and never the streets or buildings."

"Tev, focus on what you're doing. Let those old grouse-hens fawn over Ly and keep the sharks off Lissi. I think," Aria smirks. "Someone or someones may be worried as I am about some heiress snatching her eye. Someone who already matters to her."

Liselle smirks.

She is her mother's daughter.


Tevos raises her hand and wraps it in the Art. She's about to knock on the door to the Great Hall when a voice echoes down the hallway.

"Councilor!"

She turns to see a teal-scaled maiden in laboratory clothing sprinting down the hallway. Nimble but careless, sliding past a server who finds herself forced to use a ballerina's spin to keep her tray from spilling.

Her bodyguards train their weapons.

"Stop!"

Tevos turns and puts her hand on Archon Igeni's rifle.

"Guns down," she hisses, before turning to Mylei and doing the same.

Skidding to a stop in front of her, the maiden flicks her eyes from weapon to weapon. No fear, even with such a well-armed squadron facing her down.

No fear. Eyes as pale and blue as the light of the Art itself. Disinterest in fashion or expectations...

"Liara? It's been decades. I hadn't seen you grow into your good looks," she jokes.

"Greetings, Councilor. Matria-" Liara swallows her mistake. "Matron T'Reve. I was instructed to give this to you."

She holds out a large datapad and a read-only storage device.

"My..." Liara stammers.

"She is your mother, Liara. Call her such," Tevos teases.

"Yes. I was on the planet seeking a grant, and Archon Shiala gave this to me. She said that mother said I was to give it to you, and only you."

What would Benezia send the leader of her guard to courier a disk and pad and then have her daughter bring it to me, here? Benezia must know how Liara feels about the place...

"Archon Igeni, find us a secure room. No data terminals, no appliances, natural lighting. Wait outside. Liara, Liselle, follow me. Both our families are adrift in these waters already, if it is what I think."

Neata T'Van hurries over from a nearby parlor favored by maidens inducted but not that interested, lifting her skirts with her biotics. Her eyes rake Liselle before she holds her hand out for a greeting meld and gestures at a finally sleeping Lycoris.

"Matron T'Reve. Heiress T'Reve. Heiress T'Soni. May I?"

"Mylei, go with her."

Mylei salutes. Neata gathers up Lycoris, shushing the mostly-sleeping child with a murmured Armalic lullaby. They split off to the parlor, where half a dozen gleeful maidens can be seen and a few matrons in the back of the room, waiting to fawn.

"Your daughter seems to be quite popular," Liara notes.

"As were you before her, when you were that age. As yours will be, most likely. Daughters of Officeholders and daughters of Heiresses are few of late."


"Goddess."

Liara's nearly as pale as her jumpsuit-the side is stained with dust, Tevos notes fondly-after seeing that.

"It's certainly not good," Tevos agrees.

"Not good?" Liselle sputters. "Not good? That's a pyjak-fucking ardat kill. On Earth. Found by human police and taken to a human hospital where they're going to notice something, maybe everything that's unusual about it. With a name written in the mirror. Not that I know who Morinth is."

"She should be dead," Tevos mutters.

"Perhaps the Justicar failed? Was deceived?" Liara suggests. "Rare, but not unheard of."

"She was not killed by a Justicar, Liara."

By your father. Not that I can tell her that. Goddess, Aethyta. Get up the courage to tell her she's yours.

"By The Thirty. And we have a body. A close match genetically."

A perfect match, Tevos reminds herself. The Will of Sunset put her down.

"Was the agent...competent?" Liara asks.

"Extremely. You would like her, Liara."

"I find that unlikely."

"Nearly everything about you is unlikely, Liara. Someone like you being the Heiress T'Soni is beyond unlikely. Embrace it."

How long will you make me lie to this brilliant daughter of yours, old friend?

"Liara, how easily can you contact your mother? Securely. We must treat this as we would treat the command codes for the Destiny Ascension."

"Goddess! Half a day, perhaps a day, to contact her at all. When she travels with Saren," Liara huffs. "She likes to make me wait. With that sort of restriction? Perhaps two more, if she's far enough from a terminal."

"Do so, please. I shall reach out to my bondmate."

Liara's 'eyebrow' rises. It's a curiously current and human-style tattoo for a recluse.

"I wondered if my mother was joking," she admits. "But I see Aria in you, Liselle. And having had to refuel at Omega once, I still remember it. I doubt anyone less forceful could distract our councilor from her duties. It seems we all have preparations to make. Goddess go with you, Councilor."


I write various things for various sites including AO3, and others (see my profile).

If you want to know more, I have a Tumblr (alephthirteen-writes dot tumblr dot com) that ties it all together-every site I touch, I link there in a pinned note-and I also I post musings and ramblings about my various headcanons, characterizations, character and trope rants both for and against, and follow fanartists I like.


ilai'kis or 'crown' - The ilai'kis (Zessau dialect, 'blue flower' after a particular form of Maidens' Blush wildflowers) or 'crown' are a group of smooth, touch-seeking, mobile structures in asari genitalia, rooted just inside the birth canal. Made up of a series of thirteen 'fronds' or 'tendrils' that seek out contact with the other partner. Fronds are massively sensitive to touch, heat, neurological activity and, to a smaller degree, taste. Typically, far longer and thicker in purebloods, as well as being more active and more controllable with practice.

See "Asari - External Anatomy" under "Intelligence" in the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex

GB or "The Goddess' Breath" - A massive and fantastically expensive quantum entanglement communications hub which connects all the Republics, both Thessian and off-world, a handful of major non-aligned colonies like Ilium, and the command centers for all ten Fleets of the Republican Navy.

GBXZ or "Goddess' Breath Exclusion Zone" - A multi-layer defensive perimeter surrounding the militarily and culturally critical quantum entanglement communications hub known as Goddess' Breath. The only facilities inside the innermost region (200km) of the GBXZ besides the array itself are a crisis bunker for Republican leadership staffed by top officials' subordinates at all times as well as a privately owned, heavily fortified and judging by architecture and landing pads residential structure visible on a mountain several kilometers away.

See "Asari Military Doctrines - Unified Communications" under "Intelligence" in the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex

'Goddess cast shadow' - With the exception of Three Taboos-slavery, lover-killing, and child-killing-it is hard to find anything related to a concept of sin in Athamism, which also does not recognize a form of afterlife meant for punishment. Therefore traditionalist, pious or well-educated asari might say 'there is a 'shadow over her' for a friend who is behaving less than virtuously or 'Goddess cast shadow' over indicating that someone or something should be denied her light.