Chapter Text
1.
It’s the new curio he glimpses on the desk that gives Hades pause and pulls his dragging feet through the door and into the office of the fourteenth.
Not a curio, but three dark but vibrant blue leaves. They lay in the middle of Azem’s desk as though left as an afterthought- an unexpected sign of life.
Hades frowns.
The old occupant of the office had kept to a rigid itinerary. Hades remembers that about the previous Azem, but even if he hadn’t, it shows in the Traveller’s office. The schedule and clearly marked map still hangs over the filing cabinet, its layer of dust speared through by the souvenirs the current occupant of the office had brought back from his distinctly more… spontaneous travels.
In the short span of time since he had become the Architect his new coworkers had treated him to a list of grievances against Azem nearly as long as the Convocation’s code of conduct, most of them related to his unannounced coming-and-going.
That leaves Hades crossing his arms and considering the foliage on the desk. Quite unlike Azem’s other souvenirs- but unlike was quite like Azem. Most likely, this means the office’s occupant has returned.
He wants to examine it closer, pick it up, hold it, the specific blue of the leaves nagging at him. He decides not to do any of those things, because who knows what would happen to him should he touch something that Azem considered fascinating enough to bring back. He wonders what the leaves’ story will be, if Azem deigns to share it.
“Hades?”
By the very- Hades can’t help but jump slightly at the sound of Azem’s voice.
“Azem.” He turns away from the desk to face him and greets him stiffly.
Azem stands half-in and half out of the doorway to his office, donned in an Amaurotine's customary robes, red mask upon his face, a blue flower held lightly in one hand. It catches Hades’ gaze and holds it.
“Are you still stuck on calling me that? Oh honorable Emet-selch of the Convocation of Fourteen?” He smiles, maybe softly, maybe sardonically, holding out the flower in his direction. “We’re coworkers now. Congratulations, by the way.”
Hades takes the flower. He can’t help it. “Where were you?”
“Sight-seeing?” He non-answers. “If you wanted to talk to me, you know Hythlodaeus can always-”
“I’d like to know where exactly you got this.” He tilts the flower back in Azem’s direction. The petals are a lighter, brighter version of the blue leaves. A familiar hue. The same hue as-
“A craftsman by the aetheryte Creates them, on the spot,” Azem answers. “I saw her on my way back- I thought they were exceptional.”
Exceptional? The flower itself is a rudimentary concept. But-
“She’s certainly gifted,” Hades mutters. Truly, her ability to see the Underworld must rival his, if her intent was to match the flower so exactly to the color of the buyer’s soul.
“Isn’t she?” Azem tilts his head to the side. “Apparently, they take on the hue of the beholder’s favorite color. I forget her exact wording. It’s hard to tell if they work when you can only see the one color.”
Hades feels the stem of the flower squish a bit as his grip tightens. He grimaces. “At least now I know this didn’t somehow bypass customs.”
“Spoken like a true convocation member.” Azem smiles with an edge of exasperation. “How has it been, by the way? Have they hazed you yet?”
His inflection doesn’t change at all, of course. Hades takes a second to process the question before his lip curls and he shoots a look at Azem. “You’re the only one that would think to try.”
“Huh. Was it really so boring without me?”
Each time Azem returns, he’s exactly as tiresome as Hades remembers. It’s only as Azem leans against the doorframe that Hades realizes he’s just standing in the middle of the room, one hand resting on the surface of the Traveller’s desk and the other holding the flower, half turned towards the door. He faces Azem fully, suddenly conscious of his hands.
“If you consider it boring to be able to settle in without you wreaking havoc with stray concepts from who knows where.” He tucks the flower into the sleeve of his robe and crosses his arms.
“You haven’t even worked with me yet,” Azem protests.
“I’ve heard plenty of stories.”
Azem sighs and pries himself off the doorframe, crossing the room to sit on top of the desk at Hades’ side. They both face the door.
“You can’t believe everything you hear.”
“I have first-hand experience,” Hades deadpans.
“Not for a while.” He snorts and inclines his head to look at the ceiling. “You should come with me next trip. You can see my professional conduct for yourself, reevaluate. Get around a bit before you end up as stale as the rest of the convocation.”
“Come with you where?” Hades scoffs. His grip tightens on his arms. “Getting dragged halfway across the star on a whim will do little to better my view of your conduct.”
Azem adjusts his mask, settling it more securely on his face. “Well, wherever I think I’m needed- or wherever sounds the most fun. So?”
Hades takes a deep breath, and does his best to make it derisive when he sighs. “I’d rather use my energy on settling into the convocation, thank you very much.”
Azem huffs out a breath, like he was holding it, but nonetheless favors Hades with a wry smile that makes the slouch in his back grow more pronounced. “Fair enough. I just thought you’d have had enough time to get tired of the office already.”
“Hardly,” Hades scoffed. “And if I was tired of the office, why would I want to follow you to whatever farflung city you decide to grace with your presence next?”
“Think of it like a vacation.” The phone on Azem’s desk begins to ring- Hades, apparently, is not the only one to have discovered Azem’s presence. “Not all of us are content to sleep in the office.”
“Not even with the included alarm clock?” Hades and Azem both look to the phone, ringing and rattling. “You may want to take that.”
“Want to?” Azem sighs. “Well, I should.”
Hades leaves the room as Azem picks up the phone, running one finger lightly over the stem of the flower tucked into his sleeve.
Azem looks up and waves as Hades turns around to shut the door. He smiles before he puts the receiver to his ear. “See you later, Emet-selch. Hades.”
2.
“I don’t recall asking you to come with me.”
“But you wanted me to.”
“I don’t recall saying that, either.”
“You’re growing forgetful in your old age.” Azem shrugs and keeps staring out of the train window.
“And you, delusional,” Hades snaps.
“Not delusional enough to hear you telling me to leave.”
Any whim could have brought Azem here, and as soon as the train rolls to a stop, a word from Hades will send him away just as easily- and when he would return after was anyone’s guess.
Hades sighs through his nose, and holds his peace.
Azem, for his part, has just enough grace not to gloat.
“So what draws the illustrious Architect out of the heart of Amaurot so early in the morning?” Azem asks, without the grace to refrain from taunting him.
“You followed me without knowing?” Hades lifts his mask for just a moment to massage the bridge of his nose.
“I was wondering what got you out of the office.” Azem shrugs.
Mere curiosity. Hades wonders sometimes if he would have more success holding Azem’s attention if he turned bright blue spontaneously.
He sighs loudly through his nose, again, and throws Azem a glare that he knows is invisible behind his mask. “Surveillance of a sort. The outskirts of the city have been largely neglected during the renovations of the city center, and with the population growing, we’ve been looking to expand the residential district.”
“Oh. Huh.”
“ What ?”
The train rumbles on underneath them. He can see the edge of the face Azem is making under his mask, but he can’t decipher it. “Hmm. Well… Couldn’t you have gotten pictures?”
“After all that time badgering me to get out of the convocation you choose to be critical now?” Hades snaps.
Azem makes a dismissive gesture. “That’s the thing. After all that time refusing to leave the Convocation, you’re coming out for this?”
“Yes, I’m coming out for this. A survey in person is infinitely more thorough.” Hades crosses his arms. “I’ll go where Amaurot needs me, not gallivanting around on a whim while the paperwork piles up on my desk.”
He goes quiet in his way- a river dammed up, not run dry. Hades is about to snap at him again- out with it - when he feels the train begin to roll to a stop.
“Well.” Azem speaks first, and Hades knows that further questions will only get him random observations of the scenery. “Looks like we’re here.”
Hades sighs once more through his nose and picks up his carry-on before following Azem out of the car.
A disaster.
Azem doesn't share his dismay. Hades feels his tension headache building with every step he takes on the nearly empty, poorly paved roads.
“This is a disaster,” Hades gripes. “I can’t even estimate when the last time these roads were repaired.” He makes a few violent marks in his memo pad. “Is this supposed to pass for landscaping? It’s completely out of sync with the city proper.”
Azem gives an apologetic smile and waves, staring past Hades. He turns. There’s a local, sitting on a bench across the street and shooting the two of them an expressive frown.
"I don't see anything wrong with it.”
Hades turns back to Azem, his lip curling in annoyance. “What?”
"What?" Azem looks forward and crosses his arms behind his head. "It has local charm."
Hades knows they're looking at the same road but they can't possibly be seeing the same thing- the cracks, the overgrowth, the instability.
“Before you start lecturing me about infrastructure, I know the roads aren’t in the best condition.” He steps over the raised edge of an uneven paving stone. “But it’s not a disaster. Everything else is fine.”
The bushes and trees that line the streets are overgrown, and the buildings are a completely different style than the highrises of Amaurot proper. The streets themselves are ambling, circular, out of sync with Amaurot’s grid system. Hades rubs the bridge of his nose.
“Hades.” He sounds almost- sad. For just a second, before his voice is, once more, infuriatingly flippant. “How long will you be here?”
“Again, you followed without- Ugh. It’s only a day trip.” He makes a few more notes on the memo pad. Azem looks contemplative. “Not enough time for whatever two brain cell scheme you’re concocting.”
“Yes it is.”
“ Azem. ”
“It’ll even be helpful.”
“That, I highly doubt.”
“It will be.” Azem picks up his pace, weaving to avoid the occasional pothole. Hades trails after him.
Azem leads them further from the train station, winding through alleys and narrow side streets while Hades marks down what he sees- buildings abandoned or in disrepair, empty lots, overgrown planters.
By the time Azem leads them to a battered set of double doors, Hades no longer knows how to make his way back to the train station.
“Here.”
“I don’t know what I was expecting.” Hades pinches the bridge of his nose. “You-”
“You don’t even know what you’re looking at,” Azem cuts him off.
“Inform me, then,” Hades snaps.
Azem simply holds his hands over the door to dispel the wards and opens the doors.
"This is illegal," Hades protests.
"Maybe I own the building."
"You don't." Hades snaps back.
"I don't." Azem walks in, leaving the door open behind him. "It's abandoned."
Hades grumbles and follows him in.
The corridor immediately gives way to a spiral staircase that Azem has already partially ascended. Hades lifts the front of his robes and follows Azem through the long coils, up to a trap door that Azem fiddles with deftly.
It gives way before Hades can think of something snide to say, and Azem throws it open to let a beam of sunlight through.
A belltower.
"Closer to the railing, Hades." Azem gestures him forward. "Didn't you want an overview?"
"You're not funny." Hades joins him at the railing, memo-pad in hand.
From above he can see where the streets wind, and where they aren't so far departed from the rest of Amaurot's grid. He can make out the residents. And stretched on the skyline is the city proper, laid out like a mural.
"You can take it all in from up here." Azem stares down at the streets below them. For once, his mask seems to sit comfortably on his face. “You were talking about the streets-” He points. “You can see where Amaurot’s grid ran into the older paths. And-"
Surprisingly, it is helpful. The old roads are concentric, radiating out from an old park. It would be a good commercial district, and the old shops replaced with better housing that would give them time to-
He realizes Azem has fallen silent. Hades looks up to find him smiling wryly at him, bracing himself on the banister.
“What?” Hades snaps.
“You weren’t listening to me,” Azem huffs, half sigh, half laugh. “I’m going to stop talking one day.”
“And leave me in peace?” Hades makes a few short marks on the pad. “Heaven forbid.”
3.
Lahabrea turns an unpleasant shade of red to match his mask when Elidibus discloses Azem’s actions to the convocation.
The Speaker, rendered speechless by Azem- not uncommon.
Nabriales is not so tongue-tied.
“Should you have another… unconventional idea... in the future, pray put it before the convocation before acting on your own.” Nabriales smiles at Azem thinly.
“So I can be overruled twelve to one?” Azem manages to look almost bored. Hades is the only one close enough to see how the hand that doesn’t prop up his face tightens around his other bicep, straining the cloth of his robes. Hades is the only one who knows how Azem avoids the Hall of Rhetoric.
“If that’s what the convocation decides,” Nabriales responds.
Hades had asked Elidibus whether he was alright with allying with so divisive a figure. Universally disdained may have been better phrasing. Not unreasonably, Hades thinks sometimes. Maybe uncharitably. He blows out a sigh.
“And the Convocation would decide that it was better to simply let the island burn.” Azem waves his hand. “We all know that the council was merely a formality.”
“If you were so confident in your plan, why didn’t you believe that it could hold up to the scrutiny of the convocation?” Altima folds her hands on the table. “Instead you acted alone-”
“Not quite alone.” Lahabrea has mostly returned to a normal color. “The Bureau of the Architect saw fit to entrust Ifrita to the task.”
Perhaps he would be more sympathetic to Azem’s plight were he not so intent on pulling Hades into it.
He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair as the rest of the convocation turns their eyes on him. He doesn’t say that deciding what Hythlodaeus gives to who is not his responsibility. He also doesn’t disclose that he had helped Azem dispatch Ifrita and the resultant aether. “There was no sanction against it.”
“Azem has broken no rules,” Elidibus speaks up, earnestly, enthusiastically. “I recorded his journey, and as a convocation member, the use of restricted concepts is within his purview.”
“He has violated the spirit, if not the letter of our code of conduct,” Nabriales counters. “He acted with haste specifically to circumvent hearing the Convocation’s decision before he enacted his plan.”
“Easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” Someone snorts under their breath, quiet enough that Hades can’t pinpoint the speaker.
But Azem isn’t asking forgiveness. “And? It worked.”
“We’re at time,” Elidibus says.
Another meeting, wasted talking about Azem- not that it matters, this was supposed to be about the volcano, now obsolete, anyway.
With last grumbles they file out into the hallway, Lahabrea and Elidibus staying behind to finish their respective minutes.
They walk down the hallway. Azem throws himself on the bench beside the lift and fidgets with his mask, like he can’t decide whether to press it more securely into place or to take it off entirely. “How does Lahabrea create such beautiful concepts when he’s such a bore? Is that stick shoved so far up his arse that it’s knocking something loose in his brain?”
Hades stops in front of him and crosses his arms. “Perhaps if you applied yourself to creating new concepts rather than blowing them up, you might find out.”
Azem shoots Hades an annoyed look.
“So you’ve avoided censure yet again. Saved by the bell, as they say- though technically it was Elidibus calling the meeting early for you.” Hades slouches, waving one hand theatrically through the air.
Azem slumps against the wall behind him. He pulls at his cowl so that it covers the eyeholes of his mask. “Do you need something, Emet-Selch?”
“The convocation is on its last thread of patience with you.” Hades snaps.
“Loghriff thinks I’m funny.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“I call it how I see it.”
“Are you sure you don’t still have ash in your eyes?” Hades asks snidely, “Or perhaps you hit your head too hard in the explosion.”
“I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t-” Azem cuts himself off and groans. “I can never win. What was I supposed to do?”
“What the convocation does- create a proposition, deliver it-”
“And be told to let the volcano erupt, and write a formal acknowledgement.”
“As is natural.”
“As is- there’s a whole island there.” Azem’s voice drops. “What would you do, if it were Amaurot threatened by an eruption?”
“There’s no volcano by Amaurot,” Hades responds. “You’re missing the point.”
“You’re missing my point!” He drops his head into his hands. His fingers curl and pull at the edges of his hood.
“And you’re constantly running off on your own, not thinking through your plans, and causing no end of frustration to the other convocation members who actually follow both the word and the spirit of the law. If I hadn't been there to help you with Ifrita-” Heavens above, he’s starting to sound like Nabriales. It’s as he says- this is simply Azem’s habit. Why is he getting so worked up this time?
“What,” Azem mutters to the floor, heels of his palms over the eyeholes of his mask. “Are you worried about me?”
It feels like a gut-punch, for some reason. Hades throws his hand up. “Worried about you! If it weren’t for Elidibus, I’d have no idea what you were doing!”
“So you want me to warn you next time?” Azem snorts.
“Don’t bother.” Hades looks up, pressing his palm to the mask in front of his forehead. “You wouldn’t let me stop you anyway.”
“Maybe I’d let you come with.”
“Would you?” Hades snaps. “Despite the fact that you’ve made a hobby of going around my back to convince Hythlodaeus to enable you?”
“Hythlodaeus doesn’t need convincing,” Azem says matter-of-factly.
Why is it that speaking to Azem makes him feel as though a blood vessel will burst in his head at any moment? Perhaps it’s for the public good that Azem avoids the Hall of Rhetoric.
“Consider this a formal invitation. Next time I go to halt a completely preventable eruption, I’ll tell you beforehand and save you the trouble of showing up uninvited on your own.” Azem stands and shakes out his robes. He looks down the hallway, away from the Convocation’s council room and away from the lift. To the doors of the balcony, his favorite place to disappear. It’s a spot they both love, usually, looking out over the whole of Amaurot.
Azem begins to walk away.
“Was it worth it?” Hades can’t help snapping after him. “Were the grapes really so delicious?”
He only stops for a second. “Why don’t you come and find out for yourself?” Azem walks away down the hallway, waving his hand once in clipped farewell. “Since the vineyards haven’t been vaporized.”
4.
Renovations on the city limits had ramped up- and begun to go wrong. Hades poured over reports of the concepts of their normal building alloys crumbling spontaneously, equipment Created with extra parts that no one could account for, a particularly baffling account of a planter that had sprouted legs and walked away.
Hades rests his forehead on his palm, skin on skin cool without the barrier of his mask. Unprecedented- baffling. He scribbles another note, crosses it out. The slowdown on the construction is a smaller problem than that they have no idea why any of it is going wrong.
"What are you working on?"
Hades starts, knocking aside one of the binders that was resting by his elbow. He hadn’t heard the door to his office open but there Azem was, standing a scant few feet from Hades desk as though he had simply materialized.
Azem’s appearance, disappearance. They’re back to normal it seems, except Azem is quieter than ever.
Azem's hood is pulled low over his mask. The shadow of it doesn’t quite conceal the curious set to his mouth.
Hades pushes back from the desk and cards his fingers through his hair. In lieu of explaining, he gestures at the papers scattered over his desk.
Azem closes the gap, straightening them absently before grabbing one of the reports.
He sits on the edge of Hades desk, scanning through the pages. Hades leans back farther, covering his eyes with his hands in the hopes of pressurizing away his headache.
“Hm.” Azem says after a long moment. “You know- it’s weird. I actually saw something similar on my last trip.”
“Really?” Hades takes his hands from his eyes and squints at Azem.
“Mmhmm.” He finishes skimming the report, and returns it to one of the neatened piles. “Really similar, actually. They were building a new city hall and courthouse when the building's foundation started liquefying and growing branches.”
“What caused it?” Hades presses.
Azem shrugs. “They chalked it up to exhaustion on the builders’ part and gave them all leave.”
Hades plants his elbows on his desk and drops his forehead back into his palms. “We’ve only just begun construction, though.” Still- he jots ‘leave’ down on his notes.
“Maybe it’s some kind of sickness?” Azem suggests. “I wrote about it in my report…”
“I’ll submit a follow-up request. Perhaps they’ve made new discoveries while you were away.” It’s more than Hades had before, and for that he can be grateful.
Azem hums absentmindedly. Hades stares at him in silence for a moment, two moments, three long moments before he sighs. “Was there something that you needed from me?”
“Something is…” Azem trails off into silence. He fingers the edge of his mask like he’s contemplating taking it off. “I’m leaving again tomorrow. Come with me.”
Hades raises an eyebrow.
“Didn’t I tell you I’d extend a formal invitation before going to prevent any new eruptions?”
“Azem-”
“Joking!” Azem huffs a laugh. “I just want you along.”
Hades snorts. “Don’t tell me you’re getting lonely already.”
“No, you know I never want for company.” Azem confirms, staring absently away from him so that Hades can only barely see the edge of his mask. “Though, if that’s why you keep brushing me off, I suppose I could change that. I just-”
Azem musters a weak smirk and looks at Hades over his shoulder. “It could be just you and me, if you wanted.”
Hades ignores the turning in his gut. “I’ve had more than enough of you here.”
“Hades.”
“Not tomorrow.” He doesn’t know what to do with his mouth, or his eyes, or his hands, or the way his stomach is spontaneously tightening as he speaks, and he could be sick all over his desk, or star forbid, smile. “When this issue is resolved, I suppose I can afford a short vacation.”
Hades manages to keep his eyes and hands on his desk, his stomach settled, and his face straight- for the most part.
Azem breaks into a smile.
5.
No one in the convocation looks healthy anymore. Azem perhaps looks the worst when he rushes into the office of the Architect.
“Azem-” Hades stands despite himself, staring at the blood crusted on the side of Azems face, the charring on his sleeves.
“You couldn’t possibly have signed that.” Azem’s voice is hoarse from smoke and exertion. Of all the Convocation members he’s been the most active. He’s their only source of news as he races back and forth to places the Sound tolled earlier, a one man rescue team looking for refugees he can bring back to the Convocation hall- their last bastion.
Hades regrets standing. He has to bring his hands back down and brace them on the desk. “Azem…”
“Tell me you’re not seriously considering it. Tell me I understood wrong. I don't know. Hades.”
He sighs at his desk before meeting Azem's eyes. “You asked me once, what would you do if it was Amaurot threatened with destruction.”
“And this is your answer?”
“This is Elidibus’s answer.”
“That you signed off on.”
“It’s the only answer we have. Who even-” Hades knots his fingers in his hair. “It was Hythlodaeus, of course. He couldn’t even do the courtesy of letting me tell you myself.”
“What does it matter, when I’m told?” Azem paces back and forth like a caged animal. He scratches the dried blood on his face and it flakes off onto the floor. There’s no wound underneath, leaving Hades with the iron taste of the question ‘ whose?’ lingering in his mouth. “You’ve already signed off on a proposition to kill half of our people.”
“You've missed the part where it’s the only viable plan we have to stop the sound.” Hades feels the familiar frustration clawing its way up his throat. He feels a new strain of anger coiling in his stomach- what, pray tell, does Azem want him to do instead? “While you were running around somewhere halfway across the world-”
“You-” Azem springs from his pacing and slams his hands on Hades’s desk. "I was looking for a way to stop this!"
“And this is the way we’ve found.”
“A way that ends up with half of our people dead and consumed!” Azem grabs him, curling his hands in the front of his robes. “Come with me , Hades. We can- we have to find another way.”
Hades brushes his hands off. “Do you honestly think that? If you’ve truly spent all this time searching-”
“You’re smarter than me!” Azem snaps. “Because you see things I don’t- you see, literally, more than I ever could! Why can’t you try, just try to look at something other than Amaurot, just once! Is this the plan you really want to follow when there could be something else out there?”
“Take this seriously, Azem,” Hades snarls. “We don’t have time! Our people are dying in the streets!”
“And you’ll kill another half of them!” Azem’s hands grip and pull at the fabric of his robes.
“Better half than all!” Hades snaps.
Azem’s jaw works behind his mask.
The frustration clawing its way up Hades throat grabs it in the silence.
“Using a dangerous concept to divert overflowing aether and safely consume it- you could say Elidibus took his inspiration from you.” Hades looks up at the ceiling. “Except there’s a bit more at stake than grapes, this time.”
Azem barks out a short, ugly laugh. “There has never been a time when I was glad you listened to me.
Hades sighs, deflated. “This is our only plan. Not the best plan. Not the plan we favor. When Elidibus proposed it, he didn’t like it. When Lahabrea and I signed for it to be put before the convocation, we didn’t like it. If the convocation accepts it, they won’t like it. Charon-”
“Don’t call me that.” He balls his hands into fists at his side and turns away. “By the- you know, I really hate you sometimes.”
He’s at his breaking point. “Do your feelings really matter right now, Azem? ”
He doesn’t expect it when Azem’s fist collides with his face.
His mask is cracked, Azem’s knuckles are bleeding.
He can’t draw on the aether, can’t swell his form for fear of how it will affect Amaurot. Azem, with his bare hands, has no restrictions. Emet-selch raises his hand to his face, feels the blood coming from his nose. He grits his teeth.
Azem tears the mask from his face and hurls it at him. It strikes him in the sternum before falling to the floor with a hollow clatter.
He walks into the convocation hall, breaking the silence by throwing Azem’s mask onto the lectern. Elidibus stares at it, pale, shaking.
“Azem has resigned,” He snaps to an audience of twelve.