Chapter 3-2
It turned out that the Brotherhood of the Striking 'Skelln wasn't a typical Sangheili fundamentalist sect at all. It was led by a woman.
I don't want to derail my whole narrative by going on and on about gender. There are two dozen known intelligent species and, with the possible exception of the Lekgolo, they're all neurotic about this in completely different ways. It's a mess. If you start talking about it there's a risk you don't ever stop. But the Sangheili are even more neurotic about it than everybody else, so it's important here.
The Sangheili are sexually dimorphic and culturally patriarchal, which sounds normal enough at first. But the Sangheili are patriarchal in a way that's almost more like Salarian matriarchy, where filial piety is devalued in favor of fealty to the broader clan. On Sanghelios itself it's even considered abnormal for a son to know who his father is, because he'll probably have been given over to one of his uncles at birth. If you're a Sangheili male and you admit to knowing the identity of your own father, other Sangheili will label you as a colonist hick.
Your uncle (or your father, if you're a colonist hick) raises you tough, and then you join the armies or the fleets, where if you have any ambition you join a warrior fraternity. The warrior fraternity provides you with whatever higher education you end up having. You finish your first tour of duty and decide whether or not to re-enlist. Either way you set forth with your triple obligation to your Covenant, your clan, and your Brotherhood, and you try to live out adult life with honor and valor. If you do okay, you earn one to three wives.
The warrior fraternities all have their own peculiar rituals and creeds. Occasionally one of them gets an unorthodox idea, like that usage of Forerunner technology is sacrilegious, or that the Sangheili are degrading themselves by prostrating before the San'Shyuum. If it does, the fraternity passes its unorthodox idea on to all of its initiates, who might then pass it along to their respective clans. The whole fundamentalist lodge has to be declared heretical and disbanded, its grandmasters executed or compelled to suicide, its lower membership made to beg for the Prophets' pardon.
Such was normalcy in the classical Covenant. But by the Utter Disintegration, the war with the Citadel Council had gone on for two decades. And even in classical Covenant space, off the mass effect relays, normalcy was getting harder and harder to come by.
Sangheili women were supposed to aspire to lives of chastity, seclusion, and dependency (though from any alien perspective none of the seven-foot-tall reptiles ever looked all that demure). But by this time the Citadel Council had killed so many Sangheili men that the gender dynamics of Sangheili society were wildly imbalanced. There weren't enough husbands to go around, and for a lot of Sangheili women dependency wasn't a realistic option anymore.
The Sangheili tried talking to the Hierarchs about this. The Prophet of Sagacity floated the idea of Sangheili women joining the military alongside their menfolk, the Prophet of Intrepidity encouraged the Sangheili to bring back concubinage, and the Prophet of Diligence predictably started yammering about blowing the Haivattan Gate and letting the war end without any winner. Many Sangheili took equally grave offense to all three suggestions. They wanted a society where men were men and women were women, and they also wanted that society to also be honorable and just, and they also wanted the Sangheili to be the martial upper caste of an empire that ruled all the known galaxy. The thing that these Sangheili decided they could be flexible on was keeping the San'Shyuum around.
The Brotherhood of the Striking 'Skelln was founded by a woman called Thasi Kansuni, which wasn't her real name, but an alias chosen to obscure her origins and protect her clan from recrimination. We didn't know what she looked like or what planet she was from. She claimed to be a war widow, which was more than plausible, but we didn't know much else. She hearkened back to two thousand years of fundamentalist revolt against High Charity, but seemed to do so only as an emotional appeal. She did not try to be a theologian. The thrust of her arguments were secular, that the San'Shyuum stood "in the way" of Sangheili victory over the Citadel Council, and that the Hierarchs had to be removed on those grounds. The Hierarchs had recalled the Arbiter from the Terminus Exarchate and charged him with destroying the 'Skelln after they assassinated the San'Shyuum Minister of Preparation.
I don't want to make the Brotherhood out as a brigade of amazons. Most of its armed wing was male. A lot of them were embittered veterans of the Council War. But despite their generically fraternal name the Striking 'Skelln were sociologically a much different phenomenon than a warrior lodge that had gone heretical, and they were far more resilient. They weren't all young or stupid (though plenty were); and they were embedded in Sangheili civilian society, such as it was.
The 'Skelln had a presence on High Charity, but they weren't based out of the holy city. For two years, the Arbiter and his Sangheili retinue jetted around classical Covenant space, fighting the 'Skelln on dozens of planets and orbitals. For two years, I stayed on High Charity, where I was able to blend in at least a little better than I would have on Sanghelios. For two years, under the Arbiter's intermittent supervision, I led the counterinsurgency against High Charity's 'Skelln cells together with Prelate Forsuvin.
That was a political thing. The Prophet of Sagacity had the Anuranite Lustration, the Prophet of Diligence had the Prelates. The Prophet of Sagacity wanted the Arbiter to take me, so the Prophet of Diligence insisted that the Arbiter take Prelate Forsuvin as balance. Neither of us had command over the other.
There were only a few hundred San'Shyuum Prelates. They all got top-of-the-line gene augmentations meant to make them into super-soldiers. It was expensive and impractical, but that wasn't the point. Having just a few hundred gene-modded San'Shyuum who could fight, who were actually very good at fighting, made all the twenty million San'Shyuum baseliners feel better about themselves somehow.
The Prelates were all for the Prophet of Diligence, but I actually got along with Forsuvin pretty well. He wasn't much like any other San'Shyuum I ever met. He wasn't any kind of careerist.
Prelate Forsuvin and I stood on a bridge crossing the canals of the Junjir Sea, idly watching the Hanar blooms drift below, as we waited for our targets to arrive.
"Been following the kurultai on Doisac?" Forsuvin asked me.
"Not really," I admitted. "I tried, but I couldn't track it."
"Couldn't track it?"
"All the candidates seem the same to me. They're all… Jiralhanae."
"Naturally, but one of them will be the new Great Cheiftain, one of them will replace the fallen Argurus. It's important, you know."
"Is it? Do the Jiralhanae chieftains ever disagree with each other about any, what is that Asari word, policies? From what I did watch, they literally just shout at each other about who's the biggest and the strongest."
"That's the charm of it! Did any of the candidates strike you as any bigger or stronger than the others?"
"I liked the biotic one."
Forsuvin laughed. "You are not a student of the Jiralhanae skeins. Kardatus has no gray hair, no great victories, and no chance. He is only a protest candidate. Any skein that casts its ballot for him is throwing its vote away."
"I'll take your word for it."
There were two stories filling the news cycle at that time. We were talking about the kurultai on Doisac in order to avoid talking about the other one. Council fleets were closing in on Ilium. If Ilium fell- when Ilium fell- the Terminus Exarchate was liable to collapse entirely. I could assure myself that it didn't ultimately matter, that the Utter Disintegration would be reversed, but that was only because of the antecedent secret I had kept for two years running.
Ilos, I was always thinking to myself. There is a Conduit on Ilos. There is a portal built by the Inusannon on Ilos. The Covenant will win through Ilos.
"We'll have to destroy the Haivattan Gate, you know," Forsuvin said.
I looked at him in surprise. "You want to argue about the Relay Dissension? Now? We've spent two years going out of our way not to talk about this with each other."
"I'm not certain how healthy that was. Listen, it's just you and me here. The Council War isn't winnable, and our Covenant will need to blow the Haivattan Gate. That's reality. So, you're an Anuranite. So, the Prophet of Sagacity doesn't want your institution to live in reality. You need to move past what Sagacity wants."
"You're not even going to allude to the Reaper fig leaf? You're just arguing straight from defeatism? A less open-minded Anuranite would call that treasonous."
"Don't be an ass. Nothing I say can be treasonous. I was born a San'Shyuum, you know, and you weren't even born a believer… forget about that. It's just you and me here. You need to be certain whether you really want to be stuck here, after it happens."
"Stuck here? Stuck on High Charity, the holy city? What would the people down there say, if they heard a San'Shyuum Prelate say something like that?" I gestured to the Junjir Hanar swimming below us.
"Them? Thirty million of them have now migrated to High Charity. And almost all from Junjir, almost all from one solitary moon of schismatic jellyfish. There are now more Hanar converts to the Great Journey in this city than there are San'Shyuum. We had to flood this whole ward to accommodate them all. I have to assume they really do like it here. But you? There are barely one million Batarians here. And there are so many of you who could have come, so many more Terminus Batarians than there ever were Terminus Hanar. I have to assume you really do like it wherever it is you come from. Where exactly was it you were born?"
"I was born on a planet named Irtulsk."
"Irtulsk. When our Covenant blows the Haivattan Gate, you will never be able to return to Irtulsk again. Do you want that? You will need to decide."
"Forsuvin, our Covenant isn't going to blow the Haivattan Gate. It's going to win the Council War."
"How?"
Ilos. "It just is. Have a little faith, ye Prelate, ye sword-arm of Diligence."
Forsuvin studied me carefully. "Do you know something I don't?"
"Target incoming." I pointed to an ornate skiff driving toward the bridge, and then turned on my armor's active camouflage.
The Prelate looked through me and grinned. "You're going to try and actually disappear? I don't lose interest so easily, B'Norai. We'll talk about this again. Perhaps right when this is done."
After Molzhure, I'd resolved never to let stealth technology put me at a disadvantage again. The Arbiter had helped me. In exchange for returning the Ossoona armor I had recovered from the Geth Interlocutor, the Arbiter had helped me to commission my own set of Batarian-fitted stealth armor from the Ossoona. I had to pay for the armor out of my own pocket, and that wasn't cheap, but it was worth it.
Forsuvin had no active camouflage, so he stayed atop the bridge as I invisibly made my way over to a nearby dock. I reached the dock at the same time as the skiff did.
A young Sangheili wearing blue armor moved to board the skiff. I followed him onto the watercraft carefully, so as not to alert him to my presence. The skiff set off again.
Apart from the armored Sangheili and myself, there were two Sangheili in expensive civilian clothing and six Unggoy servants aboard the skiff. One of the Unggoy was Yur Gagap, skiff pilot and Anuranite Lustration asset. He was the one who had alerted Forsuvin and myself to this meeting. He must have suspected my presence, but he never spoke. None of the Unggoy servants ever spoke.
The two Sangheili in civilian clothes were named Yugil and Olsi Sadakropi. Sadakropi Clan was wealthy, traditionalist, and lately seditious. Yugil and Olsi were financiers of the Brotherhood of the Striking 'Skelln on High Charity, but they weren't especially good at covering that fact up. Prelate Forsuvin and I had a mass arrest of Sadakropi clansmen in the works, but in the meantime we wanted to map their contacts out.
The young Sangheili in blue armor, for instance. We had no idea what his identity or affiliation might be, but we were eager to learn.
"So far, so good." Forsuvin's voice spoke in my ear. I was not in a position to answer back.
"Why," Yugil Sadakropi asked the Sangheili in blue armor, "did you have us meet you like this? Why are we skulking around like Kig-Yar bandits?"
"Salarians. Not Kig-Yar," the young Sangheili answered. "I was on the Coreward Front, and I fought Salarians. If I had not learned how to take these kinds of precautions, I wouldn't be here today." He eyed the servants of the Sadakropi suspiciously. "And I don't think you're skulking around half as cautiously as you ought to be. I asked the two of you to come alone. How do you know that these Unggoy can be trusted?"
"Because we treat them well," Yugil snapped. "Sadakropi Clan is in a position to offer its peons trust. If your kinsmen are not, I suggest you examine that."
From the corner of my upper-right eye I glanced upwards to Yur Gagap, in his pilot's seat. He was mute and unmoving.
"Mmm." The young Sangheili looked unimpressed. "No, I don't think this is going to work. Not with you."
"You think the Sadakropi are the problem here?" Yugil demanded angrily.
"I asked you to meet me in the Junjir Sea, where we wouldn't be listened to. I thought it went without saying that you should pick me up in a public skiff, and not your own ostentatious pleasure craft. I thought it went without saying that you shouldn't bring a half dozen Martollans-in-the-making along with you."
"Paranoiac!" Yugil barked. "We'll just drop you off then. Waste of time."
"It suits me," the younger Sangheili answered.
The skiff stopped. The young Sangheili in blue armor got out onto another dock.
"Well that was disappointing," Prelate Forsuvin commented. "You barely rounded the corner. Did we even get the armored one's name? You may as well follow him around a little. Maybe this won't be a total loss. He seems a little smarter than the Sadakropis. Could be more dangerous, too."
I exited the skiff, still invisible. The Sadakropis and their Unggoy servants set off again. We checked with Yur Gagap later and confirmed that Yugil and Olsi spent the rest of their day Hanar-watching.
I spent an hour trailing the young Sangheili. If I hadn't had the active camouflage, it would have been difficult. He knew that he was coming from a meeting with seditionists, and he made an effort to be difficult to track. At last, he came to what looked to be a fairly expensive shuttle. Before he took off, I put a tracker on the shuttle and made a note of its registration.
"That was an hour we won't get back. But I'll try and pull the records of the shuttle up," Prelate Forsuvin offered. "Let me see if I can find anything useful by the time you get back to the bridge."
By the time I got back to Forsuvin, he was manic.
"You know what clan owns that shuttle?" he demanded. "Natakueliti!"
"Nata- Powers of Khar'shan."
"Right. As in Dras Natakueliti. Arbiter Dras Natakueliti."
"Maybe the High Charity branch just loaned their shuttle out to a different clan?"
Forsuvin waved his hand and a holographic image of the young Sangheili in blue armor appeared. "This is from the military records of Taltos Natakueliti. Taltos served with distinction on the Coreward Front. He disappeared shortly after the Terminus Exarch called for the forces on the Coreward Front to retreat. He was presumed dead. He is the Arbiter's second cousin, more or less."
I rubbed my temple. "Fine. So… the Arbiter's second cousin talked to the Sadakropis. He didn't end up taking their money, but we've got to assume he's at least sympathetic to the 'Skelln."
"Yes. Gods help us."
"We don't know that anybody else in Natakueliti Clan is involved. Taltos could have just joined a seditious warrior lodge."
"Do not taunt me with optimism right now, B'Norai. I am not in an optimistic mood."
"Fine. What's happened when an Arbiter has been asked to go against his own clan before? Historically, I mean."
"I've never heard of it. If it happened, it was probably covered up."
"We've got the tracker on Taltos' shuttle. We'll be able to capture him and interrogate him. We'll have a better idea of what to do after that."
"I'm telling Diligence now."
I shook my head. "That's a bad idea."
"You would say so. You'd prefer it if Diligence were dead!"
Yes. "Of course I wouldn't. But if you tell Diligence, then I'm telling Sagacity. And they both might jump to rash conclusions, and they both might make rash decisions, and given who we're talking about there's every chance that they end up working at cross-purposes."
Forsuvin hesitated. "Three days. I am going to tell Diligence about this within three days."
"Fine. We'll move on Taltos tomorrow."
"And what are the Hanar doing?"
"Huh?"
Forsuvin pointed to the canals.
The multicolored Hanar blooms now shined only a single hue. The water was illuminated in strobing saffron lights.
"I think it means they're distressed," I told him. "I watched a documentary about terrestrial Kahje once, there was a part with a shark that looked like this."
"I don't think we ever put any sharks down there. What are they so afraid of? They don't know that the Arbiter's family might be heretics. They don't know that the Arbiter might be a heretic. They don't know that for all we know, the Arbiter has spent the last two years supporting-"
"Hang on." I fiddled with my translator's settings until I found the visual interpreter. I looked back down at the canals.
ILIUM IS LOST!
JUNJIR HELP US!
VORCHA ARE CONSIDERED SAPIENT BEINGS AS A TECHNICAL FORMALITY, BUT IN REAL TERMS THEY ARE A SPECIES OF WILDLIFE. ALL AGREE.
ILIUM IS LOST!
FORERUNNERS HELP US!
THE TERMINUS YANME'E BETRAY OUR COVENANT! THE DAUGHTERS OF PALAMOK BETRAY OUR COVENANT!
THE TERMINUS EXARCH! WHERE IS THE TERMINUS EXARCH?
HESHTOK! THE EXARCH HAS FLED TO HESHTOK!
COME AGAIN?
HESHTOK IS THE CRADLE OF THE VORCHA. HESHTOK IS THE VILEST HELLHOLE IN THE GALAXY. ALL AGREE.
ILIUM IS LOST!
TOGETHER! THEY'RE ALL TOGETHER THE YANME'E AND THE VORCHA AND THE TERMINUS EXARCH ARE ALL TOGETHER!
WHY WOULD ANYONE SEEK SHELTER ON HESHTOK? OF ANY RACE? UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES?
ILIUM IS LOST!
THIS ONE KNOWS THAT ILIUM IS LOST! TELL THIS ONE WHO IT WAS LOST TO!
TO THE VORCHA! AND TO THE YANME'E! AND TO THE EXARCH HIMSELF!
SPEAK SENSE!
ILIUM IS LOST!
JUNJIR HELP US! FORERUNNERS HELP US! ENKINDLERS HELP US!
"The news," I told Prelate Forsuvin. "They're distressed about something they heard about on the news."
"Did something happen to Ilium?"
I nodded. "We should get back to our respective offices. We need to plan out Taltos' arrest. And whatever happened to Ilium, an Anuranite and a Prelate should be able to learn about it without resorting to… street gossip? Canal gossip."
Prelate Forsuvin locked with my upper eyes. "I'm going to tell you this again. The Prophet of Diligence is going to make sure that the Haivattan Gate is destroyed. The Prelates are going to make sure that the Haivattan Gate is destroyed. If you want to be in the Terminus when it happens, if you ever want to see Irtulsk again, you need to start making plans now."
"I already told you. Our Covenant is going to win."
Prelate Forsuvin shook his head slowly. "I told you not to taunt me with optimism right now, B'Norai."
Ilos, I reminded myself. He doesn't know anything about Ilos. Those Junjir Hanar down there don't know anything about Ilos. Ilium doesn't matter. The Brotherhood of the Striking 'Skelln doesn't matter. The Covenant will win through Ilos.