Shadow of Gorgon by Selene Tang

Author:Selene Tang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CERISE

Not since my ex broke up with me via text message have I been so disappointed by my phone screen.

Next to me, Yingzhen’s purse buzzes, stirring her out of her seasick catatonia. She fishes for her phone with swift, jerky movements. I can only assume she must’ve gotten the same message—so the general does not even trust me to read my messages anymore.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” I preemptively speak before she’s had a chance to finish reading the directive with her red-lined eyes, let alone make up her mind, which I imagine must feel like it’s sloshing around in her skull right now. The sibyl is stubborn, but if she is off-balance, I might have a chance at winning the disagreement and ensuing battle of wits I already know is about to unfold. “The general messaged me just fifteen minutes ago, asking to meet her in Japan because she needed our help to find someone. Now she’s telling us to stay put and keep watching her sis—the doctor, because it’s too dangerous to come meet her?”

Yingzhen scowls at her phone as if she wants to throw the device into the roiling waves. But she tucks it back into her purse and rubs her temples. “Then her situation must have changed in the last fifteen minutes, making it too dangerous to come to her, or making her aware of a new risk to her doctor friend on the island.”

“But wouldn’t she arrange to meet us elsewhere, then? Danger or not, she’ll still need our help finding her enemies.”

“Perhaps she will make such arrangements when the danger has passed. Or perhaps she has found another way to track her nemesis and no longer requires our aid. I for one would welcome not having to do one more soothsaying to assure her paranoid mind, and neither will I miss getting shot at while doing so.”

“But that’s what she needed us for! Your sight, my skills, even this…” I take the scroll out of my pocket as a reminder of what I went through to get it. “Was it all for nothing, then?”

She shrugs. “Not for nothing. I held up my end of the deal, and you did your duty. Your general would naturally marshal all resources, and attack from all angles, against an adversary like this. Not all of them have to pay off, just one. I would think you must be used to being but one cog in her machine by now?”

That’s the problem: I am, of course. For my entire career, my contributions to Gorgon’s operations and inhumanities alike have been both essential, and dispensable—never fully one or the other. I know many campaigns would’ve failed without my services, yet I cannot point to any specific one that hinged on me in particular. That is how the machinery of war is built, to purposely disperse and dilute responsibility.

This time was going to be different, I thought. This time I would be front and center; I would see things through; I would not just be a cog.

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