"Well that was kind of embarrassing, if you ask ," said Ashtoreth. "That poor Russian fellow didn't even get a chance to show us what he's got."
She'd tried to glamour everyone so popcorn and foam hands since they were in the stands, but Frost had been adamant that her usual performativity was unsuited to a human deathmatch, and so she'd held off on the glamors.
The match itself had been incredibly boring and only lasted a few seconds before the winner—Mark Santiago—killed the other man with a shot from a conjured rifle that had sohow bounced off the far wall of the arena and then converted his opponent's skull into nonvegetarian confetti.
She'd actually spent most of the fight scanning the seats, looking for Apollo and Haddad. She knew that hypothetically, they should be too low-level to participate, but after a lifeti of rivalry it felt strange that her sisters wouldn't co up with sothing to keep them in the running.
"Was he Russian?" Hunter asked. "How did you know?"
She shrugged. "Na sounded Russian."
"He could have been a lot of things," said Frost. "Anyway, will you co talk with now, Ashtoreth?"
They were waiting on another match between two humans. Judging just by the people in the ballroom, the ten minute tir ant they could be attending fights for hours more.
"Sure," she said. "But I don't see what good it's going to do."
Frost shot a aningful look at Dazel, who was resting in her arms as usual.
Dazel made a noise of discontent and leapt into the air to hover beside her. "I'll just hang back with these two," he said. "We'll talk about, I dunno, our inner darkness or sothing."
"Great!" said Ashtoreth. "See you in a bit."
"Let's walk," said Frost.
Soon they were out of the ballroom and wandering through the hotel's cavernous halls. Ashtoreth kept craning her neck, looking at the walls and ceiling and absorbing the opulence of the hotel.
"I feel like I've been ignorant," Frost said.
"Huh?" Ashtoreth asked. "How?"
"Lots of little ways," he said. "I think for a while now that I've thought I had a good bearing on you, but the way you acted with Matthews… I'm not sure." He held his hands out in front of him as if trying to grasp an idea. "It's like this. If I call you a fiend instead of an archfiend, you have to correct ."
"Well yeah," she said.
"I an it makes sense," said Frost. "A doctor doesn't want to be called a mister. But then when we were talking about how you were handling Matthews leading up to the election… at one point you explained that you have to rise to a fight as soon as it becos a potential because otherwise you'll look weak. I guess that's just an essential part of having minions in Hell."
"You betcha!"
"War called you sothing strange before we fought," said Frost. "And you seed very angry about it—you said he called you by your mother's na, or sothing. That was an insult?"
"It's the more powerful parent who matters," Ashtoreth said. "He basically told that I had failed to live up to my pedigree."
"And sothing like that, in infernal culture, isn't just a superficial insult. It's not smack-talk. It's a real attack."
"Well… that one was pretty much just smack talk, since we were already fighting." She shrugged. "But yeah, pretty much. If you let soone get away with an insult, you show a weakness that your enemies can exploit. It's not like humans don't have the sa sort of thing."
"We do," said Frost. "Definitely. But it's… I don't know, there are differences."
"Like what?"
He scowled, again trying to grasp sothing in the air before him. "Let start over."
"Okay!"
"The other night," he began. "When I went to bed and was very angry at you for souring things with General Matthews… I started to think about you. If you just knew better, I thought… if only you knew better. But the only way you could have known better was if you'd spent your life around humans. And that's when I started to think."
He grew quiet, and when he said nothing further, Ashtoreth said, "About what?"
"Who would you be if you'd been born on Earth, grown up on Earth?" he asked. "Call it a thought experint. I've… sort of been obsessed with thinking about it, this last day or so."
"Oh," Ashtoreth said. She felt a pang of sothing deep in her gut, a feeling that was a mix of unease and desire. Whatever he was picturing when he pictured her as a human… she wanted to like it. "And… what do you think?"
"I think you'd be radiant," he said softly. "You'd shine. Maybe have so awful, nial high schooler job scooping fries or sweeping theaters. Drown yourself in extracurriculars because you were an overachiever. Be the first one of your friends to get a car." He smiled to himself. "And every once in a while soone would mistake all your positivity for naivete, all your pep for vulnerability—and they'd learn a painful lesson."
"So I'd be… good at being a teenager. Right?"
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Frost laughed. "Yes, Ashtoreth. All of that was good. Your parents would never shut up about you. You'd be their pride and joy, and they'd brag to everyone they knew about you no matter what kind of things you chose; whether you were on the student council, a theater kid, an athlete…."
A warm feeling bubbled up in her chest. "That's, um… I'm really glad you think that, Sir Frost. But what does any of this have to do with Matthews?"
"I want you to get everything you want in life, Ashtoreth," he said. "Maybe I want you to always be happy and never get hurt. But mostly… I just want you to have a happy ending. I think I need to know that you'll have a happy ending. Being angry at you this past day… it felt different than being angry at anyone else. I think I'm just worried that you'll take the wrong path."
Ashtoreth was silent. On so level, she had to recognize that Frost's new strategy for influencing her was working very well. He'd clearly made the right assumptions about her desire for approval. She found herself desperately wanting to know that he was telling the truth.
"I want you to hear out one last ti," he said. "I know you're playing so ga with Matthews, and I know it's a ga you're good at. But I think that humans and infernals are similar enough that you think you know just what to do… but different enough that it's hard for you to see how consequential the mistakes you're making could be."
"Okay," she said. "I'll listen. One more ti."
"I think you overvalue the power to flaunt authority," he said. "I think you see too much utility in the ability to have a flippant attitude in the face of the authority of others and force what outcos you desire. A lot of humans respect that kind of strength, but I think that fact can be deceptive. Following so far?"
"Uh-huh."
"So in Hell, that kind of strength can show your underlings that you have the power to protect and reward them, earning loyalty. And it shows your enemies that there will be instant costs to any kind of challenge to your authority. Simple stuff, and not sothing a human can't understand."
"Yep! I'm pretty much counting on it."
"Okay, but that's the thing," said Frost. "You know that humans don't just dominate and tyrannize each other all the ti. For all that it's easy to criticize my country, I'm willing to bet that the average person here is much safer, and much more free, than the average infernal. That cos from sowhere, Ashtoreth, and I don't think you understand it."
"O-kay…."
"If you want to shift the paradigm to one that's more about brute-force power, then suddenly it's in the interest of almost everyone—and I really an almost everyone—to see to it that you don't get what you want. If you act like a brute, even to give people what they want, you're destabilizing a social order that benefits almost everyone who has power already."
Ashtoreth laughed. "Like a confederacy of weaklings?"
He shook his head. "No, Ashtoreth. Like a confederacy of people whose talents are optimized for sothing other than taking and holding power under tyrannical circumstances. A confederacy that's made all the stronger by the fact that they don't have to." He gestured again, then frowned. "But maybe don't call Arica a confederacy."
"Okay!"
"Look, the point is that if you keep brute forcing things, you could open the door for an aspiring human tyrant who is clever enough to ride your coattails into a whole lot of power, or at the very least maneuver you into a place where you're hindered by the restraints that inhibit them from fulfilling their ambitions so that you cut those restraints away. And while you might be used to the politics of Hell, you don't hold a candle to a human tyrant when it cos to tyrannizing humans."
"Hmm," Ashtoreth said. She knew at least a little history, and Frost was probably right.
"Whether you think this system is right or wrong is irrelevant. It's the system, and it's not going to respond to you the way you think it is. Now look—Matthews reports to the civilian governnt, right?"
"The President?" Ashtoreth asked, brightening.
"Yes. And anyone who speaks with his authority. But look, the civilian governnt—the President—are in touch with the other governnts around the world, mostly thanks to us."
"Uh-huh."
"Even if you were going to force whatever outco you wanted, even if you were playing gas, you could have tried to work with them so that they could at least be inford. What happens when the rest of the world finds out about the results of the election? If we could have at least pretended that you were acting under the control of the alliance of states, we could have had a better chance at stability."
Ashtoreth blinked. That, at least, made perfect sense right away.
And she hadn't thought of it at all.
"You're a phenonal fighter," he said. "A year of practice gave the knowledge I need to know the difference between you and the rest of us. But more than that, you have insights into Hell that we desperately need. But you're not human, Ashtoreth. You weren't raised human. You're making a ss that you don't understand, and you definitely don't understand how to clean it up." He paused. "Am I making any sense here?"
She crossed her arms and looked away. "I guess so," she said. "But with Matthews, I knew I was being too pushy. I was trying to bait an assassination attempt. I wanted to destroy so of the human fighters to demonstrate why they shouldn't compete in the election."
"We could have thought of better ways to get that ssage across," said Frost. "It's not worth the price you paid."
"Fine, then. You win. I was wrong."
Frost stopped in his tracks. "I'm not trying to win," he said. "I'm trying to… Ashtoreth, this is for you, you understand? I want you to have a happy ending. Whatever Earth becos after all of this, I want you to be welco here, happy here if that's what you want. I want you to win, you understand?"
Ashtoreth eyed him carefully. Then she threw her arms around him.
"Right," he said, patting her back awkwardly.
"You were telling the truth about everything, right?" she asked.
"Of course, Ashtoreth."
She swallowed thickly. "Promise that you always will," she said. "Even when you manipulate into doing what you want."
"That's just called convincing you," he said. "And yes. I promise."
"I'll be nicer to Matthews," she said.
"Good."
"I'll even say that I shouldn't have done what I did earlier."
"You an apologize?"
"No."
"Right. Look, as much as I'm a touchy-feely guy."
"You're not."
"Exactly," he said, detaching himself from her. "Countdown's almost done. Let's start heading back to the ballroom before the match starts."
"Uh-huh!" Ashtoreth said.
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