Chapter 95: Goddess of beauty
"He notices," Apsharathevi said mildly.
"He simply doesn’t always consider it important."
She looked at Jake properly now, and her eyes were the kind of warm that didn’t require anything in return.
"You’re Asurani’s new people. I heard about you when you arrived."
She smiled. "She must be very pleased. She’s been patient for a long time."
"She seems pleased," Jake said, his voice steadier than he expected given that his chest was still recalibrating from the pressure.
"Thank you for the intervention."
"Vikram isn’t malicious," Apsharathevi said, and it sounded like something she’d said before and meant.
"He’s just very powerful and occasionally forgets that existing near him is an experience for others. He wouldn’t have hurt you intentionally."
"Unintentionally would have been sufficient," Elise said dryly, color returning to her face.
The woman beside Apsharathevi made a sound that was nearly a laugh.
"She’s right," she said to the goddess.
"Intent doesn’t change the outcome for the people on the receiving end."
"Fair," Apsharathevi acknowledged. She looked at her agent with the fond expression of someone used to being gently corrected.
"This is Nadya. She’s been with me long enough to tell me when I’m being too charitable about other people’s failings."
"Which is frequently," Nadya said, without heat.
"Which is frequently," the goddess confirmed peacefully.
Nadya looked at Jake with the direct assessment of someone who trusted her own observations over second-hand reports.
"You handled Naktuna well earlier," she said.
"We heard it from across the hall. Most people who encounter her that early in an evening end up either trying to appease her or matching her energy and making things worse."
"She made it easy," Jake said, which was the same thing he’d told Artiemes, and it was still true.
"The best deflections always use the other person’s momentum," Nadya said with the tone of someone who had developed opinions through experience.
"You did that cleanly." She paused. "Though Naktuna holds grudges across decades. She’ll remember tonight."
"I’d be concerned if she didn’t," Jake said.
"Forgettable enemies are harder to track."
Nadya looked at him for a moment, then nodded as though he’d confirmed something she’d tentatively concluded. She turned to Elise. "Covenant transfer from Naktuna to Asurani. That’s not a small thing. How are you finding the adjustment?"
"Better than fifteen years without any covenant at all," Elise said.
"I imagine so." Nadya’s expression carried understanding that wasn’t pity. "I had a difficult transition into Apsharathevi’s covenant too. Different circumstances, but the disorientation of accessing abilities you’d stopped expecting to have—it takes time to stop anticipating the floor dropping out."
Elise looked at her with the particular attention reserved for people who had said something genuinely useful. "You were abandoned too?"
"Different situation. Mine chose to end the covenant before I was ready. Not maliciously—he had reasons, and I understood them eventually."
Nadya’s voice was matter-of-fact. "But understanding doesn’t make the adjustment faster."
Apsharathevi had been listening to this exchange with the quiet attention of someone content to let the humans do the work while she held the space. Now she looked between Jake and Elise with an expression that was both assessing and kind in ways that managed not to contradict each other.
"Asurani and I are old acquaintances," she said.
"From before either of our covenants had active agents, when we were both navigating the lower rungs of divine hierarchy together. She’s grown more cautious over the years—more selective about what she shows and to whom."
The goddess smiled. "But she chose you two in fairly rapid succession, which means she sees something building that she wants to accelerate."
"What she doesn’t tell people is what she actually sees in them, because the most interesting developments happen when people discover their own potential rather than pursuing someone else’s vision of it."
"That sounds like a very diplomatic way of saying she doesn’t explain herself," Elise said.
"It is," Apsharathevi agreed pleasantly.
Around them the feast continued its progress toward the formal seating and the meal proper, the hall’s energy shifting as people began moving toward the long tables. Vikram was visible across the room, talking to another agent with perfect normalcy, no indication in his bearing that he’d reduced Jake to controlled breathing at five meters simply by existing in proximity.
Jake watched him and committed the encounter to memory alongside Karut, alongside the Ghoul King, alongside every experience of being genuinely outmatched that had accumulated since the awakening. Each one had the same lesson underneath it.
Growing took time. Skipping the process cost more than the time saved.
"Will we see you at the table?" Apsharathevi asked, gesturing toward the hall’s center where seating was being arranged.
"We’ll find our place," Jake said.
"The lower end of the secondary table," Nadya said, with honesty rather than cruelty.
"Where Asurani’s covenant seats. It’s fine. The food is the same regardless of which table it comes from, and the conversations at the lower tables are usually more honest than the ones closer to the divine section."
"Why?" Elise asked.
"Because people performing for their gods are exhausting to be around," Nadya said simply. "And the lower tables have fewer of them."
Apsharathevi smiled and touched her agent’s shoulder lightly.
"Come. And perhaps," she added to Jake and Elise, "we can speak more during the meal. There are things about tonight’s other attendees that would be useful for Asurani’s new agents to know, and I find I prefer to share useful information with people who will actually use it."
She moved toward the tables with Nadya beside her, and Jake watched them go before looking at Elise.
"She’s genuine," Elise said quietly.
"Yes," Jake agreed.
"Which makes her either the most trustworthy person in this room or the most dangerous."
"Could be both."
"Usually is," Jake said, and they moved toward the secondary table to find their seats at the lower end, exactly where Nadya had said they’d be.
The feast of agents settled into its formal stage, and Jake sat with the accumulated weight of the evening’s education pressing down alongside the food and wine.
Most gods weren’t present in the palace, and they only sent their agents, and those agents didn’t even notice Jake and Elise, let alone talk to them. There were practically invisible for the rest of people.
But it didn’t bother them, Jake just continued to observe people and study everyone present in the palace, because information was like a treasure and it will be quite useful in the coming days.
