Revolving Door

The Planes of Space (Prologue)

I've come to learn something, in the time I've spent living in this room.

The universe is a machine of a thousand turning wheels. All the things humans create—the names and stories, the movements and endings—they turn in everlasting cycles, returning time and again to a state they were in once before.

Think of the Egyptian civilizations, of the eras of film, maybe of the cities of America. They all see golden ages, and dark ages, and golden ages anew. First their names are known to all, on every tongue and every tablet. And then they are gone—decimated, scoured from memory, as rock scars are by the sea. Like fossils, these beloved things from times-past get buried beneath centuries and centuries of earth.

But sometimes, we children look at each other, and we say, "hey, where'd that thing go?" Suddenly we want to see them again, the things our grandparents' grandparents once loved. Some millennium-old hunger opens up within us, and we begin to excavate those buried things. And then, what was loved in past ages is brought back to vogue, the latest hotness, the in-thing again.

This year's shopper’s almanac will show you what I mean. Every other mall facade stands on Greek pillars. The newest one that opened downtown is named the Hanging Gardens. Ancient Mesopotamian salads just became the in-thing with the restaurant chains, and now I hear they’re opening theme restaurants in the aforementioned Hanging Gardens, the strumming of lutes and flutes borne on the air. It's all wheels and cycles, in the end.

Just like that, another cycle has just completed its thousand-year-long oscillation. Right now our world sits upon a crest of nominal revival: like zombies, the oldest, moldiest names are climbing out of their coffins and crawling into the open, their lifeless eyes blinking.

One of those names is mine. My name is Adelaide Moore.

As far as I’ve read, all the famous Adelaides lived in the 1000s. Duchesses, abbesses, opera characters. Apparently, too, I share my name with a city in South Australia much younger than those operas, a city I know I’ll never visit. I wonder if the air there is colder than it is up here in San Francisco, and if my old friends would tell me more about Adelaide, if they could visit me.

But they cannot visit me. There has been no one here for years and years, save that balding, bespectacled face that ghosts by the only window of my home.

My home is an L-shaped penthouse apartment. What else is there to say? It has flat brown terrazzo floors, concrete walls painted an agreeable green, and that one dark little trilayer glass window facing my acrylic sofa, barely large enough for a head.

Underneath that window is a sliding panel, painted like the walls, and streaked with friction marks. It slides away so the wall can spit food at me when I’m hungry. There was a period when it disagreed with my biological clock, but I guess my clock synchronized itself with it eventually. Now the first hunger pang is as good as an alarm for the arrival of lunch, which is always some sort of pulpy mess, or pellets. My bed sits in the other arm of the L, all synthetic cotton with metal bedposts.

There is a fake plastic Boston fern on the dresser; it’s an insipid green, not anything like the one in The Pteridophyte Field Guide. That one basks lush and glorious in a world that isn’t abashed to acknowledge it, its insect-nibbled pinnae glowing with exaltation to the sun.

Terrazzo, concrete, glass, acrylic. No wood, no hide, no wool.

My shelves, like many shelves I saw in the life I had before, are laden with books. They smell like the factories where the pulp was rolled and cut and dried: books about the old civilizations and Hanging Gardens no longer existent, about settlements that clustered around rivers and grew towards the sea, about Romans crying death in smoky arenas and ships launched between continents and the two wars that thrust America to the place where it is. There are stories about the role of silk in advancing China and the big glittery photos of the caterpillars that make it.

Caterpillars have a special place in my heart. They’re the reason. I did something to a caterpillar once, and now I’m never going to see another living creature in my life.

Here, my only means of correspondence with the world outside is a glowing touchscreen rectangle. In it there is a digital catalog of all books I’m allowed to own. Should I want one, all I have to do is write its name on the sticky note that comes with my meals. I’ll have it by dinner.

I like my books very much, they’re all about technology and biology and Ancient Greek schools of thought. But those books sometimes reference yet other kinds of books, the kind they call “fiction”, and the insets aren’t too descriptive but I think none of my books are “fiction”, nor are any in the catalog.

Sometimes the word “fiction” haunts me when my eyelids weigh and I slip myself under the blanket and the lights go out on cue. I realize it inhabits a hollow in my mind, and that something outside must fill it, something I feel a flash of wanting for.

Then I think that maybe what I really want is something that book covers cannot hold between them, something that this little L-shaped penthouse apartment can’t afford me.

See, I am dangerous. I changed a caterpillar and now they can’t let me change anything else.

–Yet caterpillars change by themselves, don’t they? Without me to change them, don’t they?

Sometimes, when the dark is a little less dim, when my pupils dilate and that far trilayer window begins to glow dull blue from outside, I wonder about people. I think about old civilizations, Romans pressing screams out of sinners, ships stringing routes across the Atlantic, and silkworm caterpillars, boiled before they’ve sprung from their cocoons.

That’s when I know that I need it. Something to do with people who don’t exist. The Greeks and their theaters. Celestial bodies. Artemis and Apollo chiseled from marble blocks. Something to do with “fiction”.

I sleep, and by the next morning it no longer matters. But the chaos continues to thunder within me.

299,792,458

A new book popped up in my catalogue today. The words “Ultra Limited Stock!” popped up in red beside it. I was curious because “Ultra Limited Stock!” books don’t appear all too often, so that’s the title I wrote on the sticky note at breakfast.

299,792,458 arrived with my dinner. I abandoned the brown puree for a riffle through the beautiful new volume. Skimming the content and revelling in the diagrams that pepper the pages, I breathed the press perfume soaked into its pages, and then my fingers froze—

—as they found the ragged leaf-end jutting from the gap in its spine.

Narcissus jonquilla. I knew it before I’d pulled it out; I knew it from its cells. I knew it though I was ice numb. There were jonquils by our flagstone driveway, where I lived long ago. The breezes liked the jonquils, yellow as sun. The Ancient Greeks had a sort of false explanation for how the flowers came to be—a boy at water’s edge, in love with himself. I’d know it anywhere.

The living green of chlorophyll, here, in my room. It’s something the printers could never capture.

But that’s not what is most precious about my jonquil leaf, I soon discover.

I turn it over, and scrawled across the blade, in strange wavering loops of unprinted ink, are the words:

“Do you think the planes of space are shifting?“

Adrenaline makes my heartbeat roar. My dinner lies untouched.

Revolving Door

Ace

This chapter contains mentions of firearms and depictions of electric shocks.

It was a gloomy dawn in the year 1945. On the small side roads of the northern French towns the mud, churned up by boots during last night’s storm, had not begun to dry.

A soldier froze in a corridor between bunks, the hairs on his arm standing in a surge of static as a new set of footsteps thudded up towards him from behind, steady as a metronome beat. Gulping, he turned to show his face to the newcomer, all his past offences suddenly springing to the front of his memory. “Good—good day to you,” he mumbled.

With nothing more than a nod to acknowledge him, Captain Lovelace strode straight by, hands clasped behind her back. “Well, I do hope you are having a good day,” the officer answered. Every soul in the corridor trembled in his boots.

As she walked by, her fingers curled around the chain at her waist, and they leaned away, shivering.

Vesper was not having a good day.

She’d been made a huge fool of in the battle of last night. She wasn’t even on the Western Front, and she’d managed to bugger up this bad. In fact, thank God she wasn’t on the Western Front.

Last night, the Nazis had come with rubber in their hulls. And right on the day she'd decided to allow herself just a little complacence.

She couldn’t let this become a habit. The great gash in the right sleeve of her camo uniform would be good motivation—the gash, and the memory of the second bullet ever to come this close to killing her.

For now, she had to busy herself with cleaning up her act. It was for this that she presently headed towards HQ, attempting to massage the beginnings of a headache out of her temple.

Before she could make it to the exit, another set of footsteps joined hers. She rounded the corner to discover their owner: Thomas Hart. Hands loosening from her chain, Vesper groaned quietly.

“Morning, Captain Lovelace,” said Hart chirpily, leaning back on the balls of his feet, wearing the dirtiest shirt she’d ever had to look upon. His hair was crusty with greyish dirt from last night; she smelled the rainy mud on him, even three feet away. She had a good mind to yell his ear off, but knew she was simply feeling irritable today.

Hart inclined his head as she passed. “Are you well? You don’t look well, if I may say.”

Vesper pursed her lips. “Your concern is appreciated,” she answered, “but I am quite fine.”

“Well...well done keeping us alive last night.” He laughed uneasily.

She glowered, squared her shoulders and marched straight on by. She saw his shoulders slacken. Oh, but he’d be mistaken to think she was letting that comment slide. An accidental jab to the elbow wouldn’t go amiss.

Air snapped briefly as she passed and stuck a finger out. “Ouch! Hey!” yelped the private, like a little boy. Little boys, all of them.

Her lips curved. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she muttered.

“But how? That was one point of contact—”

“Grounding. You’d think my comrades would know to avoid leather slippers.”

Vesper left him no chance to answer. No doubt he was contemplating the purchase of a pair of rubber slippers right now.

Precisely the problem. They learn.

By the time she’d exited her company’s building, she was wishing she’d taken her medication with her. Unfortunately the only cure left to her use was deep breathing, and so she went breathing like a fool all the way up the quadrangle.

The air was swollen with wind and the smell of brine. All the buildings of the camp were of hewn stone, slanting in the dim predawn and following the undulations of the ground beneath as if grown out of that very earth. She surveyed the grounds briefly: the layout of the camp was near identical to the one where she’d trained, and the headquarters were at the head of the bare quadrangle, a surly grey figure nestled atop a swell of land with its back to the grey Dunkirk sea.

She wrestled with sea wind as she marched up the grounds, eyes stinging, and thought the brooding morning grey could almost have been Fairford, were it not so blustery. But this is not Fairford; this is France.

She was glad to come into the lee of the building, and even gladder when the door opened without a clatter. She invited herself inside and peered about. The tiny lobby was empty, except for the smell of untouched concrete; a corridor turned right from the entrance.

Only two doors stood along its length: she knew the office door was the nearer one. On it she knocked thrice, then awaited invitation. Here in the army, one always waited for orders. The people above were the ones with the intelligence, the ones who knew if you were charging straight into your doom. The ones down here, where she was—they were pins on a map. Pieces on a big black board.

Vesper stared at the edge of the wall, where the dark wood met concrete. She liked to flatter herself with the idea that she was not merely a piece. That perhaps her skill—her efficiency—gave her some significance to the men at the top of the chain. God knew, they might have noticed that she occasionally immobilised more enemy soldiers than did the rest of her company combined.

But really, she was as special as any other soldier of her rank, wasn’t she? That she’d been left defending Dunkirk, this long way behind the Front, was proof of that sentiment. No more than a piece, passing beneath hands.

Not that that mattered. Not really.

“Come in?” The lilt of the question through the door accompanied another pang shooting between her ears. She winced as she took the doorknob and entered. Lieutenant Colonel Clarke blinked. “Oh, Captain Lovelace. Just the person I wanted to see. And you look terrible, if I may add.”

“Good morning, sir, I might need an aspirin, if you don’t mind,” she answered. An unwholesome pain had wrapped itself about her head. “These haven’t been the best of days.”

The colonel began arranging his files and books. A rifle round rolled halfway across his map. It pointed at the southern tip of Italy. “Why?” The man picked it up and stood it on its end with a metallic chink. From his left palm he produced a brown medicinal bottle and pushed it across the tabletop. “You did a good job last night.”

Vesper was quite sure this was no joke, he being LTC Aldrich Clarke and not another goof like Thomas Hart. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “If you will excuse me for saying so, I consider last night a failure on my part. Which brings me to my reason for approaching you—I believe it is time I get posted elsewhere. I couldn’t harm the tanks before the storm.” She touched the table’s edge. “They installed some form of insulation. And you can bet your badge that by next week they’ll be waterproofed as well.”

To her surprise he smiled, and propped his chin up on his right elbow, much the way schoolboys did to stop themselves yawning. “Oh, then they’ll be insulated wherever you go, won’t they?” he said. “Never mind last night, the battle was won.”

“It’d have been lost if not for the storm.”

“Yes, and you still took a tenth of their tanks.”

“I was completely useless before then.”

He sighed, tilting forward so his shadow blurred across his map. “Do you think yourself so crucial to my battalion?” he inquired, uncapping his flask.

Recognising the weight hanging upon that question, Vesper shifted on her feet as water rang on the bottom of Clarke’s drinking glass. “I’d say I lend it some weight, sir,” she answered finally.

The colonel laughed inwardly. “That you do,” he said amidst the last traces of his laugh. “But you seem to think it your responsibility to lead us into every battle, or that you are to blame for my company’s every failure. My company’s.” Another chuckle. His whiskers, paled by age, rippled with the laugh. “Give the rest of the men some credit for their training, won’t you? We’re not helpless without you, and not every failure is your liability alone.”

“Yes, sir. I will. But the matter remains. I’m obsolete to the army as long as the tanks are insulated.”

“Oh, then we’ll develop something to counter their development! War is a competition of technology as much as it is of strategy. We have military researchers for that, and last I heard, they’re profoundly enjoying the challenge you pose. A bit of variety, they say.”

Smiling earnestly, he lifted the drinking glass, filled to the brim with water. She took it, and scooped the bottle of tablets off, unscrewing it with her thumb and index. She fished a tablet out with a finger; it dropped and rolled across the colonel’s papers. She snatched for it. A paperclip shot her hand. “I’m sorry,” she muttered and dissipated the currents in her hand; the paperclip dropped like a dead insect. Clarke laughed.

“You really are an oddity,” he murmured as she downed two bitter tablets. “And I don’t mean it in a completely benign sense either. If it weren’t for the war, you’d be of great interest to biologists. They’d like to pick every secret of your ability apart. But war machine is better than experimental subject, isn’t it?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I serve in whatever way I best may,” she said, “and if this is the better way at this time, then it is the one I prefer.” It wasn’t a lie. Though maybe she wouldn’t be professing such blind loyalty when she was strapped to the operating table.

“Don’t fool yourself. You’re a natural on the field.” Clarke breathed a sigh. “But this begs another question. You know you’ll be a public threat once the war is over, don’t you? That there are fears that you will use your powers to best law enforcement and even…seize power?”

“Me? I’d never.” I am the King’s. I am England’s.

He steepled his fingers. “Your prowess on the field is only telling of what you’d be capable of in a civil environment, and believe me, it is not reassuring. Most war machines can be locked away. You pose an ethical dilemma.” He sighed. “But that for another time—”

“We’re all pieces. We’re no more important than each other, to Prime Minister Churchill, to Field Marshal Alexander.”

“Pieces? Oh, no. Perhaps you are but a piece to Churchill. But the Nazis certainly don’t think so. Why else would they have upgraded their tanks for you?” He lifted his head. “Do you know what the machine gun did for World War One? It changed the course of warfare. The trenches were blood fests. The war became a bitter race of technology. You aren’t the machine gun exactly, but you’ve thrown them a challenge they’re having a hard time responding to.”

Vesper frowned. “Then why am I here, defending this dingy outpost in France?” she asked. “With all due respect, sir.”

A change came to his face that was at the same time heartening and terrifying. His eyes were wide and his smile unnerving.

“That brings me to the reason I wanted to see you,“ replied the Lieutenant Colonel. ”Do you know when Dunkirk became ours? This slice of land was captured from France by Henry the Sixth, centuries ago.” He paused. “What most don’t know is that this dingy outpost was taken—and has been defended—for a reason outside war and politics. Scientists suspect it of possessing certain qualities and ongoing research is being conducted here as we speak.”

“We?” she asked, straightening.

He smiled. “I suppose I did have vested interest in this area,” he answered. “We all have our lives outside the war.”

“I was no one.”

“And so was I. Or rather, we were.” Clarke’s inward chuckle came again. “No one will believe strange claims like ours. In our proposal we said we were certain there are tunnels between worlds. Know what their answer was? The entire council laughed. Laughed a good five minutes, then had my colleague and I chucked out of the lab for good.”

“I see.”

He gazed off pensively at the door in the right wall, likely leading to the bedroom. “Nevertheless, I am lucky to have convinced some higher-ups to take their chances with my well-evidenced conjectures. And you, Vesper, are here defending Dunkirk because it holds secrets. Secrets more crucial than this little tiff over territory. We must protect it until we know enough about it to be sure of what to do. It could have...immeasurable strategic applications.” Again the colonel fixed his eyes on hers. “You understand now why you’ve been posted here?”

“I’m guarding something I don’t understand.”

He smiled. “Just as we don't understand your abilities.” Then he had found some papers to busy himself with, and Vesper was left watching the rapid back-forth of his pen, wondering how she should excuse herself.

She cleared her throat. “Thank you, Sir,” she said. The ache clawed at her skull. “I will leave.”

Lieutenant Colonel Clarke nodded at his papers. “Go have yourself a good rest,” he said. “You did well last night.”

Instead of returning immediately to the quadrangle—there was half an hour before any business of import—Vesper decided on a detour. She rounded the perimeter of the shack, crossed the bumps of a few rocks where the sparse grass blades broke up and sand took their place. Her eyes swept the grey expanse where it faded into the ocean, at a line that rose and frothed white and receded, at the span of battered fence that slanted three metres beyond the tide. In the lull of each wave, she breathed.

Vesper only went as far as the tide line. Rocks and shells rolled aside at the tips of her grimy boots, seaweed squelching. Her soles grew damp. Looked like she’d have to leave them out tonight; good leather had a habit of spoiling in moisture.

After a short survey of the coastline, she made for a tall rock that gazed out over the ocean, sunken in the sand. In the dawn it looked like a curled-up man.

Vesper knew more than enough about scaling rock walls. She scanned the little rocky rise for footholds, then picked her way to the top, three metres from the ground but dizzying enough. There she gazed up into the sky, imagined the shadows of the Luftwaffe buzzing by, specks of bombs sinking through the cloud layers. She imagined smoke blooming upon this very beach.

It’d been in the news, the Dunkirk Evacuation, the television glaring grey footage of the carnage into the room where she’d once played. Nine years ago. Almost half her life ago. Half my life has been war.

She wondered upon that miracle, when three hundred thousand soldiers had been spared by misjudgment and chance. What if the Nazis had made a slightly different judgment of the situation? What if he had called a full attack? Just like sorcerers, the men at the top. One flick of a finger and the world was dead.

I do not think it is easy, being the one to whom others pledge allegiance.

A throat was cleared nearby.

“Good morning, knave,” said a voice, feminine and neutral.

Vesper started. Something about the voice was unbearably odd. Aside from the fact that there should be no other females at this camp…

“Who’s there?” she called back, and dragged herself to her knees—rapidly unwinding her chain from about her waist and shuffling over to the back edge of the rock, crouching close.

When she peered past the rock, she almost let her chain fall from her grip. There at the bottom, half-lost in shadow, stood a girl—barely twelve by her looks, blue-gowned, and huddled inside a hooded grey cloak almost too large for her.

Don’t trust homeless waifs you meet by the sea, the thought crossed her. Too many stories began this way.

Still holding her chain at ready, she let herself inspect the apparition. The hands that clutched at her cloak were pale and slender. Light hair pricked out from beneath her hood.

Without warning the girl looked up, and their gazes caught hold of each others’. Her gimlet grey eyes glittered from beneath the shadow of the hood and her gaze seemed to skewer Vesper’s thoughts straight through.

Then she saw movement up ahead, and glanced up beyond her. The girl’s eyes followed. Another person was approaching from some far part of the beach, red robes swaying beneath a cloak that might have looked more at home a millennium ago.

Bright alarm filled her. “Who are you?“ Vesper shouted, swinging her feet over the edge of the rock and hurrying down its face; even then those great grey eyes followed her unfazed, like a scavenger’s. “Identify yourselves! What business have you here?”

“And why should I tell you?”

“Because, ma’am, you are trespassing on a camp of the British Army.”

The man had arrived beside the girl by then, long brown hair waving in the wind. Seeming completely heedless to Vesper’s words, he offered up what looked like a charred crab to the girl, who refused it with a curt “later”.

“Don’t you see the planes about? Are you hermits?” They couldn’t be hermits. At least the girl couldn’t be. Not with a dress that glittered the way it did.

“You misunderstand.”

It was the man who spoke this time; his voice was also peculiar. A gleam of light peeked from beneath the folds of the man’s robes.

Armour? Surely they aren’t performers–

Narrowing her eyes, Vesper pointed her hook at them. “What do I misunderstand?” she shouted. “Why are you here in the camp?”

“There is too much to explain,“ said the man, “could we secure lodging nearby?”

“Camps are out of bounds to all but military personnel,” she persisted. “Clarify your cause. What are you doing here?”

“We require rest immediately. We only just arrived. The journey through the tunnel has left us without a drop’s nourishment.”

“Tunnel? There are no tunnels here. Tell me, where from?”

“Is this the world of Alice Liddell?”

“Stop it with your gibberish.”

“Was this world founded by magic?”

“You have ten seconds.” She released a surge of electrons through her fingers so they sparked and crackled. “Tell me who you are.”

The man glanced at his liege. “I thought not,” he muttered, and his hand flew to his belt, where hung a scabbard glittering with gems both red and pale.

Vesper gripped the hook tighter, preparing to fling it. Who first, the girl or the man?

"You imbecile!” yelled the girl all of a sudden. “Take us to find lodging at once!”

“I don’t take orders from spies!” Vesper said.

“Then let us settle this honourably,” answered the man, eyes flaring.

Morning was rising; it stained the sand pink. There was some of last night’s storm left in her. She felt the electricity race to her hand, tingly as hot sand.

With a snarl, she flung the chain.

The hook snagged the man’s cloak before he’d drawn. Vesper tugged so it dug through the cloth and bit his armour. The girl yelled. The man’s eyes widened.

As the first shock travelled through the taut links, he stiffened like a corpse, eyes wide. Again the girl shouted, something like “stop”—and Vesper thought she heard the rasp of tears in her voice—then for seconds she wondered how a twelve-year-old could be a spy.

An immense coldness came to seize her from nowhere, like a bitter winter wind. Her fingers ached and grew numb. She shivered, teeth chattering against each other. What—

It was the chain. The chain—frost was crystallising on the chain. Gasping, she uncurled her fingers and let it drop, shivering the deathly cold away.

“Don’t you understand? We’re not of this world!” shouted the man amid her daze, eyes narrowing as he dislodged the hook from his shoulder, dazed but lucid enough.

Vesper clenched her teeth. “I’ll believe you when you can prove it.” That sudden—cold. Was that proof? No one in this world could do anything like that. No one else.

The girl snarled. “I’d have you arrested for your insolence.”

“Arrested? And this is not your country.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You attempted to murder my protector, did you not? That ought to be punishable in any land! Unless, of course, you are so uncivilised a people.”

“The way the world has been the last ten years, it’s hard to say,” answered Vesper.

A moment’s harsh silence proceeded. Then the girl smiled, almost kindly. “Do you still want your proof?” she whispered.

“Proof? Do you think I’ll ever believe your tale?”

“Believe this,” she answered, and with a fiery crackle a swoop of flame consumed her.

Vesper blinked at the space that the girl had once occupied, now empty. Then she noticed the card that rested upon the sand, where her footprints lay. She bowed to pick it up. The Ace of Diamonds. She flipped it over. The girl’s face stared back, wreathed in red curlicues outlined in black.

“Impossible,” muttered the captain.

“Quite possible,” answered the face on the card.

And that was about when Vesper realised what precisely was so strange about her voice. She’d never heard that accent before. Anywhere. Not in this world.

A swirl of hot red erupted from her hand, and recreated the girl on the sand ten centimetres from her. “You—have yet to clarify your cause,” said Vesper blankly. It was like a gale had ransacked the shelves of her mind and thrown the thoughts everywhere. Was she going mad? How should a soldier respond to these revelations? “What—business do you have here in Dunkirk?”

The man lowered himself to his knees, picking her chain up off the floor; he inspected it like a bloodied knife before rising. When he turned to her again to return the tool, she no longer found his gaze so serene.

“We are here to find you,” he replied.

Revolving Door

A Fish Out of Water

This chapter contains depictions of alcohol use, intoxication, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and casual racism.

Chen Hong Yi is an idiot.

Or at least he’s managed to convince everyone that he is; it’s hard to match the report card with the face, particularly when that face is spouting terrible jokes in the hallway. Jokes such as the gem that ends with this punchline:

“The poop! Get it? Get it?”

Outside of his fellow toilet humour connoisseurs, who guffaw enthusiastically and slap him on the back, no one can help feeling slightly less intelligent than before for having understood the joke.

“I made that one up myself!” he exclaims amidst their groans. Of course he made it up. No one else could possibly have.

It’s not that they don’t appreciate it, really. Everyone in the BU Marine Biology faculty knows Chen Hong Yi, the international student with the mad pranking skills and the endless catalogue of bad jokes. He’s infuriating, or he’s fun, depending on who you ask. The one thing he never is is boring.

Boring. It gets so boring sometimes. You know how it is, to be so good at things that there's no longer any laudable modesty in pretending to suck?

Of those who know exactly what that means, there are some who apply themselves to memorising classics, and others who spend their lives proving old mathematical conjectures. And then there’s Hong Yi. Hong Yi who finds such feats so boring that he regularly engages, instead, in the practice of silliness. Being a pest. Baiting snark.

After all, people seem a lot more drawn to That Fucking Dumbass Hong Yi than Straight-A’s Star Pupil Hong Yi.

Alright, so maybe he actually does get a kick out of strapping horns to the tops of doors and watching the reactions when tutors slams them shut; maybe it’s because he is an incorrigible prankster that he keeps ten fart cushions in his locker for the days he feels inclined to conduct an orchestra of flatulence and vehement denial. Or the reason he has purple food dye. Or the electric gag pen.

But that’s not all there is to him, he’d insist. Obviously there’s some profound meaning behind his enjoyment of bad fart jokes.

Hong Yi, ever the socialite, makes the effort to be there when his friends decide they’ll be going out tonight. Even though he’s wary of being out too late. It’s common courtesy to be there with your buddies while they’re going through alcohol-induced humiliation.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit…I dunno…late to be out?” He shifts on his feet, squinting down at the road beyond the Towers.

Flashing a grin, Jacob slaps him on the back. “Stop being such a mommy’s boy!”

Pete’s sleek new car charges into the driveway, and suddenly everyone’s being bundled into the backseat. Hong Yi protests to no avail. Doors click shut. The engine revs proudly.

As the car rejoins the traffic down Commonwealth Avenue, Jacob pulls his buddies into a football huddle. “For the benefit of Berrigan, we’re down for beer pong,” he says. “Harold chose the game, think we stand a chance?”

Beer pong? That will–as far as he’s read–involve beer, balls, and gravity.

Berrigan snorts. “Yeah, easy-peasy!” he says. The rest answer with equal vigor.

Chen Hong Yi loves the sea.

He lived his life before in Beijing, and has lodged two years at the Warren Towers. But he considers the glassy, blue New England Aquarium as much a home to him as either place. He spent a semester of his life there, learning from behind the glass with all that blue light upon him, blue so intense he thought it might seep into his skin. It was the professor he was attached to there, a scowly Dr. O’Malley with the disposition of a hunter, who had recommended him to the folks at the Marine Biological Laboratory.

It’s hard to explain what precisely he loves about the deeps and its secrets. He thinks fish are absolutely rad, as are the invertebrates that cohabit the greatest niche of the earth. He has an entire notebook filled with notes on marine animal behaviour. He watches silly octopus videos in his free time. But he thirsts after the mystery and the strangeness, still, as if something deep down were calling him to join it.

It’s quite something, this love. Vast and fierce enough that he’s set all his life choices irrevocably around it.

There is a catharsis in watching the seagulls circle over the white masts in Boston Harbor, listening to those messy white birds scream at the morning for fish. He sort of thinks it must be nice not to know the restriction of roads and walls. It must be nice living on the wind. He sometimes sees them go out farther than the shore, farther than the last visible boat, out to where they are swallowed by blue.

Chen Hong Yi is not an idealist.

He misplaced his idealism long ago, one day, while he was staring at the wall, gravel grinding at his knees as the skin on his calves was split by a rattan cane.

Like every other student, he has been topping classes as long as there have been classes to top. School starts them off early, and almost as soon as he is eligible for competitions does he start bringing awards back home, trophies and plaques that rapidly accumulated and fill the shelf his father installed for the very purpose so a second, then a third, has to be nailed beneath it in subsequent years. His parents are so very taken by the shiny cups and medals.

Fertile field suddenly thrust into their hands, they take immediately to sowing. On Sundays, Hong Yi is locked up alone with his books. Given little choice otherwise, he learns not to hate them but to look to them for comfort. They open windows of salvation in his little world of concrete and dust.

Elementary knowledge becomes amateurish expertise. His novicehood morphs into a flowering, angry sort of thirst that is not soothed even when he’s opened and scoured every last book in the study.

It is perhaps the first time he’s ever seen his parents smile, when he comes to their room one evening and says the books are too simple for him.

A dormant dream of theirs is reanimated then, one that both were forced by circumstances to abandon.

Hope becomes insistence. Insistence moves their hands. Insistence becomes paranoia.

It’s not enough, they bellow and screech, eighty is not enough, not when there are twenty marks left unattained. Eighty isn’t enough to make you a doctor, eighty is a peddler’s score. They have him answer the strokes of the cane with a mantra of borrowed aspirations.

Hong Yi makes good on his pledge. Eighties become nineties and reports on his excellent work displace complaints about his conduct.

Then nineties stop being satisfactory, and his parents start goading perfection out of him.

Chen Hong Yi is not one to abide by rules, most of the time.

He’s gotten to know Harold’s house over three visits, but he has no less trouble navigating it than the first time. It’s hard to see through the menagerie of party-goers bouncing to the throb of the speakers, and the spotlights set up on tripods, now a furious shade of green. There’s kids sprawled over the sticky tables and a band on the grass that’s totally killing it. The lights shift again, this time to red, and men are talking up other men, mischief and the threat of malice in the placement of their hands.

Hong Yi and his lot avert stares from the rest. There's a plastic table on the lawn, all set up with shiny red cups, for the messy game about to get underway.

They’re welcomed by friends; no one minds sweaty hands all over their shoulders, or thick alcoholic breaths clouding up the air. Friends laugh in his ears and offer to grab him a beer, though they know he hates drinking.

At the table, Harold is drumming his fingers on his forearm, Harold of the infield, unrecognisable now in his v-neck tee and torn jeans.

"Hey, they’re here!” A grin widens on his lips. “Jake the Rake!”

“Good to see you didn’t chicken out!” Jacob retorts with equal spirit. “Ready to lose?”

“I’m ready to have fun.”

A game of rock-paper-scissors determines that Jacob is to start. He soaks the ball in the nearest cup of what smells like something much stronger than beer, and lifts it level with his eyes. He doesn’t contemplate the cups, nor does he weigh the ball–merely swirls his hand and flings it at the triangle of cups, so swiftly that no one is ready to gape. “Woah, slow down!” Hong Yi yells, snatching the table’s edge to watch.

The ball arcs, and squarely makes a cup in the third row.

Chorus of cheers, noise and expletives. Nothing they aren’t familiar with. Harold downs the shot, makes a foul-mouth exclamation and a massive grin. Then he takes the ball; he’s in his element now; he’s thrown a thousand times. Everyone can see the ball soaring across the field.

The shiny red sphere flies in a stirring of breaths, and plops neatly into the second cup of the first row on their end. Yells and high-fives are exchanged. Jacob sniffs at the furor and flicks the sticky ball out of the cup into Berrigan’s hand while he gulps the drink down.

He throws next. It is an unfortunate throw. Everyone’s eyes follow his clearly-misaimed ball, cheers going up at the other end of the table already. But in the split second following, Hong Yi’s fingers tighten on the table–and he seeks, for moments, the tug of the world beneath his feet.

The ball grows inexplicably heavy.

The curly-blonde-haired boy on the other team drinks.

Amid cheers and back-slapping and complaints of nausea, Hong Yi leans into the crowd to listen. “Did you see that?” A sceptic in the background. “The ball wasn’t supposed to do that.”

“It’s the Asian guy. He messed with the ball. Or he used his nerd powers to move it or something.”

“That’s some straight-up X-Men shit, man!”

“Did you see him touch the ball? I didn't seen him touch the ball once.”

“But he was staring at the thing like some freak! Nerd powers, I’m telling ya. Just watch—”

Hong Yi clears his throat, and their lowered eyes dart towards him, before the conversation abruptly moves on to an unrelated topic.

He grins. Of course he didn’t tamper with the ball.

It grows clearer and clearer, as the months seep into each other and stretch into year-long streaks, that his interests are beginning to stray—from the definiteness of the path that’s been carved for him in blood and gravel under knees. Till now he’s expected to be a doctor or an engineer, just like he’s been told he will be all his life. Till now he’s had no questions.

But the questions are coming now, all at once, like a flock of attacking gulls. And he thinks it must have to do with the pictorial guide lying open and heavily-tagged on his desk. The gaping hatchet fish and its monstrously pearly eyes. Searching the deeps with lights like a landing strip along its back.

I want to be a marine biologist, his mind whispers suddenly, fear and hope mingling. He doesn’t know how he knows. He only hears the sea.

I want to be a marine biologist, he drags the words bleeding, screaming from his throat, two months later, and he is answered with the most ruthless caning he’s had.

You’re a waste, they say then, yelling at each other without addressing him at all. You were supposed to be something good, you wretched child, is this how you repay everything we’ve spent on your education?

Even though he doesn’t think this is something to feel guilty for, the guilt comes anyway, like a twelve tonne tank, mowing his heart down beneath its treads.

Snap. The sting of the rod makes him bite his tongue and choke back everything he was prepared to say. All the explanations and excuses about wanting something different, something new, something that they—with their pathetically tiny lives and equally tiny minds—were never allowed to imagine.

You’ll either be a doctor or an engineer, they scream even in his dreams. Don’t settle for a lesser vocation. We won’t let you.

They force him through medical dictionaries. Journals. Moralising lectures that make clear that he has been bereft of any choice. Their earnest hope is stained by grudges and frustrations, like seawater by oil slick. They mask their pleading with beatings and emotional blackmail.

He gasps for air without letting fall a single tear, it’s not that hard when you’ve spent a decade learning how not to cry. Nothing is wrong, he thinks; his parents only want to send him to the sky because he was made, they say, to soar.

But somehow he only feels like a fish out of water.

Chen Hong Yi thinks he’s doing a good job of making American culture a part of him.

It’s all for the better, he thinks, particularly when he’s going to be living here for an indefinite time to come. And it helps that he quite loves it—all the uninhibited luxuriation, as if he could rule the world if he so much as asked for it.

And it’s easy. Except, maybe, when everyone decides they know him from a single look. But hey, he knows how to take a joke. All the same, he does his best to bury his accent under borrowed vocabulary and intonation. Within a year he speaks like a real Bostonian, keeping his memory of his homeland where no one will ever find it and use it to their advantage.

The bustle peaks at around nine-thirty. They’ve made two-thirds of the frats’ cups, and the frats have taken out half of their own, but Hong Yi hasn’t had a drop and it’s his turn to throw.

Everyone’s a little addled by now, so they invite him forward with rowdy chants. With a smirk Hong Yi tests the weight of the ball, syrupy with alcohol both dried and not.

He throws. The speakers are booming and the lights are getting lower. The table legs echo the strain they feel.

In one continuous and mesmerising motion, the rubbery red projectile skims the surface of one cup and lands in the adjacent one, making two cups in a toss. A guy on Harold’s side—Hong Yi thinks he recognises the pitcher at the last game—curses and lifts both, tipping them in his mouth simultaneously.

The accusations of cheating and tampering from the other end have become audible now—but he knows they don’t believe their own calls. The entire throw was out in the open, viewed from all sides. No tricks. Nothing makes a ball bounce like that but skill.

And gravity powers, of course. But he’s not about to tell them.

Fist-bumps around the table have become roughish hugs, the alcohol is getting to everyone’s brains. Before he can return their sentiments though, his eye is drawn by a flash of red and he turns in time to see the pitcher make a cup on their end. “Hey, Chinaman,” snaps a voice. “Drink up.”

Hong Yi blinks. Looks like he forgot to mess with this guy’s attempt. The glistening ball bobs in a cup in the front row. Well, rules are rules. Picking the ball out of the red plastic cup, Hong Yi tosses it to Jacob. “Sorry, liver,” he whispers, and tips the liquid into his mouth. Vodka.

There is this one advantage Hong Yi has over conceivably every other person he will ever meet. Quite a meaningless advantage, though, which he finds to be useful in activities as specific as shifting heavy luggage and as frivolous as winning beer pong.

As a child, he observed that things around him had a habit of either collapsing on their joints or toppling inexplicably. It was at least three years after the realisation that he was the cause of these events that the boy, now ten, learnt to control the timing and severity of these accidents.

He decided to hide the fact from others, and it was the one rule he never broke, strain as the secret did against his prudence. It was his one secret from his parents, something that would always be his.

Whenever he is at the clinic, Hong Yi likes to huddle in a corner of the couch and watch the ornamental fish dart about the tank on the shelf. When no one is looking, he places a hand on the shelf’s underside and makes fish sink to the stones, grinning when their bulbous eyes dart to the face in the glass.

Bright, beautiful things. He wonders, as he is watching them gleam, how it must be to be trapped in a tiny artificial tank, so very far from the lakes where their ancestors were caught.

“Hey, hey, I’ll go again,” he holds out an arm to stop Jacob from taking the ball, and feels an elbow collide painfully with his chest. He’s only had one cup, the guy had five and it’s obviously not doing him any good. His eyes narrow. They’re gonna win this.

Hong Yi barely has to interfere. The little white ball bounces once off the rim of the only remaining cup, then falls right in

“You cheating–” yells the pitcher; there’s vodka all over the front of his shirt. He makes a vulgar jibe about his mother, and all at once Hong Yi feels his insides turn to ice.

“Shut the fuck up,” he says.

He loses footing for a second. “Mummy’s boy, eh?” he shouts in answer.

“Yeah,” he replies with a smirk calculated to annoy. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

Look at these scars, look what you did so I’d follow the path you wanted to follow, but couldn’t follow.

He has shed tears in front of his parents before—but this is the first time the tears have been for anger.

Look at all my awards, isn’t that enough for you? Aren’t you proud?

This time the slap stings deeper than the skin, and he is sent to kneel beneath the shelf of his trophies, each one an accusation.

We punish you for love, love, always love, and fear. It’s the reason your subpar grades aren’t worse, you ungrateful child.

I earned those scores myself, he thinks without any tears, I earned them because I loved to read and to learn and to know. I want to know more. More about biochemistry and invertebrates and evolution and abiogenesis and being and lightning and freedom.

I didn’t learn for you.

He says none of this. It is basic respect. Respect founded not upon the perceived infallibility of his parents, but upon his love for them.

He watches their opponents down their last cup, finally conceding that they’ve lost and their opponents are now officially members, even laughing and congratulating them, too drunk to be ashamed of defeat.

Not a second’s staring longer, Hong Yi dashes off to the toilet, two fresh cups of vodka sloshing in his stomach.

“Killing me,” he gasps, slamming the door shut. Better get it out.

He reaches to touch the wall, not to steady himself but for quite the opposite. He feels himself grow weightless, lets the sickening weakness of gravity wash over him while he loses his balance. Then he flings himself forward and vomits.

The lights brighten unbearably while the gravity in his vicinity returns to normalcy and Hong Yi, slumped against the corner of the room, attempts to flush the toilet. Should have kept the puke for some future prank, he weakly thinks for a moment, before deciding no one deserves something that sick.

When he leaves the toilet, the drunkards have managed to drag each other into chairs, and a very sober Pete is waiting to take them home.

“That thing the guy said. It really grabbed your goat, didn’t it.”

It is half past eleven, and the bare streets are hauntingly pale, streetlight glowing off the tarmac. The carpark is near full end to end, from what he can see from the backseat of Pete’s car.

“How did you know? That was the calmest I was the whole night.” He tilts his head on the cushioning, trying to see through the darkness and the pressing silence, but the far-off streetlights prove insufficient.

The dashboard clock glows a quiet green, 11:00. He hears the traffic light turn green; the cars have started zipping by again.

“Yeah,” Pete says, turning his head halfway to catch a glimpse of his friend. “It’s scary when you’re calm.”

Yes, I am calm.

Chen Hong Yi knows the difference between what he wants and what he’s meant to have.

He, like the ocean, has seen and known too much. Too much dark treasure, too much spilt blood, for him to be calm knowing it.

Through a public WiFi connection, he secretly applies for a transfer to a high school in Boston, Massachusetts, and writes to his high school in interest of the same. Then, every night after, he grits his teeth and broaches the topic with his parents.

Somehow he is never met with corporal punishment, so weary of fighting have his parents grown. They hold their ground, but he advances. He digs towards the underpinnings of their beliefs.

Why do you glorify these professions? Why doe they matter so much? Every word hurts to speak.

Because they pay well. And because it will make us proud.

Do we really need a so much money?

How else will you support us when we're old and sick? Have you lost all sense?

I can earn that money anywhere. I promise I can.

Promises don’t make up for lost opportunities!

I’m losing an opportunity! I'm throwing my dreams away for yours! Look at my academic testimonials. Look at all those trophies. My tests reports, my certificates, the scars on my legs. I don’t care, you can’t lie to me about it. I could be good at anything.

And this, he sees then, in their eyes, is the truth they were afraid he’d someday learn. That he could, indeed, be anything. Anything they want him to be, and anything they don't.

He sees right through their game now, of course—they thought their rule of fear kept him on his feet—but no, it was never the fear, it was never pain, it was the eddying of froth on the edges of waves, telling a chemical story, a luminescent story, whispering a rumour, of the life beneath and how it began.

Yes, you could be, they finally concede.

His eyes well up when at the listlessness on their faces, he doesn’t want them to know it hurts to watch but the hurt makes itself seen.

I promise they will want me wherever I go.

You’re not thinking this through. You could be so much more.

I could be so much—more.

Late one night in the humid, blooming, blustery red depths of summer, he hears his parents weeping in the next room.

And within a week, he is gone.

The silhouettes of the fuzzy dice intercept the faraway lights. Beneath the musk of alcohol and vomit the perfume of the car is still faintly perceptible. A scent like jasmine.

“I guess he did sort of piss me off,” murmurs Hong Yi, studying the unremarkable screen of his phone, as if waiting for a call that won’t arrive. “Like, he was boozed and all, but…”

“Don’t let them get to ya,” answers his friend after a pause. “I’m surprised you haven’t gotten that sort of thing before. You’ve been here for four years, right?”

“Yeah. But tonight—”

He scrolls through his message history with his mother. Nothing too personal. Mostly her asking after his health and him promising he’s fine. Even when he’s not. She’s too far now to send him to the doctor or boil him tea, and worrying her over his health will only wake livid fears she can’t soothe away–

—tonight I wish I’d never left.

Rising from his slump, he yawns and throws the car door open. “Thanks for the ride. See you.”

Pete grins in answer. “Go get some sleep, nerd,” he says.

Chen Hong Yi is a veritable genius, though no one likes to admit it.

“The goddamn nerd. Don’t know how he does it. I mean, he’s got the vocabulary of a fucking five year old. Does he sleep in the aquarium?”

“More like, does he sleep with the professor?”

Apparently someone has made the top of the list again. People are already joking about hammering a plaque with his name to the top of the notice board.

He decides he will take part in this self-glorifying exercise, and suggests the plaque be made of gold. Then he asks a classmate if she’d like to borrow his pen for that form she needs to fill, extending the item in her direction.

Hilarity ensues as she stiffens and shrieks, letting go.

“Shocking, eh?” he chortles. “Sorry, do you actually need a pen? ‘Cause you can have this one.” He flings her the one in his pocket. This one is not rigged with an electrical circuit. He’ll keep the special one for himself, in case someone needs it in future.

Today is a good day. Five great (and totally unnecessary) Facebook posts, and one-third of Homestuck under his belt. Crazy stuff, that. He dearly hopes there’s no weird time/space shit going on in his vicinity—the world’s complicated enough as it is.

Flicking at the curtain, Hong Yi is met by dull grey sky, thick as pudding. He groans and thrusts a hand under his desk to snatch a book off the top of the stack. Summer is on the brink of beginning. He’s got the air tickets. His luggage is packed under the bed.

Revolving Door

Guiding Light - Butterfly

This chapter contains depictions of laboratories and (the effects of) solitary confinement.

He loves this thunder. It makes him feel alive, the way it rattles the joints of the chamber around him as he is tossed through time and space.

Fingers against the walls, he thinks of his old smoky days below. He remembers the streets in the gloom, the fog, and the umbrella overhead—he lived, so he did, but was that living? He thinks he has never lived till today, because today is the first time he has been afraid to die.

He loves this thunder. It sings death, death, death like a whisper that writhes through the shivering gaps to wring his neck. Six long seconds he listens to the thunder in the steel joints encasing him, clamouring against each other. The best that the year has to offer this side of the Channel.

—that side? Perhaps the Channel and the things it divides grow irrelevant when you are this far beyond its limits.

Somehow, despite the meticulous calculation, the years it spent in review, he knows he will not arrive where he’s meant to go. Somehow he knows the universe conspires. Somehow he thinks this is fate’s design, that he should hear this roaring thunder and suddenly believe the things he has so far pretended to be false.

He is afraid; he cannot deny that. In all likelihood he will arrive quite safe, a little battered, and normally he would believe the scientists. But ah, this is different, his heart says—this is today! He has lived too long on the good sides of probabilities.

It is time for chance to swing wildly. It is time for him to be unlucky, at least this once.

When the bespectacled man appears at the window today, she stares at him until he is gone.

The world is soundless beyond her walls, but up here, when she closes her eyes, she pretends she knows how the new car engines sound. She imagines they rumble like her father’s old truck, lights streaming across the driveway.

Curling her fingers around the corners of her peculiar physics textbook, Adelaide thinks of sunlight.

She has lived like this too long. Thinking of people she will never meet. Longing after faces in print. In all these years, with only her books for sordid company, she has read about lust, about the wilderness where sex means that the individual ripples through genealogies, its little pieces captured in strings of code.

Sometimes, she begins to think she is part of that code herself—when by some whim of fate her eyes get caught on photographs of dead naturalists, Greek statuettes sometimes, and she feels a honeyish happiness trickle through her. She lingers on those printed faces, and thinks they are quite pleasing, sometimes imagines them walking this empty room with her. And of course, pictures are not all she has. She has, on three separate occasions, grown obsessed with the face in the glass.

This week is the third occasion. When those eyes peered in yesterday, Adelaide looked right back. It made her think she is still alive, the eagerness with which she sought the face of the bespectacled man. Alive and not irrelevant, not isolated from the rest of this vast beating code. But her staring seemed to terrify him, so he left sooner than usual.

She sighs and waits for lunch, which eventually arrives in a tray shoved into the room by a mechanical paddle. Bland paste as usual. They try for variety by randomising the dishes everyday, but is there so much to be excited for between pellets and goo?

Something flashes in the glass. Heart pounding, her eyes lift to the dim shape that has appeared. The man with the glasses. She catches his eye and tries for smile. She can make out his eyes today. Perhaps he cares for her; perhaps that is why he comes to check. Perhaps she should tell him she is glad that he does.

But his gaze twists into a frown today, one of such dislike she grows afraid and retreats into her blankets. He vanishes into the dark, and she fears that she’s offended him so that he will never return.

She pounds a fist into the mattress. This hapless, fatuous staring. She has been severed from life, hasn’t she? That is what they’ve been trying to do, all these years. Excise her from the system. Why does she still feel it, then?

Like all the days that have flown before this, Adelaide tosses another day aside, flings it like a mayfly into a pond. The rise and set of the sun is only an informed event now; she can only imagine how it looks when Rayleigh scattering sets the clouds ablaze. It must be… She frowns at the face in the toilet mirror. …It must be beautiful. She remembers finding the jonquils beautiful.

The lights hum an ambivalent warning, the way they do a minute before they cede their light. Ten o'clock. She places the automatic toothbrush on the cleaning tray. A push of the button sees it sliding through a gap in the wall.

Deep in the night, as she stares off into the fathoms of the black ceiling above, Adelaide grows sad. It is a sadness she doesn’t quite recognise, enough that tears begin welling at the corners of her eyes. She can feel the dry, listless air-conditioning against her skin, making strands of her hair flutter. Everywhere she turns in this darkness, she sees loneliness staring straight back like a ghoul.

She wonders what has become of the world outside. She knows it’s still there; she knows because that bespectacled face returns, and must go somewhere else when he is not at the window. But does that matter? The traces of grey in his hair, the scratches on his glasses, that is all she has of the world.

The sadness throbs and her lip trembles. No, she can’t cry—not for this.

Breathing a sigh, she pulls herself out of the blankets. The cold swallows her feet. Her eyes sweep the dark room, where the faint glow of a few things has sharpened to clarity—the outline of a book catalogue screen beneath a polyester cover, the little square window above the food panel, the clock above blinking an electric blue 10:14. There isn’t anything abnormal about this layout; she has seen the same thing every night for eleven years. The same blue lights in the same dim places.

The sleep is getting heavier on her eyes. Why is she awake still? Something sits awkward in her belly, something she might call regret. Why hasn’t she fallen asleep? Why did she change the butterfly? Why does she feel these codes and strings? Nighttime, she finds, is a good time for futile musings. She never sought an answer anyway…

A shadow shifts in the dark. Shock pierces straight through her thoughts and sets her rigid.

Her eyes flit about, but her room is unchanged and empty as ever. Well, then, all this loneliness has made her too eager to see something extraordinary. She resolves not to let loneliness deprive her of sleep–

Until the blue lights appear.

Adelaide shrieks as her floor lights up, electric blue. Her back bangs against the headboard; the smarting pain joins the throb of her heartbeat. Her fingers have gone numb and the hard blue glow is still there, sturdy and bright. Throwing tall fingers of shadow all around.

Danger, instinct shrieks. Danger, danger where there are things you don’t understand. How can a light be danger? Danger pretends to be good.

But curiosity burns on her thoughts and she needs to look.

Dropping to her knees, Adelaide begins to crawl to the edge of her bed. This must be meant to happen, she whispers to herself. No danger. There hasn’t been danger for eleven long years. They must be testing a new signalling system. She sucks in a breath, grits her teeth together, and peers over the edge.

Her eyes widen in the light. There, on her floor, glows a string of words:

I AM HERE TO TAKE YOU AWAY

Adelaide curls her fingers and shivers. Feelings engulf her, like a storm that engulfs an entire city, roaring so violently that she bows and begins to sob. Is it real? Is this hope? Fear? She is afraid to hope. She only stares, tearfully, at the great bold words still there.

Through the blur of her tears, she faintly sees the text blur and dim, before solidifying into a new message:

DO NOT FEAR, I AM A FRIEND

A tingle races up her neck. Her eyes dart about the room, but even in the new blue light, nothing much is detectable to her eyes—just the gleaming of couch legs where she knows it stands, and shelves where her books slant against each other. There are still too many shadows, and she takes a second survey of the area. The person responsible for the messages must be here—where? She sees no changes in the room, no displaced furniture, no human figures by the faintly glowing walls.

But there is a new silhouette in the window.

She clenches her jaw so she doesn’t make a noise.

The shadow shifts. As if to prove it is alive. The words are blurring, forming again.

PLEASE DO NOT FEAR ME

She looks up, more curious than afraid. “Are you help?” she says. It shifts again. Surely it can’t hear her.

Finally making up her mind, Adelaide slips, all jittery, off the edge of her bed. The carpet is cold at the touch of her toes; fear churns even colder in her stomach. Carpet changes to terrazzo. She stumbles half-blind through the thick darkness.

There at the window, she presses her fingers against the glass, as if they might feel some warmth, but all they find is more ice. “What do I do?” she says, hoping her voice carries through it.

On the floor behind her, the lights begin to swim, and she turns. The text has rotated to face her.

I WILL FREE YOU

Her fingers curl and uncurl again. Free. The word is lighting bonfires in her. The text changes.

NEED YOUR HELP, PLEASE ANSWER

Adelaide nods listlessly.

DO YOU REMEMBER HOW YOU ENTERED?

WRITE YOUR ANSWERS

“Oh—” Adelaide scrambles into the dark by her bedside, stubbing her toe on the corner. How did it happen? The wall was open, and she turned around in time to see it slide shut–

She finds the pen in the drawer; the paper is on her shelf in the form of a ring-bound notebook. Her fingers slide across spines and crimped pages till they find it.

Feverishly glancing to back check that the silhouette still waits beyond the glass, she blindly scribbles her reply on a page, handwriting turned ugly by fright:

This wall opened like a sliding panel

and racing from her bed to the window, she presses it against the window for the silhouette-visitor’s eyes.

It moves, and so do the blue words on the floor, to be replaced by a succinct:

THANK YOU

Barely after she’s taken in the cold gratitude of those words, they scatter into nothing, and the room is dark again. They are burned into her retinas, though; her nerves are still buzzing. Is this escape? Real escape? The thought is too strange and it leaves the silence ringing.

The room is dark as pitch. Turning back to the window, she finds it empty. The same blue shines through as always, from the corridor outside. But she refuses to leave the wall, not when—not when she can almost feel it, the warmth. Of the person on the other side, just moments ago.

The silence it begins to weigh inside her skull. Ten minutes. The shadows are swimming with imprints of lights behind her corneas. Any minute now. Any minute. She can wait a minute longer. It will happen. The silhouette will return…

When twenty dark minutes have come and gone, and her feet have begun to ache, Adelaide can no longer remember seeing the words on the floor, at least not in a way that stays. Like a dream.

All at once, a swarm of questions, confusions, descend upon her. You don’t know if the silhouette will come back. You don’t know if it was real.

She barely manages the trip across the room; it almost drowns her in stillness—she slumps onto her mattress, where the cold blankets engulf her like they always do. Did you really believe it for a moment? Did you think someone would come after eleven years?

The tears have returned, because she can still feel the hope glowing in her veins. Eating her alive. The letters in light, the blue silhouette. It still rings, all rings, like the aftersound of thunder. Was it all, despite the sharpness of sensation, a dream?

Of course it was.

Adelaide is pulling the covers over her feet again, readying herself for the emptiest sleep yet–when a click resounds like a gunshot, and she stiffens.

She throws the blanket aside and rises, breath quickening.

She hears it, the grind of machinery. Something begins to hum, even as she is craning her head to listen. It isn’t like the hum from the air-conditioning; it moans from outside the walls, and it is so uncannily loud.

Then the bed beneath begins to shiver…

A straight gash of brilliant blue opens at the left corner, where two walls meet. She flinches and shades her eyes, breath coming in harsh, trembling gasps. In that hazy light, she can just make out the lines, of the ceiling panels, of floor outside—

She breathes so hard her ears begin to ring. Outside. She feels the swirl of the world about her, feels the light sing through her cells. The gap widens, and bright ceramic blue glares into her eyes so she must squint, and a new smell erupts into her little L-shaped room. It smells of—of needles. Alcohol. Imperfect sterilisation. Constellations of memory reignite in her brain.

And as she sits there shivering and gripping at the sheets, a voice comes to fill her room, for the first time in a decade.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Moore.”

A silhouette stands there, outlined by the glow of the corridor, no longer a blur behind glass. He is right here. Breathing the same air as she.

Adelaide’s eyes widen as she struggles to make his face out. “Why—did you—” she whispers, limp and quivering, fingers tangled in the cloth.

His head tilts, and the room lights up, though she sees the bulbs are still dead.

Adelaide’s mind swims momentarily, with the face of the man whom the silhouette has become.

He is not the bespectacled man. His hair is a lovely sunny blonde, cut to his shoulders—and is dressed for windy weather, collar turned up and girdled by a scarf. She cannot stop watching him, as he watches her with fascination of equal measure—cannot avert the thousands of movements and expressions and nuances of motion he engages continuously—it is so strange, so alienly enrapturing. To see a living person.

Raising his eyebrows, he straightens his coat. “Forgive my manners! Felix Mercer,” he says, extending a hand as he approaches—she withdraws. “Explanations must wait. As I’ve mentioned, I am here to remove you from this facility. And I think it bears mentioning that I did not enter by the most legal of means. We must leave quickly.”

Felix. Felix Mercer. She fights to remember, as if struggling to catch a flickering bird. The terror is bright in her head. But he is right, of course—the wall is open. She realizes everything this entails, with a widening of eyes. She can see right down the corridor, right into the burning blue lights…she needs to run now.

Shifting nervously, Adelaide manages a timid “do I take anything along?”.

He is already there beside her. “Anything that warrants its burden,” he replies, offering her a hand in this shadowless light.

She recoils for a moment; wrong screams her mind, wrong to touch anything that lives, anything that could breathe and change; she will turn it into something monstrous—

But his unfamiliar grey eyes strike the match of her courage. He isn’t the bespectacled man. The past. The chiming dark. He is a stranger. He is someone she’s never seen before.

And because of that, she trusts him.

Picking up her notebook and pen, sliding them into the pocket of her skirt, she gingerly grips the offered hand.

“Are you ready?” he asks; his eager smile surprises her.

She nods, even though she isn’t. He takes her, stumbling, to the blue corridor. Sounds are stirring somewhere beyond, security guards.

Grinning, he takes her about the shoulders and readies himself to run. “Keep quiet,” he says, “and they won’t see us.”

Suddenly they are dashing breathlessly through the corridors; she swears he’d be laughing if silence weren’t so crucial. Who is he, this strange young man whom the light seems to follow? He swoops down pathways and she fights to keep up, eyes clammed shut, tears trickling down her cheeks.

The thought that she could lose this chance at freedom any moment—now that she’s so close to touching it—is excruciating. One glance, one second’s recognition, she will be a prisoner again. And Felix, kind, wonderful, mysterious Felix who ventured so far to find her, will be a criminal by law. She doesn’t know him, not quite, but she knows she doesn’t want him to be the target of the police.

Footsteps. A guard turns the corner ahead. She sobs softly but doesn’t scream, feels her companion’s grip tighten about her shoulders and pull her up against the left wall. The uniformed man strides towards them, surly grey. Keep quiet—keep quiet and they won’t see us. She bites her fingers so she doesn’t shriek, hangs tight onto every breath.

But the guard barely gives them a glances, and marches straight by, not finding it strange at all that a well-dressed man is roaming the lab with their prisoner under his wing. Adelaide watches, still, until his back has shrunk from sight and his footsteps from earshot. Then Felix is moving again.

The corridors are dim as caves; as they pass, cloaked scientists flutter like ghosts between doors. None turn to look, but their footsteps make her shiver. They pass incubation rooms with glass doors; rows of plants glow dimly in machines. They soar by photonics labs whose heavy doors stand shut, thick with black-and-yellow warnings. The entrance to the particle accelerator beneath the city is here in this place, too, and its double doors whiz past as they whirl down the grey stairs. Another guard comes and passes; his stun gun is never raised. But it is near enough that she grows rigid with fright.

The labyrinthine lab never seems to end. A map of the world is building itself in her mind now; it is vast, cold, horrible. This is not the world about which she read. Adelaide feels like weeping. She only clenches her teeth, draws closer, and hopes that Felix knows what to do.

Dim corridors fly behind them. The boom of rain grows louder. Gleaming concrete passageways give way to a narrow carpeted corridor, and they slow to a walk, and something about the air tells her they are almost there—almost out. Perhaps the scent of more civil air conditioning, which is growing to overpower the odors of sanitation and the brutality hidden beneath.

A door with a rectangular button looms up at the end of this passageway. Before they pass through, Adelaide glances at Felix, asking with her eyes, how did you get in? He smiles and shakes his head as he pushes the button.

“After you,” he whispers, holding the door open for her.

Felix takes her arm again on the marble floor outside. Smiling still, he leads her across the sparkling lobby, right past the receptionist’s counter.

Adelaide stares out ahead at the curtain wall between here and outside. She’s almost afraid to believe that the darkness that fills the glass, smudged with orange at the corners, is the sky. It isn’t nearly as much of a blur as she expected. It is so—crisp and sharp and…cold.

“Almost,” whispers her companion. The man at the counter straightens as the doors slide apart for them, before deciding the two leavers are no cause for concern and returning to his work.

The warm air outside blasts against her face, making her gasp.

She almost doesn’t realize when she is finally outside.

The first thing to demand attention is the wind. The wind is monstrously loud; it claws—scrapes—at her frigid fingers and across her ears, singing harmonically, the way her air-conditioning never does. The driveway is fuzzy with rain, the curb sinking half a foot to the glittering, watery darkness. There are towering lights far, far beyond, all visible from the vantage of this hill—cheap signs and myriad window-specks, dotting the horizon just beyond a hedge of rails and parking stands.

She can see the city, San Francisco. The rain smells of something old she cannot quite place. She feels it whip at her cheeks.

Suddenly frigid, terrified, exhausted, her bones long for the safe coziness of the L-shaped room again. She tries to turn around, but Felix hasn’t let go. “We must find lodging,” he insists. The dark, wet roads sprawl on outwards around them, into the hazy streetlight.

“We can’t. If I’m seen…” It strikes her suddenly that she is not free. She is still a fugitive. Every citizen of this place is her enemy—every child who knows her face, every storekeeper.

“You will need a disguise,” Felix answers quickly. “I believe I can disguise you for a while, at least until we have a reservation somewhere…” She watches as he reaches into his pocket for a collapsible black umbrella and pulls it open. He calls her under its shelter, and they begin down the sidewalk, descending the hill, plunging into the city below.

While they walk, Adelaide pulls her hands into her sweater sleeves and curls her fingers, feeling rain splash against her shins. “Mister—Felix, sir…” she murmurs.

“I’m barely any older than you,” he says. “You needn’t address me that way.”

“F—Felix,” she corrects herself, “I still don’t understand why—you came here. Or how you managed to get in at all…”

He sighs. “I suppose the explanations must come now,” he murmurs, brushing a hand on his coat. “I am a traveler—or so to speak, and I have been stranded a month in San Francisco. You could say I was growing too idle for my liking.”

“That—” she ploughs frantically through her vocabulary for an appropriate response— “is…unfortunate. There are many airplanes away from here; you could obtain a directory…”

“Actually…that is not the issue.” His eyes dart to the dark road running parallel to their route, diving in between swaying black trees that taper towards the sky. A lightning flash reveals the grounds. His voice grows earnest. “Miss Moore…promise you will believe me.”

“There are few things I’d disbelieve, everything is equally strange,” she replies, a little sadly, as she glances at her fingers and remembers the caterpillar that once lay curled in them.

Felix sighs and stares out at the city spanning the horizon. The hill upon which this laboratory sits is like an island in a sea of light. “I hail from quite different a place,” he says. “Where I live, my nation—Great Britain—is locked in a race with France to build a technology that will take us across the Atlantic in the shortest time possible.”

“Great Britain? With—the castles and the jousting tournaments?”

“You’re a few centuries out of date, my dear,” he laughs quietly. “My father was a chief sponsor of the Tunnel Machine. I suppose I found that inspiring—in a way he likely did not intend. Days after the launch was announced, I paid to be the machine’s first subject.”

He turns to check that she is still listening, and seems glad to find her enraptured.

“The journey was set to take place a month ago,” he goes on. “It would last no more than six seconds, and, if the script had been kept to, would have taken me halfway across the world. A month ago, the machine was prepared, and I departed from the site as planned.”

Her lips form an o. “Did something go wrong?” she breathes. “Were you meant to arrive elsewhere?”

He shakes his head. “It was calibrated to send me to San Francisco,” he replies, “and so it did. However, it was immediately obvious that there had been a malfunction. My welcoming committee was not at the landing site. It did not take me much asking-around to discover I had arrived nearly two hundred years too late.”

“You’re…two hundred years old?”

“I thought so for a while, too, until I discovered that historical records of 1894 described a place quite vastly different from the one I knew. There was no record, even, of the Great Race! I found it terribly odd that something of such massive influence could vanish so wholly from records.”

“Then…you aren’t two hundred years old.”

“Hardly. I have thought upon the happenings of the day hundreds of times over, and the truth of the matter has since clarified itself. It is…considerably terrifying.” He casts a glance at her; she hasn’t withdrawn her attention once. The umbrella dips. “I believe…I arrived in the wrong universe.”

“Universe?” Adelaide echoes dumbly.

He nods. She almost grimaces; this must be some elaborate joke, or a barefaced lie. But then she remembers her promise, and does her best to keep it, particularly since it’s the first one she has made since leaving confinement.

“I didn’t know…there were other universes.”

“Neither did I, nor did anyone living in the same one as I. Quite a discovery, I’d say; it’s unfortunate I may never return to report it.” Felix looks out at the cloudy sky. “My father…must be worrying himself sick. Perhaps they’ve cancelled the experiment. I…” Shadows cross his face. The rain murmurs. “…I hope he does not spend the rest of his life searching.”

Hearing these admissions, and privy to another’s sadness for the first time in so long, Adelaide finds she is afraid to answer.

“I—am sorry,” she tries.

Felix laughs. “There is no need to be, but thank you,” he replies. “It is my fault more than anyone’s. I gather from the state of your technology that my route home will not come swiftly, not for a decade at least. I have grown resigned to a life here. San Francisco has offered me much in the way of interest—but none so much as the stories I’ve heard of you. The Genome Rewriter.”

She shivers at the way he says it, that nickname she has come to fear herself. The shame weighs on her. “Why?” she answers.

He must have noticed the shame come over her, because he pats her shoulder until she is at ease. “We’re very similar,” he says. “I came to believe it necessary that I seek you out and convene with you. Perhaps in a coffeehouse. With tea between us.”

She would like to enjoy what he describes, but the thought is too cold, too far. “Similar?” A chill of understanding creeps over her. “You can…change things?”

“Not the same things as you. You did notice we were largely ignored by the guards, didn’t you?”

“Yes—I meant to ask about that…”

“That is because I have been refracting the light around us.” He spreads his arms slightly, allowing her a moment—to be afraid, to cast frightened glances about. “If you recall, too, I did project letters onto your floor—”

“—you did?!—”

“—impressive, yes?” He tilts his head, looking proud enough of himself that she cannot help but nod. “I’m a changer of light. I have developed many uses for this peculiar ability—none too devious, I promise!”

She is surprised when she laughs, she isn’t sure for hope, relief, or dumb amusement. Something has been squeezing her heart from the day her seven-year-old self discovered the eight-winged butterfly lying dead by the husk of its own cocoon. That something loosens its grip all at once. Eleven years alone, and suddenly he says…

A howl erupts into the sky behind them. Shrieking, Adelaide leaps closer. “They know!” she shouts; the shock has wracked tears from her eyes. “Hide me, please, please, if they come they’ll take me—”

“Hush, I am hiding us,” he murmurs. “We shall be invisible until we need to be seen.”

Are they really? Adelaide cannot tell. But she must trust him. He…he is the one person standing between her and her prison. But she continues to quake in her shoes, which weren’t made to guard from the seeping of rain.

The alarm continues to scream behind them, ripping the wind; even the rain cannot mute it. She drives her gaze forth so she doesn’t have to remember what’s waiting behind, with steel jaws and flashing eyes. She ploughs forward into the cold, the blinding rage of streetlights.

The wind grows blustery as they hurry towards the junction. Her nose has begun to run in the cold. She barely remembers the feeling. They turn down the street and pass before towering streetlamps, following the glittery arc of the road into the greater foggy tangle of streets far ahead, but before they have arrived at the junction, he pulls her off the path into the grass, where he begins to unbutton his coat.

“Wouldn’t want you catching a cold so soon after escaping.”

“Don’t you—need it?” Adelaide interjects. He lays the black longcoat over her shoulders anyway, and shakes his head.

“You haven’t been in this weather for years; I know it quite well.” He tugs the coat into place.

Felix returns to the sidewalk before she can reply; the scene ripples and curves about him, then he is no longer visible to her. She hears a strain of wailing from the hilltop; her fingers curl, and she dashes after him into his bubble of safe invisibility.

The road finally meets the four-way junction, upon which the streetlights glare. Cars aren’t quite as noisy as she remembers them being, nor as stern and square. They streak by sleekly, so she doesn’t notice them until the lights glare off their hoods. Beyond the junction, shops begin springing up on roadsides, facades sparkling with brazen promotions and welcomes, some masquerading as the legacy of civilisations they barely understand. All blurred behind a golden veil of rain. Adelaide supposes the magazines have been telling the truth about these shops and their silly trends.

Felix, though, doesn’t seem to think much of their flashy dressing. He quickly loses himself in a smothering of pedestrians, and she fights through the crowd, struggling to keep up with him in the dazzling blur of umbrellas and coats. This isn’t, this isn’t how she has imagined the city. She has no bearings; she’s lost jostling through a sea of hems and shoulders. Cars swoop by in rushes of wind; their watery hoods are deluged by the light of neon storefronts.

Somewhere very far down the same street, Felix eventually comes to a decisive stop before a dim grey unit wedged between two glittering shops. It is four stories tall just like all its comrades, with two columns of windows, its bright glass door sheltered by a plastic canopy.

“Here!” he calls out between the pedestrians, waving. He holds the door open for her, as before, and she plunges into the reprieving warmth, but hangs back on the threshold: a queue of two waits in the chairs by the counter, and neither member of it looks extremely trustworthy.

Without warning Felix appears at her side and whisks his coat off her shoulders, asking, “Would you mind a plain look?”

Adelaide shakes her head slowly. She doesn’t think she understands.

“It’s a pity that I must hide your true face,” he sighs, and taps her forehead, before leaving for the queue.

An unfamiliar flicker makes her stiffen. There is a new nose between her eyes. Her fingers move to touch it, but they sink right through, as if into a mirage. Felix—he said he’d hide her face. Of course.

Adelaide frowns at her own silliness, and continues to watch her new companion, twirling a finger in her sweater. He has done so much, in so short a time, and done it thankless. She thinks she should thank him—no, she must—as profusely as she can afford to. But when can she say it such that it won’t seem sudden? She is awkward enough as it is, without having to contemplate the timing of a polite thank you. Yet it would be ungrateful of her, she thinks, to say nothing till they part ways. Perhaps a note is in order—something slipped secretly into one of his pockets, the next time he obliges to hand her the longcoat.

Felix returns soon, flashing a receipt in front of her eyes. “We shall reside here until a more permanent arrangement can be made,” he says, and wastes no time to take her to the dim staircase beyond the counter. “I hope it does not bother you that we shall share the room.”

“Of course not,” she replies. To imagine being alone on the first night away, deep in the tangle of streets that is San Francisco…

She realizes, gradually, that she must stay with him till the authorities have forgotten. Forgotten her, forgotten her crime. She’ll be in the news tomorrow. They’ll be scouring the streets for her till they’re sure she’s dead. And he must hide her till then.

The world is swirling, swirling; she feels like a particle on a greater tide. Maybe their cars are waiting outside. Maybe they’re questioning the receptionist right now.

“Go on ahead,” says Felix, nodding at the woody staircase. She shuts her eyes. Lets his voice be a small beacon, in this darkness.

Free, I'm free, her mind fills to the brim.

Revolving Door

Guiding Light - Spiderweb

“Not too shabby!” comments Felix, hands on his waist, as he inspects the room they have just unlocked with the keycard.

The room is small but not oppressively so, cosy in other words, maroon carpet beneath their feet. Its clean beige walls meet a burgundy ceiling, from which spherical ceiling lights dangle. Beyond the turn of the wall and the bathroom door, a large bed stands flanked by nightstands. Lamps hang over the pillows, shaded so they glow a lovely honey. A metal desk is backed up against the wall facing the bed, a red armchair reclining beside it. The window that looks into the room is veiled by a cream curtain.

Coming up beside her, he asks again, “Are you sure you do not mind?”

She turns. His coat is hanging in the wardrobe; he stands in a grey waistcoat and a white shirt. "Mind what?“ She can feel the sleep hanging upon her eyelids; the great white blankets are so very tempting.

Raising an eyebrow, Felix shakes his head and decides to change course. "It is far past your bedtime,” he murmurs, pacing before the bed.

“Th—thank you.”

“Hm?”

She weaves her fingers together. Suddenly the words are jammed in her throat. “Well…you—saved me, and you’re paying for this, and it’s of no benefit to you…so I thought I should thank you.”

“Oh, you're very welcome,” he replies with another kindly smile. “But of course, your friendship has more than compensated the effort.” He tilts his head and gestures at the bed again. “Go ahead; I did interrupt in the middle of your sleep.”

She nods many times, profusely, before dropping onto the cushy bedside and pulling her shoes off. The night is warm enough so she takes the sweater off and leaves it in a bundle on the nightstand. The night is so warm. Perhaps the cold of being alone and far away has already seeped so deep. She never realised till now.

Morning circles the room, faint gray, pink, colors nuanced and strange. Adelaide blinks her eyes mistily open, expecting her ceiling panel with its circular lights. Her head swims for a while when she sees deep red instead.

Then last night bursts through the windings of her mind to inundate it. She remembers a confusing swirl of lights on the street, and lots of pedestrians. She isn’t…in her room. She is safe. She remembers the strangers by the counter, and Felix—

When she first lifts her head to look about, she is alarmed to find Felix is asleep in the armchair. He’s being too polite, refusing to sleep in the bed without invitation. She makes a note to give him permission tonight. Keeping as silent as she can, she shuffles across the bed to the window and draws the curtain. Gray light pours through, and a pair of windows set in green stares back from across the street. The streets are already bustling below.

While he is not awake, she studies the brochures on the glass desktop, and hovers about the telephone at the corner of the desk. An unexpected plant has placed itself at the corner of the table, sprouting out of what looks like a small brown drawstring bag, a plant she recognizes in a single nervous touch. Narcissus jonquilla. She remembers the textbook, the leaf, the—light.

Adelaide tries not to gasp with sudden understanding. She stores that new knowledge away, and begins to sort through the brochures on the tabletop. One of the guides tells her she can order breakfast-in-bed by dialing 819, so timidly she picks up the receiver and tries.

Her companion wakes without her notice, in the midst of her experimentation. “Good morning, Miss Moore,” he mutters, startling her away from the phone. “What have you been up to?”

“Good morning,” she replies. “Um, I opened the windows, found an odd dish in the drawer, and…ordered breakfast.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You did?” He is interrupted by the doorbell. “…so you did.” He frowns. “You’ll have to hide, or else I must disguise you again.”

Her eyes widen, and she slips obediently into the bed where the turn of the wall hides her. She listens as Felix crosses the carpet, sleepily, and opens the door. A conversation ensues between him and the room service employee outside:

“Good morning, Sir.” The lady sounds old but not tired.

“Good morning to you too, ma'am.” He’s managed to sound lively, at least as much as morning grogginess allows.

Wheels rattle on the carpet. “You ordered breakfast?”

“Yes, I did. Thank you.”

The clawing of hunger at her stomach sharpens when the first whiff of breakfast reaches her. Food, not pellets—real food. She shifts on the mattress.

The door clicks shut. Felix arrives at the bedside with a tray of two dishes, laden and rich. Heat wafts against her chin. It smells of an old diner in her memory, the one down at the end of the street where she used to live. Her parents used to take her there when she was good.

Mum, Dad. Should she visit now, flag a cab downstairs, risk the ten-mile trip? Will her family shun her like the rest of the nation—will they think her a monster?

Felix turns. “You look dazed.” She shakes her head blankly and reaches for her plate. He shouldn’t have to listen to problems that shouldn’t matter by now.

She eats on the bed, as she often does, but he insists on dining at the steel-glass desk. “Did you sleep well?” asks her companion between mouthfuls.

“I think so.”

“We must take you to a hairdresser,” he says musingly, “have your hair dyed, perhaps obtain ‘contact lenses’, as they’re called…”

“I could change them myself,” she ventures. She could, but is it safe—or right? It…it must be right. Felix used his abilities to save her. And this will safeguard them both.

“Oh! I forgot you could.” He taps his chin. “Blue eyes. Blue eyes will suit you, I think.”

She blinks, and decides not to respond. “Okay…and, is that all? Is that all we will do today?”

Considering the question with a pursing of lips, Felix folds his arms. “To ease your reentry into the San Francisco of year 2060, I suppose I could take you to tour it—a strange arrangement, considering you are the citizen and I, the tourist!” He grins. “Fish out of water, us both. I imagine much has changed since you last saw it. Eleven years, was it?”

She nods. It must have. Both things, the city and she.

“This must be how butterflies feel,” she murmurs pensively at her scrambled eggs, “emerging from their cocoons.”

“Quite so,” Felix replies. “I imagine San Francisco will surprise you, too.”

Before the sun has crawled above the arachnoid antennae of the fortresses of shops, Felix takes Adelaide into the city beneath their window, the city in which they will be eternal fugitives; it won’t hurt, she thinks, to get to know it better.

With the help of street signs and some agreeable conversations with pedestrians, her companion locates the shop of Dania Mille, hairdresser extraordinaire—but she only dares to enter when he is guiding her with a hand upon her arm.

Adelaide wears her false face as the chemicals are massaged, foaming, into her locks and the hairdresser begins an inane conversation that remains largely one-sided. Even though her visage is absolutely unrecognisable, a little sharper and terribly strange, she’s afraid to give anyone a proper glimpse of her face.

Mishap avoids them today, though, and the new light brown shade settles nicely into her hair, just as the noon sinks calmly into the streets. Their fellow customers are none the wiser when the pair leaves the little shop’s air-conditioned comfort, Felix sixty dollars poorer.

“You needn’t have,” Adelaide murmurs when they are outside.

“Sixty dollars? That has not impacted my finances in the least.”

“You…did you bring money from your world?”

He shakes his head in the burning noon, the sun blazing upon his hair as they pause outside a cafe among empty tables, wafts of air-conditioning bringing some reprieve. “I did, however, bring a gold locket,” he replied. “Not one I fancied particularly; it was but a gift from an acquaintance who has since come to abhor me. The auctioneer seemed thorougly enthralled with the good state of the supposedly two hundred-year-old artifact.”

“Did it fetch you a lot?”

“One million, six hundred thousand dollars in your currency,” he says, quite fluently for such a remarkable sum. “I do favour financial investment as passive income, however. While I was idling, I opened a bank account and bought bonds in Faro Technologies, just in case I should find myself here for much longer—”

“But don’t you—need a computer to do that? All this investing stuff, I mean…”

He grins. “What else would I have done with a million dollars and a month’s boredom?”

“Your luck must be amazing.”

“Strategy is easily mistaken for luck.”

They hop over to the opthalmologist’s next, where she picks a box of blue contact lenses. Adelaide doesn’t think her grey eyes are much of a giveaway, but every change she can make to her face—she knows—will be invaluable now.

He then offers to pay for a new set of clothes, and she insists on a market where she supposes they will be cheapest. He is very visibly alarmed and attempts to convince her that no one should be allowed to make purchases in a place where the clothing cannot first be sampled, but she knows—and insists—she cannot burden him with more expenses.

“I am a millionaire,” he answers pointedly.

She shakes her head, and hopes refusal is not offensive—not as much, at least, as the offence of accepting would be. “I don’t think millionairehood would make it any less rude of me,” she says, and borders on snappiness—to her surprise.

Between changing rooms and cost and rudeness, they eventually settle on a roadside boutique that minds itself quite well, if a little modestly. Their prices are equally well-though-modest; fifty dollars gets her two new skirts, and another seventy or so go to top wear of various sorts. She asks him about underwear next, but he seems reluctant to discuss it altogether, and leaves her to make her purchase in a store upstairs, offering instead to carry her half-dozen shopping bags for her.

The evening, they become patrons at a relatively obscure cafe in the southern part of the city, in a place where the freeways cross and there are less eyes to discover her. It is strange how quiet the roads have become, how high the buildings tower over her where she sits at the cafe table, as if bridging the gap between the ground and the scant fiery clouds above.

“How have you been feeling?” asks Felix over his tea. Earlier at the counter, he seemed visibly displeased with the plastic cup in which it was originally offered, but the Dusk’s Delivery is a place that respects itself and the counter staff replaced the container in due time.

Pursing her lips at the swirly marbling of the tabletop, Adelaide tosses the question about in her head. “You mean…how I have been feeling ever since leaving the lab?”

“Yes, that, and also with regards to the city you’ve just seen.” He casts a meaningful glance at the jagged faraway skyline where the buildings are taller.

She fumbles with her empty saucer. “It’s amazing,” she says, just a whisper. San Francisco is all the colours she’s forgotten. Grey till the morning is properly awake. Blue with the sky arching above it. And it grows so searingly orangely hot so soon, like when bulbs overheat, or when—she has read—airplanes rub against the air. They passed the coast; the old sea waits there still, though the bollards are gone and gleaming fences stand in their place.

The city has changed again, and keeps changing, even as she stares at the rough black tarmac. The skyscrapers gleam purple and blinding gold upon their little cafe. Down the street the first shops have lit up for the night.

“There is more that will amaze you yet,” he replies smilingly.

“Oh? Do you have more stop planned?”

“The secret of its location cannot be spoiled now, but I promise you will like it,” he replies, and she decides not to pursue the matter. But the question keeps returning. Where?

They stay in their seats, quiet-eyed, till the tea menu is replaced by dinner on the screen behind the counter. Adelaide orders pizza for the first time in so long; she finds the portion so large that she must offer the rest to Felix, who very politely obliges, though she can tell—or at least guesses from the furrow of his brow—that he would not otherwise deign to consume the food.

Felix finally decides, at dinner’s end, that it is time he completed the tour with a visit to the mysterious place he has so far withheld all information on. She follows him to the roadside, and wears her false face again while he flags a taxi in the wind.

The city is so bright that the black sky peeking into the canyon between the skyscrapers is devoid of stars. Gazing through the window as the taxi glides through the streets, chin on the sill, Adelaide finds she is beginning to think that San Francisco is not as monstrous as it seemed yesterday. Not when the streets are shining, not when she has walked amongst its citizens and seen no threat. The city has almost begun to seem…safe.

But that sense of security is only a result of careful disguising and street protocol. And Felix. No small part is owed to Felix…

The taxi has stop on a particularly busy street, along which great screens on mall facades pretend to be the vivid forests that were hacked apart years ago. The digital greenery glows in pedestrian faces on glittery sidewalks.

Adelaide is alarmed when her companion does not take her down the street but rather up the front steps of the nearest skyscraper and through the glass doors. Servers chorus welcomes as they cross the marble floor. She shivers and pulls her arms close; he takes her arm and convinces her with a smile. The lift rings to announce its arrival.

Where are we? the question is still there. She does not ask when he pushes the very highest button in the lift, nor does she ask when the lonely lift ride exceeds a minute’s length and she begins to feel awkward in her shoes. That anxiety of being near someone again. She stares at the golden doors to distract herself.

When the lift rings again, Adelaide shrieks, and hears him laugh. “What has you so jumpy?” asks Felix as she dashes through the doors and he follows. It’s all dim outside, a deep rich red carpet path bordered by glass walls, beyond which she can only faintly make out a shelterless balcony—and the glow of the city.

“I paid this location a visit once,” Felix’s voice is a reverent whisper, “but not in the nighttime, and not in good company.” He begins down the corridor, passing between ochre lights and the bright patches of floor they light.

She almost feels the question leave her, of what makes her good company when all she does is be nervous and silly. But then they reach the far glass wall, and the doors there slide apart, and the wind knocks the words away. Her eyes sting—where are we going? She still wants to ask—but Felix seems sure that they’re in the right place, and she follows him through the battering gales to the rooftop’s edge, to place her hands on the frigid rails.

“Felix—where are—”

The lights drown her eyes, and she loses her answer somewhere in them. It is not a city that she sees, but a network of colourful stars. The lines of gold where the freeways tangle with each other. The reticulation of the roads, the black fathomless border where she knows lies San Francisco Bay, and the bridge that pierces like a bright knife through the void.

She has never seen her city from the top before, but it is so bright, so much brighter than she remembers at all. She doesn’t understand this thing, between excitement and surprise, between surprise and fear of falling—she doesn’t think she’s felt it before, not like this, but her heart thrums.

“Wow,” she breathes, just so Felix knows she hasn’t forgotten his presence. “Where are we?”

“The Marah Tower,” he finally answers. “It was constructed during your time inside the laboratory. What do you think of the them, the city lights?”

“They are…very nice to look at.” They are a giant web, woven to trap butterflies.

Lowering the shopping bags to the ground, Adelaide swallows and closes her eyes, waiting for tears. She doesn’t think being here will nourish her or heal her, or do anything to help her at all. It is so very empty on this rooftop. Yet she finds this view quite priceless, all the same. This view and this moment. So high above the fog.

“Thank…y-you.” Again she loses her grip on the words, and has to straighten her tongue. She is glad she has an excuse not to face him while speaking. “For the hairdresser, and the lunch, and the clothes, and the dinner, and the taxi ride, and the time all this is wasting.”

“The hours are not wasted on a friend,” he says, “and you are most welcome to take all the time you need.”

“Thank you,” Adelaide repeats. She thinks it’s not enough yet. Then she remembers what people do to thank each other, so she turns around and hugs him, as tightly as she can.

“You're welcome,” he says, but she can feel him trying to extract himself from the hug. He clears his throat.

“Sorry.” She withdraws, staring down at the shopping bags fluttering by her feet. “I just wanted to say thank you. Isn't that how you do it?”

Felix shakes his head, coat corners flapping about. “It's no matter. There is no need to thank me, your joy is thanks enough.”

It is ten o'clock before they make it back to their hotel. Adelaide falls asleep in the taxi, and has to be woken by her companion. Upstairs, she finally offers, with droopy eyelids, the other side of the bed, but he refuses, and takes to the armchair before she can protest.

“I will be collecting my luggage from my previous hotel tomorrow,” he says. “Don’t mind me.”

This is the last thing she hears before everything in the brilliance beyond her eyelids—Felix, and the plant upon the tabletop, and the pocketbook he studies—fades into the dark of her sleep.

When Adelaide wakes in the white hours before morning, Felix shows her the news.

She barely has to read two lines to find out that it is about her. Her. They want her back for forty million dollars.

But it is the rest of the news that decides to stick long after she’s flung the papers aside. She can barely make it past the second paragraph, but she does, she drags her eyes through the words. Freak, they call her, threat to public health, malignant menace, anomalous, deleterious, not allowed to live.

It is most destroying to read because of Felix. Felix. Felix has created something in her that can be destroyed. She’s begun to believe she is something other than a monster—that like a gnarly ravaging caterpillar she can fall sleep in her cocoon and emerge something beautiful. Something they will love for all its fury. Felix made her think so. Felix made her think it didn’t matter.

No, she can change many things, but not the monster she is.

They’ll be here soon, too. Someone will see her and know her. Someone will tip the authorities. Someone as near as next door…

…or in this very room.

Assaulted suddenly by myriad feelings she doesn’t understand, Adelaide curls up and begins to cry. She cries distrustful tears, wracked and black and cold. She sobs spasmodically, and pants and sobs until her shrieks become breathless and the lights are all dazzling. Through a fog of sound, she can hear Felix trying to calm her down—verbally, uselessly, taking her shoulder. He puts a pillow behind her head and orders something on the phone.

“Quiet, my dear, calm down,” he murmurs, pressing the orange juice into her hands. She downs it in convulsive gulps and drops the glass onto the nightstand. “We’re still here, and no one knows where you are—”

“If you want to so badly, then turn me in!” she yells; part of her is gasping for life. “Forty million dollars! You could find—better friends with forty million dollars.” More sobs spear their ways out of her.

“I shall not.”

“I know you love money, why wouldn't you?”

“I wouldn’t!”

“You have me right here! You've caught me! You could take me there right now—and claim their reward—” She glares, and he recoils. His fear makes her afraid. “Just another investment, isn’t it? You—you meant to do it, you meant to break me out of the lab so—you could turn me in for a reward.”

“No!” The exasperation is so furious it almost leaves a scratch. “I am not that sort of person!”

“Why then?”

“Fear, fear and nothing else! I have been afraid of myself, and of this circumstance, of being in a world I don't know with abilities I don't comprehend. But to know that I am not alone in this fear, and see myself in someone else…just to know, dear God, I needed that, your friendship—am I making any sense?”

She finally manages to stem the torrent of horror that has wrung these tears out of her, but the hiccuping sobs interrupt her silence every few seconds. “Yes. Yes, I understand.”

Adelaide blinks her eyes open. Another cascade of tears. Through them she sees him smile sadly.

Can she believe him? He appeared so suddenly, so soon. She barely knows him. A man with an unbelievable story. Believe him?

Danger, her heart cries. Danger when you don’t understand.

Danger pretends to be good.

She slumps against the headboard, tired, tired as the old sea that has been pounding all these eleven years on the shores of San Francisco. San Francisco which has shifted and grown outside her cocoon. San Francisco the spiderweb.

He fixes her with a serious look, and nods once. Nodding back, she draws in a breath, and grits her teeth together.

Revolving Door

The Traveller

This chapter contains mentions of murder, depictions of vomiting, bodily fluids, corpses.

Pala Winstead has just murdered herself.

She lies crumpled in the ditch, skin blue and cold in the glow that hangs upon the highest eaves. The last moments of her assaulter’s struggle still hum back and forth in her brain, that frantic darting of eyes, the cries of “no” that resonate still in her very own throat.

Her shirt is already beginning to soak in the mucky water, and her phone is vibrating in her pocket.

Both phones are. Both phones, in both pockets.

Standing amidst the flicker of waking streetlights and the hum of car engines, the girl finds all the stories turning on their heads.

She shrinks away, trying not to scream. Screaming will only bring the police, and the police, she realizes, are the last thing she wants to attract.

She tugs at the hem of her sweater. Her own dead countenance stares back from the ditch, hair soaking up the liquid of the black puddle on the old alley pavement. It is five minutes past sunset, and the clouds are coming—maybe if she leaves her here the rain will wash the body away without a trace and she can go back to being an ordinary schoolgirl—

Pala fishes out her ringing phone, synthesiser notes humming in her teeth. When she taps the green Answer icon, both phones fall silent—hers, and the corpse’s. She brings it up to her ear, averting the eyes of her doppelganger.

“Pala, are you on your way?” Panic reignites in her chest. Ms. Mahi’ai doesn’t know what she’s done. Of course she doesn’t know. “The light-up’s starting soon.”

“Yes ma’am, I’ll be there,” she says, and as soon as the receiver clicks her jittery hand slots the device back into her pocket, mind whirring.

Think like a murderer. You’re a murderer now.

Havaiki is a small island, so far out in the Pacific it sometimes forgets there is a world beyond it. The only reminders arrive in the form of small cargo ships, arriving in the port once a day. There are orchards and chicken farms here, and there are fishers whose daily catch is more than enough to feed every citizen. There is a central market where these fish trade hands, so self-sufficient it almost never sees foreign currency.

But not everyone lives by the port, and a working internet connection is not something everyone has, so it becomes difficult to remember that beyond the vast expanse of water surrounding the island, there is an entire world of people, living lives that do not intersect with theirs.

Within minutes, Pala has managed to empty the contents of a trash bag. With every muscle clenched and her breath held so tight it hurts the inside of her head, she slides her cold body inside it. The corpse is pallid and she does her best not to notice the faint warmth, still perceptible, in her other-self’s arms, as she slips each limb into the rustling plastic and lifts it so she slides in deeper. Her other-self’s uniform is rumpled, and she stinks of urine, and she would feel ashamed on her behalf if terror were not constantly screaming for her attention.

She kicks clinking cans, fruit rinds and empty milk cartons over the bag, until it is buried in a heap that looks almost innocuous. Without another glance, she dashes out of the alley clutching at her mouth, heartbeat roaring inside her ears.

Pala feels nausea press on her skull as she sprints through circles of dim streetlight, away from the dark alley, sling-bag bumping on her waist. She can barely hear the cars for all the blood rushing in her ears and the noise of her footsteps, suddenly the only sounds in the world. Every few seconds, the image of her own face in the gutter, bluer than death, crashes in on her thoughts uninvited, and she gulps, pressing forward.

Flesh is a lot stiffer and less yielding than one would assume—especially when that flesh encompasses the windpipe, and is held sturdy by a column of bone. The ghost of that sensation—of the windpipe resisting the pressure of her grip—sends another gush of nausea over her, and she falters to a stop, the circular blue signboard marking the bus stand going out of focus ahead of her.

With a shiver, she swings to a side and vomits on the grass beside the pavement, knees buckling.

For a minute Pala stands and coughs, waiting for the world to settle, like sediments at the bottom of a cup of tea. She spits the taste of lunch and acid into the grass and wipes her mouth with her wrist, fighting to find her footing.

Her phone beeps to signal a message. She shakes her head, and resumes her slow trudge.

Not a car passes, as Pala walks the remaining distance to the bus stand, passing before a row of small houses, each painted a different colour, their windows glowing gold.

Once she has arrived beside the round blue signboard, she closes her eyes and listens to sounds in the warm evening. The chirp of crickets stirs from the grass, the treble to the deep bass of the cars in the southern town centre. A plate clinks inside one of the houses.

A second phone beep startles Pala out of her reverie. Fishing her phone from her pocket, she opens the inbox and finds the last two messages, both from her boss:

15 minutes

someone here wants to see you

The five-to-nine shift is only the second-most-eventful. No one has ever come seeking Pala specifically before. At once she thinks of the body, and a new surge of frigid fear squeezes her stomach—but the pink line bus rumbles in right then, doors gleaming her reflection back at her, and the thought is crushed by the noise.

She swallows again as the doors hiss open. “Good to see you,” says the conductor with but a glance, the golden sun gleaming on his sweat-slick brown skin.

The lone two passengers on the bus are both staring off through their respective windows at the roadsides. Shoulders sagging, Pala begins to make her swaying way across the deck as the bus engine grumbles back to life.

The pink bus line is the newest of the seven on the island: it opened earlier this year in answer to popular demand, running in a loop between the southwestern coast and the southern town centre.

She would have far preferred the colour orange for the line, but citizen preferences don’t matter terribly much to the town council when they’re labelling their bus routes. She supposes it’s no big deal. Perhaps the eighth line will be orange.

Every now and then, news comes of strange happenings in the area. Apparitions, vanishing monuments, spots where time loops inexplicably. The papers are full of these stories, and they are just common enough that the citizens do not think anything of them. Mystery and intrigue are but daily inconveniences, and being situated this far from the rest of the world, there is no one here who can tell them otherwise.

Pala tries not to scuff her palms on the wooden seats of the bus as it bumps along towards the southern town centre. Putting one leg up on the facing seat, she unbuckles her bag flap and fishes around for her notepad and pencil.

The first ten pages are single-ruled and filled top to bottom in scribbles that almost resemble maps. On the third page, she purses her lips and flips her pencil, scratching out the squiggles that demarcate the pink bus route so she can redraw it, carefully, as the bus proceeds.

For months, she has been trying to draw the town the way she sees it—trying to capture something she cannot really picture in physical dimensions. They all think she’s making it all up, the wrinkling of the streets, the hairline cracks in the garden earth. They all do, except for—

Her phone beeps again, and this time she feels calm enough to answer.

where are you?

Fen. She smiles and types her reply:

on my way to work

And then he answers:

there’s a pink haired girl asking for you

she says she’ll kill me if you don’t come

Dread seizes her heart so hard that she chokes.

The riverside hotel grows into view from around the last rippling bend of the road. The riverfront façade is already lit for the evening–with what manner of image or message, she can’t see—but the hotel on the facing side of the river is also lit, and it bears a lotus in red, green and yellow, glittering on the water, pockmarked by boats.

Pala springs from her seat before the bus has come to a stop. Dashing to the door as it swishes open, she leaps from the top step and lands with a thud that jars her ankles, stuffing her notebook in her pocket. She sprints up the pavement to the red side entrance and down the dim carpeted hallway, which still smells of old roses, to the servicer room in the back.

She grins briefly when Fale’s stocky blue-uniformed figure appears in the doorway, but when the woman turns, her face is taut, and she gasps out, “Miss Mahi’ai wants you in her office!” and Pala feels the smile melt from her face, dread mounting, as she thanks her and turns for the corridor again, breath burning in her throat.

At once it is apparent that something isn’t right: almost as soon as she enters the office corridor does she notice an acrid stench in the air. She clamps a hand over her mouth and starts to gasp like a fish.

“Ma’am? I’m here!” she calls out. “Ma’am?”

Then Pala notices that the office door is wide open and through the doorway, she sees Miss Mahi’ai look up when she shouts. Her gaze is not bright behind her glasses. She stands like a statue beside her desk, both hands tucked behind her back, and gauzy smoke swirls from one visible corner of the desk, the papers around it charred.

“Pala, perfect,” she says without feeling.

As Pala thunders into the room, her eyes grow wide. The manager’s seat is occupied by a person she has not seen before: a tall girl of ashy-brown skin and a warrior’s build, hair pulled back in a ponytail that is both too pink and not pink enough. Her clothes are foreign, and a tattoo trails a dark line from her right eye to a dot in the middle of her right cheek, distorted by her grin—like a teardrop.

“Who, why–”

“You’re here!” the strange girl exclaims with a thrust of her chin. She reaches under the table to lift something heavy that yelps—something that turns out to be someone—someone she knows too well.

He dangles by his black locks from the pink girl’s grip, eyes squeezed shut and wet with tears. “No,” he mouths. “No, no.”

“Fen,” Pala squeaks in reply.

“Shush, it’ll be over soon!” The pink-haired girl jabs a metallic rod at Fen’s cheek, still grinning. “You care about this boy, don’t you?”

“Who are you? What do you want from me? I don’t understand–” She digs her fingers into the fabric of her sling-bag and her eyes dart to Miss Mahi’ai for instruction, but the woman has retreated from the desk, and she only shakes her head.

“Well, Pala Winstead, you have a certain skill that I would very much like to use,” says the girl. “In exchange for this boy’s safety, I would like to you to come with me on a long journey. It would please me very much for you to comply. Otherwise—” She twists the rod against his cheek, fingers tightening in the loops at the other end— “boom.”

In the silence that follows the single syllable, the thin smoke wafts from the table, and Pala notices, for the first time, that Miss Mahi’ai’s red ceramic mug lies in fragments among her papers.

Everything is making itself known all at once. All the things she was afraid of. All the things she knew deep in her core. And the universe is suddenly more than even she, with her wild imagination, can fathom.

“Yes, okay, I’ll go!” It barely takes her three seconds to come up with her answer. She has begun to sob. “Why are you doing this? Who are you?”

“Well, Pala, I am a very thorough researcher. And you, you are a Traveller.”

“I don’t travel,” says Pala in a trembling voice.

The girl throws her head up in a laugh. “Not in the regular sense of the word, you don’t!” she exclaims. She has stood, and her gleaming rod-tool—suddenly more sinister than before—is still pointed at Fen’s head. She shoves him from behind the desk, towards Miss Mahi’ai. Her gaze pins Pala in place. “I’ll make sure you are treated well, as my premier servant. Kalani Mahi’ai over here has already agreed to the transfer.”

“Let me follow her,” gasps Fen as soon as the girl releases her grip. “I…I know what this is about. The…maps. The holes and folds and tears. Pala's told me everything.”

The pink girl’s eyebrows rise, but she does not seem particularly impressed. “Is that so? Well, I have no need for two of you. A Traveller’s what I need, and that’s what your friend is.”

He steeled his face. "Let me come, please."

She slides the strange metal tool into her belt. “It would mean one less witness to worry about.”

After a moment’s pause, she stretches an open hand in Pala’s direction, and snatches Fen’s shoulder in the other, scaring a gasp out of him.

“Hold my hand tight. We leave in a minute.”

“How?”

“By Travelling.”

“Travelling?” Quaking with every step, Pala reaches out to grip the girl’s calloused palm. The smoke threatens to choke her. The pink girl’s fearsome brown gaze makes her head pound. Miss Mahi’ai and the office seem farther than ever, and her other hand instinctively slips into her skirt pocket, to check that her notebook is still there.

“Think of something specific but unimportant,” says the girl. “Maybe not so unimportant, because the more important it is, the quicker you’ll be done. An object, a feature of a place.” She pauses, gaze burning into Pala’s. “Well? Anything—a painting, a flower, a piece of furniture in your home. Quickly now.”

“I’m thinking—I’m thinking—“ My double. My corpse. The person I killed. “I’m thinking of something.”

“Good, now think about all the ways it’s important. Think of all the things that give it meaning. And then think about the universe next door, the deeper one, the downstream universe.”

“Downstream?” Pala echoes, going breathless.

All at once, the clues connect in her mind, and suddenly she understands. The topology. The sinkholes and infoldings and tears that have haunted her all her life.

It’s all real. She is right. They are not alone.

This universe is pressing against another.

“I killed myself!” she shouts, thinking of the agony of looking in her own dying eyes, her hands wringing a windpipe, and the fetid taste of vomit, and she wills herself against the straining fabric of the universe—

—and then the space around them buckles and warps inward—like when a needle punches through cloth—and then they’re not there anymore.

“Exceptional!”

The thundering of the sea suddenly sounds much closer than it should be, the wind more violent. And when Pala opens her eyes, they are assaulted by daylight, her nose by the clawing smell of brine.

Her captor’s fingernails are digging deep into her palm, and she feels tears spring to her eyes.

They stand on the booming coast of somewhere new and warm. The sky is dim overhead, and the clouds dance in a way she has never seen before—almost ghostly, like smoke stirred by wind. A black and purple banner stands planted in the earth a few paces back, and beyond that, a grey brick road divides them from a cluster of tall black tents wreathed in purple designs.

“I didn’t know you could…do that.” Fen is still regaining his breath.

Pala stares at her palms, starting to sag with exhaustion that seems to have come from nowhere. She isn’t unfamiliar with the feeling, of being forcibly removed from a reality that makes sense to her. But she’s never been here before, nor has the wind ever felt so strong. “Did I? Was that me?”

“I imagine you’d be able to tell,” says the pink-haired girl with a grin. Already, she is marching towards the road, ponytail swishing, her back to her two captives. “How marvelous our ability to store past experiences in our minds, to recount—even recreate—them at will! Memories compel and instigate. They are the reason we act. So much power is encapsulated in them. So much power.”

Fen seems entirely uninterested in what she has to say. “What did you mean?” he gasps out instead, reaching out to grip Pala’s hand with both of his own. “That you—killed yourself. Why did you say that?”

She blinks back. “Kill myself?” she replies, trembling. Something tugs at her memory. Fear. Her stomach roiling. But she can’t seem to recall anything more. “I…I would never do that.”

Revolving Door

Low-Pressure Thunderstorm

This chapter contains depictions of warfare, firearms, murder, graphic injury.

It is easy, when you are young, to think that stone is permanent and that houses stand forever.

Walls are like features of the geographical landscape—inseparable from the country, and from the earth itself, so firmly rooted in the motherland that to move them you would have to move the earth itself. They have the chief purpose of keeping Inside and Outside apart, a crucial function by any measure. And that is the reason you keep your front door shut: because you cannot let Inside and Outside mingle till you no longer know where one ends and the other begins, because you cannot allow the storm to weep upon your carpets nor knock vases from your shelves.

Children tend not to heed that boundary. They play in storms even though their parents have warned a thousand times of the perils of getting caught in the rain. They stomp about in puddles and leap into drains, trailing mud across the floor and spilling leaves in their wake. They don’t understand how the kindly wind, strewing leaves and petals across the floor, should be evil in any way. They like to blur that boundary; it is in their nature.

Vesper was not one of those children.

It was during the Great Slump that the child Vesper Lovelace came to be, born inside a modest stone hospital with her damp eyes shut. The ward had a single large window, but that day it failed to shed much light on the scene, for the sky was overcast, and the child was to be born amidst long shadows.

She was so tiny that her mother began to weep as she cradled her in her arms. “Vesper,” she named the fragile little infant, the light just dim enough that one could almost believe it was evening. “I'll treasure you always. I'll let no harm come to you.” As poor, naive parents always do, they made promises they could not keep.

As it would come to be apparent, Vesper was not anything like her name would suggest. As a toddler she did not entertain fantasies, and as a child she was more abrasive than a child should be. Jokingly her parents called her the head of the house: she did not laugh nor caper, and when she was disappointed she scolded.

She was also very taken with the concepts of orderliness and organisation, devoting herself to them from as early as seven years of age. She did the chores when her father was at the hangar, and when her mother was in town, and even when they weren’t. Whenever the wind obliged to scatter dried anthers on the floorboards, she would take the broom from the closet and sweep them out the front door. She shut all the doors and windows when it rained.

So it annoyed Vesper immensely that leaves and paper shreds seemed to stick to her clothes and skin with annoying persistence. It perturbed her that when she rubbed wool sweaters on her hair, bright sparks would snap from hair to fabric. She hated that she would feel the mounting of charge on the surface of the knitting, for it made her feel all wrong, like a swarm of bees.

Soon, wool sweater sparks became small fires and dead insects on the dressing table, impossible to deny. And it was on the day a bulb lit up and blew out in her hand that she realised it was not freak weather, nor spirits, that were to blame.

One windy autumn evening in the ninth year of her life, Vesper stood barefoot on the porch, next to her father’s ladder. Bending from the fourth rung, he put the glass porch bulb into her right hand and took the screwdriver in her left. While he returned with a squint to the panel above him, his daughter stared at the filament through the gleaming glass, heart thundering in her ears as if there were an engine in her head.

“Dad,” she said, waiting to have his full attention.

That was when she first showed him, with a trembling hand, how she could make it light up at will.

Her father did not fall off the ladder as she feared he might. He descended silently, rung by steady rung, and when he arrived at the bottom he warned her never to show him that awful trick again.

That very same year, the war began, and she did not take it as a sign that she was meant to join it.

It is a blustery morning in the middle of May, 1943, and World War Two has yet to end. You can tell that it hasn’t. The birds are cautious; they’ve been tasting so much fire on the air, and they will not leave the bushes. The people in Fairford have grown weary of sitting in dank corners, waiting every day for the past five years for the telltale wail of an air raid siren, turning off the radio when the news grows too much to bear, leaping at the sound of birds.

Vesper arrives outside RAF Fairford as she does almost daily, eyes sweeping the area for her escort. She knows the noises of the place well: the grumble of engines inside, the buzz of departing planes. Her father began work here as soon as it was constructed, then her mother, and she inevitably followed suit.

She grew up among engines and engineers and, there beneath the metal roofs, she latched onto this universe of parts that fit together. Many a hot summer afternoon has she spent slaving, oil-stained, at the internal piping of malfunctioning bombers, sobered by the knowledge that the service she renders cannot compare to that of the pilots whose machines she services.

Over the years she has watched the facility grow crowded, the changing of the planes beneath their roofs telling fragments of a story too big and too distant to be comprehended. The hangars are dominated these days by the Spitfires and Hurricanes that the factories began churning out two years prior, and she has seen them in all stages of wear: gleaming, dented, out of commission.

None of her co-volunteers—two-thirds of them women—knew who she was when she came. They do now. The head engineer’s daughter, less experienced than her father, but twice as industrious.

Today, Vesper is here for a different reason. A bulky green car awaits her at the entrance, as she was told it would. Amidst the humming of propellors and the whiz of departing planes, the driver stands to a side, leaning on his door. Gaining pace, she hails him with a greeting, hair pricking at her eyes.

His handshake is feebler than she anticipates, even though his hand is gloved. “Good morning,” he says with measured tone, opening the back door with a click, and she thanks him, to no response, before boarding the vehicle.

Today is the day she does what she was always meant to do.

The car chugs and bumps down along down historic highways through fields. Vesper sits in silence for the hours that pass, broken occasionally by the buzz of a plane, and the atmosphere grows impermeable about them. All of her attempts to begin conversation with the driver are turned down with polite monosyllabic answers, and she stops trying after fifteen minutes. At noon, she eats the sandwich that she made and packed for herself, keeping a listless watch on the passing green outside. She presses her ear against the rattling window, listening as other engines grumble past.

The buildings begin to peek from behind the grey horizon four hours later. The car slows into the first intersection, and the quiet is overcome by city noise: street chatter, hammering, taxis with their rickety sputtering engines. The green army car weaves through the jigsaw-puzzle of dark walls and squares, into the heart of London, where it pulls to a stop before a tall brown building jammed between two grey ones.

Vesper opens the door before the driver can exit to aid her, cool air gushing in as she stands. She doesn’t need her escort to point her towards the mustachioed man waiting at the steps: he is smiling an industrial smile in her direction, and clasped in his hands is a stack of documents that are no doubt the same ones she submitted.

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Lovelace," he says with a shake of her hand.

He proves less reserved than the driver, but she cannot help but notice the gloves, and the perturbation on his brow. Perhaps he expected a woman more ordinary: paler, prettier, wearing a pressed skirt instead of a coat. Hair curled upon her brow, not tied at her nape and barely under control. Then she remembers that he knows who she is, and that alone answers all her questions.

Vesper is surprised to find that the MI6 office building is not unlike any other city institution she’s ever been inside, right down to the decor and the faint musk perfuming the interior. When she enters the lift, she leaps when the floor begins to groan upwards.

“Not here in the city much, are you?” he says, and she smiles politely in response.

“I have only been here once before,” she replies.

Alighting at the sixth floor, Colonel Donald presents documents to the receptionist and is given clearance; he endures these formalities with not so much as a trace of impatience, and she follows suit. Then he takes her down the carpeted corridor, into a gleaming room through whose single window she can see the grey street below. A table awaits the newcomer and his interviewee, numerous chairs arranged around it.

“Please take a seat,” Donald says, gesturing at the chair beside the one he takes. She finds him waiting to begin the interview with a smile that is at once jolly and conspiratorial. "Good afternoon, Miss Lovelace."

“Good afternoon, sir, and thank you for receiving me,” she replies.

“By now, I expect that you fully understand that your enlistment is a matter of top security." She nods quickly. "The Secret Intelligence Service was kind enough to loan us a conference room for the afternoon. Which means, of course, that you are legally bound to secrecy concerning all that you see and hear within this building, and forbidden from discussing the details of your enlistment with anyone—as stated in various contracts you previously signed. Do I have your understanding?"

“Yes, of course,” she replies. “Why, may I ask? Why the location, I mean. I’m not to become a secret agent, am I?"

"Even better," answers the colonel. "You remember our correspondence, don’t you?" She nods again. "Then you know exactly why we've brought you here, and why your enlistment must be kept under wraps. You're not a soldier. You're a weapon."

She has never felt words reverberate louder within her.

“In a manner of speaking, anyway. You will still serve as all soldiers do, but under special regulations.” Donald finally glances at the document he has been holding. "Now, as everyone privy to this secret has done, I have reviewed the footage of your preliminary trial fifty times at least. Suffice to say, it has blown me away." He shakes his head. “Good God. I struggle to believe you exist, even now, with you sitting before me.”

"My abilities are not the kind you see every day, no."

He chuckles. "Why was the medical guild never informed, if I may ask?"

"I was told to pretend my abilities didn’t exist."

Donald strokes his chin. "I can see why you might have thought that necessary. Your details are safe with us for the time being, but we must eventually submit them to the ministry, as a matter of national security."

"I am aware." She has passed the point of no return, now. This war will end, and then she will be relegated to laboratories—on which side of Europe, it hardly matters. "It does not bother me. I believe what I have to offer to Britain's war effort is far from trivial.”

Donald offers a smile. "Alright then,” he says with a little bob of his head, “we shall see."

He begins with the usual motions, asking after details of her personal history, all of which she furnishes promptly. She answers as plainly as she can, explaining in only as much detail as she must: that she has never been arrested, nor done anything to deserve arrest, that she was hospitalised once, when she rescued a neighbour's dog from his rooftop and slipped off the wet gutter, fracturing a femur and cutting her foot. He tells her that that was rather brave of her.

“And are you currently married, betrothed, or in a romantic relationship?” he asks.

“No.”

“Have you ever been married, betrothed—“

“No.”

She can tell he is trying not to smile.

She says she went to Barcelona every December before the war to visit her grandfather, and that he is still alive, and that his wife is dead. Mentions the granduncle who died in action in the American Civil War. Says she has never been employed, but volunteered at the RAF Fairford back in 1941, as soon as she could.

When asked about her reasons for enlisting, she has no trouble explaining her sense of duty towards the nation and the all-important structure. She talks about the country, nurtured and protected by the great men and women who have willingly lain their lives on the line for her.

"How about your abilities?" Colonel Donald finally broaches the topic, stroking his shaven chin. "How have they affected the way you live?"

"I've mostly lived in fear of them, and have done my best not to use them.”

"A pity."

"I admit it does come in handy sometimes—in place of lighters, for instance, or when my mother drops a pin and it rolls under the couch."

Colonel Donald's eyebrows rise. "Interesting...do explain."

"Oh, I learnt the trick from my father's textbooks—electromagnets," Vesper says, making a spiralling motion with one hand. "You coil a wire—the bare copper kind—around a nail and pass a current through it."

"Mm, excellent." He steeples his fingers and contemplates their tips, before raising the line of his gaze, once again, to his interviewee. "Have you attempted anything of greater scale?"

"Well...I suppose—"

She is twelve, and although the sky is thick and grey, thunder rolling far away, she decides she will make an exception this once. Grabbing a small grey umbrella from the foot of the hat rack, she flies through the door, through the gap connecting Inside and Outside, across the bridge and to the hilltop some way west of River Coln. Racing like a horse, she scales the hill till she comes to rest beside the tallest tree beneath the swirling clouds.

The air surges with static like a tidal swell around her, just the way she likes it. Beneath a sky like this, she almost feels ordinary.

Grinning up at the great tree’s canopy and panting, Vesper places her hands against the bark. Her heart is aflutter as the lightning lights the sky, a thousand times slower in her head. She knows she will forever remember the roar she roars, deep and fierce, as she plants her heels in the soil and stops the flow of electricity at the interface between her fingers and the bark.

She can taste the ache of her clenched teeth, feel the tears of terror racing down her cheeks as she gathers the thrashing electric current in a halo about her fingers, voltage mounting well beyond what she knows she’s supposed to be able to hold.

She throws herself back, fingers abuzz.

Bursting the bounds of her capacity, the lightning erupts from her hands in a blinding fountain of crackling electric arcs, seeking different paths to the ground, singeing grass and leaves everywhere.

She falls to the ground and laughs softly, while the cold raindrops turn the earth beneath her soft—

“Yes, occasionally," Vesper says, casting her gaze at the ceiling beyond Captain Donald's head. "I used to experiment with lightning, but rarely. I could never keep it under control longer than five seconds."

The man perks up at the mention of lightning. "Splendid," he replies. "That's a excellent starting point. We will be determining the formal limits of your power after your medical examination. The folks over in the tech department have set something up for that purpose."

"I’m excited."

The recruiting officer rises from his chair. He nods and beckons her to the doorway, and together they depart, the officer shutting the door behind them.

"Electromagnets are well and good, Miss Lovelace, but not nearly enough. Hopefully, once we’re done with you, electromagnetism will be the least of your capabilities.”

The bulk of her physical examination is uneventful. Held in a dustier room along the same corridor, Vesper completes it with comparative ease. It is what is to follow that pounds on her thoughts.

After all, as Colonel Donald has made plenty clear, she is a special case. Her examination is to have a special segment that no other soldier endures. A test-fire, to be more accurate.

Doctor Blythe, who is to preside over the test, waltzes in by the machines and over wires, miraculously failing to knock a single thing over on her way to the desk at the corner of the room. “Now, sweet, if you will just sit yourself down right there and put on the cuffs?” she points at the dentist's chair standing at the centre of the room like a headstone, leather restraints dangling over its sides.

Vesper approaches it like she would a coffin. She discovers, in its seat, a pair of cuffs, connected along rubber-clad wires to large clattering computational machines on either side. An assistant doctor stands twisting dials on the machine. She spends a couple of seconds staring at the twin loops of canvas before finally picking them up to inspect them more closely.

In a couple of minutes Blythe returns to strap her into the chair, testing the tightness of the cuffs around her wrists and humming all too cheerfully while she does. "Alright, sweetie, let’s begin,” she says. “I give instructions, you follow.” Vesper nods. “I'd like you to generate some potential in your left palm—do it like you did in the preliminary trial. Your left palm." She points at her own left palm for good measure.

Inhaling deeply, Vesper extends her left hand as far as the straps will allow her. Staring at the centre of her palm, she lets the burning potential mount in that very spot. The wiring in the cuff seems to tug on the current, so she lets it flee straight into it. The adjoining machine begins puffing and whirring like a beast, then from a slit in its side peeks a slip of paper. The doctor reads a figure out loud: thirty-one volts.

She is transfixed for a moment, but as she raises her gaze from the tiny slip, her bewilderment is overcome by blinding purpose. "I’m proud to say that I now have documented evidence that you are not a fraud.” A grin slowly comes to her face. “That is, unless you're concealing a battery?" She giggles at her own joke. "Now, the cuff on your right hand is wired to a different kind of machine. My contemporaries would use such a machine to administer shocks, but those would hardly have an effect on you—wouldn’t they?”

“You could do it.” Vesper shrugs. “Just in case I’m concealing a battery.”

“Oh, no, no, you silly,” laughs the doctor, hopping over to the machine concerned. She twists some dials with a look of diabolical glee, the way Vesper imagines the scientists in the storybooks doing. "Don't you worry yourself, sweet. I won’t be doing that."

“Is there something I should be worried about?”

Doctor Blythe shakes her head. “I’m sure you will have no trouble handling the next test,” she says, to which Vesper can only raise an eyebrow. The leather straps are not reassuring. “I will administer a series of currents of increasing voltage. I want you to channel the current from your right hand to your left, then through the wire and to the machine, as before. Our first trial will be a current of ten volts, and we’ll move upward from there. Ready?”

As soon as she nods, there is a brief buzz of mounting potential and a snap of electricity. Stiffening, she stops the current just in time, then lets it sift up through her right shoulder and across the back of her neck to her left, into the machine. It's a curious feeling. Blythe seems pleased.

The second trial is easier, now Vesper is prepared. She takes the trivial voltage and passes it into the wire on her left wrist. The third trial is the same. She holds fifty amperes easily, and Blythe lets out a laugh as she raises the voltage by another step.

“A hundred volts,” she announces, before the coils begin charging up with a loud hum, and Vesper narrows her eyes, readying herself for the jolt.

Five hundred, a thousand, two thousand volts are passed through her skin in timed bursts. She handles them with little effort, and Blythe’s laughter becomes wilder. “Unbelievable!” she exclaims, turning the dial once again.

At eighty thousand, Vesper finally begins to feel the strain. She grits her teeth before each subsequent shock, beginning to tremble with the effort of diverting the current away from her heart, away from the channel through her feet. That can’t be all, she thinks. A hundred and ten thousand isn’t so bad. “Shall we stop here? There's no shame in stopping, you know,” says Doctor Blythe. She shakes her head and gestures for her to go on.

The machine takes half a minute to generate a hundred and twenty thousand volts. Every little clatter makes her shoulders tense.

When the current comes, it wrings an agonised yell out of her, a current escaping into her arm and down the chair’s frame. Vesper grips at the arms of her chair. This feels nothing like lightning. Everything is cold and sinister and spinning with sparks.

Again Blythe asks if she feels comfortable going on.

“Yes, yes, let’s stop,” she pants, swaying.

“Alright, alright, easy, sweetie.” The reassurance of a hand to the shoulder does not stop the lights from flashing.

Vesper hears the machines print more figures, Blythe and the officers entering a murmur of discussion. She hears numbers rolling off tongues, and the names of weapons, also riddled with numbers, all of which make little sense.

The news arrives with a rain-battered postman, one afternoon, while she's staring into the bleak October gloom over the blurry River Coln where it runs past her house. The ducks have gone to take shelter, and everything else is a muddied blur of dull colours.

It is amid this downpour, behind a closed door, that Vesper tears the flap off a stiff, sealed envelope and discovers she is expected to report to the Aldershot Garrison in Southeast England less than two weeks from now.

And the rain continues to mute the sound of ducks as they waddle through the reeds, and the chatter of swallows taking shelter on eaves, as she returns inside, and breathes all her sadness out in a sigh.

Her parents hug her to sleep that night: two lonely, ordinary farm people whose daughter and love incarnate is about to disappear forever. They vowed not to offer her to any cause so bloody, never dreaming she would someday choose it for herself.

Wearing the combat uniform for the first time feels like a rite of passage: with it, Vesper feels as if she is casting off the memory of hiding in her bedroom waiting for sirens to sound, of being beholden to no one.

Her basic military training is effectively identical to that of every other person enlisted in the British Army. Because of the terms of her enlistment, no one knows there is anything different about her.

They only know that she is a woman destined to graduate as an officer, and the men make every effort to remind her of it, as they are wont to do. Training there has become synonymous with being the subject of derision, and she can do nothing to defend herself but to work twice as hard.

Sometimes, before it is lights-out in the garrison, the other women in the barracks gather on their sheets and talk about home. She lies curled on her own, listening to them talk of their mothers' cooking, and old summer fairs where they met the men they love. They are vicious about their broken hearts and solemn about family lost. They are patently homesick.

She cannot join them, because she does not feel as strongly as they do. When questioned, she nods in sympathy and offers advice.

“How about you, Lovelace? Surely there’s someone?” They turn to her bunk bed in synchrony. She lies prone, eyes darting to them, and shakes her head.

“Do you love no one?” asks Hadley Farnsworth, the one with the short brown hair.

“I love my parents.”

“It certainly doesn’t seem like you do.”

When Vesper isn’t training, she finds herself demonstrating for the scientists in charge of developing her weapons. She isn't much of an entertainer, and makes no effort to embellish her performances, sometimes firing a spark between her fingers, but that alone is often enough to rouse applause. On other occasions she is asked to create an arc between her fingertip and an object. The madder of the lot bring ammeters and voltmeters, and politely beg her to stop when the dials swing off the edge of the scale.

“But we do not know the last thing about how your abilities function,” says a squinty old man in a hat. “Can they be stretched—extended—as with a runner’s ability to complete a marathon? Are you able to improve?”

Vesper thinks back to when she was killing insects with little sparks. “I am quite certain I will,” she replies.

“You are all here, privates,” says Lieutenant Colonel Vaughan at the rostrum on Vesper’s first day at Achnacarry, “because you have volunteered your services to the British Commandos, or have been assigned a place here as your skills befit. I commend your courage, which the nation is in sore need of these days—but courage will not be enough. The life of a commando is like nothing you could ever anticipate. One thing I can tell you to anticipate, however, is to never see your homes again.”

A rustle of uneasy movement ripples through the assembly. Vesper blinks once to acknowledge her sadness.

“Now, do not shoulder that fact as a burden—God knows you will carry enough of those. Let the distant dream of home keep you from faltering. Let home become, for you, everything that makes Great Britain worth fighting for.”

The Commando Training Depot in Achnacarry is different from the Aldershot Barracks. Occupying an old stone castle among the mountains, the air is rare and there is not a field for miles, only forests in valleys—and not one member of the cohort thinks she does not deserve to be there.

They are all participants in the Programme, Vesper is informed before she arrives. They know who she is. They have agreed to serve beside her, and have signed forms, just as she has. Although unit postings officially take place at the end of graduation, membership in her own unit has already been decided. She is, after all, not a soldier.

“I expect thrice as much of you,” Lieutenant Colonel Vaughan growls at her at the end of their first assembly. “You are not special. You are not more capable. You are a soldier, just like the rest of them. Understood, private?”

“Understood, Sir,” she answers promptly.

Nothing makes the difference more stark than the way Vesper’s unit receives her. Half refuse to shake her hand or come within a metre; the rest are already begging her to demonstrate her purported powers before the day is over. Deciding that it might be better that they observe her abilities sooner than later, she obliges, holding her hands up, palms towards each other, and sending a small spark across the gap from right to left.

“My God, it’s like in the books,” mutters one of the younger men, McFadden, the one with freckles and a gap between his front teeth.

A blond man whose name she has yet to learn immediately pipes up, “make the lights turn on!” He is met with rousing assent. “Come on, let us see you do it!”

“I’ll need a bare—”

The light goes out before Vesper can finish her sentence and the common room goes dark. The gang of five or so pushes her towards the corner where the switch is, though she continues to insist she can’t do anything without access to the wiring.

“Go on, do it!” says short brunet Keith Dyer, whom she’s noticed trips over his own words all the time—barely the disposition of a commando. “Use the screws—that works, dunnit?”

“Well—let’s see.” Vesper lifts a hand so it hovers beside the switch. “Prepare to be amazed,” she says.

With a flourish, she flips the switch back down. The lights blink on, and she gestures for applause; they laugh and give it.

“You’re quite something,” says Dyer as he passes; he reaches out, seeming to consider clapping her on the shoulder, before retracting his hand and hustling away. Beside him, another of the boys—Gordon, if memory serves—nods, but does not speak. He only stares intently at the light switch as if it might suddenly erupt with sparks.

She wouldn’t call it alienation exactly.

Over their weeks of hefting sixty-pound kits, muscles burning, through muddy undergrowth, and traversing the assault courses that overlook foggy, densely-forested valleys, the rest of the cadets have not made no sign of disliking her in the least.

Even then—as they learn formations on the quadrangle, and commit to memory the names and uses of various firearms, Vesper begins to recognise the rift that has always stood between herself and the rest of her unit.

It isn’t just about gender, although she won’t discount that as a factor. As if she were a plague patient, they refuse to touch her belongings. She has a bunk all to herself, being the only woman in the depot, and not even the commanding officers—not LTC Vaughan himself—will touch her doorknob. It begins, she finds, to feel like a quarantine chamber.

Her schedule is busier than her companions’ by twice at least: while they take breaks, she gets familiar with an arsenal of electromagnetic weapons built specifically for her use, most of which are fresh from weapon-testing. She is in collaboration with the scientists, teaching them how to build weapons for humans while they teach her she isn’t nearly powerful enough to use them.

There are days when she feels like she is sinking in a pit of quicksand, yelling for help that will not come.

A power generator has been installed in a shed under the castle fortifications for her voltage-endurance training, and it is here that she faces her most humiliating failures. Two sessions end in medical bay visits, one in unconsciousness. Her fellow cadets have the good heart to visit her in the ward that one time; she’s learnt to appreciate the presence of each one—the only ones who know the unspeakable burden of having willingly sequestered themselves from everything they have ever loved, which she can see in their gazes even as they look on at her, hapless and limp from the exhaustion of trying to be too much at once.

One of the novel weapons Vesper is taught to use is the solenoid coilgun—they coined the term electromagnetic powered weapons—EMPWs—for them—fresh out of the prototype stage. The handiest is shaped much like a small automatic rifle, and can fire 300 Win Mags at velocities exceeding those of comparable rifles—as long as she can correctly apply current to the three coils with hair-breadth precision.

The coilgun, the scientists say, was a useless weapon before Vesper came along. She has changed the constraints. Battery weight no longer matters, and efficiency comes to the forefront—the problems of which she also negates by serving as a double capacitor.

Once she has perfected her timing, it quickly becomes her favourite weapon.

The mounted coilguns are arguably more exciting, but also far trickier to operate. With the right angle and sufficient voltage, she can fire electrodes into tank armour to embed conducting wires, allowing her to deliver a shock of as great an intensity as she can muster. Many a time during the simulations, she fires poorly only to have projectiles glance off the hull. Her overseer, Sergeant Bradley, yells her ear off each time: embedders are expensive. Failure is expensive. She burns out several wires every day.

Nevertheless, Vesper sees the power of her shots increase as her voltage generation improves. This is the reward, she supposes, to overexerting herself so many times to the point of unconsciousness. It is like learning to run a marathon while carrying weights.

In the same time it takes for them to ready themselves for the final thirty-mile route march, fifty thousand volts becomes nothing to Vesper.

In fact, it is so trivial now that she is able to generate it simply by rubbing her hands together, no thinking required.

She stands before her instructor at her final firing test on the shooting range, fingers curling around the interface plates of the coilgun gripped tight in her right hand. She stares stone-cold at the target at the other end of the range, nothing between her and the dark circle at the centre.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Vesper nods and lifts her gun with both hands, eyes narrowing on the target. This is the thousandth time she has taken this shot. She knows there is no way she will get it wrong.

Closing one eye to adjust her aim, she lets the electrons gather and flow down her arms, a buzzing shimmer around each hand. As soon as she feels herself enter the range of fifty thousand volts, she pulls the trigger.

There is no boom. The bullet slams straight through the bull’s eye with a loud snap.

The company graduates into the No. 60 Commando without much ceremony; there is applause and hugging when they pull the green berets onto their heads. No one approaches Vesper, naturally, but they go through the motions of congratulating her.

Their first posting is barely three days later, to the Axis-controlled town of Mortsel which straddles the Western Front on the northern coast of Belgium. The unfamiliar bellow of Captain Thorne, spurring them as they clamber out of the armoured personnel vehicle and race to their positions, gear slung over shoulders, reminds her that she is no longer at the training centre.

She takes her position on the rooftop of an evacuated shop-house with two other privates, Elliot and Johnson, tightening the knobs on the tripod so the electrode cannon stands sturdy atop it.

She peers over the edge of the roof while the sounds fall away, eyes narrowed on the tip of her electrode cannon where it obscures a section of the facing house. In the rumbling of faraway tanks, she lets her finger wind around the trigger, one eye closing as she squints through the scope.

He heart is booming inside her helmet, but she does not let it show on her face, only licks her lips, and lets her thoughts drown the sound of tank treads away.

As soon as the leading tank is beneath them, Johnson nods, and she squeezes, watching the electrode spin into a gap between the tread and a wheel.

At first, the Nazis do not understand the electrical surges that seem to be putting their vehicles and equipment permanently out of commission, and causing diesel explosions at random. Nothing on the battlefield ought to be able to generate a current that strong, not without being terribly conspicuous to the eye.

They blame it first on their engineers, then the factories, but after several months of tests turning up no results, they begin to watch closely.

It takes them almost half a year to wise up to their game and by then, now-Sergeant Vesper Lovelace has already disrupted a major operation or two. While she makes her fair share of mistakes, she learns to contain their effects, and soon she is a genuine leader whom her men are pleased to look up to. She has never been one to let things get to her head, but it has an effect nevertheless. Grim purpose fills her up, and all the work she is doing ceases to be enough.

One evening between battles, Vesper seeks the audience of the 3 Troop's commanding officer. “I need to be out there,” she says, pacing back and forth between tents while the evening light drains from the sky. “Every minute I spend back here is a minute I’m wasting.”

Major Harris chews on a blade of grass while he listens. “Cool your engines, Lovelace; we’re saving you for the big clashes,” he replies, barking a laugh. “I’ve never seen a kid as driven as you—and a lady, at that. Where did you say you’re from, again?”

“Fairford, sir.”

“You have seen the planes at the RAF?”

“I volunteered when I was sixteen, sir. I’ve seen their engines.”

“An early start, then,” Harris replies. “Well, Lovelace, Number 60 will be intercepting an important escort in three days’ time, on the border of Liege. They are carrying a shipment of novel weapons that could turn the tide on the German border. Heaven knows what that is. I take it Three—with the likes of you leading a section—is ready to heft that responsibility.”

Vesper straightens. “Yes, sir. I will reward your trust,” she replies, to which he grins.

It is as such that the 3 Troop finds itself moving in through the streets of Liege beneath a darkening sky, kicking stones and abandoned baskets aside, ramming doors down.

Vesper spits the taste of grit out of her mouth as the eight soldiers thunder up the stairs of their building of choice—an old hospital that stands tall over the main intersection where they expect the escort. It is almost eerie to watch the dials whir about them as they race through quiet corridors, guns raised, their muddied boots marring the cleanliness.

They locate a room that provides a good vantage over the junction, and begin setting their weapons up. It is a bare industrial space, an escape ladder ascending to a closed hatch above, and it leaves them just enough room to move about and to duck for cover. Close by, members of a fellow section—she knows them, Gordon who trained with her at Achnacarry, Rajan who lived in London—load their PIATs, ready to back her up at neighbouring windows. They are expecting four tanks: a few quick, quiet shots will do the trick. Without gunpowder she can fire at the armoured escort from the mounted coilgun without giving their position away.

Thunder rolls, shadows shift. By the time they are done, they hear the tanks rumbling from beyond the buildings, right on cue. A cloud of dust alerts them first to the escort of hulking grey Panzer III's, kicking up clods of dirt as they advance towards the intersection, crushing stones beneath their treads.

Private Rajan lowers his binoculars, and his expression makes her stomach clench. “Eight Panzers,” he says. "And they're accompanied by Hanomags. They know something's up."

She purses her lips. This isn’t the first time intelligence has been wrong, and Marlowe has no shortage of ammunition on him. But this is also the first time she has demanded responsibility. She cannot let things go awry.

“Ready to fire?” crackles Harris on the radio set, through interference.

“Standing by, over.”

Four sections wait on the ground, waiting to take the convoy, and everything is teetering upon her. “Marlowe,” she says, and he loads the electrode embedder. She aims it, waiting until her spotter, Weston, signals the OK.

Bracing herself against the recoil, Vesper fires the electrode. The projectile pummels into the treads of the leading Panzer, and there is a brief caesura of sound as she musters up a potential, before sending it through the wire.

It all happens in a split second. The first tank is seized by a cloud of sparks, and begins to smoke. The entire convoy stalls. She releases the conducting wire, and it whips out of the window like a snake.

Around her there is muttering, snatches of the first pessimistic whisperings. The Germans, too, have tried to rein the storm, and the Panzers IIIs are thunder harnessed for death. From here, they can see all eight tanks in their horrible glory, guns gaping like the maws of monsters.

“Maybe retreat was a good idea,” says Finley from behind her.

“Maybe nothing!” Sergeant Vesper Lovelace will hear none of their defeatist talk. Odds do not scare her. She has to press on. She asked to be in charge. “Marlowe!”

He shakily extends another embedder; she snatches it from him and loads it herself, stringing the conducting wire in.

She can hear nothing but her pulse. Not even the thunder penetrates it. She loads another electrode, aims, and fires before Weston has signalled. Another tank is seized by an electric surge, a blaze of flames exploding through the gaps in its armoured hull.

“Ma’am, wait—” says Weston, but she is already loading the next projectile.

This is her first, and crucial, mistake.

Against the spotter’s warning, Vesper fires yet again.

It just so happens that, as she lets loose her shot, the tank commander’s eyes rest upon their building. He sees the electrode fly, and fly wide.

The projectile glances off the hull.

Seconds later, the turret is groaning turning towards them, and the fear crystallises through her, cold sweat breaking out. “Bugger it!” she snaps. But the sight of a cannon pointed at her, pulling the entire world into the shadow of its barrel, snatches her next words from her lips, holding her fast.

“Down! Down!” Vesper only has a second to register Weston knocking her to the ground, away from the window.

A shell booms, shattering the wall into an infinity of rubble, filling the air with pressing heat and smoke and a cry of agony, and all at once she knows it's slipped out of her grasp, everything that she was supposed to have kept under control. The room is full of coughing and wailing, and as it clears she sees Gordon squirming in the smoke, trapped beneath rubble, limbs twisted, tears glistening, and she almost cannot bring herself to look, because she knows he is good as dead. She only barely hears the turret begin turning again, and the other section scrambling back into position, the sound of a PIAT being fired in a gush of heat. The retaliatory explosion of the shaped charge outside is drowned out by the strained cry of a private curled on the floor, uniform charred down to the waist, limbs and face scalded to grotesque disfigurement by the backblast.

This is what it means to be at war, it suddenly hits her. Not the ranks and glories and drills. Not pledging yourself to the king and the kingdom. It's watching your friends die screaming.

Vesper has no time for guilt or regret; she knows those will come later. Amid the pressing sound of her panicked gasping, her mind races for a tactical solution—anything—but the situation keeps overtaking her ideas. Out on the street, infantry soldiers are already dismounting from the carriers, and she knows it is too late to attempt to disarm more tanks before they storm the building and take them out. And once they do, they'd have lost every last inch of the tactical advantage they once held, and the rest of the 3 Troop will be at the mercy of the Nazis, and it would all be her bloody fault and perhaps if God is merciful she will not live to nurse the regret—

She casts a glance at the ladder leading to the hatch and, recognising the only option left to them, gestures for the rest to dismantle the coilgun and follow.

Seven pairs of boots scramble up the metal rungs, their sergeant flinging the hatch open to reveal the bare rooftop, a single water tank presiding over the emptiness, over which the entire sky glowers and roars. The street is a torrent of foot soldiers, guns clinking.

Racing to the railings, head racing even then as she takes her bright new surroundings in, Vesper gestures towards a raised area beneath the struts of the container. “Everyone but Marlowe and Weston, move there and ready your guns. All of you, plug up. Rajan—“ she nods at the man with Gordon’s PIAT, already reaching for his earplugs—“as soon as you hear the men approaching, I want you to fire at that—“ she gestures up at the tank. “Marlowe, Weston, set it up here.”

It is in moments of tilt like these that Vesper can truly appreciate the intensity of the training they underwent. It serves Marlowe and Weston well, as they ready the gun in almost twenty seconds. At least someone here remembers protocol. She on the other hand—

No. Guilt can wait. With the tanks still pointed at the window below them, none of them seem to notice that the gun has moved up. She narrows her eyes as she aims it, finding the armoured lorry—with the precious cargo—in the crosshairs.

She hears the footsteps on the access staircase, booming behind the closed door. A bolt of lighting streaks across the sky.

Plugging her ears, she feels her own lightning gather in her hands, remembering the day she stood beneath the tree on the hill by River Coln, doing what no person should be able to do.

Vesper fires the electrode straight into the convoy lorry, parked a street down, and lets a million volts gush into the ground.

Her intuition proves right: it is full of explosives. She knows, because the instant the current hits the lorry, fire blows it apart, and the shockwave levels two buildings and flings the flaming tanks across the street. The boom is muted by the plugs so that her ears only ring slightly.

But she is not done. Whirling back, she raises a hand to the sky.

Thunder booms. Static mounts in the air.

The next lightning strike leaps right into her hand, lighting up her fingertips briefly with pain. She stands over everyone else, aglow. She grits her teeth. The electrons make her shake; this is more than she’s ever held, so much she thinks it might kill her.

The next sequence of events is inevitable: the Nazi soldiers burst onto the rooftop; Rajan blows a hole in the water tank; a roar of water gushes out in a curtain to flood the space, sweeping soldiers back. Vesper leaps into the torrent, body crackling, throat blazing.

Already the soldiers are backing away, their commander barking panicked orders with flighty gestures, like a bird cornered in its cage.

Vesper Lovelace lets the swell of water knock her forward.

She plunges her hand into the current, and a billion volts of potential become a blinding surge of electricity.

It doesn’t take long for the horror to catch up, once they are back at the tents with towels wrapped around them.

As Vesper sits there drying, they ask her if she would like to report medical trauma. She tells them no, she might need a week-long break but she will be back in action as soon as she is able, because—

Because what?

Because of the structure, because of Inside and Outside. Because she is a soldier of this nation and it’s her duty to be everything she’s supposed to be.

But what is the structure, and what are Inside and Outside? Go her internal thoughts. Why does patriotism mean so much death?

Everyone is delighted, but stunned, that she wishes to return to work. No one lives through nearly dying and still wants to fight. What a formidable will, they think, and what a heart that loves its country so. There is already talk that she will be awarded a medal for her deeds in the town of Liege.

That night she wakes up and sheds tears for the first time in years, because the vision of two privates’ bodies, mauled by the war, won’t stop haunting her in her sleep.

“It was never about making a difference. They tried to tell me. Everyone who wasn’t involved in this bloody business. It isn’t about making a difference. It’s about numbers. It’s all numbers.” Midway through the sentence, her fingers clench into a ball.

You’re not a soldier, you’re a weapon. She feels like a machine.

“But you’ve made such a difference,” he replies with a meaningful glance at the medal she wears. All of a sudden, it weighs a thousand tonnes of solid guilt.

“I did what anyone in my position would have. And it was not enough.”

A wave breaks unevenly on the shore, throwing Vesper out of her daze.

"We would like," says Orobelle, "to invite you into service of the House of Diamonds, specifically as a bodyguard—"

"I have no time for your magician’s patter," Vesper interrupts, pointing the chain’s hook at the girl. "Drop your weapons and put your hands behind your heads."

"Do not speak to me in that tone!"

"You're on our camp, you follow our rules. Drop your weapons!"

The little duchess draws back, digging a heel into sand. "No!"

The hook shoots through the air in a blur of links, swinging and tightening around Dorian's arm before he has blinked. He is seized by a brief convulsion, then his knees fold, and his torso swings into the ground with a thud.

"He's alright," Vesper says, tugging once on the chain so his arm lifts and it unwinds. When Orobelle turns to the soldier, the hook is pointed straight between her eyes. "Put your hands behind your head. Don't test my patience."

Her eyes widen and for the first time she senses despair. "You don't understand the weight of this—"

"We can talk when you're in chains. I promise I will listen."

Orobelle glances at Dorian, and her face crumples into a grimace. "Be quick."

Vesper picks the sword up off the ground and slides it into Dorian's scabbard. Going down on one knee beside the swordsman, she slips her hands under his body and heaves his towering form over her shoulder, lifting him like a sack. "March," she shouts, knight-over-shoulder.

The duchess' expression sours. "No," she says. In a swirl of light, she collapses into the rectangular form of the Ace of Diamonds, skidding a few finger's-lengths across the sand. "Carry me."

“I’ll tear you in two if you don’t come out of there,” Vesper growls down at her.

“No, you won’t. It’s against your rules.”

She purses her lips, sighs, and picks Orobelle up.

Once they are back inside the barracks, Orobelle grows a little more agreeable, turning into her human form for her benefit. They put both her and her knight away in a cell, and the captain signs them in without another word, the warden greeting her with a perfunctory, "Good to see you, Captain Lovelace."

When Vesper returns later in the afternoon to check on her feisty little prisoner, the girl growls through the echoing black dampness to welcome her, a cheek against the bar.

She peers down at the young blonde duchess. "How are you?"

"I don't deserve this," Orobelle mutters, glaring with an intensity far exceeding her stature, but her shoulders are heavy.

Vesper descends on a knee so their eyes are level. "You've only been here for two hours," she says. "Shall we discuss?"

"Lovelace." Orobelle affixes her gaze on Vesper’s. "I would not have sullied my pride and come seeking you out if I didn’t need your protection, direly."

Vesper raises an eyebrow. "Dorian is a trained protector, is he not?"

"And don't you question that!" the duchess snaps. "He is not enough. I need all eight of you, the servants of the Bearer of the Knot of Worlds. Come to me as you were born to. The ancient texts say that it is so!"

"Ancient texts of your invention, I wager."

"No, no! I am the Bearer of the Knot of Worlds. I hold the universes together. I ensure their continual existence. I am she, and if I die, so does the universe!"

She snorts. "You expect me to believe any of this drivel?"

"I assure you, I do not lie about things concerning myself," snaps Orobelle. "Listen to me now. You will terminate your service with this organization within a week, and when you are ready, we will take you to Wonderland—"

"Stop." Vesper holds up a hand. "I am a commanding officer. You will not make me leave my post. That is final.”

“I am a duchess and heir to the throne of the Queendom!” Orobelle screams, both hands clutching the bars. "They do not need you. I need you!” Her tone changes to one of bargaining. “I could make you vanish. Punishment would not be a concern."

"It's not punishment I fear. I don't expect you to understand." Vesper rises on her knees.

"Do it! I order you to!"

"I am under no obligation to take your orders."

"You are obligated by four universes!"

Vesper presses her knuckles to her forehead. "No. Do not tell me that, because I will not believe it, and cannot believe it, unless you can prove it to me."

She is surprised when Orobelle pauses, glare wavering.

“Will you truly risk the existence of the world on the slim possibility I might be lying?”

It isn’t that she doesn't believe Orobelle at all. It is that no one else in the army will. “I can’t do this for you. I’m sorry.”

"What will happen to me?" the young duchess finally asks.

"They'll transfer you to—" she shakes her head— "I'll think of something. I'll make sure that you go free. But you will go without me."

Vesper later manages to convince LTC Clarke that she has, on some questioning, found the girl and her guardian to be innocent of Nazi allegiance. She takes the two to the entrance of the camp, and then detours towards the beach once she is out of view.

“Lovelace, Tell me how you came to love this army so,” Orobelle mutters as they come to a crunching stop on the sand. “It cannot be easy to be the only person in the world with powers like yours. I imagine they have treated you with scepticism and fright."

"Their scepticism does not bother me," says Vesper. "My occasional inability to live up to the responsibility accord to me by my powers, does." She turns. "I am nothing, if I am not of use."

Orobelle chuckles grimly. "I understand now," she say, "why you cannot leave here, why you’ve ceded your free will completely. You're not a soldier. You're a weapon."

"If you knew a thing about my life, Orobelle," she says, "you'd know why you're better off giving up. Not because I refuse to believe you, but because I cannot account for the possibility that you are lying."

She shakes her head. “I cannot.”

“Come back when the war is over,” Vesper says, turning to depart. “Then I might consider joining you.”

It is easy, when you are young, to think that stone is permanent and that houses stand forever. And then you watch them explode in a lightning-strike, a boom of fire, curling up before the blaze as if it were ripping your skin away. And you think about policemen and lawyers and the good of humankind. And suddenly you know that Inside and Outside don’t exist.

Revolving Door

The Brazen Bull

This chapter contains depictions of slavery, child abuse, animal abuse and animal death.

She was born in the recaptured city of Carthage, where the desert and the ocean mingled and made the air sweet. She came into being at the price of her mother—a woman whose history her seed-father never told her, perhaps because he deemed it unworthy of being told. She lived her first years, nameless, in a basket behind the man’s bread stall.

When she was eight years old, her father sold her to a vast estate that housed a family of several upon several—so many that she never did manage to learn all their names.

The pater familias, Valerius Julius Licinus, named her Valeria: he wrote his name on her when he received her, making her his before she knew what it meant to be owned. He had her wear her hair in a long braid, and he had her weave textiles like her hair was woven, like her life was now woven with the lives of the rest within the domus of Julius Licinus. For as slaves were traded like livestock, so were they treated.

Valeria lived her childhood days among the pillars of a peerless house, trying to believe, as she spun and wove flax, that she could be content living like this forever. But there were nights she would pass by her slave-aunt’s room and see her unconscious on the table, bleeding red welts across her bared back. She would walk away from those scenes with a chilling sense of foreboding.

She was a calf in the garden of Olympia: the view was extraordinary, but she saw ribs sitting in the gods' golden platters every night and she knew what it meant—that her peace was enjoyed in borrowed time.

:::

Valeria had heard of an emperor of the realm, his name, Alexius, passing between Valerius’ daughters in the garden. He was, they said, a legendary man living in the faraway land of Constantinople, whose decree created and moulded the lives of the people around her.

Only the rich possessed names so potent that they exerted power even here. Did Emperor Alexius care about the plights of the slaves here on the northern coast of Africa, for the people whom his people’s people had stolen from their lands and sold to the houses? She supposed he must not, if his palace was beautiful enough.

:::

The child Valeria enjoyed the warmth of touch. The people of Valerius’ household seemed kinder to her when her hands were in theirs, Valerius’ wife especially, but his sisters and children, too. She let them hold her while they conversed in the view of the stars, and they came to love her as the most beautiful child of the household—more beautiful, even, than the grey-eyed daughters of the master.

Until she was sixteen years old, Valeria spun wool with work-hardened hands. It was only that year that she learned why Valerius had named her after him, when he caught her wandering behind the domus and pinned her, spread-eagled, against a wall with his rough palms and watched her as a hyena might eye his carrion. In that moment she sensed an infinity of scents around her, sweet fig marigolds in the earth just beginning to lose the heat of the sun, layered over that the wine on his breath.

Valeria did not immediately know what he meant by his actions, but when his palm brushed her cheek, she began at once to shriek like the calf before the slaughter, scrambling to wrench his arms away.

And as she screamed, his eyes rolled back, and he began to gasp and spasm and froth, releasing her. By the time the other slaves came running, they found her weeping before a corpse.

No external cause of death could be ascertained by the surgeons. Valeria could have been tortured to testify, but the master had drunk without inhibition and there was nothing to suggest he had been murdered but the symptoms of poisoning.

Thus was it that her ownership—and the ownership of her entire slave family—was passed to Valerius’ brother. Thus was it that Valeria continued to live in the house that stank of him, stank of the wine on his breath, and she came to hate the sound of her name—his praenomen—on the lips of others.

The entire family saw that the girl had looked hollower in spirit ever since the fateful day, but only her slave-aunt understood why. In the dark of the courtyard at midnight, the woman slipped her a map scrawled on paper with an incomprehensible sign on the back, and hoisted her over the wall of the domus so she could begin her flight.

The kindliness of her aunt’s dark eyes was the last she ever saw of that terrible place.

:::

For half a day Valeria ran, too starved even to cry, hating herself and hating that Valeria was the only word she had to describe her personhood. The map, almost formless on the tiny scrap, led her to a doctor in a coastal town who understood her plight as soon as she saw the sign on the back.

The woman introduced herself as Tadla Junia Paetina—Tadla, her own name—and offered her employment as her apprentice and assistant. She was tall and broad and had skin the same colour as Valeria's, and the way she held herself told the girl she belonged to no one.

The surgeon’s room was a refuge of blood and shadow in which Valeria learned physician sciences as if they were dark arts. People who entered, trembling, were soothed when Valeria laid her hands upon them. She was adept at administering herbs, and a fine hand with the scalpel, and as she worked at making shapes in skin and membrane, she let her resoluteness dilute her own seething self-hatred, although it never did leave.

Three years they worked side by side, healing the people of the bay and beyond, and the girl began to understand how it felt not to be an orphan. Her mistress’ presence anchored and protected her thoughts and, in the safety she furnished, she finally began to find herself.

Tadla—skilled as she was—told her she saw something unprecedented in her. She saw the way she stroked her patients to sleep, the way the colours of their faces changed as she cradled their heads. It both amazed and terrified her, she said. It would make her a doctor like no other.

By the time the town was once again sacked by Vandals with their broad axes and Tadla abducted never to be seen again, the girl, now nameless, had yet to understand what her mistress had meant.

She realised, as she cowered under the surgery table, nineteen years old and drenched in the smell of blood, that this portion of her life, too, she would now have to push out of her memory.

:::

The child, no longer a child, ransacked the wasted surgeon’s room for supplies and fled.

She soon found herself in the recruitment office, hands lain gently upon the well-worn fingers of the centurion soldier at the desk. Dazed at the wondrousness of the woman whom he beheld, the man, all armour and glory, asked for her name.

“Junia Paetina,” she replied, taking the name of the only parent she had ever had. Her touch was so soothing he forgot to interrogate her.

:::

Rome’s fate had been changing in recent years, or so Junia Paetina heard. The armies, led and inspired by Alexius, had seen paltry resistance on the eastern fronts, tearing through the Aslama defences with ruthless efficiency. These tales were exchanged between the shopkeepers and centurions as their legion passed through the town, hefting gladius and shield. Her colleagues would drop coins for stories, or trade news with the looser-lipped townsfolk, and the stories would come: of magical fires on the battlefields, of godly voices booming from the skies, of the old Grecian legends come to life.

Junia Paetina fought smaller battles than those of the general-emperor Alexius. She fought on the battleground of Africa with nothing but her sword and her talent for influence. Together with her legion she tore Vandal camps apart, torturing captives in the grape press and the burning wheel whenever she was not holding a sword. Here, the skill that she had once used to soothe her patients aided her in the administration of pain. Alternating the torture with pleasure amplified their response, she quickly learned, and she easily became the most effective among them.

For almost a year she fought and she bled, all for the mere hope of seeing Tadla’s face again—Tadla, who had once kept her alive. But if the woman had been in their camps, no one had been able to locate her—not even after every last tent had been lain waste to and every prisoner freed. As the decisive battle was declared won and the rejoicing began, she could only sit listlessly in the sand, gladius resting loosely against her shin.

Junia Paetina had done her grieving long ago. There was no more pain to be felt for the loss of the woman, only the acknowledgment of the emerging, yawning chasm of carnivorous hunger in her.

The legions of Carthage eventually drove the Vandals out of Roman Africa, and were then disbanded as required by the faraway emperor. It was a quick and surgical affair: she had allowed herself no personal connections, and when the time came it was easy to sever her ties and go her own way, gathering what little she owned.

Left with no place to go, she went where there was food and shelter and some semblance of salvation. In the deep red of the evening, she bundled herself, bloodstained fingernails and all, on a farmer’s cart to Carthage, and surrendered herself—as she’d learned to—at the office by the arena.

Before she could escape the cycle of bloodlust and fear, she once again let them push a sword into her hands.

:::

They had not abolished the gladiatorial games, merely replaced human combatants with wild animals, as if it made the game less cruel.

Junia Paetina stared her first foe in the eye—a golden lion, back arched, teeth bared, hissing like the monsters of deepest Tartarus. Furious as it was, she saw that it was starved, for its ribs were in prominent relief beneath its combed golden fur.

Predator, who mauled the corpses of cows. It was both what she was and what she feared, friend and foe inseparable.

The blood they had rubbed on her was driving the starved predator mad: it snapped and snarled, chains clanging and scraping with the force of its tugging. When they set the creature upon her, she took several seconds to snap out of her daze—and then the lion was only a beast again.

She lifted her sword in time to catch it perpendicular between the jaws, its teeth immediately crunching down upon the weapon—the action was answered by gasps. For a minute they wrestled, metal screeching, her fingers aching against the grip of the hilt; in the lion’s eyes were the fires of Hades, in its claws the rage of Cerberus.

Then Junia Paetina wound up her arms, and twisted the weapon, with a roar to match the beast’s. She severed its mandible clean off, to a surge of yells and screams. The piece of bone and muscle bounced and splashed across the ground.

Rendered powerless, the lion wheezed and whimpered until its life bled out and it collapsed to its knees. Junia Paetina planted a sandaled foot on its head and—because its slow bleeding death had not quenched her—stabbed it through the eyes. Drawing the sword from its sheath of flesh, she lifted it for the crowd, allowing the red iron liquid to splash on her forehead amid their raucous cheers.

Seeing in her a flair for theatricality, the game makers began throwing her challenges of increasing creativity, which she met with gusto on the hot, steaming sand, each time to growing applause. In one, she began on a platform over a pack of six cackling hyenas, which she did not best till one had sunk its teeth in her arm so she saw her own blood spattered across the earth.

The audience, she was told, loved the unconventionality of her brutality, the surprise of each of her kills. She played that to her advantage. She surprised them even more, snapping spines, nailing torsos to the ground, tricking the creatures into strangling themselves with their own chains. Each death left her grieving, left her a little less of the person she had been before.

As she learned to perform, Junia Paetina’s name began to travel—far enough that Constantinople caught wind of her matches.

One day, while she was rubbing oil on her arms, they came to her in the dungeons and offered to buy her over. Suddenly, the young woman had been promised enough money to buy herself a life of normalcy: a chance to be the doctor Tadla had almost made of her, perhaps—a chance to be the true heir to the woman she’d made herself the foster-daughter of.

It had been a year since her loss, however, and Junia Paetina had found something else, something of the persistent sting of vengeance, quelled only by murder in the coliseum, murder to which thousands were privy. She could not but kill, and kill, and kill.

Junia Paetina took their document and signed. That evening, she waited among the harbour stalls for the ship in which she would depart, under the sponsorship of the Constantinople spokesperson. It arrived within the hour, casting its shadow over the workers as it moored.

Up the gangplank stood the spokesperson’s brown-eyed slave, ignored and unnamed as she had been once. When the ship had left port in the darkness and the master had fallen asleep, Junia Paetina stole the slave from her cabin, weaving fingers with hers on the deck. Before long they were stealing kisses in the cloudy moonlight, although the kissing never advanced to anything else.

:::

Constantinople smelled of sea breeze, like Carthage, but the air was not the parched desert air in which she had been raised, nor was the shimmering audience quite so bloodthirsty and wild. She saw it at the coast of the sea, glittering on the waters. Entering the excess of the greatest city in the world was a shock she never did overcome; the people spilled food on the roadsides and there was always a grand ship on the Bosphorus, thrice as big as anything she’d seen in her old city, all aglow with lights.

She became acquainted with the game-maker and the coliseum managers, welcomed into their midst with a dinner just like the city: rich and sumptuous, and dripping with unfamiliar sauces. Never one to turn down food, she ate until she felt dirty, then left to watch the sea until she no longer ached with disgust.

Junia Paetina was trained with local gladiators. Humans, she quickly came to understand, were betrayed by their intelligence. They were all obsessed with force, and rendered complacent by her looks. A man complimented her pretty dark eyes minutes before he found himself knocked cold by an impact against the arena wall.

On a cliff overlooking the bay, she asked the Marmara Sea where she was going. The sea did not give an answer, so she answered herself: as far as she could, until she was no longer property.

:::

So it was, that Junia Paetina found herself striding, a blood-red cloak over her shoulders, into the audience of five pawing, head-tossing bulls. Down in the dungeons, they had replaced her gladiator’s helmet with a horned helm, perhaps designed to confuse her foes into thinking her a rival: she wore it proudly, raising her head to the audience so they could see the fearsome image it made.

Among them sat Emperor Alexius himself, curious, she was told, about the gladiator who had recently come into the public eye.

A fanfare of horns was followed by a loud cheer and a sudden pyrotechnic display. Junia Paetina raised her sword to the animals behind the bars and swung it to taunt them, with an easy smile that none but those in the first seats saw. They answered with haunting bellows, their soul-rending voices reminding her of the war horns of home.

Rippling with muscle and sinew, these bulls were not the same as the scrappy predators of Carthage. They were the primes of their herds, towering behind the retractable fences, and in their eyes she saw no empathy nor hunger, only a soulless urge for destruction. The bull at the centre stood taller than the rest, pawing and moaning.

In that moment, Junia Paetina was overcome by a brief sadness, for the bull was no predator, as drunk on its own rage as it may be. It was not the lion she had first looked in the eye; it was massive, rippling—towering and male and vulnerable in its grandeur. She could not help but to respect it, to want its stature even.

When the bell rang and the fences retreated into the ground, loosing the bulls upon her, Junia Paetina sheathed her sword—to an audible gasp—and flung herself forward. Dashing forth upon the sure leather of her sandals, she counted the seconds, then leapt with force and vaulted onto the head of the centre bull, right between its horns. Then she dropped into position atop the grand beast’s neck, and crouched low, heart booming loud.

As it bounced along across the sand, dizzied by her manoeuvre, she leapt to a squat atop its back, armour clattering. With another twist and swing she reversed her orientation, snatching at its horns to stabilise herself and letting go before it could fling her off with them.

Today Junia Paetina did not subdue her prey with injury. She let her hand rest upon its neck, digging her fingers through its fur until it touched the hide beneath. At once the beast ceased to toss its head, entering instead a steady, measured run. Grinning, she kicked its right flank with her heel: at once it regained pace, swerving left in answer to her kick—straight towards the second bull, readying its horns as it was overcome by a sudden inexplicable spate of rage.

The greater bull gored the lesser one with ease, frothing fearsomely as it bellowed at the crowd.

A good five minutes she steered and commanded the bull after the others across the sun-baked arena, like some bizarre hippodrome tamer, the audience gasping endlessly down. One by one her bull sank its horns into the others and then trampled them, again and again, until they were but mangled piles of meat, hide and bone.

Soon, all four others were dead. Junia Paetina brought her own mount to a thundering, dusty halt beneath the Emperor’s seat, raising her head to the blazing heat of the sun. Her shadow was one with the bull’s, beast indistinguishable from master. The emperor met her eye for the first time. She stared resolutely back.

Then, with a movement so deft and so swift it was not seen by most, Junia Paetina raised her sword high, and plunged it into the creature’s spine. A collective gasp burst out from amid the cheering.

She twisted. Her bull mount collapsed, bringing her to the ground with it, the jarring impact deadened by its body. It died briefly after, although she knew it died painlessly, for she had been touching it and willing it be so, clenching her jaw with a fearsome grin to hide all the emotion that boiled beneath it.

Death to her fear, her hatred, her history, herself, all at once. Everything was iron and rust in the air around her.

Amid a cloud of descending dust, she lifted her gaze to stare at the Emperor once more—this mythical man of the stories, who could take her life and twist it between his hands if he so much as pleased.

He stared back, applauding her slowly, and soon the audience followed suit.

The girl, nameless once more, left footprints of blood as she rose and walked away.

:::

Emperor Alexius was so pleased with her performance, she later learned, that he had decided there and then to honour her with a grant and an agnomen. Junia Paetina Marcia, he called her, and so the people on the streets called her—for her chilling fearsomeness, worthy of the god of war himself, unmatched by that of any they’d seen before.

She wore her bull helmet out into the crowds on the street, where they had already named her something else: the Brazen Bull, or so she learned when they came flocking to shower her in wreaths and chants amid the heat and dust. The god Baal, of bronze flesh, in whose belly the Sicilian executioners boiled their victims to death.

They tried to invite her to drink, but the thought of alcohol tugged too hard at a memory of something she wished to forget. Nevertheless they paraded her through the streets, following her half a mile to the plaza where the musicians were playing merry tunes and the pedestrians were dancing to them.

Marcia, the Brazen Bull, they called her. She listened as they said it. The name Marcia. And she found that she liked it, for it felt like her own.

Revolving Door

Icebreaker

This chapter contains depictions of existential despair, mentions of warfare, nuclear weapons and death

2 June, 2214

They say she isn’t gone as long as you remember her. Not even when she’s dead does she vanish. As long as her face and her voice exist in your memory, she continues to breathe and laugh, somewhere.

Your memory is a mirror of the data of her existence. Her smile, the way she woke you in the lighthouse on the rocky cliff that morning, all shivery with the cold, as you were—all of it, reconstructible from what remains of her in your mind, and on your tongue.

It’s not the same, thinks Artur at the bow of the Dmitri Melnikov, watching water slip under the hull. Not the same as holding hands, holding heat, holding fire. His fingers curl around the rail, snow biting at his cheeks. The cold here is so vicious, its fangs penetrate the fatty layers of his gloves.

The Arctic sea is even darker through his goggles. Out here, where not a speck of anything can be seen in any direction, it becomes easy to imagine that the rest of the continents have vanished—perhaps plucked out of the ocean, or sucked in by it. Here, one’s vessel begins to feel like the only islet of life left in the world.

:::

2190

Artur Volkov grows up in the coastal city of Vladivostok, where the Zolotoy Rog Bay can always be seen. It gleams through every window, and ships from the neighbouring states dock to have their cargo lifted into the port, foghorns blasting into chilly summers.

The eastern coast is home to sculptures and fleets, blue skies, fronds and vines that curl in cornices and windows. People move, and connect, beaming information via digital networks when they’re not brushing shoulders or trading questions on avenues.

As a surveyor-in-training, Artur moves port-to-port on a daily basis. In the smaller towns, billboards become signposts. He sees fishermen haul catch into the docks and sailors drink, drinking the same brands of vodka, seagulls crying overhead.

Not every town is networked as Vladivostok is; some citizens go their entire lives without seeing a smartphone. But they hear and are heard, for where ships visit, information is exchanged.

:::

23 February, 2213

In a corner of the town of Dikson, Artur finds himself seated inside a portable toilet. He isn’t here to relieve himself, nor for any purpose any more interesting.

He is cold. There aren’t more dignified waiting spots for some distance, and he is cold.

Artur sits on the seat, the blizzard pounding on its every wall with a noise like every remaining wolf in Siberia howling in unison. He sits hunched, both arms wrapped around his body, and moodily contemplates the inner surface of the door as he’s been doing for the past fifteen minutes, trying not to breathe too hard because it hurts to do so.

He will die in forty-eight hours if he does not find food. But he can barely feel his toes let alone walk to the nearest eatery, and surely another venture into the cold would knock the remaining strength from him. He is, he surmises gloomily, doomed to die an undignified death upon a toilet seat. What a pitiable way to end in a world so perilous...

Amid his brooding, Artur watches as the door swings open before him. It takes more than a moment for the breach to register.

The newcomer makes an entrance he will never forget: the widening of her eyes the fierce blizzard wind bursts through the door, and the profuse apologies she yelps as she stumbles backward into the wind and snow, falling over.

She lies there for three entire seconds, lips pale, snow spattering her face.

Then he finally finds his senses again, and scrambles from the seat with a shout, reaching out to help her inside. She starts laughing as she shuts the door behind her. She is brown-haired and brown-eyed, and she does not stop laughing nor exclaiming apologies until he assures her that he is not here to use the toilet.

“Good afternoon,” he says, tentatively.

“Good afternoon to you too.” Her voice is clear, professional. She takes a glance about at the dank unisex cubicle. “This certainly is a strange place and time to be meeting.”

Artur purses his lips, and slowly rises from the seat. There is so little room that he finds himself pulling into the corner by the cistern. “A pleasure to meet you,” he finally says, attempting to meet her eye. “My name is Artur.”

“Mine is Sabina. How are you?”

“Thank you, I am well. And you?”

She casts a glance at the door, which rattles with the blizzard wind. “I could be better.” Her nose wrinkles. “May I use the toilet? You don’t have to leave.”

He quirks an eyebrow. “I can leave if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“I would not send anyone out into that storm for my sake.”

Shrugging briefly, he steps aside and turns to face the door while she pulls her gloves off.

:::

15 June, 2206

A sixteen-year-old Artur squats by the dashboard of a fishing boat when its rope comes off its mooring.

This isn’t the first time he has been negligent, and he merely shrugs his mistake off, setting back to work. But a sudden gust picks up then, and by the time he finally lifts his head to look, the boat has been thrust far out into the blue-green water.

With a shout, Artur scrambles for the helm—but finds the engine locked by a biosecurity system. Banging his hand on the pad does no good except to leave fingerprints on the plastic. He stumbles to the stern of the boat and, finding he is already too far to hear the gulls, begins to yell and wave frantically in the direction of the jetties.

Almost imperceptibly, the water begins to swirl around the boat.

Artur stops shouting.

The vessel begins, gradually, to turn to port, almost on the point.

In the same moment he falls backward, the eddy dissipates, and the boat resumes its outward drift.

Blood and heat rush to Artur’s head. He grips the rails for support, eyes wide. Silently, tentatively, he wills the water against the starboard side, wills it to push the vessel back towards the jetty.

It is about a minute before he notices that the boat is moving in the direction he wants. The water slaps against the side of the hull rhythmically, slowly reversing the vessel’s rocking horizontal drift.

With renewed energy he clings to the rails and wills with clenched teeth, gesticulating as if it would make the current stronger. His heart surges with thrill, with terror, as the waves respond, tiny currents twisting and throwing the vessel with more force than he can anticipate.

Artur stumbles when the boat collides with the corner of the jetty with a jarring bang. He flings the rope around a bollard before he collapses, winded, to his knees.

:::

Sabina does not leave the toilet after she flushes. They stand together in the dimness, both refusing to sit. There are moments of nervous, quiet smiling and attempts at conversation.

Finally, Artur says, “Let us run.”

“Where do we run to? Every building is filled.”

“Is your home not nearby?”

“No, it is at the other end of Russia.”

He perks up. “What are you doing here in Dikson, then?”

“Is it not obvious?” she replies, frowning. “My ship was grounded here.”

He nods. “So was mine.”

She doesn’t hear him; she has pulled a rectangular device from her pocket, sized to fit her hand. The start-up screen fades, revealing colourful ranks and files of icons. “Search for connections,” she says in clear syllables into the receiver. The dark rectangle slides offscreen. Whiteness takes its place. “Open the map.”

“Why does your device still have power? Most should be dead at this point.”

“There is a solar charging unit aboard the ship,” Sabina says. “The crew shares it.”

“Crew? What are you?”

“A doctor,” she replies. A map unfolds, filling the screen. She locates Dikson manually. Artur watches her scroll through green and grey. “There is an abandoned lighthouse near here. I do not think anyone would think of taking refuge there.”

“It’s better than a toilet,” Artur replies with a nod.

:::

2208

Artur has a full view of the diplomatic catastrophe as it proceeds, broadcast on the public LED screens in every town, oases of connection in the sprawling emptiness of the north.

In flawless colour he watches the polished arenas on the other side of the sea: tiers and tiers of officials, dressed as diplomats, talking with flurries of gestures. The names of their countries are on plaques before them, and he only recognises half of them. He doesn't understand much.

But he understands the shockwaves of conversation that surge over the docks and the ships for the weeks following. Of war, war, shadow, fallout, the third and final dark age.

"Russia is ruled by a madman!" his assistant surveyor spits as they approach the dock one day.

“Another one?” he replies. They are exaggerating, as they always do; no one comes to power here without resorting to questionable means. And he is only a surveyor, and he has a job to do. No time to worry himself over the politics of a state so vast he cannot comprehend it. Only work.

Then he is in the tiny town of Gizhiga when the first nuclear bomb hits, and suddenly Vladivostok no longer exists.

One by one cities begin vanishing from the map, pushing Artur to farther and farther corners of the Russian northeast in tiny vessels, farther into the cold upon the churning oceans, before he can understand this vague sadness he feels, of leaving things behind.

Tenuous connections snap. People flee to cities where they die.

To madmen, the loss of lives simply justifies the taking of more. Farms evaporate, city halls turn to sand. The runaway chain reaction quickly scours every inch of the populated world of all it can give so that nothing remains but the bedrock.

:::

“Down the road, that way!” Sabina shouts, dashing off towards the part of the coast where it grows rockier. The blizzard tears the words from her lips and Artur barely catches them, jogging after his newfound companion, face tingling with numbness. Hunger continues to gnaw at him, and he barely has the strength to redirect the air around them so they do not breathe ice.

The lighthouse takes a while to materialise from the blur of the blizzard—but as soon as they see it, they make a straight course for it. The heat from the run buoys Artur forward. He waves his hands so the blizzard parts before them but Sabina does not notice: her gloves are back on, and she stares at the phone as she runs.

It is a forever of burning cold numbness before they enter the lee of the towering structure. As they approach, they find the door ajar, a rusty chain hanging from one handle.

She shoves the door open with a well-padded shoulder; it bangs against the wall, revealing dilapidation. Thin streams of sunlight filter through boarded windows. Access to the staircase to the light room is blocked by chains: he frowns, but Sabina is already wriggling through the gaps, kicking up dust.

Artur shuts the door behind them. The temperature inside the room seems to increase by ten degrees when they can no longer hear the wind.

He waits on the staircase while Sabina scrambles about above, shifting and throwing wood with heavy clatters. “Come here! I found supplies!” she shouts, prompting him to dash after her despite his misgivings.

His companion stands before a gathering of crates. She has already lifted the lids off all of them, and is cradling a box in her arms.

Artur smiles, feeling his knees weaken as his hunger tackles him bodily. He trembles and smiles still, snatching the edge of the nearest crate for support.

Exclaiming, Sabina immediately tosses the box to him. He clumsily peels it open with gloved fingers: packets of crackers. He begins to thank her, tearing the first packet open and cramming the contents into his mouth, and she begins climbing to the room above while he feasts.

Artur feels the warmth in the stairwell before he enters the third floor. In this room, there is a fireplace, and a sink in the corner. Sabina is seated on the moth-eaten rug, her snow-speckled outerwear lying in a stack beside her. A vacant wooden chair stands before the red glow of the fire.

“Sabina, you did not have to leave the chair for me.”

She shakes her head. “You almost fainted downstairs.”

Artur frowns indignantly. “You exaggerate.” He thanks her anyway, finally daring to remove his outer layers. He drops his fur jacket and sweater in a pile by the chair and seats himself amid flickering shadows, continuing to open packets of wheat crackers and wolf them down without inhibition.

“Artur?” says Sabina. She is still staring at the fireplace. “Why do you think this lighthouse was abandoned?”

He shrugs. “Perhaps its keeper died.”

“Do you think this food will last us all six days of the storm?”

“We shall see in six days’ time,” he replies, sagging in his seat.

:::

2209

The war goes cold when the supply lines break down. By then half the world’s city centres are gone and two-thirds of the world will not survive, starved by the fallout and the nuclear winter.

The survivors left are huddled in tiny settlements in the three remaining centres of the world: the Arctic Circle, Australia, Central Africa.

Here at the far edge of Siberia, deserted by light and warmth, they wait for the world to die. With every fuel resource drying up quickly, settlements regress thousands of years. One by one, the fossil fuel power plants go silent, and entire towns black out, falling to the mercy of the burgeoning winter.

The well-prepared finally turn to the rations in their basements, and they board up the windows so that the neighbours do not find out and arrive with beggar’s bowls—or guns. But they all know that they are living on borrowed time, that their stores will eventually run out, and that no possible reprieve could come.

Every day they sit together in the cold, waiting to freeze over.

Of course, as humanity is wont to do, it attempts to postpone its death. The Arctic Oil Coalition, an international company of engineers and researchers, emerges from the wreck, operating by all the means it can scrounge up with no higher authority to regulate it. They begin amassing ships in secret and sending them on expeditions to the Arctic—the emergency reserve, locked out of reach by a network of diplomatic agreements.

They say they found oil there, two hundred years ago. But then a treaty against drilling in the region was signed by 190 nations, locking it beyond the reach of the world.

That treaty probably burned when New York City was reduced to rubble, along with the rest of the American East Coast.

:::

The second day barely dawns upon the lighthouse, for the sky is still thick with clouds. Neither Artur nor Sabina has slept more than an hour since arriving, but they have exchanged barely a word since.

Artur climbs to the light room once. Even though the walls are all glass, the view is dismal. A few feet are visible of the black sea beneath the cliff, but not much else beyond the white-grey storm. The light no longer functions, and the quartz lens that would once have split the beam is chipped in places. He finds an old hairpin in the dust.

The light of the sun deserts Dikson before they have even begun lunch. Artur graciously accepts the meals that his companion cooks from the resources which, while not tasting of much, are the best he could hope to have.

“Sabina, are you sure we shouldn’t leave?” he asks, watching steam billow from under the lid of the pot on the stove. “Would your crew not be worried?”

Sabina shakes her head, stirring dried herbs with pungent preserved meat. “They are too far from here for meeting them to be worth the risk.”

Sleep catches up by late afternoon. They lie before the fireplace with bowls in their laps, eyelids drooping. The faint hum of the blizzard is becoming familiar, and the stone walls shield them from thoughts of death.

“These blizzards feel like they last forever,” murmurs Artur, eyes closing to the glow of the flame. He and Sabina remain mysteries to one another.

:::

March, 2210

The scientists find Artur in a bar near the port of Murmansk. They—one man and one woman—don’t take long to explain the cause of their visit. They ask if he knows how to sail and, when he nods, if he will ferry them to the Frantsa-Iosifa research base in exchange for money and rations.

The choice is easy. It is not in his nature to remain idle.

“Is Murmansk your preferred base of operations?”

“I don’t prefer any particular place.”

Arrangements are made quickly. There are three major research bases on the ice sheet: Polyus, Barneo, Frantsa-Iosifa. Only the third interests them. He will make a round trip every six months. Do as their regulations recommend, and the risk of death is zero. Simple for him. Not so simple for them.

Artur understands perfectly. He is a classification surveyor with but incidental knowledge of science. He accepts his place quickly. There is no one left to anchor him, and no place left to go.

He learns their extreme cold weather protocol in fur and goggles, then leaves the Chukotka shore at the helm of the Dmitri Melnikov on the same day.

:::

On the third day, a spark catches.

During those four precious hours of daylight, Artur returns to the light room. Staring into the fogginess, he tries to picture the sea beyond it, bright and beautiful. He thinks of the ocean of his childhood—the Zolotoy Rog Bay, the ships, the green foliage.

A chorus of footsteps up the staircase alert Artur to Sabina’s presence. Instead of calling him back down as he expects, she halts, and does not speak.

“What is it?” he finally asks, turning away from the sky beyond the glass.

She steps closer, hands tucked behind her back. “What are you looking at?”

He considers deflecting the question, but the solitude of the little glass room, so far above all else, makes it easier for him to be honest. “I am thinking of the old world.”

“There is much to reminisce upon, yes.” She pauses. “Where were you from?”

“Vladivostok.”

“Ah.”

Artur nods quietly, an ache gripping his throat. “I cannot form the images in my mind anymore. They…slip away, before I can make them solid. My parents, the house, the—grass. I cannot remember.”

He trembles, eyes stinging. He feels a hand on his arm.

“I can’t remember them. Is this the fate of all things? Am I fated to follow them into the dark? Are you? Why do things disappear like this?”

Her hand has crept to his back. “That is how it is, to be in the business of living in a world like ours.”

“We are all doomed,” he says bitterly, a tear wetting his right cheek. “I don’t understand what possesses the scientists to seek a solution so fervently. What good is a little oil? They can’t fool me. I know the world is dying. I know it’s all pointless.”

“Have you heard of entropy?” Sabina says, almost offhandedly.

Artur turns to her, blinking another tear from his eye. “What is that?”

“It is the tendency of all things to fall from order to disorder. Everything is always unravelling, don’t you see? The universe’s heat is dispersing and the stars will die one by one. You are right, all things are doomed to relinquish their meaning eventually. But what use is thinking about it?”

He frowns. “That is not reassuring.”

“Well, you are no longer crying,” she replies, rubbing his back. “We can keep talking like this, to keep you from thinking about what you cannot change.”

He nods wordlessly, and they descend again into the room below, seating themselves before the fireplace, which she has already stoked.

:::

Five years of the same route, six months every time. Nothing changes, but at the same time, everything does. Villages are crumbling all around them. Murmansk is quieter each time Artur visits it. The scientists whom he serves have yet to make much headway on their oil surveying.

They have but a single chance to find the optimal point for drilling, after which there is no telling if they will be able to scrounge up enough metal to build another.

Long journeys provide countless chances for idle conversation. “Have you received word from Lukoil?” he hears a little brown-haired scientist say over cards one evening.

“They want to negotiate,” answers the boss, Doctor Andreyeva. “All I have learned in the past year is how difficult it is to regulate energy use.”

“Before we talk of regulation, we must ensure that we have a product to regulate at all.”

“A few hundred gallons a day—Lukoil cannot be hoping to make a profit from that little, in this climate! I tell you, we should have established our own power plant, or stolen one.” Andreyeva slaps her hand of cards onto the table. “Pay up.”

The subordinate groans, laying a bottlecap on the table. “How about the reports from the climatologists? Unless the nuclear winter settles, there’s no saying our efforts serve any purpose. We are only delaying the inevitable, or administering an anaesthetic. And what’s the use?”

She sighs. “Do you believe in God?”

:::

Artur and Sabina become more liberal with conversation. He talks about senior school, his lack of friends, his dislike for social gatherings. “You are still the same,” she replies with a laugh. She tells him about college and work, about administering painkillers and watching people die, which brings him to his work, and the assignment that took him to Gizhiga the week his hometown was destroyed.

By the fourth day, Sabina has learned that Artur enjoys green tea. He awakens to the scent of the drink and the warmth of the vapour wafting against his face, and finds it accompanied by the best breakfast his companion could put together from ingredients in the stores.

“Good morning,” she says. “There are barely three days left to this storm.” He finds that she stares more when he does not tie his hair.

He sits down beside her, feet restless. “Can I…show you something?”

She glances about. “I hope this isn’t as lewd as it sounds,” she answers.

He tries to ignore his blushing. “No, it is far stranger than you could anticipate.”

Perking up in interest, Sabina shuffles into a comfortable position. “What strangeness can faze me, now that two-thirds of the world have been destroyed?”

“I don’t know…” He lifts a hand and stares at the cup. In synchrony with the twitch of his finger, the condensation thickens into a vertical column, then shrinks back into the cup, like a snail withdrawing into its shell.

Sabina’s eyes grow ever wider as the tea begins to swirl, making the spoon appear to be stirring of its own accord. He smiles and lets the utensil fall back into place with a clink.

“This is truly amazing,” she murmurs. She affixes him with a gaze that strikes him as significant, and he cannot help but to feel slightly embarrassed. “I am sorry the world will never know of your talent.”

“The world would be afraid. Are you not?”

“I am not the kind to be afraid of the unknown.”

They exchange a glance that lasts several seconds long, and it hits him like an arrow—the awful realisation that she will be gone soon.

“I wish we had more time,” he says against his better judgment. “I wish this would last.”

“Why do you think it will not last?” Sabina replies, standing. “You will remember these exceptional days, and I with them, no? They are not the sort easily forgotten.” She comes to sit down beside him, eyes fixed on the cup of tea in his hands.

“Yes, I shall,” he finally says, lifting the cup to sip from it. But it’s not the same thing.

:::

“No, I do not. I do not believe in anything whose effects I cannot measure.”

“Well, you cannot measure the effects of love, for they are so scattered and so various, and so hard to capture. Do you have any doubt that love exists, though?”

“Love is a psychological phenomenon. You are implying that God, too, is one.”

“Perhaps He is, but does that make Him any less real?”

:::

By the fifth night, they can already feel their hopes starting to tangle with each other’s in messy snarls.

Sabina lays her head on Artur’s lap and promptly falls asleep that night, wrapped up in her brown fur jackets. He spends a while staring before recovering the dignity to look away. He does not move, though, at least not until sleep begins to tug on his eyelids.

Precious things have no place in the Arctic Circle. You learn to discard things as you move, to let the snow bury them.

When Sabina wakes the next morning, she looks at Artur in quite a different way, and he looks at her the same way she does. Like he cannot bear the thought of leaving her behind.

They try not to notice that the sounds of the storm have settled, choosing instead to eat their meagre breakfasts, hungrily, with their shoulders pressed together.

Discard her, he thinks, as she turns to smile up at him, and he responds by kissing her forehead.

No one has ever pierced his numbness before. As he is looking into her brown eyes, it suddenly becomes bone-bitingly clear just how much he misses green Vladivostok and the sun on the porches and all those fading paper people in his memory.

Tears come once again because her company, he realises, almost feels like having all those things back.

:::

2211

The distance between Russia and the Arctic ice sheet is remarkably narrow. It has grown in the wake of the nuclear winter, reversing the damage of centuries of heat, and now extends so far south that it splits the Arctic Ocean into two.

Through an ad-hoc radio network, the scientists relay communications to their various bases over the sea, taking and giving instructions through beeps and static whirrs. The deck is caked with snow at least three inches thick, and the first ice floe glows otherworldly white on the horizon.

The ocean sounds slightly different when it is freezing over.

The Northern Lights still dance beneath the shimmering stars where the black shell of nuclear debris fragments to reveal the missing sky. The geologic earth is unfazed by the fallout from the petty human war on its surface, and the sun yet casts vast glowing veils across the Arctic sky, human notions of beauty irrelevant.

A two-month trip must produce results equal to the value of the fuel expended, and Artur often finds himself alone at the helm, for all the scientists are occupied running calculations and consulting pre-apocalypse databases beneath the deck.

In those moments, he has the entire sky to himself, free of burden and free of fear. He watches the aurorae flutter over the endless mosaic of floes, lavender and distant green gleaming off their faces.

:::

“Russia is huge. You do not think about it because you live your entire life inside a small piece of it. But there were people halfway across the globe who answered to the same man as you. Think about it. Is that not bizarre and amazing?”

“Russia no longer exists,” answers Artur. The morning warmth—as warm as it can be, anyway—glows down the shaft from the light room, and he knows Sabina must leave very soon.

“You don’t think about it, the volume of freight they were shipping—fuels, foods, raw materials—from Europe and China, across the oceans—how much of our lives came from somewhere else. No one realised how much they were destroying, when they declared their treaties breached.”

“I never had to think about these things. I was just a surveyor.”

“No one has to. No one did. That is why the world went the way it did.”

:::

The sky has cleared and half the bay is visible. Artur stands in the light room once more, staring through the quartz, and Sabina thanks him perfunctorily from the staircase.

He turns, and a painful lump appears in his throat when he sees that she is in all her furs, her backpack slung over a shoulder.

“Are you going to leave…just like that?”

“Yes,” she says with the severity of a blade cutting thread. “My crew must be growing restless in my absence.”

His heart screams. “Do you feel no lingering desire to stay? Here, with me?”

She is silent.

She clears her throat.

“I do, but I know I should not heed it. I know you must leave, just as I must. We have jobs to do.”

A shock of pain, localised in his chest, makes him clench his jaw. “What is the use?” he exclaims, and his attempts to obscure the pain are thwarted when his voice breaks. “Why do we do our jobs to keep this dying world running?” He clutches at his head and laughs. “I’m not worth anything in a world like this! I am a ferryman! I do nothing but send scientists back and forth, back and forth once every six months—and I’m just waiting, and waiting, for the day they no longer need me—”

Sabina’s face contorts. “Why do anything, if we all die?” she retorted. “Why did every single one of those billions of people who have ever lived—why did they do anything at all?”

“I don’t know!”

“Me neither! I would be deluded to believe that my work will change the world’s fate! But there is no way the alternative could be better. There is no way not existing could be better than existing, and trying. Because—I saved a man’s life last week. Because I am the meaning to someone else’s life, and I have no right to decide for them that life isn’t worth the while—”

She breaks off, and their gazes meet again, both wet. Artur steps forward, and takes her in a gentle embrace.

“I hope…to see you again,” he replies, unable to keep the sharp sting of grief from fragmenting his sentence. “I am in Dikson every year in February.”

“I shall try to return soon.”

Then Sabina kisses him. And then she descends the creaky wooden staircase, and Artur does not follow.

And then she is gone.

:::

2 June, 2214

“Seismology readings indicate 82’ 32” N 55’ 10” E crust less than a kilometre thick, 80-90% chance of being an oil trap.”

The transmission sends all the cabins into a frenzy. Even Andreyeva joins in the impromptu below-deck festivities that night, and Artur continues to hear about the findings for several days.

They must have found what they are looking for, then, and he tries to be happy for them. A couple of scientists ask him that evening—in a friendly tone, of course—if he is able to steer them faster. He says he will see what he can do.

That evening, as he stands alone facing the ocean at the helm of the ship, surrounded by the banshee-screams of the wind, he lifts his hands like a conductor before his orchestra.

No one notices that waves are parting more easily at the bow, or that the Dmitri Melnikov is moving two knots faster than its top speed.

:::

Artur closes his eyes, and is overwhelmed by a sudden cascade of memories, like a collapsing tower of cards, falling from a shelf above.

Vladivostok…the Zolotoy Rog Bay…his family…Sabina…all that.

It’s all in his memory somewhere. If only he could project it onto reality, the way the scientists in history said the universe is projected from two-dimensional data. If only his remembering were enough to make it exist again.

“Will I see anyone more than twice?” he asks the air, the water at the hull full of ice fragments. A stream of aurora has lit up on the horizon. “Does it matter if I never do? If I forget her, does she stop existing?”

And the surface of the world continues to cool beneath the nuclear dust, trees giving out to the darkness, and he braces himself as the icebreaker bow cracks the edge of the floe.

Revolving Door

Being (A Preface)

'The universes spin in the flow of the Light—the Light of being that created all that is, the ether in which all possible universes float, and of which they are made.

'At the centre of this carousel of Light lies a knot, binding the far reaches of existence together. As reality grows ever more complex, it also becomes dangerously strained, threatening to be destroyed at any moment in a cataclysmic rending of space and time. Only these bindings prevent such a cataclysm from ever coming to be.

'As time progresses towards infinity, so too does the knot grow tauter, demanding ever greater tenacity to maintain. While it once hung suspended among atoms in space, it eventually began to anchor itself to rocks, then to the first cellular life in the oceans, and when thought and autonomy in the form of nervous systems first emerged, the knot became entangled in them, as if their existence exerted some exceptional force: perhaps the force by which they began to defy the trajectories of determinism.

'On a fateful day in the ancient past, before all known record, the knot clove for the first time to a new kind of entity—a consciousness, a being, one who perceived itself as apart from the material world. This being happened to be its first human bearer.

'Thus began a disconnected lineage of bearers of the knot—one that would span thousands of millennia.

'The identities of the earliest knot-bearers are all but lost to time, but we know the names of later ones from written record. In every dynasty it crossed, this invisible heirloom drew awe and dread. Every bearer was revered above all others, like a god almost, and guarded jealously by their most loyal. Some coveted it for their own, forcibly becoming its new bearer through intimidation or deception.

'But in all the millennia it has been taken and given and stolen, not one bearer of the knot has ever truly loved their role. For should the knot be loosened, then all of existence would at once be rent to pieces. The bearer becomes reality's custodian—reality incarnate, even. If they were to die, then existence would die with them.

'Much to the fortune of all individuals who treasure existence, this precarious arrangement is not the sole thing holding the universe in a stable form: around the knot, eight vortices—the cores of the universe—draw Light into themselves and synthesise it to ever newer forms, easing its internal forces.

'Perhaps they might delay the destruction of the system if the knot ever comes undone: no one dares kill a knot-bearer to find out.'

— Introductory chapter of the Scripture of the Light, author unknown

Revolving Door

When Night Is Bright as Day

This chapter contains a depiction of a disaster scenario, and mentions of explosions and mass death.

“Tell me what you saw that evening.”

“It looked like the universe coming apart at its seams.”

The mute dawn peered grey through the canopy, the uppermost leaves dripping last night’s rain on a grey tent nestled among the roots. Some minutes away, where the track through the thick wet undergrowth merged into a barren clearing, Curia the Arid untied her horse from a low-hanging branch and pulled her braids into her hood.

Here at this clearing, she would begin a month-long journey past horsetail forests, along boggy rivers swarming with flies the size of hands, and then through a crossing gate to the Cracked Land. On the other side of that gate hundreds of miles of hot fields of fresh volcanic ash awaited her, at the end of which stood the next gate—the one that led home. She would ride it all from memory, and with the help of signposts, if they still stood.

Two decades it had been since she had last traversed this route, so long ago that her memory of it had all but been substituted by shaky ink lines on old parchment maps.

Curia made her plans while she adjusted the belts, swatting bog flies away. Twenty years here meant nine years in the First World. She wondered upon the people of that world whom she had known, once her age and now ten years her junior; she imagined them. Perhaps it was mere wishful thinking to imagine they remembered her at all.

Home, and all its people, were now but a foggy memory to her. Indeed, she would never have gone back without word from her commander, or the Duchess of Diamonds herself.

But she had news that could not wait—news that promised, that threatened to change all the domains of all the worlds. Driving a heel into the horse’s flank, she soared off between the towering horsetails.

Orobelle opened her eyes.

The terror threw itself upon her like a beast, squeezing the breath out of her. She rolled onto her side, and stared at a patch of orange lamplight through the muslin, listening to the soft rustle of the leaves beneath the booming of her heart.

Someone was in her bedchamber with her.

As soundlessly as she could, she propped herself up on her arms, shaking with her weight on her palms. She crawled from under the covers and into a seated position, legs tangled in the covers, her skull feeling tight with the rabbit-thumping of her heart. The silk under her hands seemed threadbare to her cold fingers as she tilted towards the canopy drape, reaching out to move it.

When Orobelle nudged the drape aside, the room was empty. Only gold-leafed wall ornaments glinted in the honey lamplight. There was the ticking of the clock on her desk, and the sound of leaves.

She groaned, rubbing her eyes. There was quite enough occupying her mind right now without the imagined threats of kidnappers in her bedroom to add to it. Perhaps she would have another lock installed on her door tomorrow, just to ease her mind.

Then she saw it. On the eastern wall of the room, the farthest window was missing its glass pane. The curtain fluttered on the breeze, and something fluttered with them: a slender object, suspended from the rail by a thread.

Orobelle would have had a guard retrieve the object and examine it. But here, sitting transfixed by the swaying thing, she was overwhelmed by a cold conviction that no one else should ever lay eyes upon it.

Quietly she rose, almost hypnotised by its swaying, and walked to the farthest eastern window, where she reached out to slide it out of the loop of thread that held it.

It was a piece of paper. Unrolled, it revealed a message, written in a foreign script. After staring at it for several minutes, she surmised there was nothing in the strange glyphs to hint at their meaning.

Hastening down the dim corridors in the dark of the morning was not how Orobelle had hoped to begin this day. She stopped in the doorway of the palace library, throbbing orange lamplight glowing upon her face, and said, "Unlock the private facilities."

The keeper in attendance started straight out of her drowsy stupor and bowed, leading her at once to wards the back room.

There, she unfolded the thin slip of paper beneath a lamp, and lifted an ensorcelled translation glass out of its tray. Beneath it, she found that the note was easily translated, so strongly had its intent been scored into its ink marks. Hand shaking, she began to unfold the ranks and files of meaning, and with them the beginnings of a plot that would soon consume her entire life.

The first sign that something was amiss was the crowd at the door of the Hall of Hearings.

Orobelle arrived through the private door in puffs and frills, escorted by Dorian, her protector. Hearing the busy chatter from beyond the double doors, she felt her throat tighten. At once she directed Dorian to the main entrance to organise the counsellors and guards into a queue, while she lifted the too-large crown from the seat of the throne and placed it upon her too-small head.

“First?” she shouted, fingers cold.

The first to enter was Florian the Placid, Counsellor of Investigations. He strode, bobcat-like, through the archway and up the carpet to genuflect before her throne with a crisp “greetings, Your Grace”. As he stood, he unscrolled the report and straightened it with two shakes.

“Terribly grave news, Your Grace. At approximately the quarter mark of the night yesterday, the Water Tower was destroyed by a large explosion. The entire building collapsed upon several market stalls, killing at least fifty individuals and injuring hundreds in the vicinity.”

Where a reply would have left her lips, Orobelle could offer nothing but silence.

He bowed his head. “Yes, the marketplace is quite the horrific sight. The rescuers were deployed immediately, and all injured taken to the healers. Most of the dead are shop-owners, although there are two guards among them. Freesia of the Rocks, aged six years old, went missing at around the time of the explosion. However, the girl was nowhere near the site of the explosion at the time, and no remains that could be hers have been found there, either. The child’s mother has not seen her since, and was responsible for filing the report.”

"I see."

At this point, Florian cleared his throat, shuffling his left foot on the carpet. Orobelle leaned forward and urged him onward with a nod.

“What is...particularly worrying about this case,” he finally said, “is that we have been utterly incapable of finding evidence linking the event to any suspect, or indeed of whether or not an individual was responsible at all.”

She squinted. “That's not possible. How can there be no evidence?”

“We could perhaps make educated guesses, but you know the situation in the Duchy...too many enemies to truly narrow them down with guesswork. And no proof...no proof means no leads. No one has had anything to report on the culprit. We’ve sniffed out every corner of the quadrant, but there is nothing to say who did it, or how. Nothing at all. Everything might as well be the fault of a gust of wind.”

“No leads for an event like this? This is exactly the sort of crime we want evidence for! This is the reason your post exists!”

He blinked at the veiled threat as if at an arrow soaring past. “Anything that might have pointed us towards the culprit must have been destroyed by the explosion...including witnesses.”

A lump appeared in her throat when she remembered the note now residing in her treasure box. The culprit had left something behind. But she knew at once that revealing its contents would be too dangerous. They would have to find something else.

The buzz of fear slowly creeping over her again, Orobelle did her best to fix Florian with a hard look. “You aren’t looking hard enough. Redouble your efforts,” she said. “Dismissed.”

He dipped his head with a barely audible "thank you, Your Grace" and was off at once.

Barely ten seconds later was the next visitor through the door: Carana, Ten of the Diamond Court, her political advisor. She, too, genuflected smartly at the foot of the throne, and as soon as she had risen, Orobelle propped her chin up on an elbow, bracing herself for the recitation of advice that was sure to follow.

Follow it did—a long list of theories, as Florian had said could be created, but with no irrefutable conclusions. “It almost certainly was an act of intimidation,” Carana summarised, “just as likely committed by a serf insurgent as by a Clubs partisan. An enemy to the Duchy, either way. They must want to frighten you into submission.”

“Yes, but which of them was it?” Orobelle muttered.

“My recommendation is that you send several guard parties to comb the Duchy for the perpetrator of the crime.”

She grimaced. “Is it a good idea to send guards parties after an unknown perpetrator who clearly has the means to destroy entire buildings with unknown methods?”

“Well, then,” Carana pinched her lips together and drew in a sharp breath. “We ought to send requests for foreign specialists from neighbouring domains.”

“I’d really rather not involve other domains in this.”

“You must take action. The people are clamouring for an answer, and their unrest will soon turn—”

“Do not tell me what to do, Ten!”

Carana recoiled as if stung. “Yes, of course, Your Grace.”

Orobelle rubbed her temple. “This is what you will convey. Tell Ara to put more guards on the fortresses. Anthera should have the City Builders begin repairs by tomorrow morning, starting with my walls. I want a report from the Florian by the end of today, and from Anthera as well. And to the city, say we are still on the hunt for information about the culprit. I shall leave it to Hiscera to make that sound palatable.”

Carana eventually bowed with a murmured “yes, Your Grace”, and Orobelle dismissed her. She let out a long breath in the silence that followed, relief crumbling under the immensity of her exhaustion.

Almost as soon as her shoulders began to loosen, there was another deep brass knock on the door.

She sighed, then shouted, “Come in!”

Through the door stepped Dorian himself. A hand was lain on the hilt of his longsword, the other rested on his chest. “Forgive me, my duchess,” he said. The Tysian mannerisms had yet to desert him: he walked straight into a genuflect at the steps to the throne, his hair cascading over his shoulder. When the man stood, his eyes were troubled.

“What may I do for you?” She already knew why he was here. The look of sorrow they exchanged, lasting entirely too long, told her enough.

His voice grew plaintive. “If I may be so insolent..." he began, bowing his head, "my sister is grieving her daughter’s death. She forgets sustenance. She refuses company. I fear she will grow ill with grief soon. You have said, over and over, that Freesia must be alive. If this is true, then I humbly implore you...save her from this agony.”

Orobelle ground her teeth, and sagged backward into her throne. “I promise—Dorian—I shall do something. As soon as I am sure.”

“What do you need to be sure of, my duchess?”

“That there is anything we can do at all.”

Orobelle stared down at Dorian as he bowed, this unwavering knight and protector whom she had chosen herself upon the hot soil of the tribe of Tyse. She could see he was aching to plead even more, but he knew his place too well.

“Before you go, Dorian,” she said. He lifted his gaze. “Tell Estiva to arrange a private emergency council of experts on travel between the worlds.”

:::

Hello, young duchess. In case my entry has not already made my introductions for me, let me tell you why I am here.

I am here for you, and you only. I only want one thing: to have you in my possession.

It must be dreary being so pivotal yet so confined, must it not? I alone see your worth as the Knot of Worlds, beyond the mere fact of your existence. Yes, I shall put you to a greater use than anyone else has ever thought to do before.

Information about you took some digging to discover, I admit—you certainly are vigilant about pruning all bonds of kinship! But tireless searching will yield even the most obscure information, and even you, I figured out eventually.

You may have noticed the vanishment of Freesia of the Rocks, the six-year-old niece of your protector and named heir. I am pleased to tell you that poor, dear Freesia is not dead: she is with me, where you will never find either of us.

The terms of her release are simple. You must submit yourself, unconditionally, to my ownership. Like a slave, maybe. I’m sure you’re familiar enough with the taking of slaves to know how well they are esteemed!

You have all of the next sixty days to make up your mind. Then, I’ll return to the duchy, and if you have enough red in your veins to colour that diamond you wear, you will come, and you will offer yourself up in exchange for the freedom of Freesia of the Rocks.

Fail any of these terms, and I shall kill her there and then, and leave her body on the pinnacle of the Grand Crystal for your entire Duchy to see. Then I’ll capture you anyway—and this time, I will have an army of a hundred thousand. Even the most powerful heroes of all the worlds will not be able to guard you from me.

You alone can prevent further catastrophe.

Your Villain

The day after the event that would soon come to be known as the Shattering, Orobelle arrived on a windowless silver carriage at the door of the Duchy Library. As was mandatory, the crowds who had lined the streets were dispersed before her alighting, so that not one of them laid eyes upon her.

She ascended the stairs to the great portal escorted by Dorian, who followed ever silent and swift with a hand at ready upon his hilt. In the glittering lobby awaited Estiva, the Four of the Court, and the emergency council she had gathered of six of the Duchy’s most eminent academics.

They were a stuffy crowd, all bespectacled in decade old clothes, and the wide-eyed awe that overcame them at the sight of their Duchess continued to hold them captive as they led her to the reading hall, none daring to utter a word.

In the light of the hall’s countless crystal lights, upon an ancient reading table of stone, stood every book concerning the history of travel between the three worlds, every research file of relevance, and a tray of pristine translation glasses among them.

They set quickly to business, spurred to work by Orobelle’s piercing gaze. As foremost experts would, they located volumes with ease and searched swiftly through index pages, shooting down each other’s faulty hypotheses with sharp words.

“There have indeed been several incidents of citizens falling through transient Tunnels and leaving no trace, predating the establishment of the Crossing Gate,” said Albast Stellar, the only man at the gathering, “mostly to the Second World, but occasionally also to the Third.”

“If the culprit has escaped to the Second World via a Tunnel then, why, the monitors ought to know by now,” answered Galla Honora with a birdlike tip of her head, almost indignantly. “Tunnels don’t simply appear and vanish on a whim; that would be metaphysically improbable. Clement F—”

“Dialogues on Physical and Metaphysical Space, yes, I know what he said. Even so...”

“How about the ghosts—Victor of River's North? Honourless?”

“Do not speak of Honourless!”

At the corner waited Lilian the Lordly with a glass, furiously poring over a book of her choice—one with a title in some Second World language. When at last the rest had ceased their tirades, she lowered the tome, and quietly raised a hand.

"You?" said Orobelle.

“May I propose, to this eminent crowd,” she said, “the possibility that more worlds exist than the three we know of?”

At once there was much sputtering and heated glancing in her direction. “Rubbish!” exclaimed Sapphira Annul. “Has there ever been proof of this threadbare hypothesis other than Liddell?”

Lilian lifted a finger. “Now, now, Liddell is extremely compelling evidence, but not the only—”

“I understand you are the head of the Cosmogony Department, Lilian the Lordly?” Galla was making every effort to look scandalised. “Well, I must take it upon myself to remind you that there are far more probable theories as to how Liddell disappeared, theories that do not require the existence of more worlds—”

“Liddell is not the only evidence,” said Lilian. “The Scripture—”

“The empty prognostications of the Cosmogony department will be the ruin of objective inquiry—”

Orobelle hammered the table with her fist. “Galla, shut up!” she shouted. An abashed look came over Galla at once. “Lilian, go on.”

“Yes, of course, your Grace. Objective inquiry was conducted at the previous transfer of the Knot of Worlds, when our Duchess herself was in her mother’s womb.” She offered a meaningful glance at Orobelle. “It is now beyond doubt among us, the members of the Cosmogonical field, that existence would be troublingly unstable in its current configuration, if not for the existence of several pseudo-gravitational vortices around which Lucent particles—”

“Without the jargon?”

“Of course, of course, your Grace, I apologise—what I mean to say is, our theoretical models strongly suggest that the eight cores of the universe...the same ones described in Scripture...do exist.”

For a while, no one spoke. Orobelle had straightened in her seat at the head of the table.

“Have you found them?”

“This matter is confidential, your Grace, I’m under orders from the principal not to disclose any information—”

“I am the Duchess of Diamonds. The Bearer of the Knot of Worlds. And this is an emergency. Your principal is nothing.”

“Well, ahem, the eight Cores are—not what we expected them to be,” answered Lilian uneasily. “They are not cosmic bodies. They are...people.”

Orobelle blinked to acknowledge her surprise. “And why do you mention them?” she asked.

“Well, our instruments tell us that some of the Cores are inexplicably...far away. Farther than the Third World, in fact. Initially, we suspected they might simply be vastly displaced in space, but it is more likely that they are beyond the Third World, in a theoretical Fourth. Or perhaps even further beyond, in countless worlds undiscovered!”

Amid the muttering and disdain around the table at the mention of more worlds, Orobelle was the only one who kept perfectly still. “Interesting,” she said levelly.

“Unfortunately, your Grace, these findings have yet to be verified and I cannot have you act upon them until they are.”

“Unfortunately, your Grace, no fourth world has been discovered in almost a millennium of searching!” Sapphira cut in.

Orobelle lifted a hand with an imperious look, and the gathering was silent at once. “Lilian, send me a missive when your results have been verified,” she replied simply. “I would like to speak to you in private after this meeting.”

As soon as the rest had deserted the hall, Orobelle assumed a position in the corner, beside the curved flight of stairs, and waited. “Your Grace,” said Lilian as she approached, with a bow and a hand to her heart. “What would you like to know?”

“Do you know who they are?” Orobelle said in a low voice. “The eight Cores?”

“After scouring the three worlds with our best instruments, we were able to find one of them—residing within this very Duchy.”

She straightened immediately. “Who?”

“Your Grace’s Royal Protector. Dorian the Hopeful.”

“Dorian?” Orobelle breathed. She turned at once to the man who stood silhouetted in the doorway across the hall. He seemed not to notice the attention directed towards him. The duchess squinted at her Protector, but she saw no exceptional aura, no particular Lightliness—only a Tysian man of the second world who had yet to learn the ways of the Queendom.

“And what makes him any different?”

“The influence of the Core draws the flow of the Light around and into its bearer, and ought to confer—some sort of control over the form of reality itself. We cannot know how it manifests in him without a demonstration from the man himself.”

A singularly talented warrior, with powers unrivalled, the Tysian chief had said. Suddenly all the moments in the past, when she had watched Dorian in mock combat and wondered upon the unproven promise in the man’s words, returned to her thoughts.

“If I may suggest, Your Grace,” said Lilian then, bringing Orobelle’s gaze back, “these individuals may be your best defence against the threat you face from...what I must assume to be an enemy from a different world. Perhaps it would be wise to seek them out as defenders.”

The Duchess glared. “And let all the four courts think I am about to declare war on the Queen?”

“Of course, indeed...” Lilian nodded bemusedly, clasping her hands together. “It may have to be relegated to a last resort...”

“Thank you, Lilian the Lordly,” said Orobelle, all kindliness gone. “You are also free to leave.”

Many a time, Orobelle had sat in the library leafing through a singularly ancient book, of which only six copies existed. In this book was printed the very first translation of the Scripture of the Light, the translator of which, they said, was a bosom companion of the anonymous author themself.

The book discussed cosmology and cosmogony: it conceived of the universe as a very large thing and yet—in its grandeur—finite, everything but a pattern in the current of the Light. Most importantly it described in detail the function of the terrible, incomprehensible thing which she carried within her.

It was, after all, not easy to be the steward of all reality. It was not the sort of task that minds were meant to comprehend: the sort that rendered one's death illegal, one's importance absolute, one's humanity irrelevant.

Over and over she had studied the book, hungry for explanations. By now she remembered its opening paragraph like a verse of a song: The universes spin in the flow of the Light—the Light of being that created all that is, the ether in which all possible universes float, and of which they are made...

She had never found any answers. But reading had become ritual, for holding the book in her hands made her feel as if she could almost grasp the universe itself. It made her task feel almost knowable.

Orobelle's eyes went unfocused on a phrase—reality incarnate, even.

She had been so many things. She had been...salvation. Her family’s bid to steal the divine right for the House of Diamonds. The future Princess to usurp the throne of the Hearts. Someday she would stand at the balcony of the palace, the entire Duchy and the messengers of the neighbouring polities gathered before her, and she would proclaim herself to the world—the Duchess of Diamonds, the bearer of the Knot of Worlds, the true and legitimate ruler of all of Wonderland!

But now her parents were dead, and the bid for the throne dead with them. And Orobelle was all that was left—alone, and so wanted, and so terrified.

Some evenings later, Orobelle summoned Dorian to the palace courtyard.

She saw him emerge through the vine-laden archway, glancing about till he caught sight of her in the marble pagoda. “My duchess, you requested my presence?” he asked from the bottom of the staircase ascending to where she stood. She saw from his gaze, and from the quickness of his gait, that he expected news on the matter of Freesia.

“You have kept a secret from me,” she replied. She winced when he paused too long thereafter, frozen by horror and guilt he was barely reining in.

“I have kept a secret from you,” he replied, head bowed at last.

He lifted his head very slowly and glanced between her face and the vine-wreathed balustrade beside him. Orobelle folded her arms and offered an encouragingly stern look.

“I...have skills I never told you about,” he said hastily, gaze continuing to shift about. “One might think of it as similar to a Lightly art...but they were of my old self, my Tysian self, and I meant to leave them behind in Tyse when I came here—in spirit, since I could not rid myself of them—but my duchess, I swear I have not used them ever since I arrived.”

She leaned over the rail and frowned. “No? Why not?”

“I feared you might not like...strangeness in your servants.”

Orobelle cast her gaze to a side. “I suppose that is right. But if unusual abilities you do have, then you should never hide them again! I know what they are, and they are not to be ashamed of.”

At this, Dorian’s eyes brightened. “I would be humbled to learn what you know of them,” he replied.

“They are far beyond strange. They are proof of your importance. You are spoken of in our Scripture, a figure of legend! These strange arts of yours...what are they? You must tell me. You have kept silent long enough!”

Dorian nodded hastily. “Yes, my Duchess, I..."

"Yes?"

"I apologise, I am merely worried that you might be frightened... "

"The universe ends if I die without warning. Nothing you do can scare me."

He nodded again. "My... skill, is to take heat, and to give it,” he said.

"Well, show me. " Orobelle tried to make her gaze softer.

He reached out and and plucked a stray leaf from a vine on the staircase baluster, lifting it up before his face by the stalk, and breathing out on it. At once ice began to form across its surface, first a shimmer of crystals, then spires of it, so heavy that the leaf drooped.

“Are you doing this by—” So quickly she almost did not realise it, the ice began to melt in rivulets down the blade, then ascend in steam. “—by looking at it?—” The leaf began to crinkle up. Then a burst of flame consumed it, the leaf disintegrating to ash in barely seconds.

“Touch,” he replied. “I may be able to affect things in my vicinity but it is the things I touch that I am able to truly spread this influence through.”

“Peculiar,” she replied, folding her arms. “But not at all a bad thing. The opposite of a bad thing. This is useful!”

Dorian bowed his head low. “I’m always pleased to be useful, my Duchess,” he replied. "What...will you have me do with this?"

"Use it," answered Orobelle, meeting his eye. "Use it wherever you see it fit. It is your weapon, as much as your sword is. I permit to use it."

He seemed stunned for an instant, eyes wide, hand suspended in midair. Again she nodded, and only then did he dare begin to smile.

"Thank you, my duchess," he finally breathed. "Thank you. I shall do as you request."

The funeral rites were held very soon after the Shattering. The streets were painted in white, and the flowers lifted their heads in mournful song, vines curling tight around pillars. Orobelle watched from her window as lanterns lifted into the sky one by one.

The palatial fortress walls were repaired in a week, and the rest of the town by the next, including the bright new water tower, taller than the first. Orobelle had had a stone dais built at the site of the blast with the victims’ names inscribed around the edge. They constructed a great trellis arch over the dais and a few phytomancers raised vines that grew to the pinnacle.

That evening, Florian came before Orobelle’s throne alone.

"Good evening, Your Grace,” he said, unrolling a scroll in his hands as he rose. “I have news concerning investigations about the incident of ten days ago.”

At last, thought Orobelle, the drought was at end. “Let us hear it.”

“The shattered remains of some foreign metal implement were found around the site of a wreckage,” he proceeded. “On reconstruction, it became clear that the object was the origin of the explosion: a small copper disc whose engravings were largely melted off by the heat. It is likely that this object is a coin, and what little is left of the engravings contains text written in a yet-uncatalogued language.”

At once, several dormant thoughts in Orobelle’s mind lit up. She did not hear what the Seven said thereafter. She only heard Lilian’s voice, and Dorian’s, and the threat in the ransom note, booming louder than everything else.

“And one more thing, your Grace.”

“Yes?”

“A living survivor by the name of Sparrow Elthorn was found under the rubble. He is being held in the Infirmary of the Southeastern Inner Quarter, where he is recovering. Perhaps he will be able to offer an eyewitness account of the event, when he is able to speak again.”

On the second week after the Shattering, Orobelle arranged to meet with Sparrow Elthorn. He and the Seven were the only other individuals in the windowless hall, as was customary, and the lanky young shopkeeper sat in the sparse wooden chair, the right half of his face in a thick bandage, and a grey blindfold over his eyes.

She spoke to him from across the hall, and he answered earnestly with descriptions of what he had witnessed on the day of the explosion. At the end she was escorted back to her carriage, while Florian left him her gift of ten bottles of liquid satiation.

Not two days after, a messenger on a horse arrived at the gate to the palace keep—a woman in the metal-studded dark cloak of the Ducal Scouts. On passing inspection, she asked to meet with Orobelle immediately, and word made its way quickly to the Duchess herself that it was no ordinary rider, but a chief of the Scout vanguard herself. At once Orobelle invited her to the hall, and she entered under Dorian’s escort.

The woman had the look of someone weathered by several continents’ worth of distance, the edge of her cloak dusty and the soles of her boots worn thin. At the foot of the throne, she threw off her hood to reveal a haggard Leysian face, aged as much by the sun as by time.

“Your—Grace,” she said as she gazed up upon the Duchess for the first time, seeming to find the words unfamiliar. She genuflected, and then lifted her head. “I did not know...” Her eyes were glistening; her voice wavered. “They never told me you had ascended, Orobelle.”

If she had been any other, Orobelle would have cried insolence. Yet this woman’s seniority and stature deterred the very thought. “Two years ago,” she replied, her gaze unmoving.

“Forgive me, Your Grace,” she glanced about, abashed, voice strained by what seemed like familiarity and grief thrust upon her without warning, “Curia the Arid, commander of the Right Vanguard of the Ducal Scouts.”

“Curia,” Orobelle said. “Did you come here from your post? You must be tired.”

“I’ve been at it a month, but I’m used to longer,” Curia replied, touching a hand to her heart, and smiling a genial smile that made Orobelle’s heart swell with something unfamiliar. “I was not quite sure of the way back, but I found it soon enough. It was—your mother who sent me to the Exile Lands. I am deeply sorry to have missed the ceremonials, but I am, of course, pleased to offer you my allegiance.”

“Ceremonials?” The girl blinked as understanding dawned on her. “How long ago did you leave?”

“Nine years ago, speaking in your terms, your Grace,” she answered. “But it was twenty years for me.”

The duchess met the eye of the scout, and years of dogged servitude made themselves felt through her hard, dark gaze. “And why are you here again, after so long?” asked Orobelle then.

“Well then, as you are the new matriarch—I have important matters to report, greater than any that have befallen us so far,” she replied. “I had to come myself—this information is much too important to be shared unwisely.”

All at once, her heart was booming. She tried to believe nothing momentous would be uttered next, that this was but a routine report—yet here she stood, a scout commander of the Exile Lands, ending her sojourn of two decades to deliver a report home.

“Let me offer a little context. I have an underling named Anser, and to call him merely a good scout would be to do him a disservice. He is adventurous of spirit, perhaps unnaturally so at times—but his inquisitiveness has helped him lead us through many a rough patch.

"Well, during a routine patrol in the depths of a frond forest, this very trustworthy man lost the road and vanished. Of course I could not put it down to irresponsibility or mutiny; it would not be in his nature to defect. And indeed it was two days before he returned, bruised and quite shocked. As he informed me shortly after his return, he was very convinced that he had seen several strange things during his unplanned excursion.

“Wailing sky beasts, walls of steel nets. Exploding cylinders. People yelling in a tongue he had never heard. It was horrific, he said, and he hastened to return the way he had come as soon as he had seen all he needed.”

Orobelle had not noticed herself inching forward in her seat until she was almost at its edge. She loosened her grip on the arms of the throne, but her heart continued to pound, a swarm of thoughts darting across her mind. “Go on,” she said hastily, straightening.

“Anser had concluded, as I had, that he had fallen through a Tunnel by accident. But what he described was quite different from the the Second World I used to call home: the people—wearing strange hats like tortoise shells, carrying staves that exploded—were unlike any of the ones I knew when I lived in the Cracked Land.

“His theory was clear, and he brought me to confirm what he had observed, in a space between two horsetails near a cliff overlooking a ravine,” said Curia. “I did not enter it, but I saw that passageway did exist, for the stone I threw into the space seemed to vanish from existence. I could not see what lay on the other side, but I would never imagine Anser one to lie.

“There is no question as to what it is that he found that day. He found, in the Third World, a Tunnel into a new one.”

So it was that, on a particularly wet evening at the dawn of pink summer, eight of the nine counsellors of the Diamond Court stood gathered in an arc before the throne. The ninth, Dorian the Hopeful, stood apart from them, at Orobelle’s right hand, with a cloak upon his arm and his hair tied in a ponytail. The scout commander Curia was on her other side, dressed for riding with her silver badge glittering proudly on her cloak.

“I shall be leaving,” said the duchess, “on a long journey. No one shall know of it but the ten of you, and none of you but Dorian and Curia shall know of my reasons. Your duties are simple: beginning today, you will hide my absence until I return, in fifty days.”

She nodded at the chorus of “yes, your Grace”s. Each member of her court, she eyed in turn. She trusted most of them. Carana was sly, but work distracted her from treason. Grus, the Nine, seemed grounded enough in her sense of good to put her intellect to virtuous uses.

“That will be all,” she said. “You are dismissed.”

When the last of the eight had departed from the hall, Orobelle waved her two companions through the private door, which led them, via a narrow corridor lit orange, to a courtyard connected to the main boulevard. Evening light glowed pink through the leaves on the trellises, the breeze stirring them gently as the party of three exited the hallway.

All that that note had set in motion, Orobelle only briefly thought upon as they strode at haste. My villain, indeed! One for theatrics and drama, and yet they clearly knew what they had done. They knew she had no choice but to act.

By a pillar in the garden awaited a single brown horse laden with supplies, eyes glittering in the torchlight. It was none too special—its saddle was plain, its coat only groomed as necessary, its mane untrimmed.

As they passed under a bridge-way, Dorian handed Orobelle the cloak, and she wrapped herself in it, clasping it about her shoulders and pulling the hood over her hair so that her eyes were in shadow. Her companions followed suit, so that they were but three cloaked figures, indistinguishable from any other entourage.

“Which route will expose you to the fewest gazes?” asked Orobelle.

Curia paused in the midst of untying the horse, peering over the trellises at the evening sky. “It’s been decades since I was here...I might have the most luck going southeast, around the far side of the grove where there are no houses.”

“Understood.” Raising her head, Orobelle affixed the scout with a very solemn stare, and waited until she turned to return it. “I don’t know you well,” she said, “but I know you stood at your post for twenty years. That is proof enough for me. Take us safe to the edge of the Exile Lands.”

“Of course,” answered Curia, bowing low with a hand over her heart. As she did, Orobelle and Dorian nodded to each other. The woman lifted her head at a flash of pink, finding her companions gone and two cards, an Ace and a Two, both of the suit of Diamonds, lying in the gravel before her feet.

Hastily she picked them up and dusted them on her cloak, sliding them deep into a pocket on her vest. “I hope you’re comfortable in there,” she said, and mounted the horse. With a flick of the reins, she took off into the deepening evening.

“There were three at the bottom of the water tower that night,” said Sparrow. “The tallest had hair the colour of a young rose, tattoos under her eyes. The others seemed frightened. In the lamplight, their faces were all aglow, and the pink-haired one grinned when she saw me taking my sparrow-form.

“She said, ‘stop looking the wrong way.’ And then she tossed a glittering thing—A button? A coin?—into our midst. When I looked again, she and her companion had vanished. I can’t remember much after that. The coin must have exploded, and for seconds, night was bright as day.”

Revolving Door

Shatter

This chapter contains depictions of warfare, military occupation, explosions, murder and firearms

In the beginning there was nothing but the Being, and the Being was everything. It was current and void, force and silence. The Being was will, and all existed for that was its will...

Pink sunlight crept over the horizon, illuminating the edge of the Orsand Empire. In an abandoned armoury upon a deserted forest island, a girl with pale red hair sat cross-legged atop an empty barrel. Her name was Liss Legra, and she would one day destroy the universe.

For now, this fate was far from her mind. She watched the sun rise through the knife-thin gaps in the walls, running her thumb across the dents in a rose apple. Rays pierced through broken ceiling, filtering through sawdust, stirring the sleepy gathering at her feet. Her shadow shifted across them as she took a bite out of the fruit.

One of her companions lifted her head from a pillow made from a tunic and rubbed her eyes. “Liss? Up already?”

“Noma. Tell me something.” Liss' eyes returned to their preoccupation of tracing the gaps in the wall. “What do you think causes all things to happen?”

“What do I think causes...what?”

Liss cocked her head to a side. “Well, a ball does not start rolling unless you push it, and you wouldn't push the ball unless you had some reason to. Say, you wished to start a game with a friend. And you and your friend must have had a reason to want to do that, too. And so on and so forth, until we reach the start of the chain.”

“What are you rambling on about?”

This time it was Lacar who groaned the question, pulling a threadbare blanket over his head to shade his eyes from the dawning sun. Water was dripping, somewhere, and the place smelled damp.

“A lot of people say there’s what they call...a first cause. Something that started the whole universe moving. And you know what else they say? That the thing that gave the universe its first push was intelligent. One who was always there. A being just like one of us.”

“The Being, you mean? The One who is existence itself?”

“Maybe.” Liss stroked her chin. “Maybe the Being, maybe something else. I’ve been thinking.”

“You think a lot for a child,” said Lacar.

She scrunched up her face. “I am only a child in years lived, and not even that!” She turned to stare at the warehouse door, which hung half open to the whispering breeze. Here, the only intruders one need worry about were the centipedes. “Every great conquest, every great monument, is just someone’s dreams and desires given shape. I could do anything I pleased—if only I wanted it enough. Perhaps even create an entire universe of my own, and give it its first push.”

She chuckled to herself, and the rest glanced at each other.

“Is this what those transcriptions from the ruin were about?” asked Noma, propping her chin up. “Why do you care about the carvings of a nomad?”

Liss shook her head and lifted the fruit to her mouth, teeth crunching into it. “It’s everything I needed to know,” she replied while she chewed. “You’ll understand soon.”

Liss Legra was born on Henkor, where one was never far from the sea.

Henkor lay at the end of the archipelago of Doganir, a volcanic island from whose earth lived a town of two hundred. The land ascended to a dormant peak, fringed by forested slopes, and at its foot the people made their own lives. They shared their means and their goods, trading amongst themselves and with Dokor, the next island in the archipelago—catch for produce for nets, mill, machines.

Its people had a history of oceanic battle, and several warriors' grave-trees to show for it—but it had been generations yet since the last warriors had lain down their spells and chosen to settle where the earth was rich. Now they were ruled, or so it was said, by a lineage of Doganir princes, whose most recent successor was a man named Cerris. But the princely fleet had not been seen in these waters in a decade, and nowadays his name brought nothing but scoffs from the elders.

“Who let him have Henkor then?” she asked Boka, the weaver woman down the street, as she sat trimming the elder's hair.

“Only the Being knows,” growled the lady with a shrug of her shoulders. “Elge says someone over on Dokor reckons one of the prince’s ancestors bought our island with fifty barrels of coal. I reckon they did, too! It'd be just like those Doga royalty, to buy us and then discard us.”

Liss was left pondering whether such things could be—whether whole islands could simply change hands like that—and on who might have owned Henkor before the Doganir throne, whoever it was who had sold it to them. She wondered if there was more history to it than the old grave-trees of people she had never seen.

The children of Henkor knew most every mile of the island on this side of the peak. Any one of them could have walked the market square and its surrounding paths blind, except for Noma Nekala, who lived in the mining village on the slopes, half a mile from the town centre.

The far side of the island, however, was a mystery to them. The adults said there was nothing remarkable there, only more of the same: forest and beach and black volcanic rock. Half a day's walk was enough to deter anyone, and none of the children were allowed on the boats yet. As much as their curiosity bade them, none never ventured far enough to see it.

The elders often told stories of the past, of times before living memory when the island peak had been but an underwater vent, the drake god Henkor at its core melting and spewing lava onto the seabed until enough had accrued around it that it peeked through the surface. Although the drake no longer melted the rock, nor did smoke ever issue from the peak again, the monument to its colossal effort ever stood, giving life to the small town on its fringe.

In some ways the legend of Henkor exemplified the tenacity that its people saw as their own greatest virtue. The children learned from their parents, who sailed thunderstorms all the time and who swam out to Trader’s Refuge to harpoon sharks in the deep waters, that the Henkora people did not fear even the most horrific reaches of the unknown.

While the children sometimes picked up fistfighting tricks in scuffles on the streets, the art of spellfolding—of channeling the Being’s power through strips of cloth dipped in the resin of aroca trees and folded into various knot-forms—was the true art of battle.

Though Henkor's days of warring were long past, these forms found use in all places and contexts. The kindling knot-form, which threw sparks, was often used to ignite furnaces. The fulminant form, which crackled with lightning, was of great use in hunting, but had to be wielded on the end of a staff. The incendiary form exploded the objects it touched.

Liss studied spellfolding as diligently as any of her classmates—but it was not for this reason she quickly became the most efficient fighter among them. By a fluke of her birth, or perhaps the will of some higher being, she possessed a singular unique talent: she could cast the incendiary spell without knotwork.

Indeed, all she need do was touch an object in order to explode it. Stone, water, anything with mass or form to it, became her weapon when she laid hands on it. It rather displeased her various spellfolding tutors to have a student cast spells without even trying, thinking she set a bad precedent for the other learners. The elder townsfolk, however, were thrilled, and called it a gift from the sleeping drake-god in the heart of the island.

Just as paper burned better than stone, some materials exploded better than others. Dirt and wood barely smoked when Liss tried to detonate them; natural minerals were more agreeable. But the best results came with coins and iron, as she’d learned the day she had wrecked a market stall and half its wares in a fit.

As Liss grew into her talent, so did she grow into the certainty that there must be a reason she had been gifted so. But in the absence of a discernible cause, she turned it to more mundane uses. On good days, she could project her influence far enough to set off exploding rotten egg traps from across the street. This skill served her well in manoeuvreing around her friends' childish power plays, and during her short stint with a knotting teacher whose cruelty demanded repayment in kind. Her relentless torment, with exploding eggs and hornet nests, eventually resulted in the woman's permanent departure for Dokor.

Some ways off the path from the mining village to the mine, there stood a waterfall as tall as three huts. Loud enough to be heard from the far end of the village, it poured into a whitewater stream that wound down the slopes and through the village, before eventually emptying into the sea. The fall from the top would almost definitely break a few bones—if the faller landed poorly—and the ravenous whirlpool at the bottom would probably drown the rest.

As children would, the Henkora children invented a dare that concerned this very waterfall. “Anyone who leaps, from the top to the bottom,” Etiss announced above the din of the water on the day it was concocted, “will be the new prince of Doganir! We don’t need some good-for-nothing prince who can't do more than buy us for black rock. We need a proper prince! A true chief and leader who has earned the right!”

For the two weeks that followed, none of the others even came come close to trying, not even Etiss himself. Liss, however, was her own breed of person, and her household lacked any authority that could deter her. She woke up early one morning to scale the slopes, and called upon the two children of the rock miner village, her best friend Noma and the mouse-hearted Hassa, to witness her.

There was much protest from the ground as Liss climbed the overgrown slope to the top of the waterfall. “If you break anything, Mother will ground me for letting you do it!” was one of several warnings Noma yelled at her friend from below, the coarse dark tangles of her hair blowing in the wind. But even as she shouted, she stood eagerly watching, as did Hassa, crouched nervously beside her.

Rising on her feet at the top, Liss stretched up and let the wind wash over her. She splashed through the frigid water with her arms spread wide, tiptoeing across unsteady stones till she stood, shin-deep, a foot from the edge of the waterfall. From here, she saw nothing but the forest and the grey-blue sea, a dizzying distance away.

Breathing in deeply, she stepped off the last jutting rock and into the mist.

The plunge lasted barely a second. Hitting the cold water back-first, she screamed and yelled as the water snatched her and whirled her around, surging up around her, spray drenching her face and hair. She gasped and kicked and flailed, pulling up towards the surface. “I’m alive!” she shouted at her trembling friends on the bank, swinging her arms about. Then she was seized by a blazing wave of triumph, and yelled again, “I won the dare! I’m the new prince of the island!”

She laughed—and laughed still as the whirlpool sucked her towards its mouth, even as Noma and Hassa began scrambling for branches and extending them towards her.

Liss had only a second to notice that her feet were being tugged downward, and to gasp, before the bubbling current yanked her into the water and her friends’ shouts turned to screams. She pinched her nose shut and closed her eyes as the roaring water dragged her down through a yawning mouth in the rock, into a place where there was no light.

Almost at once, Liss was spat out into an inclined tunnel. She bobbed to the surface, blind in the dark, emerging in the head’s room of air above the gushing water. Kicking and gasping, she was tossed and flung through the darkness, the spot of light through which she had been swallowed growing smaller until it was completely obscured. Her thrill had only barely turned to terror, but as the slope and the current grew gentle her hunger for adventure reignited in her chest.

She swam with purpose, feet and knees sometimes bumping against the bed of the stream, but the current did most of the work, channeling her through unseen caverns that smelled of ancient grime.

At times her mind wandered to the friends she had left on the hillside, but she spent most of it pondering her location: she must be inside the volcano, where the lava had once flowed, where countless layers of rock had cooled and hardened time and again. She could almost feel the weight of the towering hollowness above, bearing down upon her as she kicked and paddled in the dark.

It was almost almost half an hour before light finally slit the darkness downstream, the crack’s reflection rippling in the water. Merely floating till then, Liss began to kick and paddle with renewed vigour. Eventually a glow seeped into the air, and the crack grew, until it was large enough to engulf her.

The burble of water became a gush. Out she tumbled, into the blazing light of day, and into the scent of forest and salty sea, everything she knew except untouched by the stain of humanity. This second, smaller waterfall sent her freefalling through the air before she once again met the current in a huge splash.

Down the blue river she bobbed, beneath the brightening sky, the water carving a deep path down the deserted side of the mountain. It was easier to ride than to swim, so she rode the river down the coast where it fanned out over the beach.

Before she could reach the shallow estuary, Liss kicked to the edge of the stream and rolled onto the sand. For a while, she lay there, panting, while the water puddled around her. Then she crawled to her feet to take in her new surroundings: a crescent-shaped coast overlooking an empty stretch of blue sea, much like the town beach on the other side, but devoid of industry.

This, she thought as she looked upon it, was her principality, lush, grand and bounteous. This was the island that Cerris couldn’t spare half a thought for.

Following the coast in her squelching shoes, and wading where the bluffs were steep or the undergrowth grew thick, took her back to town right as the sun was setting. By the time she arrived in the harbour, her clothes stank of sweat, so she bathed in the river before showing up at home, lest her mother nag her about the stench.

When Noma and Hassa presented their eyewitness account of Liss’ feat, the other children were unimpressed, certain that the two were lying for her. None of them honoured the terms of the dare, and Etiss later admitted he wasn’t sure what a prince's duties encompassed anyway.

From then, Liss would resent and torment them, with traps and tricks, until even that anger she lost in the shadow of what was to come.

Liss was there when the Prince of Doganir finally remembered the little island of Henkor and made his presence felt again.

From the part of the horizon beyond which Dokor lay, they saw a dozen ships emerge and grow from specks, coursing towards and into the harbour waters of Henkor. People hurried through the streets to the marketplace to watch, and the fishermen leapt out of their boats as the ships lowered anchor half a mile from shore, forming two loose lines across the bay. Liss joined the commotion, though her mother refused to lay eyes on the new arrivals.

Soon rowboats began to depart from the larger vessels, carrying sailors who bore on their chests the embroidered ribbons of the prince who had left this island for lost. When the first boat touched the coast, a man disembarked without a stumble, the golden thread woven into his collar marking him as their admiral. “Greetings from His Highness, Cerris Cagna, the Grand and Golden,” he announced.

For months before, whisperings of the growing Orsandin terror had swept the island, rumours that navies had taken the Great Isles and seized every route towards the Doganir archipelago.

Some elders of the village had sniffed, as they always had, at the very suggestion that Emperor Milaston would turn his attentions to their island. But today, the sailors told them of a great Orsand fleet that was bearing down upon Doganir from the north, and that these two dozen ships were the archipelago principality’s only hope of eluding capture.

This news was uttered with lowered eyes, and Liss read the island’s fate from the admiral’s face.

Liss was there when Henkor fell to the Orsandin.

She watched as warships bearing the violet flags of Orsand broke across every mile of the glittering horizon in the first flaming rays of morning, and the sailors of the Doganir ships roused at their posts, raising their anchors and cannons while the alarm began to ring. She watched the ships form a vanguard, cutting through the bay waters to meet the hopelessly vast fleet.

Within minutes, the first columns of smoke ascended, dark bastions over the sea.

Tragedy had a tendency to stain the mind irreversibly. Liss remembered meaningless details of that day: how she kicked a ceramic pot to the ground, watching it shatter on the steps as she leapt over it to flee down the terraces. How she left the path and scrambled through thickets to dodge the screaming crowd, only to find herself at an old farming terrace, with only the coastline and the sea ahead, and stopped, transfixed by the scene.

She stared on as the purple-bearing ships tore through the defenders’ smoking line, as a fresh wave of Orsandin vessels emerged from northeast and southwest. As the Doganir ships began to sink, a small army of reckless souls surged to the harbour, spells folded, but a cannonball smashed the docks on which they stood, and then the crossbow bolts began to rain on their heads.

For a while Liss drifted in the vision as if she were witnessing a dream with a vague ache in her throat—the smoke, the cries, the tolling bell—until a shout awakened her to her senses.

Two armoured officers were yelling out at her from downslope, swinging batons at her in threat. As one took her wrist in a crushing grip and dragged her down dirt paths, she gritted her teeth and contemplated struggle—but one glance at the smouldering sea told her that now was not the time.

There was blood on the streets as she was marched to the market square, where the stands had already been mangled to wood skeletons and shreds of cloth and the rest of the town, it seemed, was already gathered. A figure in a three-horned helmet stood upon a wooden stage in their midst, raising a purple standard bearing a black hook above them.

“You are Orsandin now!” she bellowed. “Declare the name of your new emperor! Long live Emperor Milaston!”

Her fingers curled when her people answered. The halting cry of “long live Emperor Milaston!” rose from the footpaths of Henkor, and she joined with gritted teeth.

Within days, the Orsandin soldiers had set up a counterspell around the perimeter of the island, strips of cloth strung up on cords between towering poles, and at once every strip of spell cloth on Henkor was rendered stiff and useless for folding.

The laws changed faster than any could reckon with them, and the wooden signage changed to match, hammered into the earth on street corners. Suddenly nets and poultry were banned, and seized. Then trade boats could no longer enter their harbour. Pots and bowls larger than a head were to be smashed. Each household was afforded the ownership of a single rain urn, but all garden produce was to be uprooted before the first inspection.

That first afternoon and every seven afternoons thereafter, the authorities came rapping on their doors with metal batons. Every week the Legra household opened their cupboards and cases for the inspectors, showing them into the barren grain cellar, overturning bowls and cups over the drain to empty them of leftover material.

They starved for two days. On the third, the authority once again gathered them in the marketplace, where they were told there was only one thing they could do to earn sustenance: work. Liss’ mother, even if she were any less self-serving, would have been too frail for labour. Liss was given no choice.

On the fields, they chained her ankle to her neighbour’s, a different one each day, and gave her an axe. In the daytime, they picked away at the forests, clearing acre-sized plots and then tilling the earth uncovered. In the night they ate. On some days she was directed to strip the aroca trees of their bright golden seeds and collect them in large crates. Almost as soon as each field was tilled, it was planted.

Some days, Liss and her companions were led to empty the storehouses and erect barbed steel barricades around the perimeter. Then came the machines—the pulleys, tables and winches of unknown purpose, all wheeled into the empty houses.

During that time, Liss barely met the other children of the village: only Etiss worked the fields from the start, and even he, she did not exchange more than a few words with. The number of children grew by one or two with each season that passed, and soon they were joined by Kule, and then by Noma, who followed her parents.

The first riot broke out two weeks into their occupation. The members of the Kanela and Adsa households gathered one day in the marketplace and stormed the guardhouse with broken poles and abandoned gardening implements. No one had expected a riot staged with shovels and pitchforks to last long against crossbows and cannons, but it was so decisively quelled that all Liss heard of it was in the warning that followed.

“For the foul betrayal of the Kanela and Adsa, all workers are to receive half rations for a week,” they said. “You are all culpable! All of you! While they answer for their crimes in the storehouses, you also answer for them, for allowing them to proceed with wrongdoing unhindered.”

It was known later that the two families’ houses had burned down in the night, and their residents, while still alive, now lived in a makeshift house under tighter scrutiny.

Over the next two years, Doganir gradually ceased to exist. The archipelago that had once been Doganir became a tiny corner of Orsand, another shred sewn onto that bloody patchwork. That fateful day on the marketplace sand, before the stinging heat of battle and torches had died, Liss had found herself learning new laws, answering to new leaders.

Whisperings of rebellion were common in the first months—counterspell sabotages, attempted escapes—spates of news, sparks here and there. But attempt after failed attempt began to dampen their fire, until not one person on the island dared even speak incendiary words.

Watching their anger smoulder out to shame—watching the Orsandin raise the black-and-purple banners over her homeland soil—roused a hatred deep in her core, a drake-god of her own, housed in her soul and filling her with fire.

Hatred was a dangerous thing to feel in these times. It tempted one to reckless acts. But Liss did not quell it, for she knew it would serve her someday. And every crunch of a baton against a Henkora slave’s back, and every Orsand officer’s grin, stoked it.

Liss came to know one thing: they were all guilty, every Orsandin soldier. Every last one.

Liss had to give grudging credit where it was due: the Orsandin expansion, five years in progress now, had been excessively successful for a nation just three islands large.

Their civilian programme, rumoured of in the months before their occupation, she watched sink its hooks into her town. Children learned the Orsandin language in nurseries, and adults toiled on the plantations for food, singing their captors’ songs.

She saw them all, dead eyes, put-on smiles, exclamations of “it’s not as terrible as I thought it’d be!” and jeers of “don’t ruin this for us”. The red-hot rage stirred in her belly, but she knew it was not yet time to let it take hold of her. Soon, flourishing green aroca plantations girt the town on all sides, and the gendarmerie officers with crossbows slung over their shoulders reminded them that they would find nothing but pain on the other side of resistance.

The rains made puddles of slurried mud in the earthen roads, and small weeds grew on the wayside where the cartwheels did not crush them. By the fields, carts were loaded daily with barrels of aroca resin and rolled in tonnes to the harbour: she watched their procession as she walked home.

The third year of their occupation dawned, and with it a shift in the law. Liss was fourteen, just in time for the Orsand governance to decree that a hundred individuals between fourteen and thirty-five were to be selected to become a part of the machine that had destroyed their home.

When the recruiter came knocking on the Legra household door with the promise of free rations and battlebound glory, Liss knew better than to refuse. She let them march her to the barracks, standing upon the ash-darkened earth where the Kanela and Adsa houses had stood, to lay the sash upon her shoulder. There among the shelters that had sprouted upon the ruins of her old town, the trainers barked orders in harsh Orsandin syllables, words that would never again be scrubbed from their memories.

She bowed her head before the rolling of drums, sweat racing down her face in the blaze of the sun. She spat blood on sand when she was pummelled in the jaw, and hid her loathing behind a guise of zeal. She ground her teeth and proclaimed her faith to Emperor Milaston with her fellows, and she bowed to the ground before visiting generals. The anger in her roared, and roared, screaming to erupt, to spread its ragged wings and breathe fire on all it saw, but she knew, even now, it was too soon.

In these endless, formless days of marches and patrols her only friend was Noma, who joined the division and once again stood by her, the only one with whom she would ever speak.

Being in the army offered the small comfort of a private space: one of many locked drawers in the hall, small and shallow enough that only two sets of clothes could be stored inside it. The space, meagre as it was, became a refuge for her mind, and it was while pondering its contents or returning her belongings to it that a plot began to appear in her mind.

Though she hid it well, Liss had not forgotten how to destroy with a touch. A more prideful individual, or one of weaker will, might have fallen to the temptation of showing off. But she fought without it, or only when she could conceal it. On the testing ground, she raised the heads of several superiors when she hid a rusted hook at the base of the tower of stones, then swung at it with her baton and sent it tumbling with the help of a hidden explosion.

Born with the blood of the volcano, the townsfolk had said. The Orsandin usurpers simply called her “better”. In three months’ time she graduated from basic training at the top of the class. At the vocational ceremony they slit her palm with a toxin-laced knife, and a tear raced down her cheek from her right eye, marking her for combat. Others were sorted into administration or physicianship. She grinned as they tattooed her achievements below her right eye, to be seen by all who saw her.

Then, as she began the transition from a trainee to a full-fledged soldier, she began to ponder and plan.

In the days before the occupation, sailors often dropped Doganir coins in the shallow parts of riverbeds. Liss’ patrols took her occasionally past the harbour, where she would inch up to the bank with permission from her patrol partner and dip her hands into the muck, to find the bits of currency right where they had been left. She took only the coins that were untarnished, and slid them into her tunic pocket.

In the evenings, she would slip them under her folded uniform in her drawer and feel their edges with her thumb. How could these ever be enough? Orsand had taken Henkor so long that it was beginning to stain her memory of home. How would these coins return this island, and this archipelago, to what they had been before?

Idling in a watchtower by the bay between shifts, gazing down at the strange ships in the harbour she barely recognised, Liss felt it again in her blood, the building pressure of rage. Something would change. Something must.

On the day the officers announced to the warriors on the square that they would be staging the inaugural Anniversary Parade on fourth anniversary of their capture, Liss caught the first tang of hope on the breeze.

On this day the people would be allowed out of their houses to watch the parade, presided over by Ylcor, the general of the Doganir division. A pyrotechnic display would conclude the evening, and the once-Henkora warriors would stand at attention for the audience. It was to be the island’s rite of passage into permanent Orsandin membership.

At once, as if a great tension were being released, Liss seemed to feel the island’s heart beat again, ancient layers of rock cracking to reveal red veins of heat. Perhaps it was but the inevitable playing out, when they decided to put her in charge of the pyrotechnics.

There were three rehearsals. Liss watched faces pass her at each one, none quite sticking in her memory. Their eyes held nothing but hardened apathy and purpose. They marched together across the remains of the market square—the old earth given new and sinister purpose—and then she left her contingent at sunset for her position at the fireworks. She climbed the rickety wooden stairs to the makeshift platform, and pounded firepowder into the cannon before igniting it with tinder, firing an empty rocket, then two more, into the cloudy sky.

There was lifeless cheering from the ground below, and she stared up at the inky sky as the rockets caught fire and scattered as ash in the wind.

Liss had not so much as laid eyes on Noma ever since the two had been separated into their respective vocations. Two evenings before the parade, as if by the will of the Being, she found her in the corridor to the drawer room, silhouetted in the light of the far windows.

“Noma,” said Liss, startling her friend with a hand to the shoulder. “I have a plan.”

Their eyes met in the purpling light. “What?” Noma was pulling her hair into a cloth band. Hearing the words, she let go of her hair, eyes darting left and right. “Quick, what is it?”

“On the day of the parade. Where will you be?”

“Up in a watchtower.”

“I want you to leave early—right before the fireworks display—”

The parade day arrived. Though Liss prided herself in maintaining her calm, her heart raced dizzyingly that day. Her blood burned hot. Her will was buckling under the heat and pressure. But she held fast. She did not speak. She did not hurry.

General Ylcor arrived in a ship with pristine purple sails and carved balusters, his dark hair in a topknot, generous sleeves hanging from his muscled arms with spells on the ribbons of his hems. The horns sent up a bright fanfare as he strode down the aisle and took his seat among the Orsandin commanders, on a platform apart from the crowd. The haggard Henkora people thronged the sand streets behind wooden barricades, but there was a hush upon them, a placidity to their gazes, unlike any crowd Liss had ever seen in this marketplace before.

Marches, salute and fanfare proceeded for the fourth time, and this time to moderate cheer. Her pulse drummed louder than the patter of their applause. As the sun sank through the sky, she signaled the transition with a gesture, and climbed once more to the top of the pyrotechnics platform, before a thousand eyes, and picked the tinderbox up from where it sat on the railing.

She met Ylcor’s eye as she pounded fire-powder into the powder chute, and found that he was watching her as closely as she was watching him. As she pushed the first rocket into the cannon’s mouth, she slid a hand into her tunic pocket and retrieved a small thing—an old Doganir copper—and palmed it into the cannon’s barrel.

Again as rehearsed, she struck flint on steel, hot bright sparks igniting where the coarse surfaces met, the tail of the fuse blazing. When the sparks lit her eyes, she clenched her jaw. There would be no changing her mind, now.

It was time to erupt. To kindle disaster. To shatter everything.

Wrenching the cannon's lever in a surging of her pulse, Liss swivelled the barrel and pointed it at Ylcor.

Few things were audible over the magma roar of her blood in those seconds: a chaos of unintelligible shouts—some lunging out of the way, some towards her.

The rocket sailed through the darkness in a trail of bright violet sparks, making an arcing line towards wide-eyed Ylcor’s seat as he made to leap from it. He lunged to the ground so that the firework hit the back of his chair instead, and like an emperor—or a prince perhaps—Liss lifted a hand in command, and the last she saw of the commanders were their faces lit purple.

For an eternity all was fire. The fury of four long years, shattering its prison at last, a volcano ruptured by the pressure of its magma, giving life but giving death.

A white-hot explosion tore the stage and every row of wooden benches upon it to sinews, blowing the flaming pieces into the air. She saw the glittering aftermath: bodies sprawled across the square, among blazing shards of wood, some bleeding out from wounds gashed by the shrapnel.

All at once, the strained silence of four years snapped. The Henkora people surged forth like the many-toothed sea, all screams and bellows, ripping the wooden barricades to pieces, and circular ranks soldiers came clanging in their boots, closing in on them.

Without a moment’s pause, Liss leapt from the top of the platform and rolled, then sprinted away through the chaos, detonating jewellery on necks and fingers, sending heads soaring into the air. Each explosion left her more breathless, left more cuts from the shrapnel. A lightning bolt of pain clove her head, and she reeled, but even in her momentary blindness she shoved and sprinted through tangles of limbs and torsos.

“She’s moving northward!” came an Orsandin shout, joined by others. Out of the crowd—into the darkness—she plunged, dodging around patches of lamplight, up towards the first plantation. She glared at the brass lock on the first gate she came upon until a fiery boom tore the tiny lock apart and threw the gate clean off its hinges. More shouts echoed across the compound.

Up the slopes and away from the noise wove Liss, and never before had she felt so alone, a girl with nothing but her talent left. She dodged through rustling ranks and files of trees, and at the upslope fence she reached out to touch the barbed metal, eyes squeezed shut: for three arms’ length on either side of her, the wires exploded with heat and flame, and stinging shards of metal raked her face. Through the gap she leapt, and shot away, between ravaged trees, through thickening forest, clambering up loose boulders. She followed childhood footpaths through the trunks, and turned back every minute to see if the shadows and lights were getting farther.

At the Nekala hut, she rounded the back. There among the shrubs between the back door and a sheer cliff face crouched Noma, where Liss had told her to wait, eyes glittering in what little milky moonlight reached the shadow behind her house.

The distant crunching of footsteps startled the girl out of her crouch. “Hide here!” she whispered, waving Liss over.

“No, no, follow me,” Liss muttered in reply.

Without waiting to see if her friend would do as told, she continued to run, eyes on the barren path through the grass and dead leaves. A minute later, Noma’s footsteps caught up to her, as did her panting and confused whispers of “why?”.

Liss did not turn when she answered. “Do you want to be free or not?”

The waterfall was audible before it was visible, the last shade of dusk glittering pink on its droplets. Liss slowed to a stop upon a rock at the water’s edge, where the hungry churning and sucking of the whirlpool joined the roar of cascading water. She felt the first sheet of droplets hit her arm, and turned around, to find Noma bursting through into the clearing, her face almost no longer a silhouette.

“Remember last time?” said Liss. “I won the dare here. But no one let me be the prince. I was dumb. I could have been the prince if I’d just wanted to. If I’d acted like it.”

Noma was too busy glaring at the waterfall. “I can’t do this!” she hissed, wild-haired and wide-eyed. But the distant crunch of branches in the undergrowth cut her short.

Without a word, Liss stepped off the bank and into the current, which tugged on her at once, almost urgently. Lowering her body into the water, she drew in a breath as her clothes soaked it up and the cold enveloped her. Water misted her face. She crouched ever lower on the slippery, stony riverbed so that only her head bobbed above the surface, and began kicking towards the whirlpool. As she did, the last light faded from the sky.

Now the waterfall mist was thick enough to drown in, and she was surrounded by the noise of the spiralling water, draining into the depths below. She closed her eyes to the terror, and felt the Being course in her, through her, through the bed of the river beneath her, through the water and the volcano and the eternal heat that lay beneath. She gulped in a deep breath, and let the current dragged her down into the icy gullet and back inside the dead volcano.

The journey seemed longer in this impenetrable darkness. Liss only knew Noma was behind her because of the erratic splashes that sometimes broke through the gushing of the underground stream: her friend was doing a good job of not making her terror heard. She held the tunic pocket shut with a hand and paddled with the other, using her feet to kick off the rocks and propel herself forward. Her clothes dragged in the water.

“Please, please, make it stop!” gasped Noma through chattering teeth as she splashed up towards Liss.

The routes she traversed in the dark were faintly familiar. How long they were swimming and floating she couldn’t say, it could have been the entire morning and she would not have known. Today the pinprick marking the exit was all but invisible, and Noma’s pleading grew more sporadic until she was overcome by shivers.

Then, out they tumbled, as Liss had before, tossed and rolled by the rapids as the vivid cold of the night snatching them. They were channeled down the same whitewater stretch as before, and down through the bay, the open sea glittering in the moon.

At the edge of the estuary, Liss snatched the bank and gave a kick, rolled out onto the sand. She began to cough and pant, shivering and wet and smelling faintly of salt. Some ways upstream Noma shrieked out Liss’ name and reached out a trembling arm—rising on her feet, Liss snatched the proffered wrist and swung backwards, dragging her friend out of the water.

“You’re crazy!” shrieked Noma as she stumbled in the sand, clothes and hair dripping.

“If I’d stopped and let the officers catch us, then I’d be crazy,” she answered. “Get on the ground, we’ll be harder to spot.”

Liss dropped to her knees, dragging Noma down with her. Flattening herself to the ground, she glanced at the shadowy outcrop of rock where the shimmering stream disappeared, almost expecting a chorus of shouts to come echoing through the gap, and then a full phalanx of officers. But there was not a sound, besides the whisper of tree leaves over the rush of the ocean.

She turned her attention to the dark blue beach, and saw for the first time a long line of towering poles, following the contour of the shore and vanishing around its next curve. Suspended from the tops of the poles and linking them together was a thick cord, and at foot-long intervals along that cord, hundreds of knotted cloth strips: the counterspell.

Liss flipped onto her back and rubbed her temple, slowly drinking in the sight of the sky and the peak piercing it. For the first time in five years, no one knew where she was. For the first time they could choose to move irrevocably out of Orsandin reach.

There they lay, shivering in the wind beneath all these stars they had missed, Liss charting in her mind the next leg of their journey. Destroying the counterspell would not get them far, if past attempts were to go by. The Orsandin would surely know their location at once if the perimeter were breached, or at least locate them much sooner.

“We’ll swim,” she said at last, eyes on the horizon of black and blue. “The next patrol boat won’t pass for an hour yet. We’ll swim to Trader’s Refuge. We’ll have time—”

“I can't swim!” answered Noma in a frantic whisper.

“Do you want to escape or not?” Liss snapped.

“What about—what about everyone else?”

Liss turned to Noma and fixed her with a glare. “This chance isn’t going to last forever!” she whispered harshly.

“No, no, that’s not fair to them—”

“Look here. It’s better that the two of us took this chance to escape, than that we wasted it trying to free everyone.”

There was an exchange of stares; Noma eventually turned away. “Promise we’ll come back and free them.”

“No.”

Liss’ companion froze.

“Freeing Henkor won’t ever be enough. There will always be another island. Dokor. The rest of Doganir. Then the rest of the Peaceful Sea. The Great Isles. Whatever lies beyond. There’s no freedom there! There’s no freedom in small scuffles. They’ll just send another fleet and take it back.”

Liss’ gaze was set. Perhaps Noma did not understand it, the scale of all this. But Liss knew. She knew nothing short of a god could end Orsandin rule forever.

That god would have to be she.

“No, we need to obliterate them.”

Noma shook her head. “You are crazy.”

From the moment they slipped under the cord boundary of the counterspell and dove into the water, Liss and Noma were not to see Henkor again.

They would land on Trader’s Refuge, an islet just large enough for a village of ten. There they would live from the trees, crafting a raft on which to buoy this hopeless thrust for freedom. It was not much, at the end of three days: two hollow logs connected by several smaller ones, with a rudder jutting through the middle and oars on either side.

Wading in the shallows, they pushed it off into the clear waters off the northern coast and clambered aboard. Dipping a hand into the lapping water behind the vessel, Liss exploded the suspended sand, the shockwave clouding the shallows and propelling them forward. Noma yanked on the oar-rudder so that the raft made an arc, pointing them in the rough direction of the Great Isles with the sun on the right.

With just a net of wild fruit, two wooden spears, and a pocketful of Doganir coins, Liss and Noma made off into the morning, threading their course between sea and sky.

Revolving Door

Honourless

This chapter contains mentions of graphic injury, arrest.

For an hour after she left the Diamond Palace, Curia found she missed Arican. This new horse was too reckless, too unsteady, and it was harder than before to sink into the trance of riding. But this was just another journey in thousands and she knew the tune by heart. Time quickly smoothed her misgivings away, so her mind was occupied by nothing but the journey, and the rhythm of hooves on stones.

Quietly she left the duchy’s borders, and was out in the Queen’s country again. To the lone pedestrian or farmer who spied her from the grassy wayside, she appeared only as the silhouette of a rider, the scout’s cloak billowing behind her. They did not see the Duchess of Diamonds and her protector riding with her, safe in her pocket.

The crossing gate stood at the end of two hours' riding, heralded by its piercing light. As she approached the stone plaza at the intersection of six roads, Curia slowed down to take in the spectacle of the gate: a tapering archway that towered upon impossible spiralling pillars, Light charms shimmering all up its height that made the carvings dance. A chain of flaming gemstone beacons hovered along the contour of the arch, casting their light on every field and roof for miles—so bright that the chains of lamps adorning the streets seemed to wane in their light.

There was nothing to show that it was an entryway of any kind. The incoming roads on the facing side could all be seen through the archway, as if there were nothing of interest here but the structure itself. On both sides, pairs of cloaked guards crossed spears in front of the archway.

“Halt, in the name of the Queen of Hearts!” shouted one, faceless in a white mask. “What is your business in the Second World?”

Curia tugged firmly on the reins till her mount began to slow, chains and rings jangling. “Curia the Arid, a commander of the Ducal Scouts,” she answered, tapping the badge on her cloak. “I came through here a week ago to deliver a message to the Duchess of Diamonds, and I am returning to my post.”

“One of the Duchess’ scouts,” the guard repeated to the other. The leer in their voice was all they conceded to whatever they might feel about her station. They uncrossed their spears, and Curia flicked the reins, the horse galloping across the gap between the worlds.

The heat pounced. The air rippled and the dark fields dissolved, condensing as barren earth, moonlit red, and dotted by straggly stalks of grass and fleshy, finger-like urana plants.

For seconds, the scent of her birth-land stirred Curia’s every memory from the recesses of her mind, the sweet, sharp scent of the urana flowers bringing a vision, like a lightning-bolt, of when she had gathered their spiny stalks for her chief, cuts bleeding in her fingers.

She no longer knew which way it was to her home village, or even whether it still stood.

Shaking her head to clear it, she rode out of the light of the crossing gate and into the pressing heat, rocks clattering away under hooves. Each step jarred her joints, and she found herself steeling herself against the ache. Many a year it had been since she had been sturdy enough to ride overnight, and she was not about to attempt it again.

Due northeast rose the dark mound of Poma Hill, and upon it twinkled a yellow beacon, marking the first way-station. It was a swift twenty minutes as she rode the winding road by the light of lamps on wooden poles, the path of rocks and gravel dipping into Poma Valley and then rising to the rocky peak where the station stood on unsawed stilts.

The lights in the windows glowed out into the evening, and in one of them a silhouette stirred, craning its neck. “Is it Eniun I see? Returned from her diamond land business?” called a raspy voice from the warden’s booth in Leysian.

Curia blinked at the syllables of a name she had long stopped going by. “The Third World does not explore itself,” she called back.

“What if it does not wish to be explored?” answered the silhouette in the window.

“My job does not need me to ask these questions.”

“They refused to ask questions, too, when they came to explore our land.” He chuckled harshly. “I mean no offence. We all live how we can. That is why you run the errands of conquerors. And why I spend my weeks rotting here!”

“Your service is much appreciated, that I can tell you.”

By now, Curia had come to a stop at the base of the stilt-borne building, beside the staircase leading down from the warden’s roost, her lips drawn into a line. She listened to the chorus of creaking steps as he scurried down to meet her.

When he appeared, Acun took the stallion by the reins and handed her a crudely-fashioned key in exchange. “You're my only guest tonight,” he said. “First room on the left.” He led the horse away before she could respond, and she shrugged, starting to ascend.

The rooms at the way-station were barely wide enough for two bedrolls, but she would not need that much space. She stood outside and waited while the warden returned, sweaty and panting, arms wrapped around her packs. Taking them from him almost felt like wrestling, but he eventually relinquished them without letting anything slip from his grip. She reentered the room and slung them onto the floor.

Once the door was locked behind her, she knelt and laid the two cards out on the ground. “Your Grace,” she said.

Light beamed out of the first card and took the form of Orobelle. Her blinking eyes emerged first, then her frown, muttering “Are we there?” while the rest of her followed. Stunned for a moment, she glanced about, then turned to the card on the floor beside her. “Dorian! Out of there!”

At once he burst from the card in the same way the duchess had, bowing as soon as he had materialised. “My duchess, I apologise,” he said, a hand to his heart.

“Never mind your apologies. Will you please find me the bath?”

Curia lifted a hand. "Stay hidden, Dorian. I will go."

Within ten minutes, Curia had returned with the unfortunate news that there was no bathing facility in the way-station. After the expected bout of complaining, Orobelle lay down in a huff and dozed off on her bedroll, before midnight would have come in the Duchy.

Once her soft snores filled the room, Dorian turned to Curia with a gesture to the door. “May I go outside?” he said. “Or should I remain hidden?”

“If Acun is asleep.” From the bundle of cloth and wrappings on the ground, Curia took two bottles of satiation and rose, exiting the room. When she returned a minute later, she gestured for Dorian to follow.

Acun was snoring like a bear in his booth, the noise filling the lamplit hallway. They walked the opposite way quietly, out of the lamplight and onto a deck overlooking the dark valley on the other side. Dorian glanced out, eyes sweeping the horizon: here and there, through the smoke, were stars he knew, different from the ones in the Duchy—the only things visible beyond these impenetrable chains of volcanoes. Somewhere in the distance, a bright river of lava filled a crack in the darkness.

This was their homeland in all its glory: fire and peaks, smoke and death.

Curia’s hand entered Dorian’s vision, holding out a bottle to him. He met her eye, and then bowed away, hand faltering mid-reach. “You ought to have it for yourself,” he said.

She sniffed a laugh and shook her head, pressing it into his palm. “I brought it for you, boy. What is your name?”

The sound of those Western Range syllables jolted him out of his blankness. It was the Leysian dialect she spoke, but like all the dialects of the area, the words all resembled his own. “Eirucan," he said, uncorking his bottle. "I almost forget the taste of real food." He sipped and swallowed, closing his eyes.

Curia’s brow furrowed. “Eirucan. How long have you lived like this?”

“I have been in the Duchy for two years,” he replied. “I don’t mean to suggest that I am not grateful for my employment, but—”

She swallowed her bottle’s contents in a gulp. “She's asleep. There’s no need to speak cloyingly of the Duchy here.”

He stared briefly. “In the Duchy,” he started again, “I have never seen salad, nor wine, nor any of the dishes I used to love.”

“Never have they been hospitable employers. Generous, maybe, but thoughtlessly so.” She paused to sigh. “Have you been allowed to return to Tyse since the start of your employment?”

Dorian shook his head, looking out at the desolate, beloved land around them.

“Poor boy. I return to the diamond land after all these years, and even that has not changed.” She said this more to herself than to him, each word deepening the lines in her forehead. “I hoped Her Grace’s daughter would be more…compassionate.”

“Which twelve-year-old child is compassionate?” Dorian replied.

They shared a dry laugh, but the insolence of those words burned in Dorian's thoughts long after.

Acun was awake before they were. If he had seen the uninvited guests, he made no mention. In the hush of morning, Orobelle and Dorian took card-form again, and Curia left the warden three pressed blocks of wakefulness in gratitude. He greeted them with a cheery “don’t fall into any rivers!”, and they were gone before the first light of dawn, newly-filled water flasks bouncing on the horse’s flank.

With her hood pulled loosely over her head, Curia rode the twenty miles in the parching day towards the looming shadows of dark mountains, down roads that had cracked and buckled into dusty brown fragments. At every stone kiosk she stopped for a drink and to hide from the dizzying heat, reaching into her pocket to check that the cards had not been dislodged. She passed three riders throughout the day, all headed the way she had come; all greeted her in the words of the Western Range—none were of the First World.

By evening they were riding parallel to the volcano range. Pillars of smoke hovered over the peaks, and it was impossible to tell where they ended and the thick glowering sky began. Here no more grass and urana grew, and the fragments of road shrank to the size of grains on a dirt track.

A kiosk stood in the gravel by a foothill, easy to miss in this sun, which turned everything red. As sunset deepened, Curia stopped and dismounted once more, tying the horse to the pole by the near-empty trough outside. She unbuckled her packs from the belts and slung them over her shoulder, hunching under their weight.

The door of the kiosk was gone, and the inside smelled of soot, a loose scattering of ash drifting across the floor as she entered. She shrugged and dumped the packs in a corner, lowering herself to her knees to unwrap them. Once the lamps were lit and the bedrolls lain, Curia laid the cards out upon them with sooty hands, and watched the twin lights emerge, her companions reappearing like illusions.

Orobelle looked about as she materialised, cross-legged. “Are you certain no one will find us here?” she said, eyes narrowed on the doorless doorway.

“It's hard to imagine anyone will so much as pass this way.”

“And they will, if they know to look here! You cannot be certain news of my departure has not slipped out,” she exclaimed, patting the bedroll beneath her flat. “Well...I suppose now is too soon for anyone to have breached my trust. Give me my box.” She extended an open palm towards Curia. With a nod, she unbuttoned the flap of one of several leather bags, and with a ginger grasp retrieved a small gold-leafed chest inlaid with diamonds from inside.

The instant Orobelle’s hands brushed the lock, it clicked, and the lid sprang open. The objects inside clattered as she searched and eventually fished out a pocketwatch. The lamplight gleamed off its case of gold and glass, illuminating bright patches on her face. From its hands she read the date: the ninetieth day of the 827^th year—or, one day since their departure, as measured in the First World.

Curia sat back down upon her own bedroll, massaging her legs. “What is there to discuss, if I may, Your Grace?” she said. Dorian stirred, but did not speak: he had not moved from where he stood since he had reappeared.

“We left the palace in a hurry,” the Duchess answered. “Now I must tell you what I mean for us to be doing out here. We’re searching for someone who can help us further along. No, without her, this journey would all be quite pointless. Her name is Honourless.”

At that Curia lifted her head. “Ah, Honourless!”

Orobelle's eyes widened. “Do you know who she is?”

“The child who was exiled by the Baroness of Spades?” she answered. “She was quite the story, back in the day, yes.”

“Oh.” Orobelle groaned. “Why didn’t you say you knew about her? It would have saved me days of hunting. Those archivers wouldn’t let me so much as breathe on the court annals without a stated reason. Me, the Duchess of Diamonds! Mother must have put them up to it. I can think of no other reason!”

Curia shook her head at the fuming Duchess. “Anyone older than yourself could have told you about her, Your Grace,” she replied.

The girl scrunched up her face. “Well, do you know where she is?”

“Yes, in fact I saw her two months ago,” said Curia. “She has been chained to the same cliff wall since the day she was sent there.”

Lowering herself on one knee, an exile sank the shaven point of a stick into the earth and twisted it until it was one-third buried. From the spot where she had planted it, an arcing line of similar branches extended and vanished between the trees, all protruding from the earth just like this one, an arm’s length apart from each other.

She had started to mark the perimeter of her living area with these after she’d realised that trees and vines changed too quickly to be useful as landmarks for more than a year at a time. This semicircle of land, four-hundred arms’ lengths wide, encompassing forest, a creek and a bit of dry field, was a respectable amount of space—but barely enough to live in.

She found it almost baffling that every single other exile had fallen to their knees and given themselves up to death the instant they had arrived. Unlike her, none of them had worn chains, and all of them could have roamed the entire world beyond this cliffside.

Yet none of them had taken it, and here she stood, a knee on the ground, the sole surviving exile in the Third World.

She glanced down at her arm, where a shackle gripped her wrist, tarnished but unyielding yet. On that same arm, the name ALTA was scarred. She had pricked those letters into her skin with a hot needle two decades ago, although the memory of that was hazy—as were all her memories of the times before the trial—before she had lost her name.

She possessed this scar for the same reason she lived here on this semicircle of land, and indeed for the same reason she was an exile in chains. Really, it seemed most of the extraordinary twists that her life had taken thus far could be attributed to one single thing.

Her name was Honourless, and she was a ghost.

Honourless couldn’t remember why she’d decided to go to the garden that day twenty-two years ago, but she did remember what she had decided to do there. Standing in a patch of flowers and staring up at the blue sky, she had squeezed her eyes shut, trying what every child had once tried at her age: to will herself through the walls between the worlds.

Ghosting, they called it. Up till that point, the only ghost that the three worlds had known was a man named Victor of River’s South, who had entered the Queendom from outside, and then left without a trace—whose tale still haunted the dreams of young children.

As she had stood there with her eyes shut, something like the roar of thunder had filled her ears, and she had felt the world strain and tear around her. Then she had landed on her bottom on a mound of hardened lava, under a sky whose colour was no longer in her memory. She had taken a single breath of the smoky air, heart racing, then clenched her fists and slipped back to the First World.

From the moment Honourless had reappeared inside her mother’s garden, pants stained black by the acrid soot of the Second World, the cards of her fate had been lain out for her.

Over a few months’ adventuring back and forth between the two worlds, Honourless discovered the rules governing her ghosting. If she liked, she could choose the point of her arrival. This in itself was merely interesting when travelling to the Second World; it was when she realised she could choose her destination on returning to the First World that it changed from wondrous to invaluable.

Overcome with glee and hungry for adventure, she began to conduct brief and unplanned travels to far-off realms, but only for a few minutes at a time. She stole candies from a stand in the Vistas and waded in the crystal seas near Lands of Undoing, bringing back gifts for her sister Alta. She was never late for an appointment again.

Indeed, it all seemed too good to be true and soon enough, she began to understand that she did pay a fare for her travel—in memories.

Every journey she made, she forgot the thing at the centre of her thoughts: a recent event, a fact, or even a word. After losing track of a few errands, missing a meeting with friends and forgetting the word for the paved routes passing in front of houses, she became afraid to ghost without deciding in advance on which memories to spend.

She tried creating junk memories by starting inane conversations prior to departing—but even that became increasingly chorelike, until the effort and her impatience led her to decide that it was easier simply to travel on foot.

All that changed when she watched the tattooist at work in the town square, and was struck by an idea. She snuck out to light the fireplace in the dead of night, dipping a sewing needle in the fire and pricking a thousand wounds in her arm, the way the tattooist had, gradually shaping her sister’s name in hot pinpricks. She had hidden the red scars spelling ALTA under her sleeve for weeks, even from the name’s owner.

Alta was quite the memorable child: precocious as Honourless was, but wilder. Where her elder sister would plot and design, Alta would leap in without a thought, break branches and break bones. She ruined the things she touched and she apologised to make it better. She took punishment without crying and broke the rules again. Honourless knew there was no way her younger sister could ever be scrubbed fully from her memory.

So the next time she ghosted to the Second World, she forgot Alta’s name.

She stood on the ash on a stretch of empty land, staring dazed at the mountains that rose up before her while the heat beat on her, feeling as if something were missing. Then the stinging of the wound in her arm brought her gaze to it, and when she read the name, she remembered the plan and she remembered Alta—the child who had been in her life almost as long as she could remember, the girl wailing for her sister’s toys, getting her face dirty in the garden earth, pulling up flowers and then abashedly pushing them back in.

Her ghosting days returned, and her ventures grew daring. She visited the peak of the Spire. She hopped islands before lunch. But all this failed to satiate her.

One day, while she browsed the marketplace in the town centre, the obsidian carriage of Baroness Blackrain and its train of mounted guards passed before them, windowless and sparkling. As it turned out onto the courthouse boulevard, she stared after it, and for the first time saw what it was that she craved to do.

The Baroness was in the habit of drawing a conspicuous air of mystery about her like a sequined mask that brought attention to the fact that something was being obscured. She hid her treasures in the baronial safehouse—a forbidding black house by the town square that was much taller than it was wide. Here on the square, her spokesperson made regular announcements that stiff and swift punishment would be delivered to those caught trespassing upon it.

It was hard not to take that as a dare.

To anyone else, this windowless building surrounded by guards would be as impenetrable as a fortress—but for Honourless, entering the baronial safehouse was quite simple. She held the scar up to her gaze and, as she had done those hundreds of other times, willed herself into the Second World and back. Gravelly earth turned into sparkling black floors and the sky darkened into a velvety ceiling. It was all too cold and too silent, and at once the profanity of her act struck her. Breathlessly she scurried along corridors under lamps that burned black, watching her reflection move across the obsidian pool beneath her feet. Through open doorways she caught glimpses of chests upon chests, some half-open with gemstones spilling out.

The pathways led her, almost irresistibly, up the lacquered stairs and towards a room at the top of the safehouse. As if hypnotised, she ascended countless flights, and when she reached the very pinnacle of the building, she found a pair of dark double doors awaiting her. Inside that room, a single coronet, silver with an inset gemstone cut into the shape of the Spades' symbol, sat on a black velvet cushion upon an onyx pedestal.

Anyone else might have decided to turn and leave at this point, having eluded discovery this long. Instead, she decided she would give the coronet a touch, just so she could say she had done it.

No sooner than her fingers brushed it did a guttural groaning creak resound from the ceiling. Then, before she had next blinked, a door had open above her, to let a massive net tumble, its shadow spidering over her face. The anchors attached with metallic thuds to the polished floor below, tight as barnacles. She screamed at the deafening clatter and fell prone beneath the cutting cables, feeling their pressure squeeze the air out of her lungs. Her ears were still ringing when the guards began to pour up the stairs.

As naturally as breathing, Honourless began to think of Alta's name, feeling her powers well up as she breathed. And she willed and willed, even as the spears came gleaming in her peripheral vision.

This was where she learned two laws of her ghosting that had eluded her till now. First: she transported everything she was firmly bound to, be they the things she held, or the things holding her. Second: even the price of her sister’s name was not enough to transport the entire safehouse in which she was bound.

It was only then that the despair hit her like a falling tower. She screamed and screeched and pounded her fists on the cold floor, but mercy was alien to Baroness Blackrain and all who served her.

The matriarchs of the four houses were not known for their mercy. If she had not known before, she knew now, that it was no coincidence, but a vile birthright.

Unlike the Queen of Hearts and her outlandish love for rolling heads, or even Duchess Adamanta whose archery range had criminals in place of targets, Baroness Blackrain was a private woman who put the things she hated as far away from herself as she could.

“For your crimes against Baroness Blackrain, the Spade Barony, and the blood of the First Queen," so her sentence was pronounced, "you are to lose your name and your place in this world. Forever shall you wander the Exile Lands, hated and spurned, until you find your only repose in death. May that death be peaceless and slow.”

She had struggled so long not to lose her memories, and yet, now, she could not forget these words even if she wanted to.

They chained her thrice over to the stone slab, and spread the shimmering pages of the Book of Punishment before her, threatening at her with the points of spears until she wrote her name on its pristine parchment. Then the name faded from the page, and from her memories, and from the memories of all who had ever known her.

They had fashioned her a new epithet, Honourless, which they now spat at her face, as if to be rid of it.

It was Honourless they yelled at that weeping girl as they locked her in the stocks on the town square and left the townsfolk to stare. It was the name Honourless that her mother and Alta cried.

Beside the metal hoop that kept Honourless’ chain bound to the cliff, there grew a stout tree with wide-reaching branches. It leaned away from the rock face, as if to avoid touching it, branches thick enough to bear her weight. Every year, those same branches grew heavy with white flowers, and then fruit, which ripened to pink before the seeds burst through the rind.

This tree, Honourless had come to think of as her tree: her lone friend and provider, in a land that hated her almost as much as her old home did.

It was the only tree in this jungle that she had seen bear fruit in all her time here, and its wood was too soft to fashion tools out of, so it was saved for a more honourable task. Every day, perhaps between mouthfuls of meat or seeds, she sawed at the bark of its lowest branches with the corner of a wrist shackle or a bone shard from a dead reptilian, until she had formed a tiny white notch in its grey surface. Thousands of such notches peppered the branches now, so many she had long stopped keeping count.

It didn’t seem to matter how many days she had spent here in the Third World, how many marks she had carved. What mattered was that there was a way for her to know.

The branches of other trees, Honourless carved into spears and piecemeal furniture. The vines she wove into nets and traps. The grey shirt she had worn into exile was still on her back, faded to white, the ragged cloth knotted over one shoulder where it had given out. The pieces that comprised life were constantly being replaced and patched over, and she began to enjoy the knowledge that there would come a day when every trace of the Spade Barony would have deserted her.

Except, of course, for this chain—this indelible piece of the Barony that she had worn for twenty-two years.

The chain, almost two hundred arms long and made of links of wolfram, wasn’t more than a trivial hindrance. Now Honourless often hunted and trapped and sawed and built without even noticing it. But however far she wandered from the attachment point, it would always tether her to the cliff, and to the old continent from which it rose.

Standing at the edge of her semicircle, Honourless looked out at the untouched lands beyonds its edge: horsetails with their fanlike leaves, grasses in green and yellow, a distant range of hills. Every months or so, scout and guard units sent by various realms of the First World would pass her by and strike up conversation, but none were ever of the Spade Barony. She decided she wouldn’t know what to say to them, if they ever did pass.

Many a night she had sat on the lowest branch of her tree, running her fingers over the raised bumps of her wounds. It had always struck her how there were more red stars here than at home, only sometimes visible between the shifting leaves, and how choirs of insects were constantly serenading nothing at all, buzzing beneath her.

If the mental arithmetic was right, the Third World was the oldest of the three, and must have seen more than any of the others. She traced the letters on her arm, and saw it all over again: how her sister had cried, how she had knelt in the garden with leaves and soil on her skirts, how they had fought, how the world had changed, twenty-two years ago.

It was two days later, as she sat chewing on roasted beetles off the end of a stick, that Honourless first heard hooves crunching on leaves and twigs in the distance. She spent another minute dining on the insects before it struck her that the hoofsteps were headed in her direction.

It was like a vision of the Light, when the tall grey stallion wove through the last trees and trotted in an arc about her, its rider tugging on its reins with a shout. The creature came to a stop at the edge of the clearing, and the rider, wearing the black of the scouts of Duchess Adamanta, dismounted.

“Honourless,” she said, the word silencing some of the chirping in the vicinity.

Honourless had long been staring, but only now did she rise from her makeshift log-seat. The scout strode up to her, touching a hand to her heart. With her other hand, she slid two cards from inside her pocket, and fanned them before her.

In a blaze of light, two figures emerged from within the cards: a long-haired man with a sword on his belt and a child in a pale dress. “Is this Honourless?” the child repeated her name. “The ghost, sentenced by Baroness Blackrain to exile?”

Perhaps Honourless would have answered eagerly and politely, if she had been twenty years younger. Instead she gaped, and then thought of laughing, before the slim possibility that they were not here to condemn her crossed her mind.

“That’s the name they gave me,” she answered, offering a shrug. “Why do you visit me? To mock my misery?”

“If you cared at all for your freedom, you would speak to me as befits my station.”

“Excuse me?”

The child folded her arms and rolled her eyes. “Oh, you're from Mother's time, aren't you? Never mind then, just tell me, are you a ghost, and have you moved between worlds at will?”

“I don't know, am I in exile because I trespassed on the Baroness’ safehouse?” answered Honourless in a huff, to which the child scowled. “I’m sorry. Yes, I am a ghost; it’s how I committed the crime that sent me here.”

The child, whose identity Honourless now had suspicions about, sniffed the way her mother would have sniffed. “Good, then,” she said. “I want to employ you. I do not know for how long, but if you complete your service well, your name and life will be returned to you.”

Honourless squinted. “And are you sure you have the power to do that, child?” she said. “They say only the blood of the Spade lineage may unlock this chain.”

“Blackrain is my aunt,” the girl snapped, reaching into her collar to lift a pale red diamond-shaped pendant from inside her bodice. She depressed a metal catch with a click, and from inside the pendant, pushed out a tiny blade that tapered to a point. “This is no joke, Honourless.”

With so little hesitation that even Honourless went momentarily rigid with shock, the girl gashed her palm with the blade. Dark red blood beaded along the line of the wound.

“The palm doesn’t scar easily,” she said. The line of blood was thickening still. “Dorian, give me her wrist.”

Before Honourless could react, Orobelle’s vassal had gripped her right forearm and thrust her hand towards the duchess, palm up, revealing the engraved spade symbol glimmering beside the hinge. She took hold of Honourless' wrist, and swiped her pale hand over the engraving. Her blood left no stain.

Then the handcuff loosened, and fell away, the chain crashing to the ground.

Up till this point, every word this child had uttered had carried a tinge of dreamlikeness, much easier to dismiss than to believe. Now, with the sound of chain links rattling on the leaves, it was as if every moment of the past fifteen minutes were finally crystallising into reality.

Honourless stared at her newly-freed wrist. She began to massage it where years of chafing had left a bracelet of faint scars. She opened and closed her hand. It barely looked like her own.

In that moment she seemed to feel the breeze from the far-off plains for the first time.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Honourless finally breathed, swallowing hard before tears could begin to well up. “What may I do for you?”

Revolving Door

Saltwater and Blood - I

This chapter contains depictions of murder, explosives, graphic injury and corpses.

“How'd you learn to do that?”

Liss lifted her gaze and her right hand from the silvery water. “To do what?”

“To make explosions without a sash and firepowder?”

Silhouetted in the blue moonlight, Noma gave the oars another faltering tug. The makeshift raft of logs bound by vines groaned and glided several arms’ lengths forward, bobbing across the choppy waves. She sagged with exhaustion before their short skim had ended.

With a shrug, Liss let her right hand drop into the water again, returning to her twofold preoccupations of steering and propelling the raft with exploding sediments. “I didn’t learn it,” she said. “I exploded a shellfish at lunch one day, and suddenly I knew I could do it.”

“What? I was sure this whole time that you had a secret teacher. Or some…other…secret. Like you met the drake god without telling me, or anyone else.”

The little wooden raft that had borne them here thus far was slightly worse for wear than when they had set out: besides the vines loosening, the wood had accumulated a few burns from failed attempts to light fires. They had solved this problem by picking up a flat rock from the seabed and lighting dry twigs from their stash atop it, but this was the only problem of theirs that had been so easily solved.

Gritting her teeth, Noma pulled the oars once again with trembling arms. Liss frowned at the sound of her panting. “Noma, give me the oars,” she said.

At once her companion dropped the oar handles. As she crawled across the raft, she was halted countless times by her hands slipping through the gaps into the water, each time growling something under her breath. Shaking her head, Liss offered an arm as a handhold, which she took sheepishly, and rose onto shaky feet, stumbling towards the rudder.

“I know as little as anyone else about these abilities,” Liss continued, taking her position at the oars. “But I know I have no secrets about them. Don’t believe the elders' drake god nonsense.” The oars creaked against the vine oarlocks as she made the first stroke.

Together, they sailed through the night, wind and water whispering about them like priestesses speaking charms. They had seen no land for days, and when the air was calm as it was on this night, the ocean became a rippling mirror in which clouds, blazing with moonlight, swam and dissolved. In shadow, the water was black as the night sky above, the endless miles beneath the raft obscured to the eye by its silver veneer.

Staring up at the sky, Noma breathed a sigh. “All this would have been easier without me, wouldn’t it?”

Liss shook her head. “You’re a physician. Wait till I find myself bleeding to death, then you’ll see that asking you along was a smart thing to do.”

“Liss…that won’t happen,” she mumbled.

Liss shrugged. “You’re the only person on Henkor who likes me.”

“If you want me here, then I’m happy to be here.” Noma began to stretch, but she let her arms drop with a yelp. “I’m hurting everywhere. It’s all this rowing…and hunting…” Sighing, she laid herself down on the raft logs and curled up to sleep, arms folded under her head.

“Aren’t you used to it? You helped your parents in the mine, didn’t you?”

“Liss…you know I only brought them lunch and dinner.”

“You’re not a real miner?”

“Don’t say that like I ever pretended I was…” she mumbled.

“You’ve fooled me for seven years,” Liss said with a chuckle, but Noma did not respond. Her steady snoring was just audible over the rumbling waves.

After their departure from Trader’s Refuge, Liss and Noma passed no islands, nor ships, for eight days. They saw the changing sea in all its moods; sometimes the water swelled beneath them as their raft was pattered by needles of rain and sometimes, the waters were flat and blue.

Here, nothing came to them that they did not seek out themselves. In the mornings, they dove and hunted with makeshift spears carved from branches, knowledge learned from years of books and conversations with elders finally serving them. Their hunts often ended in Liss bringing back four speared fish and Noma contributing shrimp and sea cucumbers found on the seabed.

It barely took them any time to begin stinking of saltwater, and even with the evaporation bowl they had built out of bambus wood and a coconut husk, they had to resort to collected rainwater to keep themselves hydrated. Often Noma mourned her lack of comforts, and though Liss did not speak of it, she too began to hunger for home, the pangs growing sharper whenever it began to drizzle and the shivers took her over.

Home was far, far behind them, and they reaffirmed their severance from Henkor each time they took their bearings against the sun and corrected the course northward.

Twice a day, they lit their cooking fire on the flat stone that had become their makeshift stove, and then ate in communion with the silent ocean. They chewed on the eyes and gristle, and spat bones back into the sea. At one point, a bone got lodged in Liss’ throat: she reached into her own throat to hook it out.

On the humid ninth evening of their voyage, while they sat at the fire tearing fish meat from bones beneath a heavy, glowering sky, Noma bowed her head and began to sob.

Liss felt an unfamiliar pang. “Why are you crying?” she asked.

It was long seconds before Noma managed to choke out a reply. “What are we even looking for?” she asked. “We’ll run out of supplies, and then we’ll die out here in the open sea. That’s what’s going to happen.”

A thought long-overdue—that Noma had followed her away from home blind, and buoyed on nothing but trust—crossed Liss for the first time. “Don’t you worry, I promise we're alright,” she said then. “It is a nine-day sail from home to the Greater Isles. There will be land soon. We have been on the sea for eight days. It can’t be long now.”

Barely had she spoken those last words when thunder sounded over their heads.

The sky had been darkening steadily, the clouds pregnant with the luminescent red light of the sunset. Only now did the lighting crack through them, the first drops begin to patter. The surging waves lifted them stomach-turningly higher until, at last, one of them flung the raft through the air, a few of the vines snapping as it crashed back to the water in a white spray.

Noma shrieked as they landed and the cooking fire went out, as their slab of stone spun off and plunged into the sea. Liss’ limbs locked with terror. “We’re alright,” she said. She planted her heel on the nets to secure them, and laid an arm about her friend’s shoulders. “It can’t be long now.”

“Liss!”

Liss looked up. Noma’s eyes were fixed on the horizon behind her, the dawn glittering in her irises.

“Liss, Liss, I think there’s a ship passing, over there,” she exclaimed. She had been rowing all morning, but not a word—no greeting nor complaint—had left her till now.

Turning around, Liss squinted out in the direction Noma was looking. And there, silhouetted against the pink-and-blue, unmistakeable with its tall, proud masts, was a warship.

Without a word, Liss snatched for the rudder handle and yanked it to the left so the raft’s course began to turn.

Although the clouds were thick and drearily grey, their spirits had lit up. Their raft skimmed over the water, flying faster than it had for all ten days prior. By then, the ship had ceased moving, and flashes of light from a lamp on the deck, brighter than the sunrise, told them they had been seen. Before long, a red-and-green rowboat was being lowered into the water, a rider in black onboard.

Now they could see that the ship flew the flag of Orsand, the sight of which made Liss’ heart sink. Even so, Noma rowed onward on Liss’ orders, oars splashing in the water. It was the best they could hope for in these waters.

From the distant warship, the rower made a swift course for their raft where it drifted. It was not long before the rowboat’s hull bumped against the edge of the raft. Lunging over the side, Liss grabbed onto the rope hanging off the hull, hands splashing in the water. She pulled it close enough for them to clamber onto, both doing so with profuse thanks.

“Do not let yourselves feel at home quite yet,” answered the rescuer, refusing to meet their eye as he steered the rowboat in a tight arc with a few oarstrokes, and began towards his vessel.

The thrash of the waves against the hull of the war ship grew louder as they neared. From the deck, the pulley ropes began to descend, reaching the surface of the sea by the time the rower pulled up alongside the towering blue hull. He hooked the rope to both sides of the rowboat and gave it two tugs; almost at once, wheels began to creak overhead, plucking the boat out of the water and hoisting it up at a head-spinning speed.

No sooner had they swung over the side and leapt off onto to the warship’s deck, than did they find themselves sandwiched between two closing ranks of crew. The captain strode down the corridor they formed, carved teeth flashing. Her brown coat was trimmed in silver, and several charm knots swung on the broad brim of her hat.

“You’re so young,” she said in drawling Orsandin. “You must be exhausted from your travels.”

Eyes narrowing, she signalled to her crew with her hand. Liss felt coarse hands fold her arms behind her back, the rough bindings of rope biting into her wrists. As it tightened, she stared up at the woman and the repulsion spells folded into her ribbons.

“As much as I hate to aggravate you after your time at sea,” the captain went on, “I must make sure that you are—in fact—deserving of rescue.” The last word, spoken in a hiss, made Liss’ blood run cold. “Answer me a few questions, and answer honestly.”

Liss put on a brave look. “Of course,” she said with an ingratiating bow, and Noma quickly followed.

“You are soldiers.” The captain traced a line under one eye to indicate the initiatory tattoo. “It is quite odd that you should be out here on a raft, sailing in the direction of seemingly—nothing. How did this come to be?”

Slamming into the brick wall of inadequate preparation set Liss reeling for a moment, and it was all she could do not to let her gaze waver. “We lost our way—on patrol,” she said. “A storm caught us off guard and capsized us. We ended up on a desert island—and that was where we built that raft, hoping to return home.”

She folded her arms, eyes darting from one face to another. “Where were you patrolling?”

“Doganir,” she said.

“Doganir, indeed. There were brief reports of an incident there, thirteen days ago. I only hear there was an explosion, resulting in the death of good General Ylcor. You must know about it. What happened?”

Her testy gaze made the skin on the back of Liss’ neck burn. “An explosion, yes,” she replied, mind racing to lay the paving for her subsequent lies. “Someone had rigged the firework cannon to make it explode. It did so, killing everyone in the first two rows of the audience.”

“I see…” Again the woman glanced back and forth, eyes narrowing. Liss felt her palms grow clammy. “A sad waste of life…but was the culprit found?”

Liss nodded, the booming of her heart almost as loud as the captain’s voice by now. “She was subdued on the town square and taken to the black houses to be re-educated.”

At that, the captain’s mouth curved into a fanged smile. “What a glib liar you are.”

Liss froze. Every crew member’s face changed at once, and she felt the rope tauten around her wrists. From her scabbard the captain pulled a sharp sword, its blade tapering to a needle-point.

“If you’re in the business of lying, get a friend who can keep a straight face when you’re doing it,” she sneered, jabbing the sword in Noma’s direction. The sound of her friend whimpering brought a hot surge of anger. “No, the culprit wasn’t executed. And you…you were not patrolling, nor were you capsized. Let’s try again. What are you doing in the waters of the Greater Isles?”

Liss swallowed, hands curling into fists. It was clear no silver-tongued diplomacy could save them now, so, as the second wore on, she began to calculate. She was weak from two weeks of aimless rafting. But this crew did have such a fondness for jewellery.

She focused on the ropes between her wrists, her attention as sharp as the captain’s sword. None could feel the heat of her ropes burning from inside but herself.

“We had been…” Liss bowed her head. “We had been sailing for ten days from Henkor on that raft. We were escaping from Henkor. After the attack, we didn’t think it was safe for us to remain on Henkor.”

“So the culprit was not executed.”

“No,” replied Liss, clenching her fists. “It was me.”

With a boom, the sword was torn by an explosion of fire and smoke, taking an index finger with it. The captain stumbled back with a screech, droplets of blood spraying across the ground. With another look, Liss set off the beads on her hat, each one severing its charm from its thread.

“I killed your filthy Orsandin commander. I killed Ylcor!”

With a single jerk, she tore her weakened ropes apart. That seemed to unleash the crew: from the corner of her eye she saw them lunge to ambush her, and she whirled around to pummel the first assaulter in the jaw.

Line after line they threw themselves at her, a blur of bodies that she could barely focus her eyes on. One landed atop her, but she flung him off with her feet and then detonated his earring so that he collapsed with a shriek, rivulets of blood pouring down his jawline.

With hands outstretched, she blew chains on necks and buttons on shirts apart, every explosion laced with blood and sending dismembered body parts spinning across the floor. Noma yelped and leapt with each boom, falling backward against the bulwark and curling up beside it while puddles of blood began to pool on the floorboards.

Stinging pain lit up Liss’ right arm: the captain had landed a blow with the blade of a borrowed cutlass. She bit back her shout and snatched the woman’s sleeve, flinging the blade back at her face and blowing it to pieces as it cut her between the eyes. A henchman took the opportunity to lock her in a chokehold, but she twisted her arm behind her back and gripped his belt, exploding the alcohol sloshing in his belly. His grip loosened with a shake and he collapsed backward, sputtering blood.

One by one she added corpses to the slew at her feet. With each one, Liss’ grin grew wider, until she had begun to laugh. Murder came so easily. There they had stood, with their swords and sashes and she, with nothing but her hands—and yet half of them were dead! And now two-thirds of them, she thought as she slung another lifeless body at the bulwark, her shaven head thudding against the wood.

“Stop! Stop, please!” The whimper of surrender pierced her euphoria, shrill and faltering.

Dropping the corpse she held, Liss turned to find its issuer: a young woman, kneeling by the mainmast, clutching at her eyes as if to blind herself. The heat fading from her limbs, she glanced about amid the rising scent of blood: she counted only four more living crew members, sitting, kneeling, or sobbing with their heads between their legs.

Kicking the captain’s limp body aside, she swept up the hat she wore and turned to the survivors, placing it on her head, severed strings dangling from its brim. “I am Liss Legra,” she announced with a grin. “I am your new captain until we reach the Greater Isles, and you will follow my orders. Unless you want to end up like the rest.”

There was much whimpered assent in response. She smiled and strode towards them, picking a coil of rope up off the floor. One by one she corralled them into the centre of the deck with kicks. One of the four was bleeding from a cut in his cheek, the stream of red staining his dirty collar; otherwise they looked unscathed.

“Which of you is the best sailor?” she asked, standing before them.

“Lacar,” said one, glancing at the bleeding man. The rest nodded, except for Lacar himself, who bowed his head and said nothing.

“Get up,” Liss said, kicking at his feet until he did as told. She looped the rope around his wrists and pulled the knot taut to form a leash of sorts. Then she turned to the other three. “No poor behaviour from you. Understood?”

Amid their frantic nodding, she knelt and began binding their ankles to each other’s, then stepped back to admire her handiwork.

“Very good, now you stay right where you are until I call upon you again. Easy.” She turned to her friend and adjusted her new hat, grinning. “Noma, how do I look?”

Noma looked up. “Very nice,” she said, seeming at once startled and embarrassed. “You would look...even smarter with a coat.”

Liss beamed back, then winced, gripping her right arm where the cutlass had sliced it. “Lacar,” she snapped, tugging on his leash. “Show us to the sick bay.”

Liss kicked several corpses out of the way as they picked their way through the mass towards the stairs to the lower deck. “We should get rid of them before they start to rot,” she muttered.

“I’d suggest it too,” Lacar put in.

“You don’t...want to bury them?” Noma said.

“The sea would be a fitting grave for them,” he replied, and then lowered his shaggy head again.

At the sick bay, Noma seated Liss on the edge of the sick bed and began searching baskets and crates till she had found salve, rum and bandages, and arranged them on the tabletop.

As she washed the wound out with the alcohol, Liss flinched and almost tugged her arm out of Noma’s grip, the cut smarting as if the blade had sliced it a second time. Her friend shushed her and renewed her grip on her wrist, beginning to slathering the sticky green salve over the cut.

When the bandage had been knotted securely around her arm, Liss lifted her hand to test it, twisting it so her palm faced up. Already, the throbbing pain was beginning to smoulder out beneath the comforting pressure of the bandage.

“And you ask why I brought you along,” she said, lifting her gaze.

“Because no one else on Henkor liked you?” Noma answered.

With a laugh, Liss turned to Lacar. He had taken a seat on the floor by the wall; two tugs on his rope brought his attention. “How about that steering now?” she said.

Again, he grunted in assent and began to stand with the assistance of the wall. “As you wish,” he said, leading the way back to the stairs.

Out on the corpse-strewn deck, where the salt breeze mingled with the rusty stench of blood, Liss tied Lacar to a baluster beside the helm. She tested her grip on the wheel and gave it a turn, the mechanisms beneath the deck groaning.

“Could you free my hands?” Lacar said.

She frowned. “Just tell me how to sail this ship.”

“How else will I show you how to sail?” He held out his wrists. “I have less than no desire to harm you. I just want to return to Madan.”

“Don’t try anything,” she snarled, beginning to loosen his ropes with her right hand, her left pointed at his chest where his buttons were sewn.

Once she had slipped the rope off his wrists, she knelt to loop the noose onto his left ankle, shoulders tensed, ready to spring at the first provocation. But his betrayal never came, and she finished the knot around his legs with not so much as a complaint from him.

He was already testing the wheel by the time she rose. “Now show me,” she said.

“Alright, give me a minute,” he muttered. “You children truly have no patience.”

Despite his prickly demeanour, Lacar was a patient teacher. By the latter half of the afternoon, Liss was helming the ship fearlessly, with the man providing the guidance of navigation. By then, she had decided it would be easier for everyone if the captives’ ropes were to be replaced with metal necklaces, so they spent the afternoon clasping chains around their necks and melting the hoops together.

Liss had learned the three remaining crew members’ names—Perma, Arzala and Bethur—and then ordered them, by name, to throw their ex-crewmates’ bodies overboard. They resumed their duties as if the ship had not changed hands, raising and trimming sails as their course arced towards the blue sliver of shore in the distance. As the last pink light of sun trickled out of the sky, they went to dine below deck; Bethur brought sea cakes and fish soup, and they even dared laugh among themselves as they ate.

Dinner gave way to drowsiness. Liss was almost dizzied when the exhaustion tackled her bodily, the sleepless nights on the raft finally starting to weigh on her. Wariness alone kept her awake at the helm, where Lacar, too, was dozing off in the rotting chair Noma had brought him. Noma herself lay on the steps, curled up in a fitless sleep.

“Liss,” said Lacar.

She turned. “What?”

Rising from the chair, Lacar shuffled over and laid a hand on the wheel. “Have some sleep. There are hammocks below. I’ll watch the ship through the night.”

Without sparing him a look, she shook her head. “Why should I trust you not to tie us up in our sleep?”

He glanced left and right, as if suspecting the shadows of harbouring monsters. “I told you, I have no desire to harm you,” he whispered. “Nothing about this ship, or this job, commands my loyalty. Only fear. I was…molded to their will by fear.”

Liss folded her arms. “If you follow their will so eagerly, then I’m sure you’d happily tell lies in their name, too.”

Silently, Lacar slid a hand into his shirt pocket, and pulled out his sash. At once Liss leapt into battle stance, pointing a hand at the chain on his neck. But he only offered the sash to her with an insistent look, fingers loose.

Her brow furrowed. Besides the roar of waves and Noma’s gentle breathing, perfect silence framed the scene.

Quietly, Liss snatched the sash out of his hand, eyes never leaving his. “Are you sure?” she said, wrapping it about her hand. She stared down at the fabric: nearly pitch-black, trimmed with silver borders.

Lacar nodded, his hair fluttering in the chill wind. “I can no longer live this life,” he replied. The lines deepened to hollows in his face. “You—” he chuckled—“you struck fear into me, for the first time since I learned to be Orsandin. And now their spell over me is broken. I cannot keep living the life they marked upon me. They know when our minds are changed. They will take me away. Please—let me aid you.”

Like a clawed hand, the words closed about her heart. Liss glanced again at the sash in her hand.

“Tomorrow,” she said, stepping away from the helm, “we’ll talk about this again.”

While Lacar took the wheel, Liss strode down the steps, coming to a stop beside Noma. With a shake of her head, she squatted down and slid her arms under her, hefting the girl in her arms. In the dark, she staggered with Noma’s weight, picking her way down the stairs and towards the corner where she had seen the hammocks before, checking every few steps that her friend was still asleep. She snored away in Liss’ arms, oblivious to all that was happening.

Eventually Liss felt a hammock brush her knee. She lowered her friend into it, then slipped into the neighbouring one, falling asleep almost as soon as her eyes had closed.

As promised, Liss met Lacar at the helm as soon as she woke the next morning. She ascended into the morning chill to the sound of gulls, a sure sign that they must be approaching land.

As she climbed the steps to the helm, she braced herself to revisit the subject of Lacar’s change of heart. But his eyes burned with purpose, and he must have spent the night pondering—for almost as soon as she arrived, he began to speak of plans.

“I have an idea of what we must do now,” he said without turning. “I’ll have you and Noma lowered in a rowboat long before we reach the port. That will leave me free to return this ship to the docks without suspicion.”

“Without suspicion? How do you mean to cover up the murder of all but four of the crew?”

“Whisperings of mutiny. We heard that Captain Glena meant to steal the ship for herself and start a rebel navy. We executed them in their sleep. As far as we are concerned, that is what happened.”

She folded her arms. “The rest—Arzala, Bethur, Perma—will they agree with your story?” she asked.

Lacar nodded once. “Admitting to defending the ship poorly would cost us our superiors’ trust. I think we would all prefer to tell this lie.”

“And will they believe it?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Glena was not trusted in the upper ranks, they made that much clear.”

Folding her arms, Liss recited the plan in her mind. “So, what then, when you’ve lowered us in the rowboat?” she asked.

“You will row out to a secluded part of Madan’s shore, and make camp in the forest for two days. Once my business with the navy is cleaned up, I will find you, with supplies, and we may plan the rest of the journey then.”

“You know...they won’t buy your lie forever.”

“I am not hoping that they will. I only need to delay their realisation until we have moved out of their reach.”

On returning to the main area of the deck after lunch, Liss discovered that most of the bloodstains had been scrubbed from the wood. On the port side of the ship, a rowboat was already hoisted on pulleys, hanging half a foot from the bulwark, a stepladder pushed up against the balustrade. Arzala waited with the rope in her hands, offering Liss a greeting in halting Orsandin. With a sigh, she sat down on the lowest rung and propped up her chin on her elbows.

Noma did not arrive on the deck until half an hour later. She came up the stairs hugging a bundle of supplies—sea cakes, dried fish, water skins—wrapped in a net, and began towards the rowboat once she had regained her bearings, tottering under the weight of the pack. At once Liss leaped out of her seat to call out, but she did not return the greeting, glancing warily back and forth between her and Arzala instead.

“Liss?” she whispered on arriving. “I don’t understand. Bethur told me the plans earlier. But why are we trusting them to help us?”

“It is...a bit of a story. Lacar and I talked last night. He’s decided to join us.”

When Noma finally met her eye, she looked stricken. “You’d just trust him? I mean…I know you wouldn’t let them lie to you, so maybe you know for sure that he’s being honest, but…but how do you know?”

Wordlessly, Liss reached into her tunic pocket. When she pulled out Lacar’s sash, Noma’s eyes widened. “Even if he does turn on us,” said Liss then, “I will best him. You know I will.”

While Noma continued to gape, Liss turned back to climb the stepladder, swinging herself into the rowboat. The tiny vessel swayed like a pendulum on the pulley ropes when she landed in it, and she felt the wind through her untied hair, cool and wild and tasting of the sea. When it had stabilised, she turned back to find her friend still standing where she had been. “Coming up?” she called, reaching out.

Looking up, Noma finally began to climb the stepladder, taking the offered hand when she reached the top. She clambered over the side of the rowboat, and promptly lost her balance, landing over the thwart with a bump and a shriek. Liss laughed while she crawled onto the seat in front of her, blushing so hard that the flush was visible through her skin.

As she was righting herself, the pulley began to creak, and the boat began to sink through the air, both pairs of oars rattling. They watched as the balustrade ascended past their heads, then each blue plank of the hull, the waves growing louder until, with a jarring splash, the boat slammed into the water, misting them with seaspray.

Once the boat was steady in the water, Liss unhooked the rope from either side of the boat and gave the pulley two tugs, watching it retreat back to the deck above. Masts and ropes creaked above them, the sails rising to catch the wind. The ship passed them in a roar of currents, its tail of turbulence gurgling and then fading into a froth of seafoam, leaving them adrift alone in the waters. The vast island of Madan undulated to the north, blue and impenetrable from this distance.

Each picking up a pair of oars, Liss and Noma began to row towards the shore.

Revolving Door

Saltwater and Blood – II

This chapter contains depictions of murder.

Liss watched as the hills beyond the rowboat's bow drifted closer, glowing purple in the light of the sinking sun. Glena’s ship had long disappeared into the next bay, and above the slosh of water, the swampy air sat heavy and stagnant. With each stroke the land resolved into sand and forest, bands of colour and shadow muted in the fading light.

“How are you going?” she asked, limbs slackening with the relief of familiar Doganira words upon her tongue once more.

Noma lifted her sagging head barely higher than her shoulders. Her arms trembled against the oars with each stroke and her eyes were dull with exhaustion, yet she rowed still, one pull after another.

“I’m as good—as I can be.” Her voice came in stops and starts, worry knotting her brow. “Do you reckon there'll be patrols about?”

A chill ran up Liss’ neck. “That would depend on our timing,” she said, eyes on the violet horizon from which they had rowed. “If they come…there will be fewer of them than there were on Glena’s ship.”

Noma made a noise in acknowledgment and lowered her head, returning to the row with faltering resolve.

Liss knew something that few others did—something she had held close to her core from the day she had learned it, and had built herself around.

On the island of Henkor, and all across the Doganir Archipelago, the only stories the elders ever told were the ones about the people who deserved it. Each prince, monster and murderer at the heart of every legend must have done something to earn their place in it—a deed so great or terrible that it demanded to be spoken of for generations after.

Whereas the other children would squeal at every suspenseful turn of the elders’ stories, Liss had always listened with unperturbed attention, never once concerned that the hero might die in the first third of the tale. They never did.

No one told the story of the man who was mauled by a shark in the waters of his own lagoon as he rowed out in search of treasure, or of the woman who tripped on a pebble and fell to her death on her way to the battlefield. They had to do something of consequence first. Something that mattered.

As she had lived, and as life had taken turns as wild as those of the legends, Liss had come to learn that all she had to do to have what she wished was act as if it were already hers. No one else seemed to see it, how fate could be wrapped around fingers and tied into knots like a sash. Watching them she came to understand, with no small amount of pity, that none of them could possibly be more than a minor players in the story of the world—none of them but she.

And so this was why, sitting here at the bow of this rowboat, in unfamiliar Orsandin waters, Liss knew she had nothing to fear. She knew a thousand things could happen in this moment to end their journey for good. But she knew none of them would.

She couldn't die yet. She was the hero of this tale.

The rowboat’s hull finally crunched on sand as violet washed over the sky, like a dye pressed from flowers. Liss nodded to Noma, and both clambered over the side, splashing barefoot in the shallows. Noma picked up the skin-wrapped supplies with both arms. With one hand, Liss lifted the bow of the boat by its rope handle and began to drag it up the glimmering beach, oars clattering, toes sinking into the sand. She staggered out of the water, wet ground turning dry and coarse, the pink grains rustling under the hull.

At the edge of the grove bordering the beach, Liss heaved the boat into a space among the roots, squatting to shove it in. She dusted her hands on her tunic and rose, eyes sweeping the beach for her friend. Noma’s silhouette waited some ways down the beach, one arm wrapped around the packs while the other waved at her.

She began to run stumblingly to meet her. “Here,” Noma called as Liss arrived, gesturing at the parting in the trees beside her. A footpath dove through the trunks, curving into the leaf-carpeted dimness. There was no sign of how this path had formed; perhaps the trees had simply parted by their own will.

They stood staring down the passageway for a while, before Liss stepped forth and forged into the depths.

Leaves and loose gravel crunched beneath their bare toes as they tiptoed in the shadows of interwoven branches, stepping over roots in the indigo dark and swatting flies away. Noma lingered at Liss’ side, neither moving ahead nor trailing behind. The path soon broadened to encircle a dark stump with a pale centre, about as tall as their shins and an arm across; without a word, Liss dropped the pack of salted fish, water flasks and sea cake jars onto the stump’s flat top and sat down on its edge.

“Let me make a fire,” Noma said at once, dropping to her knees and scraping out a pit in the ground even as she spoke.

“And I’ll get twigs—”

“I can do that,” Noma cut in.

For a quiet half-hour, the girl worked alone at the firepit in the deepening darkness, digging cakes of earth out with her hands, then scampered about the clearing, scooping up twigs into the hem of her tunic and dumping them in the pit. Kneeling beside her handiwork, she pulled her sash from her pocket and folded a spell into it in the dark.

Amid the scent of smouldering wood, Liss lounged about, listening to the girl mutter about “useless damp twigs”. Noma had denied all her offers of help, so she had long abandoned the effort and now sat cross-legged atop the stump, watching Noma swing the incendiary spell at the twig stack.

In a crackle, a spark finally caught, and the warm orange glow of a flame lit up the hollow.

“You did it!” said Liss, sliding off the stump to settle in its glow, with a grin that Noma did not return.

Sitting side-by-side with the flame warming their faces, they speared the fish on the ends of twigs and roasted them. The silence seemed opaque, sludgy as the swamp almost. As the heat licked at their shins and they stripped fish meat from bones, Liss glanced rightward and caught Noma watching her, though her eyes immediately darted away. The air seemed to grow heavier.

She cleared her throat. “Thank you, for lighting the fire,” she said.

“No need,” answered Noma, looking the other way. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

“That doesn’t matter. You did it in the end.”

She drew her arms closer. “You would have done it quicker.”

“But I didn’t do it,” she answered, brow starting to furrow. “The twigs were damp. You couldn’t help that.”

“I know you’re better at these things.”

Liss sighed. “Are you upset at me?”

An upsurge of annoyance clouded Noma’s face for a moment, before she shook her head, hugging her knees with one arm. “I’m upset at myself,” she growled. Wind rushed into the hollow, making the fire gutter momentarily, wringing a shiver out of her. She pulled her legs closer.

A curious pang of protectiveness flared in Liss’ chest. “Because you took a while to light a fire?”

Noma threw up her arms. “Because I take a while to do everything! I haven’t been anything but perfectly useless to you since I left home. Right?”

“Useless?—"

“I’ve only given you twice the work since we left Henkor! Why did you take me along?”

“You fixed my arm. You caught us sea cucumbers. I didn’t even know what sea cucumbers were before you brought them! That’s not something a useless person would have done.”

Noma sulked intently at the fire.

“I told you, I didn’t ask you to come because I needed you to be useful.”

“Then why? Because I’m the only person who likes you?”

Liss folded her arms on her knees, watching her friend’s eyes glisten in the firelight. “Because you’re the only person I like.”

Noma blinked tears out of her eyes, glower softening. In that moment, the rustle of leaves became the only sound in their vicinity, obscuring even the low rumble of the waves. The unfamiliarity of everything around them—the broad-leafed trees, the coarse sand, the melody of the chirping insects—came over them like the cold.

Liss looked up; there was not much to be seen beyond the canopies, which were an unfamiliar colour in the firelight. She began to think about Henkor and its dead volcano and its encroaching aroca plantations, so far away now that they might never return to it.

“I miss home, a little,” she said.

Noma nodded. “I miss when it wasn’t overrun by Orsandin.”

Both fell silent as the thought of their ravaged home resurfaced. For Liss it had become second nature to harden herself against expressions of sorrow or rage, but Noma's shoulders sank, and her fingers curled.

“I miss everything. Even my parents. Even the mines.”

“The mines. You spent a lot of time there, you and the rest of your village. Did you help your family with mining?”

Noma lifted her head, swallowing a mouthful of fish. “I didn’t do much. I brought my parents their meals on some days. And when they needed an extra hand, I helped mine the rock. I always got home aching. And then I would spend the rest of my time reading, learning knots, and learning about the sea.”

“When were you ever not reading?” she said, a grin coming to her. “You know so much about the sea, but you never came to swim with us. Why’s that?”

She shuddered. “Half of the creatures in it could kill me.”

Liss shook her head. “When’s the last time someone on Henkor was killed by a sea creature?”

Noma looked away into the woods again. “It doesn't matter, I’m… Most of us are afraid to die. And I let that fear tell me what to do most of the time. I’m not you. You’re strong, and brave, and none of that scares you.” Tearing the last of her fish off the stick with her teeth, she finally flung the charcoal and bones into the fire. The flame began devouring it.

Liss folded her arms. “If you want to be less afraid, you have to stop thinking so poorly of yourself. You aren’t born with it, you choose to be brave. Haven’t you ever done something you were scared to do?”

“Well, once…I guess. When I helped save my uncle Nera’s life during a cave-in.”

This was perhaps not the answer Liss had expected. “Saved your uncle? When?” She made sure to make her surprise visible.

The beginnings of an abashed smile appeared on Noma’s firelit face. “It really wasn’t much… It was so many years ago. A mine shaft collapsed on Uncle Nera, and no one could reach him except me. I was the only one who could fit through the gaps. So for three days I brought him his meals, until the rest of the village broke down the blockage.”

“I remember that—the collapse. We were seven years old then.” Liss tossed her stick into the fire. “Why’s this the first time I’ve heard about your part in it?”

“I didn’t think it was much to brag about.” Noma choked out a laugh. “Bringing people food, that’s all I’m good at.”

“No, no—saving people. That’s what you’re good at.”

“I don’t know,” Noma said, but it was clear she was allowing herself to be pleased with her little heroic deed, for she couldn’t hide her smile.

Finishing the last of meagre dinners, they lay down in the litter by the dwindling fire and drew together mounds of leaves for pillows. Lying on her back, staring at the silhouettes of criss-crossing branches, Liss closed her eyes, and the hollowness of being so far from anything familiar began to swallow her again.

“Ship’s missing a rowboat,” Lacar shouted to Acsana over the rush of red-drenched waves as he strode down the gangplank. As he stepped off onto the dock, the ground seemed to wobble beneath his feet, as it did after he had spent a week at sea.

The inspector-on-duty fired him a frown as she made a note of the damage in her booklet. “Where is your captain?” she answered with a furrow of her brow, pressing the end of her pencil to her chin.

“She is not here, and the reason for that is for the Admiral alone to know,” he replied as he passed. She began to voice another question, but he did not meet her eye, and marched down the dock as if he had some singularly important business to attend to, Perma, Arzala and Bethur tailing him in a hushed line.

Admiral Ecata’s dock-side office was situated deep within the repurposed ferry station half an hour’s walk along the military docks, a monolith now defaced with Orsand banners and murals. The entourage behind Lacar was silent yet jittery as they traversed the seaside route; none of the sailors they passed offered more than well-wishes, with glances left and right as if they might be reprimanded for their pleasance.

In this interlude, amid the relentless roar of the waves, Lacar once again composed the lies he was about to tell.

The Admiral, who might have been a sailor once, spent more time cooped behind his desk in his cell of an office than he did out in the sea breeze these days. Now he only signed papers decreeing the movement of ships, and found he had trouble fitting his belly behind his desk.

Lacar did not mind his portliness—but his eyes, those bearish Orsandin eyes, half buried under hooded lids in the shadow of a trimmed brow, were hard steel grey and impossible to look straight into. Not years of sailing storms, not decades living on the wrong side of the law, could ready him to look into those eyes.

Even so, as he closed the door behind him and rattled out a greeting, Lacar forced himself to meet that gaze. “Admiral,” he said, touching his hand to his heart in salute. “I have bad news concerning my superior, Captain Glena.”

Ecata did not respond right away, the sound of his nib scratching away filling the silence for a minute until he finally returned the pen to its holder. “You, Lacar en Cantra…hmph, one of Glena’s, yes,” he answered. His gaze dipped back to his letter, and he blew on the wet ink through puckered lips. “Bold of you to speak on her behalf.”

“I don’t speak on her behalf. She’s dead.”

Ecata’s eyes darted back to the visitor. Whatever reply he had prepared, it died on his lips. His brow wrinkled, and once again that steel gaze tested his will. “Dead. At sea?”

“Yes, during our recent patrol mission.”

“That is unfortunate.”

“There is nothing unfortunate about it. She was a mutineer.”

If the first statement had knocked the response from Ecata’s lips, this one seemed to bring a thousand new ones, which came in an incoherent sputter. “Mutineer!” he finally spat.

“I apologise to have to bring such grave news, Admiral. I got wind of her plans four days south of Madan: she meant to take the ship and begin a rebellion. It was only a whisper among the crew at first, but three days ago, she announced it to us herself.”

Here he paused to gauge the Admiral’s reaction. The letter seemed the least of his concerns now; he watched Lacar with a deepening squint, no trace of flippancy left in his deep-set gaze.

“She demanded our loyalty, even in the face of mutiny. But the four of us—myself and the three outside—we knew and feared the consequences of such treachery. We pretended loyalty that day. And that night…we slayed the rest with our own blades.”

To this, Ecata’s answer was another testy silence. It was easier to return his stare with equal force now. He knew he had to.

And he must have done a good job of it, for the admiral’s gaze dropped. “Mutiny,” he said. “Of course it was Glena, but all the same—” The pause that ensued felt out of place. When their gazes met again, his was frigid and barren. “Leave my office, en Cantra. You will be summoned later…there will be investigations…you know the process, recruit. Do not see me again until then. Now, out.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Lacar said in a shaky breath.

With no more than a salute of hand to heart, he turned smartly to depart, every footstep seeming too loud as he walked away with the cold pressure of Ecata’s gaze on his back. He only dared let his brow slacken once he had shut the door behind himself, and the long sigh he let out as he met with the three outside brought a sag to his shoulders.

Liss pried her eyelids apart as the sunlight began to seep through the cracks. The chatter of animal cries and the rumbling of waves were the first things that faded into her senses, then the muggy warmth...and the uncomfortable stench of salted fish.

She sprung bolt upright from her waking haze, scrambling across the leaves to where their packs lay. There she found that the ropes had been chewed through, and their bundle of fish was all but gone, the remains scattered across the clearing in tiny crumbs.

Liss made her most valiant effort not to yell in frustration, but she did give herself the luxury of punching the leafy ground with a crunch. Taking quick stock of their supplies, she found that only one jar of sea cakes and one fish remained—barely a meal for both of them. She began to rearrange their supplies, tossing out useless fragments of rope and knotting the loose ends together.

Sitting on the ground beside their pitiful stack, she gazed out between the trees. With their fish gone and their stocks so low, there was not much to do but to forage for something else to dine upon.

She stood. Beside the sooty remains of the fire, Noma still lay asleep, snoring softly on the carpet of leaves. With a shake of her head and a smile, she slipped out of the clearing through a gap between two trees.

It was almost twenty minutes of picking her way through prickly undergrowth and flicking insects away, before she hit the edge of the grove, where the light began to bleed green through the understory. Peeking through that last row of trees, Liss found a bend in a cobblestone road, ploughing straight through the vegetation. Its stones had been worn down by the wheels of thousands of carriages, the bald patches of dirt between them generously scored with cart tracks.

It did not take long for a rumble of wheels to draw Liss’ gaze, heralding the passing of a gleaming carriage. The stags that drew it snorted as they passed, but did not so much as turn to glance at her. She watched lazily; it was ten minutes before the next vehicle passed, and then they came at five to ten-minute intervals. Some were run-down passengers carriages; others, carts bearing crates of cargo, slowing on the approach to the bend.

Liss counted six, seven, all rolling effortlessly along. Soon, an eighth vehicle came trundling towards her, a cart of serviceable grey wood and rattling crates in the back. Again she began to follow it with her eyes, watching the undulation of the horse's sleek flanks as they cantered along.

Then the driver met her eye.

With a yell, they cracked their whip against the horses’ flanks. The cart clattered to a stop several arms’ lengths away, the wheels grinding to a halt in the dust. The driver barked something in the incomprehensible syllables of the Greater Isles, before switching to Orsandin. “What are you doing here?”

“None of your business,” she answered in their shared language.

Their brow furrowed beneath the shadow of their hood. She watched as their hand slid under their cloak.

“You should not be in this forest!” they hissed. “Get in my cart. I’m taking you back!”

“I said it’s none of your business,” she repeated.

“Get in here, or I’ll make you!” they repeated.

“No!”

She knew, if the Orsand authority had worked its way into their mind the way it did every captive’s, that this cart-driver would not leave her be.

Sure enough, they leapt from their seat and lunged at her through the first row of trees, dagger flashing.

Even expecting it, Liss was not quick enough to react. The blade tip tore through her tunic and bit deep into her skin, the pain shooting down her arm and igniting sparks in her eyes. A chill of terror swept her as she noticed, through tear-clouded eyes, that the blade was ivory. Tough as bone. Impossible to detonate.

Clenching her jaw, she shoved them away before their knife could find any deeper purchase. She had almost forgotten the feeling of fighting for her life, the way the fear squeezed the air out of one’s lungs and made one’s fingers numb. They wrestled for the weapon, and with each jerk the tip left another bleeding gash. Their strength was almost matched, as was their terror. But little by little, Liss wrangled the assaulter into a vulnerable position until the moment was ripe, and she sprang, yanking the weapon out of their grip.

They froze for barely a moment, before pouncing to reclaim it, and the surprise almost wrenched a cry out of her. It was almost by luck that Liss managed the next sequence of manoeuvres: she side-stepped the opportunistic lunge and whirled back as they passed, thrusting the knife into their side.

Eyes going wide as she tore the blade out of their flesh, the driver collapsed forward and crumpled to their knees. Over and over they muttered some phrase in their language, a hand pressed weakly to the gushing wound.

Kneeling beside them as if to listen, Liss drew back her arm and plunged the knife into their back.

The reek of iron seemed to stain everything as it pooled on the leaf litter. Clutching a hand over her chest wound, now sticky with her own blood, Liss raced back to the cart that the attacker had left in the roadside dirt. The horses were pawing restlessly, tossing their heads.

“You won’t work for anyone ever again,” she said. Working away at the reins with the bloodied knife until she could tear them with her hands, she freed them both of their bonds, and watched as they bolted away across the road.

Now that the cart was completely deserted, Liss clambered into the back and lifted the lid of one crate. The scent of salt and dried meat hit her at once, and she peered in: countless woven straw packages were piled up inside. Choosing and unwrapping one, she discovered it enclosed a flaky stick of jerky.

She swallowed an exclamation of surprise. Sparing only a few seconds to marvel at the find, Liss leapt out of the cart and kicked a few rocks into the grooves under the wheels. With a clench of a fist, the rocks exploded, sending the cart bouncing and cruising down the slope off the road, loose reins trailing on the ground, until the driver's seat bumped against the first tree and snapped off with a crack.

She became aware then that she could hear the approach of another distantly clattering set of wheels. Without another wayward thought, she flung the knife in among the trees and dove behind the cart, by the broken remains of its seat.

Perhaps the sight of wrecked carts was no rarity on Madan, or perhaps this driver had judged that leaving the accident uninvestigated was more prudent than becoming entangled with it. The cart passed without slowing, and Liss finally clambered out of hiding when the rattle of its wheels had finally deserted her hearing range.

"Where’ve you been?" Noma sprang from her seat the moment Liss stumbled into the clearing, hugging the crate with both arms. “You made me panic!”

“You should look at this.” She dropped the crate on the ground with a rattling thud, heaving a sigh as the pain of the wound ebbed somewhat. She lifted the lid, and at once her friend’s frown morphed into a gape.

Before Liss had even begun reaching out for a packet, Noma had already snatched up her own, tearing the straw wrapping off. “Where did this come from?” she gasped, already ripping generous chunks of the jerky off with her teeth. “How far away did you—”

Noma's eyes grew wide as the moon as they crossed the fabric tears and knife-wounds criss-crossing Liss’ chest for the first time. She swallowed her mouthful of the meat in a gulp.

“Liss…did you fight someone for these?”

Liss folded her arms over the wounds. “No, I ran into a cart full of them,” she replied.

Noma’s mouth curved into a frown, and she reached out to push Liss’ forearm down so that she could squint closer at the wound. “And the cart stabbed you,” she muttered.

“That’s not a stab wound, physician,” she replied with a smile, then winced at the pressure of her friend’s fingers near the wound site.

“It could fester and kill you if we don’t wash it.”

“Definitely not, this scratch can’t kill me.”

Noma shook her head. “We have some water left, I’ll get it.” Then, glancing at the crate, she grimaced. “Liss, what if they come searching for all this jerky? You don’t think they’re going to miss that much?”

“If they do,” she said, “I’ll just do what I always do.” The pain was beginning to aggravate her, and she did her best to reserve her response to a pursing of her lips.

“Liss, you need to stop marching into every fight like you've already won,” she replied.

Liss shrugged. “What, do you think they can beat me?”

“Yes! I said stop, please!” Noma snapped, snatching her wrists so suddenly that she stiffened. Those wide, brown eyes met her own, the pleading so fervent in her gaze that it was almost terrifying to keep looking. “Look at yourself. You’re bleeding all over your clothes. Whatever fight you were in, you weren’t about to win it easily.”

Liss’ frown softened. “I didn’t have any metal to work with, that’s all,” she said. “Just bad luck.”

“And it could have been worse! Without metal or rock to explode, you’re just as strong as anyone else.”

She sulked. “Slightly stronger.” But she let her shoulders slacken, and conceded with a tilt of her head. “Alright, I suppose you want me to prepare in advance? Tie some knots? How do you prepare?”

“That’s the trouble with you, born with the island’s blessing and all that. Are you even any good with knotwork?”

“Hey, I know how to fold an incendiary spell.”

“The incendiary spell is the least useful one for you.” Noma’s expression, too, had grown mild; her huge eyes were put to good use staring up at her friend. For a while Liss tried to read that look—growing aware, above the throbbing of the wound over her heart, that her wrists were still locked in her grip.

"Are you…going to get the water?" she said, verging on a laugh.

Immediately Noma snatched her hands away. "Yes, minute—a few—give me a few minutes," she choked out, racing towards the pile of their supplies by the stump.

Liss frowned as she waited, pacing back and forth in circles. It was hard to bite back her arrogance, but she knew Noma was right. If one cart-driver had been carrying an ivory knife, there was no saying everyone else on Madan didn’t.

She continued to ponder as Noma returned to drag her to the stump. Her friend pointed to a spot between the roots, and she sat down in the niche they formed.

Noma worked confidently but with care, pulling the collar of Liss’ tunic aside to expose the tattered undershirt. The sharp sting of water in the wound interrupted her thoughts, a cry tearing itself from her throat. In response she received a shoulder-pat and more water.

Her friend seemed satisfied after some prying that nothing remained lodged in the wound site. The application of a small lump of salve from a jar smuggled from the ship began to ease the pain away.

Liss watched with bewilderment as Noma went to work, first unravelling her left leg wrap, fighting with the fabric until she had torn off a rectangle and winding the wrap back around her ankle. About the clearing, she began to pick and shred leaves off the shrubs. Somewhere, she paused to inspect a large fruit the size of a cannonball on the ground, then glanced up at the tree from which it had fallen, studying its bark.

Her eyes widened as Noma began to fold a spell she did not recognise. Pressing the knotted fabric against the trunk with a palm, she gave the end a tug, and all at once the spellwork unravelled, a stab of force cracking the bark and sending the girl stumbling back with the recoil. A hole gaped like a wound in the tree's side, brownish sap oozing out of it.

Though she was not one to admit to admiring another, Liss could not help calling out, “You have to teach me that, that's amazing!”

By now, Noma had returned to Liss’ side, beaming despite herself and curiously unable to meet her friend's gaze as she reached into her pocket and patted the shredded leaves over the wound. “It’s the best I could make,” she said. The sap-treated rectangle of fabric came next; she pressed down to seal the edges of the makeshift patch in place.

Liss lifted her left arm and swung it back and forth to test it, before Noma gripped it and pushed it firmly back down.

“Don’t aggravate it for no reason,” she scolded. Liss, now diminished to a disgruntled charge, made a noise of half-hearted agreement, and Noma knelt down beside her, her inquiring look returning. “Have you decided what we’ll do if someone comes looking for the jerky?”

Liss nodded. “We'll prepare an ambush,” she said.

Revolving Door

Saltwater and Blood - III

This chapter contains depictions of murder.

When Lacar bowed goodbye to Perma, Bethur and Arzala in the salty breeze, he offered a longer thank-you than they were expecting, a hand on his heart. As he trudged away he knew, one way or another, that this would be the last time he would ever see them.

Guilt gnawed on his heart when he thought on how they must have followed him into this venture certain he would steer them through this storm, as he had before. Perhaps someone stronger—someone with more resources perhaps—would have found a way to save them.

Putting this dark cloud of thoughts out of his mind, he descending a flight of stone stairs, each step half the height of his leg, from the port and onto the tangled streets of the city.

Lacar had only lived on Madan for as long as the Orsand empire had been here, but already he was starting to forget he had ever had any other home. Ever since the conquerors had renamed it Reico, a shadow had been creeping over it—from the black and purple banners draped over facades, and the dull obsidian eyes of the statue of Emperor Milaston, watching over the city square—blotting out all that lay beneath.

He trudged to a stop before a stacked stone façade, nestled between two others, at the end of a barren street. A shadow lay over its right half; here was the hole he called his home, one of hundreds in the district that had been cordoned off for the sailors and workers of the port. From here the ocean could still be heard, though it was invisible beyond the wall of offices that separated the dock from the neighbourhood, and sometimes the saltwater still came racing down the streets in the torrential rain.

Wrenching the door open on its rusty hinges, he stepped out of the sea-breeze and into this home for the very last time. He had never meant to stay here long. A single large room enclosed by stacked granite slabs, the ceiling hung low enough that he could touch it with his palm. A screen divided it into two areas: a utilitarian living space where his pallet lay by the furnace, and a storeroom, in which little remained except for moth-bitten blankets, stray repair parts and bags strewn among chairs. No paper or tapestry remained—nothing that could serve as a record of history, remembered or lost.

Only a dark rusty stain, streaked across the stones before the doorway, gave an indication of what had become of its previous owner. He took care to step over it whenever he passed, a ritual for the deceased.

As soon as he had shut the door behind him, Lacar sucked in a breath. It would happen soon; the inevitability was like the tang of cold in the air. Someone on the docks would remark on the spotlessness of the ship's hammocks, the marks left by the scuffle on the deck—the misalignments between his story and the one told by the evidence.

At the first glimmer of pink in the sky, he turned the sandglass on his dining table, and at once he felt his time beginning to run out.

From the storeroom, he took his only two drawstring sacks, scooping handfuls of rusty metal pieces from his basket of repair parts into the smaller. By the rain urn he filled three flasks: these he slid into the second bag. A stack of old bandages, he finally took from the top of his dusty wardrobe, where they had lain since the day he had stolen them.

He knelt by his wall and found the old fish spear slotted into the niche at its base, considered its usefulness before conceding to a drop of sentimentality and strapping it to his back.

With nightfall Lacar did not light any lamps. There was no dinnertime chatter outside, as there had not been since the conquerors had first set foot on Madan's soil, but a lone owl—a bird from the old Madan, one which would always soar beyond Orsandin reach—sent up a call from the eaves.

Any time now, there could be heavy footsteps, a rap on the door, and then all this—surviving his town’s massacre, betraying his crew, living and living still in the face of Orsand’s advance—would all have been in vain.

Once he was certain there was nothing more he wanted to take, Lacar slung the bags over his shoulder and strode at last to the doorway. The rack by the door was all but empty, save for one weapon: his sheathed Orsand scimitar. He approached it, running a finger along the designs carved into the leather. The prize and the curse of his survival, the icon of his subjugation, it was the keenest weapon he had owned.

This he strapped about his waist, its weight offering the strength and finality he had been hungering to feel. With it, he knew he was ready to leave.

Leave. The dread of the notion almost struck him down as he stood at the brink, peering through his only window at the purple sunset over the docks. A final chill of hesitancy crept over him. What if he abandoned his struggle now, and left Liss and Noma to be picked off?

But he decided he had done that enough times today. He had already told his lies and made his play, and without their aid, it would all come to naught.

With no more than another breath, Lacar lifted the latch and opened the door.

It slid aside with a creak, a gust blustering at once through his home, the damp and the rot. Before the sky had darkened completely, he had shut the door behind him, all he knew behind it, and scurried to the end the street. Out in the wind, he left the shadow of the port so that the moon lit his way. Already he had his course charted in mind, most of it spanning a grove that would take him to the coastline where he had told Liss and Noma to wait.

Looking up, he tried to discern the map in the stars. If this was no more than a fool's venture, doomed to end like a thousand others, he did not care to know it. No map could tell him where he and his newfound allies were headed: only a memory of what lay beyond these borders, and the hope that some scrap of fortune still remained for them, in this world where Orsand had stolen all of it.

“Moreni, ask the Being’s blessing for me,” he whispered in a tongue the Orsandin would never understand. Then letting his past slide back into the recesses of his mind, he made a sprint for the trees.

The crackle of distant footsteps broke through the afternoon. The noise of the padded boots was nearly imperceptible, but from their vantage high above the undergrowth, it was hard to miss the trails of rustling through the shrubs, advancing in the direction of the coast.

Liss and Noma sat perched on a branch in the understorey, a crate of cannonball fruit balanced between them by means of a pulley. The other end of the pulley rope lay clutched tightly in Noma’s hands, and both were as still as they could be, for any sudden motion would set the branch swaying.

In the centre of the clearing beneath them lay a single cartwheel, waiting to be discovered.

The rustles in the shrubbery meandered back and forth for several minutes, until at last a person burst through into the clearing, dressed in the black tunic of the gendarmery with a dark sash swinging on his belt. Noma went stiff beside Liss, pressing her free fist to her mouth.

Beneath them, the officer stumbled to a stop before the bait, walking once around it and kneeling to inspect its spokes. He rose to his feet and turned back the way he had come. “I’ve found something!” he called out in sharp Orsandin. “One of the wheels!”

Throughout the grove, the other trails paused, and turned, making towards the source of the shout.

As he resumed his inspection, Liss’ eyes swept the man in search of the glint of metal, a brief wave of worry sweeping her when she found she could see nothing but fabric and leather. “Pass me one,” she whispered with an outstretched hand in Noma’s direction as the crunch of footsteps grew louder from all directions. With a nod, Noma scooped one fruit out of the crate with a hand, which trembled with its weight—the other still gripped around the rope—and planted it in her palm.

Even knowing its weight, Liss almost let the rough-barked fruit slip out of her grip. She balanced it upon her palm, its heft lending her certainty.

The officer had resumed inspection of the cartwheel, almost dead centre between the two above. In a scattering of leaves and twigs, three more officers burst into the clearing, and then, in time, several more. There were a dozen of them now, all gathered over the wheel in confused discussion.

With one eye closed, Liss held the rough brown fruit suspended beneath the branch, and flung it at the kneeling officer.

The cannonball fruit connected off-centre with his head, but that was enough to bowl him over with a disquieting crunch. Everyone turned to their fallen comrade in a concerted motion, one of them pointing out the offending fruit, another picking it up. “Another,” whispered Liss as confusion turned to concern on their faces. Noma placed the fruit in her hand almost as soon as she reached out.

In that moment, a second officer looked up, and as her eyes met Liss', mortification contorted her face—one second before the cannonball fruit smashed into it.

At once the clearing was in a frenzy of shouts, a wave of sashes emerging from pockets and belts. "Spells!" The order resounded across the clearing.

“Dump the rest!” Liss snapped. Lips pale with fright, Noma slackened the rope and the crate tipped.

Thunder and a roar of leaves as the fruit rolled and tumbled out of the crate. With the sudden lightening of its load, the branch began to swing wildly, and Noma’s cries joined those of the officers below as a cascade of fruit the size and weight of small boulders rained upon them. Birds sprang from hiding, fleeing into the depths of the grove. Most of the officers did not make it; their screams and raised arms proved no barrier to the spherical projectiles as, one by one, they were knocked to the ground, blood spattering across the leaves.

Liss felt her heart unclench as the last fruit landed in the leaf litter, but the triumph was premature. Four officers remained standing at the edge of the clearing unscathed, spells folded on their sashes and slingshots in their hands.

Gritting her teeth, Liss gripped Noma’s shoulder and shook her with a shout, “to the ground!” Quickly she turned her attention on the clearing, and exploded the cartwheel’s iron hub with a boom, sending one of the four sprawling on the roots. As the remaining officers shouted at each other, she crawled towards the trunk.

“But the crate—” Noma trembled, a hand still curled around the rope.

“Let go!” Liss shouted.

A slingshot twanged. The sash, knotted so tight it flew like a rock, struck the branch with a spark and a boom to match Liss’ own explosion. In a pop of sinews, the branch began to tilt. Shrieking, Noma let go of the rope—and the crate went tumbling, shattering into splinters upon the bodies sprawled below.

Arriving at the junction of the branches, Liss wrapped her legs around the neighbouring one and reached out to Noma, who was stuck crawling by inches up the tilting limb, the tear starting to gape between them. Fibre by snapping fibre, the branch sagged with her weight.

Their hands met just in time, fingers locking around wrists, grips tightening. With a cacophonous rip, the last sinews of the branch tore, and it gave way, plummeting in a showering of leaves.

Noma let out another scream as her feet lost purchase on the branch, her legs swinging in the air. Suddenly there was nothing but a drop five times her height below her, nothing but Liss’ grip keeping her from tumbling that entire height to her death.

“Liss!” she cried, fingers starting to slip. “Liss, I don’t want to die!”

Noma’s pleas were muffled by the boom of her heart in her ears. “You won’t!” Liss growled, hooking a leg around the trunk. She threw herself backward with all her weight, hand beginning to burn with the friction between their palms. She thrust her other hand towards her friend’s flailing arm.

Their free hands connected, grips slippery and aching. But Liss knew she did not have enough purchase to lift her friend onto the branch.

“Swing!” she called down to Noma’s tearful, wide-eyed face. Another projectile burst past, missing their branch and booming against the one above. Again Noma cried out, tears cascading down her face. The sound of cracking wood chorused across the clearing. “There’s a branch not far below you—just swing and let go!”

“I can’t!” she cried. “I’m not you!”

“So what?” Liss snarled.

Noma continued to sob, but she nodded.

With a kick of her legs, she swung once—twice—and as Liss loosened her fingers, she let go, soaring through the air for a fraction of a second…before her left foot connected with the branch beneath, and her right missed.

With a scream Noma’s left arm flew out to hook the branch. Her fall stopped short, and she tilted back, crawling till she was straddling it, arms embracing it, head bowed to the bark.

Right then, from the trees, another figure in gendarmery black flew into the clearing. "They're up in the trees!" the one with the slingshot called over to him, waving him over and aiming again at Noma's branch.

Liss began to curse, but her voice dwindled as the new officer drew his weapon, and a metallic glint lit up its curved edge.

Flinging thoughts of all else aside, she began focusing her eyes on the Orsandin blade. She followed its shining edge with her eyes, drawing heat from the thrill and channelling it through the air into the metal as he lifted it over his shoulder—

—and beheaded the slingshot-bearer in a clean swipe.

Liss’ focus broke. She stared, blood roaring in her ears, as the head flew, scattering an arc of blood droplets and thudding on the leaves. The uniformed man flew across the clearing and hacked another head off another pair of shoulders with the overheating blade. He turned at the end of the swing, barely hindered by the weight of the haversacks over his shoulder.

“Lacar,” Liss whispered.

The third gendarmery officer, hobbling towards Lacar in the shelter of undergrowth, lunged for his legs like a snake. He was faster than they were. He barely had to look before lifting a foot and thrusting a kick in their direction, sending them sprawling. There they lay for their last breaths, before he twisted his scimitar into the officer’s back.

They sent up a ragged scream, which ended as he drew the bloodied sword out of their twitching back.

For a minute or so after the echoes of that last cry died, Lacar stalked about the clearing, sinking his blade into chests and backs. Most did not respond, but a few, still barely living, twitched as the metal entered them.

Kicking a cannonball fruit gently out of the way, he looked up through the foliage.

“Was it your idea to kill them with fruit, Liss?” he called.

“I take half the credit,” she replied.

A smile broke through his stone-hard grimness. “You young ones have such wild ideas.”

Liss began her descent, climbing in shaky stops and starts from one branch to the next. At Noma’s branch, she came to rest, sitting down and locking gazes with her. In answer to her quiet, firm look, Noma offered a wavering one.

She knew Lacar would be getting impatient right about now, but she refused to move on until the terror in Noma’s gaze had settled.

“Time to go,” she said, reaching out to grip her hand. “Alright?”

Lacar greeted them as they scampered the last leg’s height down the trunk. His eyes were sunken with exhaustion, but as unfalteringly as he did everything else, he handed Liss the bag of parts as they arrived.

“Do the authorities know yet?” she asked, snatching it out of his hands.

“They well might—even if that Acsana left it till this morning to put her suspicions together.” He made a grumbling noise. “Get your supplies and meet me here. This fight's wasted enough of our time.”

The three trudged across the beach as the sun began to burn white, stepping over flotsam and shards of shells. Lacar dragged the rowboat behind him while the other two carried the oars, Liss holding them in the crook of her right arm, Noma hugging them against her chest.

From behind the trees, they watched till a patrol boat passed, its white sails gleaming. It would be half an hour before the next one came—half an hour to pass unseen into the unknown beyond Orsand’s reach.

They paused at the fringe of the water, waves splashing their toes and boots. Without a word, Lacar dropped the rowboat to the sand with a thud. He shoved it out onto the first lapping waves. Untethered from the ground, it glided an arm’s length across the glassy water.

“Keep your eye on those,” said Lacar, pointing out three dim islands upon the blue horizon. “If we row fast, we can make the leftmost island before the next patrol passes.”

Liss leapt across the water, landing in the boat with a thump. The contents of her bag jangled, and her fingers moved to run along its outer surface, feeling the bumps of nails and nuts inside. While the vessel bobbed and drifted, she dropped to the thwart and secured her oars in their locks, rowing it gently back towards the others.

Lacar waded out knee-deep into the water. With a palm he tipped the boat just far enough to step in, which he did easily with his broad, towering frame. He took his place on the centre thwart, between the first pair of oarlocks.

“There’s an old warehouse a five-day row from here. A hive of activity for black market traders and smugglers, before the atuis industry dried up.”

“Atuis?” Liss frowned.

He turned to her. “Didn’t your grown-ups tell you what it was they were smoking? I refuse to believe it never reached Henkor’s shores. The largest illegal industry in this corner of the world—and most of it went through the den we’re headed for.”

“How does a place like that go missed for so long?”

“It was a haven of outlaws...its location wasn't chosen for being easy to find. The triumvirate of the Greater Isles never found it in the two decades of its prime, and the Orsand authority will not find it either...at least not for a while.”

“How will you find it?” muttered Noma from outside the boat.

He turned to her and gestured for the oars, which she dropped beside him across the thwart. “I’ve been there several times,” he replied, loosening the oarlock bolts.

Liss felt her jaw clench at these words. “You’re avoiding my questions,” she snapped, turning abruptly. “If you won’t speak openly, then you’re no better than Orsandin to me.”

Lacar looked on back, gaze giving away nothing.

Right then, Noma finally struggled over the sheer and landed inside the boat with a bump. Releasing Lacar’s gaze, Liss wasted no moment in beginning to row, pulling faster and more vigorously on the oars than she ever had. They shot out into the blue, past the line where the bed sank away and the seawater grew dark beneath them. Soon, she heard the splash of oars meeting water, and the doubling of their pace told her Lacar had joined.

“Ask what you will,” he said once they had gathered momentum. “I’m not trying to hide anything from you.”

“Right. Why were you at a smuggler’s den so often?” Liss answered.

She had half anticipated yet another explanation that led nowhere, so it almost did not register when Lacar said, “What do you think? I was a smuggler.”

Revolving Door

A Hole Through the World

It was too stiflingly hot here between the trees, even as a breeze twisted through them. The air sat wet and heavy among the trunks, and the insects’ chatter vibrated about the unlikely gathering of four, the trees rustling their answer overhead. At their backs, a great cliff soared, its pinnacle lost above branches.

“You still haven’t explained why you’re here,” said Honourless. “What can I do for you?”

There was a sourness to her look that immediately shrivelled any trace of charity the Duchess had tried to muster. “Enough of your prattle,” snapped Orobelle. “I’m the Duchess here. I’ll ask the questions. Dorian, come over here.” She snatched Honourless’ wrist, grimacing when her fingers closed around the thick bracelet of scars left by years of chafing. Her Protector appeared from her right; she reached out to take his hand as well. Wrapping her hand around his, she turned back to meet Honourless’ eye. “Answer me something. How many worlds are there?”

Her brow furrowed. “Three,” she said. “Why do you—”

“Wrong.”

“No?” Honourless’ eyes narrowed.

“No. Pay attention. A month ago, or so Curia has told me, the Right Vanguard found an unrecorded Tunnel in this same jungle. They found a Tunnel, but it did not lead back into the Second World. It went to a place that we, in the Duchy, have no record of. A secluded beach, we are told. We have found the Fourth World.” Honourless’ eyes grew disconcertingly wide. “Timely, too, because a threat from beyond the First World has its sights on me.” She met the scarred woman’s gaze. “That is why I’m here today. You’re a ghost. And you are going to take us there, to the Fourth World, and beyond it.”

The Duchess felt a twinge when her earnest glare was answered not by prompt deference, but a frown with a wrinkled brow. “What do you mean, a Fourth World?” Honourless muttered. “I’ve tried to go there, and I can tell you it doesn’t exist. I know what I’m about. If there were a Fourth World, then I would have found one!”

“Look here, Honourless,” Orobelle jabbed a finger at her chest, “I do not understand the scientifics of your abilities, but perhaps you simply weren’t trying hard enough. You’d better have been, because you are going to take us there, if you value your name, and the life you lost.”

The exile’s jaw clenched, and her hands curled into fists. Half a minute’s silence later, she lifted her head. “Alright, then, let’s try,” she said, closing her eyes.

With her head bowed, Honourless began to say something, but too quietly for Orobelle to hear. “What did you say?” the Duchess exclaimed, but Honourless continued, heedless: it was the same word, over and over, still too soft to make out.

The Duchess snatched back a gasp when Honourless’ arm almost shot out of her grip with strength to rival a horse’s, though she had not moved an inch. Their view of the world was starting to warp, the ground curving around them, the trees stretching into thin concentric circles, and now it felt as if they would be wrenched right off the ground at any instant.

The woman drew her lips back to bare her teeth, as if in agony or rage, her limbs starting to tremble, her clawed grip starting to burn. Her low growling mutter rose into a cry. Orobelle’s arm hurt as if her joints might pop out of their sockets, her weight the only thing holding her in place on the ground, though even that, she wasn’t sure of; earth was churning beneath her heels, the world spinning and curving, curving and folding…

A split second before the world snapped back into stillness, the dizziness hit Orobelle like a wall. Losing her grip on Honourless’ hand, she stumbled two steps to a side. Dorian, still clinging fast to her, tugged her back upright before she could fall. “My duchess,” gasped her protector, in a voice she had only ever heard out of one other person before: her father.

Steadying herself on her feet, Orobelle turned away from him. “Honourless,” she muttered. Abruptly she batted Dorian’s hands away, marching—unsteadily—towards Honourless, who sat cross-legged on the ground. “Honourless,” she shouted, kicking at the woman’s shin, then several more times while repeating her name, until she finally looked up with a grimace.

“What?”

Orobelle placed her left hand on her hip and gestured around them with her right. “We haven’t moved!”

“Excuse me, Orobelle, or should I say, Your Grace,” she snarled, “but I’ve never ghosted with two people in tow.”

“Oh, you think it’s because of us, and not your incompetence?”

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s both. It could be that the gap between here and this Fourth World is too wide for me to cross. Or it could be that the Fourth World doesn’t exist!”

“Argh!” Orobelle stomped a foot into the grass, but it made a far less impressive sound than she wanted. Instead of acknowledging Honourless any longer, she whirled around to find Curia, who was a little farther from the group than she remembered, beyond a row of trees, a hand upon her stallion’s flank. “Get over here, scout!”

“Gladly, Your Grace,” she called back, taking the horse by the rein.

“There has been a change of plans,” she said as the scout commander arrived. “Honourless is too weak to take us to the Fourth World. We shall pass through the Tunnel instead. Curia. You know where it is, don’t you?”

“Sure as I am a scout,” she replied. “Shall I escort Honourless back to her cliff, then?”

“What a waste of my time and my hope,” Honourless muttered, beginning to walk in the direction of her old handcuffs, lying in the leaves where Curia had been standing. “Come, lock me back up.”

Orobelle cut in with a sharp, “No, stay here.”

The exile came to an abrupt stop and threw up her arms. “What do you want? You saw me. I can’t take you there!”

“You say that the gap between the Third and Fourth worlds might be wider than you’re familiar,” she answered. “If you’re so much better than the impression you’ve left so far, then you should have no difficulty ghosting to any other world, no?”

“I could flee to the Second World and back, right now,” she replied with a grimace. “But that wouldn’t help my chances of completing this damned penance and going back home.”

Their eyes met, the Duchess’ and the exile’s. Orobelle saw her own buried desperation reflected back at her.

“I want you to come with us,” she repeated. “We have already found one world we did not know existed. There is no saying that there aren’t more.” None in her audience seemed ready to respond. “I am certain we’ll need you again. You will just have to learn to ghost better, fast.”

It was with two days of riding, and by only a memorised familiarity with the undulations of the land and the shapes of the forests, that Curia finally arrived at the edge of Zone Fifteen.

A smile spread across her face as they galloped into the clearing at the top of a hill, and caught sight of the grey tops of the Right Vanguard’s camp in the crook of the river, right where she had told them to set up. “That’s my Vanguard,” she said with a grin. Behind her Honourless shifted, her chains jangling, but she made no answer, and sat insistently silent instead. She had been returned to a spare pair of shackles from one of Orobelle’s three bags, the other cuff locked onto Curia’s belt.

These chains would only hold her for so long—but the old scout supposed that if Honourless meant to flee, she would have done so the instant the chains had been taken off her. Perhaps even a heart like hers was tethered by the notion of home, but who could really know her mind?

Downhill through arching trees and into the depths of the misty valley they descended, hooves clearing several roots in a bound, till they met the river bank at a bush of reeds. Her horse—whom she had named Teru after several hours’ riding—bucked at the sight of water. "Palace horses," she muttered. With a shake of her head, Curia spurred his side with her boot, and they forded the burbling shallows. Teru loped up onto the facing bank just as the sky began to turn gold, their legs and boots all coated in scum.

The cluster of tents was nestled in the curve of a vast swath of forest, an area that the scouts called Zone Fifteen, but which the cartographers had named Adamanta Forest, for the last Duchess. The grey raindrop-studded canopies glistened in the golden hour, drops showering on the thick undergrowth as Teru’s flank brushed by.

The horses of the Right Vanguard were the first to proclaim Curia’s arrival, a chorus of neighs ascending from the makeshift corral outside the tent circle as they cantered into the open space and came upon the remains of last night’s campfire, now a pile of ash and soot within a circle of stones.

It was Anser who had stood on watcher’s duty, only just completing a round about the camp: the clattering of hooves and chorusing horses had brought him running, and he burst into the camp ground in this moment, letting out a shout of, “The commander is back!”

He came to a skidding stop beside Teru, bright white hair in his eyes. “We missed you!” he exclaimed, beaming up at Curia, eyes darting to her cargo. “That’s an awful lot of luggage, the poor boy is winded! I’ll unload him.”

“Anser! Ever pleased to see you,” Curia replied, swivelling the metal ankle of her left foot. “How is the Vanguard holding up?”

He began circling the horse. “Oh, you know, a little disorderly without you, but I promise Thistle has been doing her best—” Stopping to her right, he gasped. “You! You’re that exile who lives in Zone Three! Wait, weren’t you chained up because of some powers you had? How’d you get here?”

Curia offered him a look as reproachful as she could within the bounds of goodwill, and he took the signal, stepping back. “Much as I’d love to explain,” she said, hooking the chains with her thumb and lifting them up for his eyes, “that is private information. I’m under Duchess’ orders.”

His face fell, almost imperceptibly, at these words, but he nodded. “Ducal business, I see,” he replied. “I understand, ma’am, and I won’t pry no further. Need a hand?”

“My passenger first,” she said, pointing a thumb at Honourless behind her.

Till this point, Honourless had yet to utter a word. When Anser offered her a hand, she finally broke her silence. “I can dismount myself,” came her gravelly voice. Curia could only imagine the look she was giving Anser, as he launched into a flurry of apologies. Without a word, she swung her leg over Teru’s flank and leapt to the ground with a thump.

Curia dismounted once the woman had stepped aside; by then Anser had yet to complete his litany of pleas. It wasn’t until a minute later that the boy realised he would make no headway with Honourless, and finally turned his attentions back on his superior, resuming his grinning. “And, Curia! Your tent is right over there.” He gestured at the two grey tents flanking the entryway to the camp ground. “Closest to the river, beside Commander Thistle’s.”

Barely had he spoken these words when there was a rustle of tent flaps, and the second-in-command herself emerged from the tent left of the gap. She marched towards them, with a frown that would make a knife go blunt. Lowering his arm from the gesture, Anser quietly retreated behind Curia.

“Commander Curia!” Thistle called out, breaking into a smile. “You brought quite the commotion! It is good to have you back.” Coming to a stop a foot from Curia, she extended her arms, offering a hug.

Curia returned it firmly and with mild enthusiasm to match. Such a talent for making her gestures look insincere, this Thistle. “I hope you have cared well for the Vanguard in my absence,” the commander said once they had stepped apart.

A contempt crossed Thistle’s gaze that anyone who knew her less would have missed. “Of course, do you know me to be an idler?” she replied.

It wasn’t long before the twenty-strong entourage of scouts and cartographers was packed into the rustling hollow between the tents, clamouring in a mass of rowdy voices and hugging arms. Thistle was forced to step aside as one after another came forward, all with hugs and outpourings of welcome and snatches of recounts, from which she pieced together the gist of the events of the past two months. The Vanguard had scaled the side of a ravine—now named the Traitor’s Gap—and into the den of a reptile pack, which they had barely held off through their numbers, then lost a few packs to a river when the cable bearing them had unravelled.

She, in turn, described her own sightings: the dereliction of the Queen’s Road, and the many ways in which the palace had changed. But she spoke of Orobelle via the obfuscating epithet of the Duchess, leaving the fact of Adamanta’s passing unmentioned.

“You rode here on a palace stallion?” was one scout, Gale’s, bewildered remark as she sank out of a long embrace with her commander.

“Teru held up much better than a palace horse should,” Curia replied with a chuckle, scrubbing at his fur with her fingertips. “Really he was wasted on the palace. I say he’d make a fine addition to our troupe.”

As they spoke, more than a few cast Honourless odd looks, but none seemed keen on questioning their superior about the newcomer’s presence.

All except for one of them. “Excuse me for interrupting this cheerful reunion, Commander,” said Thistle, stepping between Curia and the cartographer Serrata, “but I couldn’t help but to notice that you’ve brought a pariah back to our camp.”

“If you are referring to Honourless here, then why, yes—I did fetch her, under the Duchess’ orders. I am also under the Duchess’ orders not to speak of my business concerning her.”

“Ah…” Thistle hesitated on her next words. “I promise I had no intention of sticking my nose in your affairs. It must be important.” Casting a look at her own tent, she drew her lips into a line. “Where will she sleep? We have only enough tents for the Vanguard.”

“I don’t need a tent,” Honourless spoke up again, brashly and without remorse. Thistle turned. “I can sleep outside.”

“Thank you, that does solve it,” she said, a smile curving her lips.

“Honourless will be with us for one night,” Curia said, offering Thistle a long, hard look. “It won’t hurt us to be hospitable. We have a spare tent, and if you could be so kind, I’d like you and Maura to set it up for her the moment you leave.”

The vice-commander sighed. “Understood, Commander.” Then a side-long glance. “She had better not get used to it.”

Curia snorted. “Much to get used to, I’m sure—sleeping on roots inside a leaky tent.” She folded her arms. “Well, then, is there anything else you youngsters have to tell me about? No other curious finds?”

There was a concerted shaking of heads, and a couple of mutters of, “Estel ate a poisonous fruit.”

She supposed that would be a story to hear at the campfire tonight, but right now she was spoiling for a lie-down, and so she nodded to them and saluted. “Pleased to be back,” she said. “But now I must be reunited with my tent and its comforts.”

The crowd dispersed. As Anser passed, Curia stopped him with a raised hand. “If you’ll take Teru to the corral for me,” she said, gesturing towards her mount behind her. He flew forward to take the rein. She bent close to say, “thank you,” and then, in a whisper, “take all my packs to my tent at once, and do not open them, not for anyone, and not to satisfy your curiosity.”

His expression grew grim. “Of course,” he said. Then he elevated his tone. “I hope you find your tent laid out as you like it!”

“I’m sure I will,” she said, patting him on the shoulder.

Without waiting to watch Anser trudge off, Curia crossed the campground to her tent. Here beneath the rumble of waving branches and stirring leaves, she felt the sweetness of a sense of belonging settle around her like an embrace. She parted the flaps of her tent to be welcomed by a mouldy bedroll and a puddle at the entrance. Nothing looked more like home to her, she thought with a satisfied sigh as she hunched low to enter.

Curia unclasped her cloak and rolled it into a bundle, flinging it into a far corner of the tent. Crossing her legs atop the roll, she closed her eyes and kneaded at her leg where her artificial shin was clamped on, swivelling her ankle irregularly left and right. It didn’t take these long journeys quite as well as it used to, but neither did any of her other joints.

She sat waiting in that position, until another flutter of tent flaps announced Anser’s quiet arrival, barely five minutes later. Kneeling inside the tent, he lowered the two armfuls of canvas packs onto the floor.

“I promise I didn’t open them,” he said in his usual wavering tones, patting the top of the closest one.

“Appreciate it, Spire Boy,” she said, nodding up at him.

“Pleased to help!“ He rose from his knees to leave, but then his head snapped around and he exclaimed, “oh, yes! I have something to discuss with you, too. About the Tunnel we found a couple months ago.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Come back in,” she said. Quickly he drew back into a kneel inside the tent, door flaps cascading over his shoulders. “Did you investigate it?”

“We almost forgot to, but yes—before we left Zone Five, it suddenly occurred to me that you’d wanted us to check it again. So I reminded Commander Thistle, and she didn’t think we should take the whole unit on a chancy mission like that—so before the rest left for Zone Fifteen, she sent Maura and I to do the job. Both of us found the spot again, right where it had been before, right off the edge of a cliff, and went across to the other side." He frowned. "Tunnels are so strange, aren't they? Like a gap, a hole through the world, that you could slip through to get to the next one. Well, we fell through that one again, and landed all on our backs. It's an awful long trip down that one.”

Curia nodded along with every sentence of his recount. “What did you find there this time?”

“Lots! Maura had the idea to survey the Tunnel’s exit and record as much as we could. You know, in case the Duchy ever starts expanding over there. The Tunnel opens onto a boulder pile by a cliff, and there’s a short drop to the ground. Oh, and you have to be careful climbing down because some of the rocks on the pile are loose and would probably slide away if you put any weight on them. That’s useful to know, right?”

“All of it is,” she said, though she had temporarily busied herself with stretching her neck. “Did you venture any further?”

“Yes! We made it about three quarters of a unit down the beach, before we came upon the same military camp from before. I reckon it was military, anyway, or else it was some sort of school of physical training. We went up a tree to watch; some of them were obviously commanders, they yelled a lot and the rest were taking their orders. And they spent a great lot of time running in circles on the grounds. We watched them go at their morning exercises—not much different from ours, really—though they did them lined up in ranks and files…”

To this Curia frowned. “How long were you watching them?”

Anser’s sheepish grin returned. “An hour?”

She clicked her tongue. “Too long,” she replied.

“We were—we were up in a tree,” he replied, weaving and unweaving his fingers repeatedly. “They couldn’t have seen us unless they had sent someone just to look for us.”

“A tree’s not much cover, what would you have done if they had sent someone?” she muttered. “Keep your eyes open and your mind sharp, Spire Boy, danger isn’t always something you can feel in your gut. It sounds to me like the land on the other side of this Tunnel might be contested territory. There’s a military unit stationed on it, no?”

Anser’s heartbrokenly chastised look almost coaxed a consolation out of her, but she did not take her words back. “You’re right, I’ll do better next time,” he said, eyes cast down, pale hair tumbling over them.

“That doesn’t, of course, change the fact that you and Maura did excellent work, and brought back findings invaluable to the Duchess and to all of us,” she said.

“Just doing my job,” he said, saluting with a hand to his heart.

“But don’t you go people-watching in an uncharted world again. Save that for dull days at the camp.”

“I promise, Mother—” It took him a second to realise. “Curia! Commander Curia! I hope you join us for dinner! Good to see you again!” Finally pushed that last inch over the edge to mute embarrassment, Anser drew up and backward out of the tent, face disappearing behind the tent flaps as they fell shut in front of him.

Curia chuckled, shaking her head and tying the flaps shut once she was sure he wasn’t about to return. Breathing a sigh, she finally unbuckled the pocket of her shirt and, with a worn hand, slipped Orobelle and Dorian out.

“Is that boy gone?” Orobelle’s voice issued from the card in a poor attempt at a whisper, as she emerged.

“Yes, Your Grace,” Curia replied in an undertone, holding the Ace and Two of Diamonds close, “but it might serve you well to be a little quieter. There is a tent not three arms away.”

“I know, I heard what the boy said about your tents,” muttered the Duchess.

“I apologise for doubting your ability to overhear conversations from inside my pocket,” Curia murmured.

The surface of the card began to glow pink, then a light blossomed from its surface into the form of the young Duchess, seated on the edge of the bedroll. “Are you sassing me?” Orobelle snapped under her breath as the light faded to reveal her face.

“I would not dare,” said Curia, resting a hand over her heart.

Growling, Orobelle turned her gaze on the entrance. “Honourless. Where is she?”

“Thistle and Maura must be setting up her tent right now.”

“You let her out of your sight?” Orobelle hissed. “What if she runs off?”

Curia shook her head. “No one in the three worlds would welcome a prisoner who wears those chains.”

She pouted. “Even a life at large in the wilds would be an improvement on her life before. She has every reason to flee.”

“Then, if I may ask, Your Grace, how do you intend to keep her bound to your service once you’ve left here? The Fourth World doesn’t know our rules. You can’t possibly have her in chains, in sight, constantly. If she wants to then she will try eventually, and you’d have no way to give chase.” She shook her head. “You’ve placed a lot on the shoulders of someone you don’t trust to stay under your command, Your Grace.”

Shuddering, Orobelle glanced at Dorian, still clasped in Curia’s hand. “I will have to trust her,” she finally breathed, blinking her wide grey eyes, “or trust that she wants her name and her life back.”

“Those are firm tethers,” said the scout.

She shrugged. “What can I do? Even Blackrain couldn’t think of a better way than to chain her to a cliff.” Orobelle gestured for Dorian, and Curia held him out. The Duchess snatched the proffered card out of her hand and began to study it. “This is a waste of my time. How soon can we find that Tunnel and be done with this?”

Curia shook her head again. “Not today,” she said. “It’s an hour's journey away and there isn’t enough sunlight left.”

A sulk grew on the Duchess’ face. “Honourless has caused more trouble than she’s worth,” she muttered. “But I cannot do without her, and I know she knows it, urgh! Now put us back in your pocket, and see to it that we’re in the Fourth World by tomorrow morning! With Honourless!”

Revolving Door

A World Through the Hole

That was the last Curia heard from Orobelle. In a blink, she was but a card lying at the foot of her bedroll, and the rustle of trees through the tent canvas reigned over the clearing once more.

With a sigh, she patted the cards back into her pocket. That done, she spent a minute fishing around in her own satchel for her oil flask, pulling back the leg of her pants to uncover her left leg, steel from the shin down. Into the joints, she swirled the oil, twisting them back and forth with every drop until they no longer squeaked. Once she was pleased that she could move her toes again, she lay down to asleep, though she never really dozed off, remaining keenly aware of the bumps of roots and pebbles under her.

Curia opened her eyes an hour later to unexpected dimness. Blue light glowed through the crack between the tent flaps, and as her eyes adjusted, she also became aware of the low buzz of chatter beyond the canvas.

Her thoughts leapt instantly to Honourless. Without wasting time on her cloak, Curia shifted onto her knees with an involuntary grumble about the ache. As she moved out of her tent into the balmy evening air, she was rather stunned to be greeted by the scent of a gloriously roasting dinner, and the entire vanguard gathered on the firelit campground. Many alternate-forms abounded, animals screeching across the clearing, Afa in a corner turning into a pile of glittering dust repeatedly.

“Curia! Commander!” The call of her name ignited a thrilled chatter, faces turning to where she stood. A skewer of reptile meat was swung in her face, a strip of scaly hide flapping about as its swinger, Cui, jabbed it towards her. “Join our feast! Well, it’d be nice if you did, because it’s being thrown for you!”

She could finally make out the large dinner roasting on the fire: dripping fruits and a half-skinned reptile, freshly-hunted, draped in the leaves of young horsetails. She touched a hand to her heart. “You didn’t have to,” she answered, accepting the skewer nevertheless. “Who’s the hunter responsible for our dinner?”

Calibra emerged from behind a tent, hand shooting up. “I trapped it, because I’m smart,” they said with their mouth full of half-chewed food. “How about a drink?” Lifting the bag out of the crook of their arm, they threw the flap back to reveal a meagre four bottles of liquids delirium and satiation—all that remained of the several dozens that had come with the last delivery two months ago.

Maura frowned as they scooped a bottle out and attempted to hand it to her. “We should save the drink, no? We’ve made ten bottles last almost three weeks now; that’s all out the window if we—”

“Relax!” Calibra exclaimed, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “Or did you forget how when you became junior commander? We’ve found a Tunnel, Maura. I’m sure gifts of gratitude are coming our way as we speak!” They began sorting through the bag’s contents, picking up bottles in succession to check their labels. “All but one of these are delirium, anyway—won’t nourish us any more than smokes will, so no problems there.” They shrugged. “Speaking of smokes, there’s some back in the store. You could use one of those, it’ll get some fresh air inside your skull!”

They exchanged looks, all while Calibra uncorked a bottle and knocked it back, but the gathering did not need liquid delirium to get festive. Curia smiled but shook her head when they came by to offer one to her.

“I need to speak to Honourless. Where is she, wasn’t she invited?” she said.

Calibra’s head perked up. “Oh, well, we didn’t think you wanted that criminal here,” they replied. “She’s by the horses, you can go ask if cooked bark-lizard is to her taste.”

“By the horses?” she muttered.

Only a few were not flying about the clearing as she passed through it. She answered several greetings, pausing, even, to strike up conversation. Anser was passing fruits around on the campground; Curia waved him over, and accepted one berry bunch with a pat on the back as payment. Sol sat by his lonesome at the edge of a log, staring at the meat and fruit roasting on the fire, but even he smiled and offered a bow to acknowledge her as she passed. Thistle stood with the shadows flickering across her face, glaring at the roasting food as if knowing what Curia knew: that this was a larger feast than anyone should be throwing with their current stocks.

In one corner she heard a shout: “Light bless us, and good riddance to the Queendom! We would never have tasted meat like this again, if we had stayed.”

Laying a hand over the pocket where the cards were hidden, Curia picked her way over roots and out beyond the tents, glancing at the skewer in her hand that she’d almost forgotten about. She tore a chunk of meat off the top with her teeth.

Honourless was with the horses indeed, cross-legged on the mud and tentless, shoulders hunched beside Shrew, Thistle’s mottled horse. Her chains were looped around the dangling reins, and the horse seemed about as pleased about this predicament as she. She said nothing as Curia slowed to a stop, and knelt in the dried leaves beside her, holding out her skewer of meat.

“You haven’t eaten,” she said.

Honourless glared back, eyes glimmering in the moonlight through the branches, perhaps trying to read her eyes. Curia nodded once towards the skewer. She snatched the stick out of the scout commander’s hand, ripping chunk after chunk off with her teeth, chewing and swallowing each in a single gulp. She coughed spasmodically, as if choking, then continued to tear and swallow.

“What do you want?” she finally spat when she had swallowed the last of her current mouthful. “Here to kick the beggar?”

“A few more hours,” she said, “and you will go with the Duchess and her protector to the next world. I’ll come for you early tomorrow morning to let you out of these bonds.”

“Anything to never see a horse again,” she muttered.

“Thistle put you here, didn’t she,” Curia sighed, rising on one leg, then the other. She lifted the rein to inspect it. “Not even a knot here. Did she undo the reins just to tie you in them?”

“I don’t know what she did. She didn’t say a word to me. Didn’t even let me look.”

“That's no way to treat a guest.”

To that, Honourless snorted. “She’s more polite than anyone I’ve met in years. What reason had she to treat me well? I'm a criminal, aren't I?”

Letting the reins drop, Curia shook her head. “Honourless, if I may ask you something,” she said, then, glancing down at the pocket where Orobelle was hidden. Honourless let out a low grunt. “You know that you could flee right this very moment, if you wanted. Just cut the reins against a sharp rock, and be gone without a trace. I know someone like you would have tried, if you had wanted to. And yet you haven’t escaped.”

The exile, staring at her palms, began shaking her head. “If I can even remember how to,” she said bitterly. “It’s not easy like it used to be. Like when I was young, and consequences didn’t exist. Until the Baroness decided to teach me herself. I know what disobeying them gets you, now. I have the past twenty years to show for that one day I thought I could outsmart the damned Baroness.”

“But you would?” Curia said. “If you escaped now, you could live in freedom, in any world you chose. Without chains.”

“It’s not the chains that I want to be rid of,” she growled. “You know how it is. If your Duchess were good, she would have sent you home years ago, and yet you are still here. We’re both stranded out here in the Third World. No chance of ever going back home. Would you really call that freedom?”

“Not to digress, but I do, quite,” she answered.

“I’m not the same as you,” said Honourless. “The child, the Duchess, she said she would give me my name back if I did as told. The Light knows I hate being a servant—but this is the closest I’ve ever been—to going back to—”

She squeezed her eyes shut, ran a finger down her forearm, where the scar of some words—or some sort of name—had long refused to fade. That arm ended in a hand with two fingers, lost to some beast’s maw.

“What do you want, scout? Did the Duchess send you to question me? She doesn’t trust me to stay put?” She gritted her teeth. “Tell her this. I will do what I must to go back to the Barony, and back to my sister, and if that means seeing her quest through to the end, then fine. Good enough for her? Or is she going to keep being a mean little brat about it, as always?”

“I’m sure Her Grace will appreciate your frankness,” said Curia. “We leave at the first crack of dawn tomorrow. Be awake.”

“I’m not convinced of her loyalty,” muttered Orobelle, still a card in Curia’s pocket, in the muted dark of the chill early morning. “I don’t like her tone, that one.”

“She won’t run away,” Curia replied in a voice even lower than the rustle of leaves, trudging through them towards the corral. Her cloak was about her shoulders once more; it wouldn’t feel right to ride without it. “She doesn’t want to, not more than she wants to go back to the Barony. You needn’t do any more than keep her in an agreeable mood.”

Around them the Vanguard lay asleep in their tents, only a few loud snores audible from here. The commander’s footsteps across the leaf litter were the only movement on the grounds, a small bag of last night’s roasted fruit—found hanging from a stake in the campground—swinging in her left hand.

Honourless lay in the horse corral at the edge of the campground behind a row of tents, curled up by one of Shrew’s hooves. Curia called Honourless’ penance-name and knelt beside her, tapping her shoulder firmly.

With a yelp, the exile flipped right over and threw a punch at the scout, missing only because she reeled away in shock.

“Oh, it’s you.” Honourless rubbed her eyes, and then dropped back to the ground, sighing through her teeth. “Sorry.”

“No offence taken,” Curia replied, lowering the bag of fruit into her palm. “A meal before we leave?”

With a groan, Honourless propped herself up on her other elbow, staring at the bag as if expecting an animal to spring out of it. Only when she was satisfied it was not a trick did she finally sit up, fishing about in the bag with her left hand. She held the gleaming fruit to her mouth and bit through the rind with a crunch, gnashing the bitter mouthful between her teeth. Curia raised an eyebrow, but made no comment otherwise.

Between now and when Honourless finished her breakfast, Curia released Dorian. The two soundlessly loaded the Duchess’ luggage onto a placidly tail-swishing Teru at the far end of the corral, untangling his rein from the tree that held him. Dorian retreating back into his card-form, the scout commander returned to Honourless to find her dusting off her hands on her tattered rag of a sarong, the fruit bag crumpled at her feet.

“I’m done with you,” muttered the woman in Shrew’s direction, before following Curia to where Teru stood waiting.

They mounted as they had before, Honourless behind Curia on the saddle. “While I have been to this Tunnel’s mouth, I have never ridden there from here,” she said as she flicked Teru’s reins and prodded his left flank with the heel of her boot. He needed no further prompting, turning around in a tight arc and pacing with heavy hoof-thuds through the exit between Thistle’s tent and Curia’s own.

Almost as soon as they exited, their route met the bank of the stream, and ran parallel with it. A lone stake with a carved top, some ways upstream, affirmed that they were going the right way. Curia spurred Teru so that he broke into a long-gaited gallop. “Anser and Maura were kind enough to mark the route with carved posts,” Curia said. “I’m ever so proud of them. They’ve learned the ways of good scouting so well!”

“They were taught well,” Honourless replied.

Curia laughed, the sound joining the burbling of the water. “Glowing praise, coming from you,” she said.

The silence fell upon them again as they left the forest and the low whirring of insects, stars sweeping forth to take the place of leaves above their heads. At the forest border, the trees stood back like an army on the brink of battle, only grass lying before them. Here, the line of stakes diverged from the river and onto the gently-sloping plain before them, and up towards the scraggly peak, thinly-covered in horsetails.

The carved markers were impossible to miss now, standing in chains across the rising expanse. But from here, Curia knew the route without needing them. As they climbed the hill, so did the wind howl louder, until its wailing, and the roar of waving grass, drowned out all noise but the clopping of Teru’s hooves.

The chain of stakes ended at the top of the rise. There, something appeared between the horsetails: a dark, triangular frame of branches, bundled and stacked against each other.

Curia yanked on the reins. Teru stumbled to a stop barely arms away from the cliff’s edge, which anyone less familiar or careful would easily have missed. Dislodged stones tumbled over the verge. The noise of the wind dropped as they stopped, and the rustle of leaves, buoying up the chatter of insects, filled the gap it left.

She gave the right harness three tugs. Whinnying, Teru took a few steps backward. Once he had calmed down, she swung her leg over the saddle and leapt off, boots crunching in the leaves.

All was silent around them. The sky was purple now, the entire hillside, and the ravine beneath it, awash in the velvety shade. The grass was tall enough to prick at Curia’s knees, through the fabric of her pants.

She turned around to offer Honourless assistance she knew would be rejected, but the exile was ahead of her, jumping off Teru almost seconds after she did. She turned back, instead, to the arch of branches and sticks on their right. From here, she could now see that the sticks were bound together by tautly-knotted grass and vines, firmly enough that the structure did not shear with its weight.

“It’s…an arch,” said Honourless.

“Well-observed, Honourless. Have you seen a Tunnel before?”

“I can barely remember what they looked like.”

“They don’t look like tunnels…or like anything,” Curia replied, “except straight from the front. And that is why we mark them.” Even as she spoke, she took several steps to the right, to align herself with the archway. Then the Tunnel condensed into being, like a mirage: a refracted distortion of the jagged horizon beyond, forming the discernible shape of a horizontal funnel, ending where the cliff ended.

Honourless had appeared beside her; she squinted, took a few experimental steps back and forth, and then froze. For a long minute, she stared on past Curia’s shoulder, brow furrowing.

“That goes into the Fourth World?”

“I haven’t been through it myself. But if Maura and Anser are to be believed, then yes,” said Curia, unbuckling her pocket.

“And how…do you come back?”

“The same way.”

As they talked, Curia slipped the cards out of her pocket. In a flutter of skirts, Orobelle materialised, as did her temper. Her eyes swept her surroundings once round, before finally on the scout.

“Dorian, help me!” she snapped, yanking the card out of Curia’s hand and flinging it into the air.

Dorian, too, condensed into being, landing with a thud on one bent knee. “My duchess,” he exclaimed, rising in a single swift motion. “How can I help you?”

“My bags,” she said, with no motion to indicate where to turn his attention, but he needed no explaining, bowing with a hand to his heart. He was already walking towards Teru by the time Curia looked. “Honourless,” the Duchess said then, pointing at her, then at the horse. “You’re my serf now, too. Go carry my last bag.”

“I never agreed to be a serf!” she snapped.

“Something so obvious doesn’t have to be agreed upon,” said Orobelle. “Until your terms are fulfilled, you serve me. Do you want your name back? Disobeying me will not help your chances.”

Honourless’ face contorted into a snarl, but Orobelle glared unrelentingly back, and she soon managed to wrestle her expression into one resembling placidity. “We don’t have more time to waste,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”

Teru had by now been relieved of the last of his load, and Orobelle’s luggage was now borne by Dorian and Honourless. By then the purple of the sky had shifted to pink, and beyond the sheer drop, the forest was starting to glow red as the morning light illuminated the tips of leaves.

“I take it you aren’t coming along,” said Honourless in Curia’s direction.

“Me? Afraid not,” Curia replied with a shake of her head, six braids swishing. “I have a Vanguard waiting for me.”

“Shame, the only person whose company is worth the time here.”

“No more of this insolence, Honourless!” shrilled Orobelle from beside the Tunnel entrance. “I will not stand for this!”

“What will you do about it? Dismiss me?”

“Oho, the exile taunts me! Would you like to be dismissed?”

All empty threats. All this hot air was being wasted. Instead of answering, she trudged up beside the arch of branches and wood and crouched beside it, Orobelle's pack under her arm. She peered through the gap, into the rippling air beyond. Now all that she saw seemed to warp around the mouth of the Tunnel. The hairs on her arms stood when she was swept by a sensation she had only ever felt while ghosting: a folding of her form, and of the forms around her, as if something were trying to peel her off the surface of the universe.

She turned to the Duchess. “We’re both trapped in this quest together, you and I. Let us make it bearable for each other.” Then she looked straight into that invisible doorway, at the world waiting on the other side. Who knew what would become of them, once they crossed?

Wordlessly she stepped forward—one foot, then another, towards the archway—until her limbs could feel the warping tidal forces that swirled around the Tunnel.

Some age-old instinct within her opened its eyes.

And she leapt—through the arch, down the Tunnel’s gullet, over the edge of the world.

The wind whistled around her as she fell, and for moments she was gripped by terror that she had been lied to. Then the entire world began stretching into threads of colour around her, and her body rippled as if she were a reflection on the surface of a pond as a rock plummeted through it.

Images swirled and folded into each other, ones she knew and ones she didn’t: the forest, the sky, the sea. Blue became green at the edges, green became blue, the frayed edges of the worlds tangling into each other. She felt herself stretch and vibrate upon the interfering waves around her; years ago she would have shrieked, but now she simply let herself be dizzy.

She mouthed Alta’s name by instinct, like some long-fading memory, like some long-cherished charm.

It was like falling down a deep, deep hole, passing through ever layer of the earth below. All about her roared a wind she had not heard since her childhood. Nausea like she hadn’t felt in years twisted her insides.

Alta. Alta. That was her name. She remembered Alta’s name. Alta, what had her face looked like?

Somewhere close by, inside her and enveloping her all at once, she heard a child’s far-off scream. “Alta,” she tried to gasp out, but she could not hear her own voice.

“This shouldn’t be taking this long!” The shrieking went on, and before the sound began to fragment at the edges, Honourless realised it was not Alta she was hearing, but Orobelle.

Orobelle landed with a crunch. Her crinoline broke her fall, the frame springing back into shape, so she bounced off the flat rock where she had landed, and down onto the sand a few arms’ lengths ahead.

She landed with her palms to the sand, struggling to rise. “Honourless…” Amid a rattling, roaring rumble of water breaking on sand and stone, she began towards the woman lying ahead of her.

Orobelle managed but a single step, before stumbling to her knees in a dizzying rush. Bitterness rose in her throat; she squeezed her eyes shut. “Dorian! Get me a drink!”

Dorian was not hasty to comply as she would have liked, but he did eventually arrive, swaying a little on his feet. “Tunnels are known for having this effect,” he said, offering the flask to her.

It was several minutes of tending nausea later that Orobelle finally managed to rise to her feet, fuming as she beat out the sand caught between the beads of her dress. “Curia could have warned us,” she growled. But the roar of another wave snapped her out of her seething, and she turned to face the sound.

The first thing she saw were the wires. Rising out of the water, barely three feet from the tideline, was a net of criss-crossing metal cord strung up along a chain of poles, its top lined with thorny snarls of more metal wire. It was too much metal, too barbarically-shaped.

Through the strange net, and far beyond it, she saw a grey sheet of water that she knew must be the sea. She had only seen it once before, but even that memory did not do it justice. It was so endlessly flat and vast, it almost did not register as a real thing: so much empty sky arching above it, so much darkness across and below. Every now and then, the waters reared up like a beast, and crashed white on the beach before dragging away. Each wave left crushed pieces of glass and shell, turning the sand to a sort of whitish loam. Above them glowered the grey sky, the stench of salt soaking into the air.

Something about the sound of the sea, solitary and grey and remote, finally drove the fact of the matter in.

They were here, in the Fourth World, grey and strange, full of wires. Alien land trod by alien feet.

All the fussing over the logistics, the transportation, the "how do we get there" and "when do we get there", it was all past them. They were here.

There was no more to be done, besides get on with their task.

Orobelle climbed onto the lowest grey rock, boosting herself up with her palms and lifting her head. From her new vantage, she looked down along the coast. All along the white length of the beach, great rocks were planted intermittently, like fragments of an old mountain, half-buried in the sand. Inland, the sand met a thin mat of coarse grey heath in a ragged line.

And beyond the swells and rises of the thorny heathland rose several rectangular grey structures, the walls almost as well-hewn as those of the Duchy.

"The encampment," she murmured, and stepped off the top of the rock. “My cloak and the compass, Dorian.” As if he had rehearsed it in his mind, her protector unbuckled the largest of her bags, and swept the hooded cloak out of it, and soared to her side. He draped it around her shoulders, fastening the hood under her chin and throwing it over her head.

Into her hand he pressed the box bearing the device she had received from Lilian, twice the size of her palm. She flipped it open to reveal the metal contraption: an intricate instrument from Lilian’s lab, all knobs and levers that she dared not tweak. Under the glass, eight needles swivelled imperceptibly, and two free-spinning discs twirled in a pair of smaller inset displays.

Orobelle gave it a flick. The needles and discs spun, glinting in the dull light.

Almost instantly, two of the needles settled. They remained locked on their targets, gliding gently back and forth as Orobelle shifted it left and right. It soon became clear, as she paced about, that one pointed dead in Dorian’s direction no matter where she stood, exactly as it was meant to.

The other was pointing eastward—at the encampment.

“Have you found something?” whispered Dorian, who had been watching her pacing with perplexion till now, his shadow falling over her arm as he peered over her shoulder.

She nodded. “Honourless,” she announced, sliding the compass into the pocket inside her cloak. “Stay here and guard our bags—we will not be long. Dorian, come with me. We came here to find a Core, and one of them is here in the Fourth World. The camp is where we will start searching.”

The morning sun lifted into the clouds. In that murky light, they forged forward, slowed by the sinking of their shoes in the sand. The white expanse of the beach seemed deserted, but it bore the traces of the people who frequented this shore: shoe-prints with bizarre striping across the soles, a discarded paper box wrapped in a glimmering film, a paper stick with one charred end.

Rock after great rock they passed, ugly barnacle-crusted monoliths, their bases swathed in seaweed. As they passed by one of the shorter, stouter ones, a creature shot out of a crevice—a spider with a shell. Orobelle yelped, stumbling back. At the very sound, Dorian sprang forward to put himself between his duchess and the creature. He snatched it off the ground, and at once it went up in flames, smoke paling the air.

It was in the last echoes of this little altercation that Orobelle first heard it: the scrabbling of footsteps nearby, the clinking of a chain against rock.

She looked up, and doubled backward. There, atop the neighbouring rock, sat the silhouette of a person contemplating the sea. They seemed oblivious to the Duchess’ presence, staring resolutely out at the waves with their hair billowing in the wind.

Without waiting for Dorian, she began her march towards the rock. Perhaps she should have made her approach noisier, for even as she arrived at the base of the rock, they failed to respond to her presence.

Impatience welled up in Orobelle. Puffing up with indignation, she cleared her throat. “Good morning, knave!” the girl shouted.

The silhouette straightened. “Who’s there?” they called, glancing left and right before scrambling to the rock’s edge.

Inhaling, Orobelle braced herself: to order, to bargain, to make demands. Then she breathed out, and lifted her eyes.

The face that peered back down at her was framed in a shocking mane of unruly hair, fierce eyes matching her own in harshness. Around them, the air seemed to crackle with lightning.

"Who are you?"

Revolving Door

一日三秋 (A Day Three Autumns Long)

Author's note

This chapter contains depictions of transphobia, misgendering, racism, parental abuse, emotional abuse, and alcohol use

There’s a line painted on the ground, separating the nationless territory of the airport from the grey concrete of Beijing, China, home. For a moment, Hong Yi stands with one foot across the line amid the oppressive racket of the arrival hall, uncertain of which side to wait on.

Then he sees them coming through the doors, their faces stark in the bobbing sea of heads. A smile breaks through his glazed stare, and he makes a beeline through the milling crowd, arms outstretched.

There are the tearful hugs right there and then: from mother, father, Nai-nai, all with more streaks of snowy gray in their hair.

“Are you well?”

“I haven't slept in twenty hours, but I'm hanging on.”

He doesn't ask how they are doing. He can read it off their faces: they’re haggard and hollow-cheeked, and their faces crinkle and furrow even as he grins and laughs with them. His father’s crop of hair is thin as a drought-stricken plain, not the lavish black coif it once was.

He doesn’t ask. Now’s not the time for uncomfortable questions.

The conversation swerves sharply into the subject of Hong Yi’s classes. All the way down the intercity highway, they interrogate him about his classes and friends, about whether the professors are any good, about what he’s done during the breaks when he didn’t come home.

“I had a job at the aquarium,” he says as the first stodgy houses rise from the horizon.

“Did they pay you?” his mother turns back in the front seat.

He grins sheepishly. “Yes, but it was just intern rates, but yes.”

The Chen family home sits on a little street on the edge of Langfang. The garden is abloom when the five-seater car putters to a stop outside the narrow gate an hour later. Hong Yi watches, breathing the stale car perfume with his chin propped up on the sill, as the rest of his family pile out of the car. While his father lugs his bag onto the driveway and rolls it inside, he stares out the dusty-streaked windows at the plum trees, shorter than he remembers, and the drifts of petals at their feet.

When Hong Yi steps through the front door, he is greeted by the family’s awards wall. Just like that, the past three years in Boston fade like a mirage.

It’s all become a blank. Christmases that smelled of air freshener in malls, dropped ice-cream on sidewalks, that rich summer sun, and those days by the Charles River, feeling too different to really be a part of that world—they’re far away now, lost in the miasmic fog of this tiny house.

Shelves of trophies, their wood veneer peeling. His parents’ degrees in engineering and accountancy hanging from nails, beneath the watchful grey photographs of a sour Nai-nai and Ye-ye from the Forties. The scent of mothballs. The smoke from the joss sticks.

He is ten years old now, papers wrinkling in his hands as he memorizes endless lists of chengyu. Yi ri san qiu: that was always his favorite, something about its air of sadness, misty to his understanding, beyond his grasp. A day’s parting, or so they say, might as well be three years long.

He is eleven years old, poring over Zhongkao revision books, smudging pencil marks with the side of his palm. Now he listens to the rattle of gravel as his mother sprinkles it on the ground, piercingly aware that he has done something wrong, though he doesn't know what, and he will soon be cutting his knees on gravel.

Hong Yi stretches and yawns as he enters the living room, plopping himself down in his favorite spot on the couch, opposite his father. Frying oil hisses from the kitchen, sizzling as something is slapped onto the pan. Off the rattan coffee table, the surly man plucks an envelope, scoring it open with his nail. He makes a grumbling noise in his throat. Hong Yi studies his furrowed face, tips his head back to look at the ceiling.

It’s lower than he remembers, wide cracks splitting the paint. The ceiling fan is dangling by its wires. He frowns.

An aroma of frying snatches his gaze away from the unsettling dilapidation. “Ma! That smells great, what’s for lunch?” he calls out, springing out of the couch at once.

“One year away, and you’ve forgotten the smell of your favorite dish!” she shouts back, with the sound of a pantry slamming shut. “Zhajiangmian, don’t you tell me you don’t like it anymore?”

No, he does, but he’s had so many dishes since, he no longer knows if he’s got a favorite.

“No, no, it's good!”

It takes some time figuring things out, as his mom calls him to the kitchen to help serve out the bowls of noodles. When he returns to begin the meal, he starts pulling himself the chair at the corner of the table only to be met by both parents’ warnings, pointing out the wobbly leg. Picking a better seat and setting his own bowl down before it, he drops into the chair and immediately digs into the sauce-darkened noodles.

His slurping is interrupted by a disparaging look from his mother, and then he drops the chopsticks in a splash of sauce.

“Rude, Xiaoyi,” she clucks, shaking her head. “Aren’t you going to wait for your grandmother? You really are turning into an American.” He knows these words are said in jest, so he forces a laugh, while his petite grandmother hobbles in and settles, hunch-backed, into the last of the four chairs, bony knuckles on the armrests.

Looking out onto their tiny garden is a tall window, spanning the height of the wall, from floor to ceiling. The shadows of leaves fall through it, dappling the marble floor of their living room. As he eats the fried noodles, Hong Yi finds himself watching the shadows of leaves dance back and forth, every now and then sprinkling across the family’s new twenty-year-old CRT.

“How have you been, Ma-ma, Ba-ba?”

“Your Ba-ba was hospitalised,” says his mother.

The words knock the breath from Hong Yi's lungs. “What happened?” he finally coughs up the question.

“Right after you left, I started getting the runs. They just wouldn't stop, you should have heard me in the bathroom, moaning and groaning all day! And then came the fevers. Suddenly I was too sick to walk, and, tian ah, it was so much pain. Your Ma-ma nagged me to go see a doctor, and I told her to take me, so she took me. And you know what they found? Stage three cancer, in my gut, here.” He recounts it all so matter-of-factly, it’s almost as if Hong Yi weren't meant to worry about the revelation. Mr. Chen lifts his shirt to reveal an ugly surgery wound across his belly, pink and raw, the stitches yet to be removed, and he barks a laugh at the stares he gets in answer. “You missed everything, Xiaoyi!”

“Don’t laugh about it,” mutters his mother. “It’s not a laughing matter.”

“You just don’t want me to recover,” his father sulks, supposedly also in jest.

He can barely even muster a frown. It makes sense, now, why they all look as if they've seen the ravages of war or famine, why the paint is cracking and the fan hangs from a wire. Why his mother isn't wearing her favourite necklace anymore.

“Did your aquarium pay you well though?”

“I was earning seven thousand yuan a month. Pretty good for an internship, right? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Xiaoyi, Xiaoyi...do you know the Huang family's son is earning twenty-thousand a month as a receptionist?”

He grits his teeth. “I’m doing what I can, what more do you want?”

Her eyes narrow. “Don’t answer back!”

That is enough to see the conversation sputtering to an awkward stop. But now, his father chooses this moment to speak the words he has been dreading ever since he stepped inside the house. “Ei, Xiaoyi, why’d you cut your hair so short? Are you trying to look like a boy?”

He’d like to tell them: but I am. He’s gotten so used to speaking, being his own person unfettered. But that courage belongs to the other him, that other life. As if he were tangled in a net, his home holds him fast, and he can only draw in a breath to answer, and then shut it.

He bows his head and eats. He sees the wary glance his parents exchange. The food is a bland mush in his mouth now, and he fights to swallow it all in a gulp.

“I’m going to my room,” he says, standing abruptly.

Behind him, he hears a mutter, about insolence and where he must have learned it. There’s a barely-caged grief to their voices, as if they believed they were slowly losing him to the tide of change that has swept this little house in these three years.

And he suspects that this feeling—of not quite fitting into his own home, like a peg jammed in the wrong hole—is all a part of being who he is.

The day the airport staff call him “Sir”, he knows there’s no turning back.

He wants to cast it all off now like an ugly coat, that life of playing a part for his parents; he wants nothing to do with it. But some rope of sentiment tethers him, and it hurts to even think of cutting himself loose: he can't bring himself to throw this name, and its sixteen years of history, away. So the new one is indistinguishable in English, written differently in his mother tongue.

He tears his past away in stages: first the clothes and the hair, though his first haircut is awful, the buzz cut uneven across his scalp. Looking in the mirror, he decides with a laugh that he likes this grotesque haircut more than any other he’s ever had, feeling like some ancient weight has lifted from him. His wardrobe is already exactly as he likes it, all slack jeans and baggy nerd tees, the occasional ugly tracksuit. It will be a while yet before he can afford clinic visits, or even have them without his parents’ consent. This will do for now, he thinks: this is his new normal. Almost everyone gets it right without asking, without him having to ask, and it makes him feel like a fish in spring waters, unbridled and alive.

Of course, there are those who mess up with the pronouns and are all over him in apology immediately; and there are those who hiss at him as if he were some vile demon trying to fool good children. A thin film of guilt coalesces on the surface of his joy. Sometimes, he's afraid they see a costume—but he has so much of that going on already, language and genetics, and the assumptions that orbit in their gravity. There is so much that he has to fight against with every new connection he forms.

And he tells himself this every day, though he knows it's wrong: that it's all a part of being who he is.

The BU Marine Biology class does all the same lectures together throughout the week, so Hong Yi remembers all their names and faces barely a week into freshman year. There’s Jacob, or as he insists, Jake, big dude with a bigger love for his friends, and an endless supply of snacks in his backpack. Peter (“Pete”), who was stony-faced until the day Hong Yi offered him an electric gag pen in the hallway—his moment's humiliation was over quickly, and both had a furious guffaw about it by the preserved animal display. Berrigan, from Down Under, with the accent to show for it—almost definitely as much of an overachiever as Hong Yi is, if not more. Andrea, who’s better at drawing dissection diagrams than any of them, and also better at spilling soup on his shirt. Tana, who's used every digital audio workstation in existence, who ran headfirst into him on the way to class the first day—who can barely hear you half the time. And Mae, who's bleached her hair white and calls it the new emo, always hiding her cutting humour behind a veneer of apathy.

They form an chat group that ensures that the bad jokes don’t end when they part ways at the college doors. By Hong Yi’s suggestion and Jake’s enthusiastic lobbying, they get in the habit of going out somewhere new every Friday night: crashing parties, storming arcades, getting themselves blackout drunk.

In the last aftertaste of summer, they take a day trip down to New York to watch a concert by some obscure band that Mae's into—too obscure to be doing shows outside of local underground venues with empty beer cups littered across the floor. The boys attempt to join Pi Sigma Upsilon together, but the head honcho Harold demands they last out a series of hazing rituals, including a beer pong game against the house.

Of these many, many Friday nights, one sticks out in his thoughts all the time: the one where it’s just Andrea and he.

There’s always places around Boston where Hong Yi can find people who don’t take one look at him and furrow their brows in bewilderment. People who don’t judge, who don’t care what parts you have, who get involved with whoever they click with, sometimes more than one person at a time. Very soon he finds a pamphlet pinned to a noticeboard about the Alpha Chi chapter, the closest thing to an LGBT alliance at BU, impossible to miss with its gaudy lettering: an invitation to its annual open-door party on Friday.

So he arrives that Friday evening at the recreation center wearing a plain purple tee and all his charm. The throb of synth music through the evening draws him down the avenue, a layer of chatter becoming audible over the thud of the bass. And when he steps into the lobby, his eyes widen.

The lights glow bright in his eyes, and strait-laced Beijing seems so far away now: an ocean of faces swim in the shifting light, girls kissing girls and boys cuddling boys and many whose gender he cannot tell from looking.

He bumps into someone at the snacks bar as the lights are turning pink: she is as tall as Hong Yi with cropped blonde hair, blue eyes like the sky, and a grin that stirs up a sudden hot surge of nervousness in him.

“Hey,” he calls out, putting on his best smile while he scrambles for an opener. “Have you tried the cheese chips?” Fuck.

Charitably, she takes the hook. “Nope, are they any good?”

“You gotta add the cheese with your imagination,” he answers.

She laughs as Hong Yi snatches for a plastic cup of beer, and when he turns to meet her eye again, her hand is extended.

“Hale,” she says, shaking his hand.

“Hale! Nice to meet you,” he replies, melting into casualness. “I’m Hong Yi.”

“Hon Ee!” Hale echoes enthusiastically, which he can’t help snorting at. “You pretty cute. What’s your major?”

They hit off over bland beer and cardboard chips, and the whatever-th reboot of Spiderman, in a washed-out projection on the wall. They laugh together, fingers creeping towards and around each other's. By the end of the evening, Hale is lying with her head on Hong Yi’s lap. At the door, she halts him with a hand to his shoulder, moving in for a kiss.

“See you tomorrow,” she whispers as she pulls away, smiling lightly. One more clasping of hands, and she leaves, and he smiles after her, heart booming.

Things nosedive two dates later, when Hale adds Hong Yi on Facebook.

He’s startled to be cornered outside the lecture theater, where with a stricken gape she asks, “Are you…a dude?”

And he nods. “What did you think?” he answers, eyebrow quirked.

“I thought…you were…something else,” the words come haltingly out of her.

Three weeks later, it crashes and burns, when she finally admits she’s “confused and still trying to wrap my head around it, I’m sorry”.

It’s a good thing he only had three weeks to let the whole thing start sinking in. Still, when he gets to Friday drinks with the Marine Bio kids, he wears all his glumness on his sleeve.

The moment he shuffles into the bar, Pete lowers his mug. Tana and Andrea instantly abandon a conversation about dinoflagellates.

“Your girl dumped you?” Jake asks at once, and when he slumps at the counter, head propped up on an elbow, and raises his hand in a reluctant thumbs-up sign, everyone’s upon him with back-pats and their own stories of their romantic misfortunes.

“Hey, I got dumped after a month, back in senior year, so I know where you are,” soothes Tana, rubbing his shoulder.

“I don't get it?” Berrigan exclaims. “You're the coolest mate I got! What's up with her?”

This, he thinks, is real nice, the best part of having friends you see every day.

But he still isn’t quite sure if they look at him and wrestle with what to think of him, like Hale did. And he knows he cannot explain why it all went so wrong, not in a way that they'll understand, not in a way that he dares to.

Hong Yi tries again and again, he really does. Girls, boys, people who are neither. He gets his fair share of “you’re so short tho’”s and “I’m not into Asians”s and “you’re like a real life anime”s, and none of them stay or settle for more than a couple of weeks. He casts his net far and wide, between studying and concocting large-scale pranks: hitting, with diminishing enthusiasm, on people at bars, in class, and at the water fountain.

But then comes the night. The one where it’s just the two of them.

He can’t deny that, among the group, it's Andrea whom he’s been getting on with the best. The two are the ones always sharing the groanworthy puns, and they get lunch together at the Subway downstairs without the others. In their free time, they've tried learning each other's languages, laughing over mispronounced Z's and R's.

Everyone is a little out-of-place in this bunch, but Andrea is different in a lot of the same ways he is: more of an artist than a sportsman, hiding more than anyone else—something he can sense without having to ask. He is a bit of a puzzle in that way, and all puzzles want to be solved.

Hong Yi figures out a small part of the puzzle that Friday, when he runs into his friend at the door to the Alpha Chi club room.

The instant their eyes meet, there’s a protracted hands-in-pockets moment before Hong Yi finally croaks out his name.

“Hey, Hong,” Andrea replies, finally daring to smile as he approaches. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Didn't you?” he laughs. “I'm here basically every other week.”

They enter together. And they leave together, full of chips and beer and new knowledge of gender theory. There’s a little silent walking on the way back to the Warren Towers, until Hong Yi pipes up, “I didn’t know you were—uh—"

“Gay?” His companion laughs. “I didn’t either. And to be honest, I still don’t know. I was just…reading some comics a few nights ago when I started to realise I might find guys attractive?”

“Crushing on a fictional hunk, huh?” he laughs, jabbing him in the ribs with an elbow.

Andrea glances away. “Maybe…”

Hong Yi snorts. “No shame in it, man, the artists draw them pretty hot,” he replies.

It’s a minute before he composes himself. “I mean…it was the first time, but I figured—I might as well go see what it’s all about, see if it makes it clearer. I’m just curious, that's all. That’s okay, right? They’re okay with people just…not sure?”

“Totally! But did it make it clearer?”

He looks up in thought. “Eh…not really, no, I think I need a bit more time.”

“Take all the time you need. No rush on figuring out yourself.” Hong Yi grins at Andrea under the yellow glow of a street light on Commonwealth Avenue.

Then, as if the conversation had cast some sort of spell, he realises he likes how his dark curls frame his eyes, and how he talks, quiet and a little shy.

“Oh,” he breathes.

“What?”

“Nothing, I just—think it’s crazy I didn’t even mention it to you guys.”

Andrea shrugs. “We never asked. I guess that’s just how it is with Boston dudes…they're all ‘cool with the gays’, but no one of them want to talk about it, you know?”

“Yeah, for real. They're kind of cagey about anything even a little personal.”

Andrea laughs, then his voice dwindles to a sigh. “I can't guess how the rest really feel about it.”

“Yeah. They haven’t said anything, but I can't be sure either. Y'know, if they're cool with me, or…”

His companion holds up a finger. “Hong, I’m definitely cool with you,” he finally says. “Don’t tell them, but I actually think you’re the coolest one of us.” He comes to a stop outside the Shields Tower, card in hand. “See you tomorrow at Ecology class!”

Hong Yi walks the rest of the way alone and clutching at his face. “Oh god,” he repeats to himself. “Oh god.”

Hong Yi lasts about three weeks without letting out a peep about the severe crush he's developed overnight. At every turn he resists the temptation to act on it: to try flirting with an unsuspecting Andrea every time they're side by side, to make any gestures that could even be construed as signalling romantic interest. Partly because he's certain it will all go disastrously if he tries...and how.

Halloween comes and goes, the windows dressed in paper skeletons and bats, pumpkins popping up at an alarming rate on lawns and doorsteps. Hong Yi celebrates it by accepting Jacob’s dare: with a pumpkin in his backpack, and the aid of an anti-gravitational boost, he clambers through a clerestory window and onto the roof of the Marsh Chapel, and impales the unsuspecting fruit on the cross of the steeple.

The ornament remains there for three days, its juices flowing down the eaves, before a crew finally scales the building by means of harnesses and plucks it off. By then, the fruit—and footage of his daring climb—has been seen and liked at least half a million times on every social media platform, and Hong Yi has enjoyed a dressing-down in the Head of Science’s office, though it isn’t enough of an offence to warrant any other punishment.

He finds the Marine Bio kids waiting for him outside. “Ayy, good on you, taking one for the team,” calls Jake, grinning broadly when they reach the lobby, slapping him on the back. Soon the rest get in on the back-slapping action, which only manages to make Hong Yi’s back sore.

“Oi, how many of us are doing dinner at IHOP tonight?” Berrigan cuts in then.

There’s a bout of general nodding, before Hong Yi remembers the chapter meeting this evening that he’s been meaning to attend. “Wait, no! I, have something on,” he cuts in.

“Ah, same,” Andrea adds, exchanging a glance with him.

There’s a murmur of puzzlement among them. “The same thing for both of you?” Pete pipes up.

“Nah,” Hong Yi says quickly.

“Yeah,” Andrea puts in at the same time.

There are several raised eyebrows and exchanged glances. “Okay,” mumbles Jake. “We’ll save you guys some leftovers? They make some pretty sick dinner pancakes.”

“Yeah, pretty sick,” Hong Yi answers, sticking out his tongue to mime vomiting, while everyone else erupts in a chorus of groans.

While their friends are off partying with pancakes, Hong Yi slips out of the dorm with just his wallet and phone on him. The crisp night bites at his fingertips, even tucked into his pockets, and he can barely feel his feet as he strolls by the bare, twiggy trees.

This time, he stops and waits at the gate to the Shields Tower, shuffling a foot on the ground, the noise occasionally drowned out by the whiz of a car driving past, or the chug of the light rail.

“Hey, Hong!” The call brings Hong Yi's gaze: before his presence registers, Andrea has come up to his side, throwing an arm around his shoulders and not seeming to notice the effect this has. “Thanks for waiting for me. Is it movie night tonight?”

He swallows. “Yeah, they’re screening that Hairspray movie,” he answers, faking casualness. “Who picks the movies, anyway? It's always second-rate adaptations and reboots...”

“In the end, it really doesn’t matter what we watch,” Andrea says. “It’s an excuse for people to get cuddly.” He laughs, and hot dang, does that laugh flood Hong Yi’s stomach with proverbial butterflies.

“What've you been up to?”

“Homework, reading, games, not much. And you?”

“Just watching some videos from that marine channel I follow. Did you see the one with the octopus throwing its lunch at the researcher? It just, crawled out of the tank. And threw it. Right on his keyboard. Oh my god.”

“Oh no, they're learning...”

Mid-laugh, his companion turns, their eyes meeting for several years too long. And when Andrea breaks eye contact first, that’s when Hong Yi makes up his mind.

“Hey, Andy,” he says, maybe solemnly enough that his companion's head perks up in surprise and he turns with a look of concern.

“Yeah, Hong?”

“If I asked, I mean, if I ever did, would you ever…wanna…go out with me?”

It takes all his strength not to break eye contact, but Hong Yi manages it. Andrea blinks at him. “Like, romantically?”

“Yeah. Just, y’know,” he sticks out his lower lip and tilts his head left and right, “a bit of that, dating and stuff.”

An entire universe of emotions fleets across Andrea’s face: a smile melting into a frown, into a quirking of eyebrows. “I’m not…sure.”

“Oof. Okay. I getcha.” He makes an OK-sign with his hand.

No matter how many times it has happened, Hong Yi still struggles with the part where he has to keep his face straight when the words hit.

"Sorry," Andrea breathes, withdrawing a little into himself when he reads the look in his companion's face anyway. “I mean, yeah, I…I…I’ve thought about it, definitely. I've thought about it. But I’m still…not sure. About me.” His face falls. “I just started to question my orientation a month ago, so this is a bit—fast?”

They’ve arrived at the entrance of the recreation centre, the leaves all scattered at their feet, various shades of dark in the streetlight. “Yeah, I get it, take your time,” he replies, thinking entirely too long before finally deciding to pat his companion’s back.

“Thanks,” Andrea answers, offering a consolatory smile. “I’m sorry. It really isn't your fault. If you…meant it, when you asked.”

Though the disappointment lingers like the echo of a sour note, Hong Yi laughs. “Duh, I meant it,” he replies as they continue their stroll. "But it's okay, man. I don't get to tell you what to feel. Let's forget about it?"

“Can do, if you'd like that.”

Some strange bittersweetness is welling up inside him now. Some part of him is glad his friend would be so frank and respectful about it, as he knew and trusted he would be—even if the rest of him is still smarting with the sting.

But that bittersweet sting, coming unexpected at every turn, is starting to wear on him. And he is starting to learn that it's all a part of being who he is.

Day after heady day flies by into winter, so many of them spent with these friends he already knows will always be in his life. After an initial week of difficult, stammered conversations, Hong Yi has become adept at pushing his lingering rue out of his mind’s reach. Andrea laughs along with his jokes as eagerly as ever, and still has lunch with him at Subway, seeming to think nothing of what was said that day along Columbus Avenue. As the exams loom closer, all of them try to set to work independently. But as the natural order dictates, everyone eventually returns to Hong Yi and his cornucopia of knowledge and well-kept notes.

The air goes thin and dips below thirty-two. The first snow falls. Christmas muzak fills the malls down Commonwealth Avenue and on some days, the Prudential Tower vanishes in fog. They are bundled up in winter wear, stopping by at the packie on the way to some sleazy new club in the city where the people kiss and sway, music throbbing in their throats, and maybe somewhere in those lights, he will find…

Hong Yi wakes up.

The ceiling is too low, and its paint is cracked, pieces of the plaster cornice scattered in the corner of his room.

His bed creaks when he leaps off it onto the tiles, almost expecting the carpeting of his dorm in the Warren Towers. But the walls are too close, and his bed is too short, and he doesn’t feel like himself.

Birdsong fills the silence of the living room. A window is open, lace curtains billowing, and in the beige couch beside it sits his mother, opened envelopes scattered on the coffee table before her. “Good morning, Ma-ma,” he greets her.

“Xiaoyi,” she answers, without lifting her head from the bills. “Breakfast is in the kitchen.”

He waits, by habit, for more of her response. But she doesn’t continue. Shrugging, he goes to the kitchen: there’s a tray of pork buns waiting for him on the stove, so he takes one. The back door lies ajar, and before he can think, he’s walking out into their garden.

Hunched on a stool in the garden, in no more than a singlet and tattered shorts, sits his father: the farmer’s son, tan lines across his blemish-speckled upper arms. His thin grey hair flutters in the wind, as does the hem of his singlet: there’s a lot of slack to the fabric, like he’s lost half his weight since buying it.

“Ei, Xiaoyi,” he calls out at the sound of Hong Yi's footsteps on the earth, grinning. “I keep forgetting you’re home.”

Hong Yi comes to sit on the brick ledge beside him. “Wa, forgetting your own—” he chooses the next word carefully—“child?”

His father, Chen Jue Yao, stares out beyond the fence holding in the family’s meager plot. “A year is a long time, you know. I got used to not seeing your face,” he says. “It was like…healing over a wound. If I had kept wanting to see you, then I would have been in pain every day. Especially in the hospital. Especially when your Ma-ma was yelling at me for being sick. Like it was my fault!” His eyes glaze over with these words. “It was just suffering, and I was always alone. Every day, I wanted to turn around and see you at my bedside. I wanted to see my daughter.”

It hits like the sting of a slap. Hong Yi does his best not to wince; his father’s face is too troubled by his own agony. The awkward resentment morphs to fear, to frustration, to guilt. He doesn't shed any tears, like he never has.

“I wanted to see you and Ma-ma, too,” he chokes.

Jue Yao meets Hong Yi’s eye. “Yi ri san qiu,” he murmurs, stroking his chin like an enigmatic sage. Then the weight of his pain suddenly making itself seen as he scrunches up his brow, ageing his face by three years. “your Ba-ba must be getting old. Every day was far too long, and hurt too much...like waiting for three autumns to pass.”

And Hong Yi knows part of him missed this too, despite everything, despite the ache of being here. Just like how part of him misses that life all the way across the world, despite the ache of being there.

His life lies in two pieces, in two worlds, and neither one feels quite like home.

And this, he thinks, is all a part of being who he is.

Revolving Door

Supercell - I

If you're here because of the link I posted on April 1, here is the thing you're looking for.

This chapter contains depictions of firearms, depictions of graphic injury and (mild) body horror, mentions of Nazis, mentions of war.

“Come back when the war is over. Then I might consider joining you.”

On that evening in April 1945, Captain Lovelace walked to the gates of the Dunkirk camp, keys ringing on her belt and two ex-prisoners in tow: a long-haired bodyguard and a child duchess. She did not speak to either of them as the trio forged through the wind, and they were content to remain silent.

As evening fell, not a lamp was lit across the campground, and their eyes glittered in the dark between the settling lights. She marched them wordlessly through the darkness, until they were at the security booth by the chained gate, and the plaque bearing the name of the camp.

Unlocking the chain, the Captain flung it aside, and waved them through. “The town of Dunkirk is an hour east on foot,” she said.

And they did not answer as they passed through the gates and returned to the wild.

“I’ll teach them a thing about being proper hosts!” Orobelle snarled through her teeth, once they had walked out of earshot. “With my own army, if I had to.”

They passed a signpost in the dark, marking the road down which they were walking. Orobelle stared at it, before reaching into the pocket in her silk skirt for her translation glass. It had occurred to her that they might need to remember the location if they were to return for Lovelace, who was a Core no matter how much she wished she were not.

Holding the glass up to the text, she filtered through the flickering amalgam of meanings, eventually reading it phonetically as: Rue Victor Hugo.

They diverged from the road onto the packed sand at the top of the beach, and began to descend the gentle slope into the salty roar of the sea, pulling their cloaks tight in the blustery night. Orobelle, ever light on her feet, drifted over the sand like a ghost. But Dorian’s metal-clad boots sank into the sand, so with every step he had to lift his knees twice as high. Still he kept apace with the young Duchess as they wound towards their landing point, marked by the jagged cliff peeking above the dark thicket.

Another of the Fourth World wire nets loomed, the same kind that had marked the boundaries of the encampment, topped by coils of metal barbs. They stopped before it’s height, peering up.

Orobelle planted her hands on her hips. “Dorian, turn.”

On cue, his form melted into pink light and contracted, the Two of Diamonds fluttering onto the sand where he had been before. Stooping, she picked him up and slotted him through a gap in the fence.

Before he had landed on the ground on the other side, Dorian had rematerialized in a spark-spitting flare of pink light. She vanished into card-form almost as soon, landing less than an arm’s length from him on the other side. Reaching out, he pulled her through the gaps.

They trudged back in the blue moonlight and the wind, towards the foot of the cliff where they had arrived. No more grumbles left the Duchess, for the wind would drown them out, but as it howled louder, she began to take more urgent strides, the fabric of her cloak gathered in her fists and pulled tight around her.

They crested the last sandy rise, and there, they came to a stop.

There was no one there.

The sea had advanced up the coast to swamp out the place beneath the cliff where they had left Honourless and the luggage. "Wh—" Orobelle barely managed to finish her cry; she was already racing across the sand, shouting for Honourless. Dorian hastened his pace after her. Turning to coast and then inland in turn, they called out Honourless’ name, and then increasingly vulgar epithets on Orobelle’s part, to no answer. Gritting her teeth, the Duchess scurried down the rest of the beach to the line of the swishing waves.

It was with a shriek of dismay that she spied three dark shapes rolling in the waves, straps caught on the rocks: she would not have recognised them for her luggage if not for the loose straps flailing about. “Honourless!” she cried, while Dorian flung his boots off and splashed into the waves, sand sucking his feet in. He lunged for all three of the sodden bags, and dragged them up by the straps to the dry sand, like drowned carcasses.

Dropping straight to his knees, he rescued the most important things first: her treasure box, the dresses, four bottles of liquid satiation each. As each one entered his hands, steam blossomed off its surface. Then he shook to dislodge the sand and salt.

Despite his best efforts, all the dresses dried stiff with salt. He raised each one before Orobelle for her inspection, each one making her face sink even farther as she shook her head in defeat.

“It's not worth it, Dorian. We will save the gems. And burn the rest.” Snatching the dress from his hands, she stumbled towards the nearest boulder, and dropped onto its flat top, barely beginning to sigh when her head perked up and she turned to him again. “Get us some material for the fire. Up the beach. There were some thickets.”

“Yes, my duchess.”

When Dorian had whirled away with a bow, Orobelle laid the dress on her lap, and set to work in the dark. Her hand closed around the pendant on her neck; she lifted the chain over her head with shaking hands and slid the blade out, squinting at the gems sewn into its hem. Pressing its edge against a thread, she sawed at it till it frayed and broke, and the bead of topaz came away in her hand.

Her protector returned when she had almost salvaged a full vial of sequins and gems, a bare dress lying on her lap. In his arms was a tangle of dry thorns and twigs piled almost past his face, which he crumpled together as best he could, and dropped into a natural pit in the sand.

He crushed the twigs and leaves into the sand with his boot, and twisted his heel in. A flame erupted from the point of contact, catching rapidly on the litter.

“Are you cold?” he asked, turning to her then. Arms still gripping her cloak tight about herself, she did not answer. “I’m sorry, I ask the obvious.”

As he seated himself, warmth suffused the air, and Orobelle finally let her fingers loosen, though her grimace did not soften. She gathered a dress from the ground and handed it to him. Taking it, Dorian drew his sword out of its sheath, its edge gleaming orange. He leaned it against his knee, point up, and began sawing its edge against a thread.

In the firelight, they picked the silk and lace bare, neither speaking as the fire crackled and the wind stirred around them, the chill now bearable.

Within the hour, they had filled three empty vials with glittering stones, and that was all they could save. Stormy-faced, Orobelle scooped her treasure box out of the smallest of the three luggage bags, and popped it open, unceremoniously adding the rattling glass bottles to her collection.

Then, standing with the dresses gathered in her arms, now drab and tattered, she flung them into the fire. “Honourless! You deserve your name!” she screamed as she did, the flames snarling and rearing up. “Why did I take her? Why did I think—”

She dropped back into her seat, head bowed. Her words were replaced by sobs.

Dorian turned. Her hunched shoulders were shaking. Cautiously, he shifted beside her, but stopped short of reaching out in comforting gestures, for it wasn't his place. “My duchess, I’m sorry,” he said simply.

She banged a fist on the rock and stamped a foot. “She hates me. That’s why she dumped my things and ran off. Everyone hates me.”

“She may not have meant betrayal, or any ill will at all,” said Dorian. “Perhaps she had no choice but to leave. We have been away a day.”

Orobelle threw her head back. “What are we going to do now?” Sagging backward against the rugged face of the next boulder and drawing her cloak around herself, she blinked tears out of her eyes and gazed out at the sea. “We can’t go forward without her. And she couldn’t even ghost back to the Third World. Useless.” She gritted her teeth, and raised her head, and some semblance of her ducal fierceness returned. “Since we are already here, we might as well continue. Starting with Lovelace. She is coming with us, whether she wants to or not.”

Dorian glanced up past the fire, in the direction of the encampment where they had been imprisoned. “How should we convince her?” he answered. "She was adamant about not leaving."

“You heard what she said,” Orobelle replied, voice hardening. “She will only join us after the war ends.”

“Do you mean that—”

“We shall end this war.”

It was clear Orobelle already knew what she would do, and she had decided this in no more than a word.

They had to find more information, and they could not know where to find it themselves, so someone else would have to take them there. She spoke of her ideas to Dorian, as rudimentary as they were, as he unrolled the salt-crusted pallets on the sand, and he committed them to memory.

With her plan in mind, she slept soundly on her pallet, the losses of the day drowned out by anticipation for the next. Dorian stayed up a little longer, to keep the fire stoked.

It was past dawn, and all was grey about them, when they made their move the next morning. The same trick by which they had passed through the fence last night let them back onto the encampment grounds with ease. When Dorian had pulled Orobelle through, she did not turn back on the other side. With her card-form held fast in his hand, he sprinted across the encampment, pausing once in the shelter of a tree to watch for oncoming guards. In the gap between their glances, he flew across the remaining length of the grounds, to where the metal carriages stood in ranks, their splotchy green bodies dusted with earth.

He dove under the closest, sliding across the dirt between its broad wheels, luggage and all. Rocks scattered in his wake and spattered his face.

It stank of some unnameable acrid chemical beneath, and there was no wind to waft it away. For a minute, he twisted and shifted in the tight space until he found a position where he could rest his head comfortably upon the ground while having a full view of the outside. "Let me see," said Orobelle's card. He stood her up against his arm, facing the gap.

Then, it was time for the wait.

The hours blurred into each other here beneath the arcing path of the sun, marked by the clockwork comings-and-goings of the encampment. The feet of several phalanxes of marching soldiers passed, footsteps in disconcerting synchrony. Many specimens of another kind of carriage, smaller than the one he hid beneath, rumbled by several times, coming to a stop to emit and admit passengers. Half of these carriages stayed. The rest left as soon as their business was done. They heard many a passer call out the names of the patrolling guards: Marks and Fieldtown—Leyton.

By the time the twelfth similar carriage had passed through the gates, Dorian was massaging a crick in his neck. It was no matter to him; he had stood watch over a volcano for half his life. If anyone had asked, he would have admitted he was getting rather hungry, but no one asked, most definitely not Orobelle. And silently he watched, and waited on.

Too soon, the long day began to draw to its warm close, and the sun began its golden descent behind curtains of rippling clouds.

It was in that lukewarm light that a new vehicle—the first of its kind—came hurtling through the gates, its two wheels screeching to an arcing stop before the head building.

The rider’s boots swung over the side of the odd mount and march away in a hurry, with a cry of, “Delivery for Lieutenant-Colonel Clarke of the Number Sixty Commando!” Those boots vanishing into the doorway, and his footsteps dwindled out of earshot, to leave just Orobelle, Dorian and Leyton on the grounds.

“This one,” Orobelle murmured from beside Dorian.

The man began to crawl out of hiding on his elbows, wincing with each crack of his joints. Then he saw that Leyton’s boots had begun in their direction, and recoiled an inch. He watched as the guard marched to a stop, turned, and finally followed the messenger into the building.

The moment those boots vanished into the shadow of the doorway, Dorian thrust himself out from under the carriage and sprung to his feet, luggage bag hugged close. Even with its weight, he flew across the stone, darting behind the wall of the officer’s quarters.

Now he was close enough to examine the messenger’s mount. It was an odd thing, this soulless metal horse, dusty green with broad black wheels instead of legs, dirt caked in its grooves. A chest was tied to its back, newly-unlocked for the retrieval of Clarke’s delivery.

“You stay here,” Orobelle whispered, re-emerging in a swell of light. She plucked the translation glass from her pocket and tiptoed towards the chest, flicking the lid open. Inside it, letters: a dozen white and brown envelopes, some of their edges trimmed in blue and red.

A door clicked behind her, and Orobelle choked on her breath, scooping as many letters as she could into her arms. She flew back into the lee of the wall.

A set of unfamiliarly even footsteps passed through the doorway: a soldier’s and not a messenger’s. They marched the other way in the crunching dirt, and quickly faded from audibility.

Letting go of her held breath, the Duchess thrust the pile into Dorian's arms and began to pluck them out one by one, scrutinising each one's addressee in turn with the glass, and each time with a deepening scowl. Every single one was addressed to a lesser leader of the military: a lieutenant here, a major there.

"Give me a proper lead," she interjected every few seconds. "Better than this."

She was quickly down to the last of the stack. Gritting her teeth, Orobelle held the glass up to its addressee's name. General Frank Kirk. Flipping it over, she found it sealed with wax.

Her heart doubled its pace. “Dorian,” she whispered, lifting her pendant to slide her blade out. “Help me unseal it.” Nodding, Dorian tapped the bottom of the envelope with his finger, and the wax softened, just enough for her to lift it without leaving an imprint. She shoved the rest of the stack into Dorian’s hands while she fished her translation glass from her pocket. “Put that back in the messenger’s case.”

They both worked quickly. Orobelle squinted through the translation glass in the purpling dimness. “Field Marshal Alexander requests your presence…” It was an invitation to a meeting at the military headquarters of the army of Britain—presumably the one Lovelace served—to be presented at entry. They were to arrive punctually, exhibit proper decorum, and not to bring any weapons nor drink.

Orobelle may not be of this world, but she knew that laborious protocol was saved for things that mattered.

This was the best they could do right now.

When Dorian returned at last from his brief task, she tossed the opened envelope into his hands, the letter returned to it. There was another click of a faraway door then, and the sound of approaching footsteps. The distant, shuffling pace set their eyes wide.

“Quick,” she whispered. “Put me in this envelope, and seal it. Return the envelope to the messenger’s chest. And once you have done that, hide yourself inside the chest. I want you to listen closely to everything that happens inside, because you may not be able to see it when it happens. If my envelope is removed, you must also leave, and follow me. Don’t lose me.” Dorian nodded fervently. “Follow me to wherever I might be taken. That is where we want to be.”

Before he could offer a "yes" in answer, Orobelle had vanished in a flash of pink, and a card had taken her place on the paving.

In the span of five seconds, Dorian did as told: slotted the card into the envelope, resealed it, tossed it into the chest—and then, leaning over the box, he shrank into a card himself and fluttered inside.

Thus began the voyage of one pair of cards, when the dispatch rider Jansen Baird returned to shut the chest he couldn’t remember opening.

The engine, after some half-hearted choking, roared to life and took off. All sound was drowned out by the bump and roar of the beast beneath them, and they were carried blind through unknown lands, losing their knowledge and sense of time. The chest was opened several times across the course of the journey, light flooding into the hollow. But Orobelle’s envelope was never removed.

They came to a place where the noise of the tides grew, and grew, till they were louder than the engine. There, the mount chugged to a stop, and its engine went silent, and remained silent for a day, its rumble replaced by that of the sea. The ground rocked; they must be upon the waters. The cards and letters shuffled about.

In time, the engine stuttered back to life, a mechanical coughing followed by the rumble they’d come to know like a friend. It woke for the day, and then died again for a night, a cycle of rhythmic stops and starts that told them they were moving slowly and surely across the world.

Two days later, the chest was opened for once and for all, the light pouring in to drown them. This time, Orobelle was lifted out.

Dorian saw and heard it happen, and within his card, his dormant mind lit up at once, the plans reawakening his thoughts.

When he was sure that he would not be seen, he reappeared, landing with one foot in the chest and a chemical aftertaste in his mouth.

He turned at the sound of birdsong. This was a different place: a road of trees, and a long fence holding a wild lawn in, and dark stone buildings beyond.

Becoming aware then of the nearby burble of conversation, he swung his foot out of the chest in a stumble.

The messenger’s mount was at rest beside a stone building whose glass door hung open. A mutter from inside it, the quality of the voice familiarly nasal yet animated, told him that the messenger must have gone inside, and the letter with him.

“Thank you!” He heard another voice reply.

“My pleasure, General, Sir!”

At the first sound of the door clicking open, Dorian sank into card form on the grassy earth. But must not have done a good job of being inconspicuous, for the thuds of footsteps neared him, and then he felt himself lifted through the air, to be held face-to-face with the messenger’s brown eye.

“You missing a Two of Diamonds?” he called out, turning back to the door he had exited. Now Dorian was staring at an overcast sky.

“Hand it to me,” the General answered. The sky blurred. Dorian found himself facing a moustachioed man. “It’s a pretty specimen, I might keep it.”

The man flipped the card over. The doorway flashed by Dorian, a shrub, a well-kept hedge, a corridor leading into a lobby, and then the General's boots.

It was a short-lived glimpse. The man slid Dorian into a sleeve of leather, and back into the unfeeling darkness he had yet to accustom himself to.

Not long after—or so Dorian thought it must be, though his sense of time was warped by the darkness and stasis—he heard an exclamation that seemed, from its intonation, one of amazement. A sliver of light split the darkness, and in it, he once again saw the moustachioed face and the bulbous red nose, wide eyes peering down at him.

From above, he watched the man’s hand slot another card—one with a familiar back pattern—into a pocket beside his own. Then he shut it, and the darkness returned, but not the silence.

“Fancy that,” an unmistakeable muffled mutter came from close by.

“My duchess,” he answered.

“This was simpler than I thought.”

Honourless was alive, but only just. She sat huddled on a mattress of folded blankets in the corner of a shack, and she had done nothing but breathe and blink in the past hour.

She had woken here for the first time just hours ago, only to discover several oozing gashes across her legs, and a livid fever burning her up. Then the effects of the fever had begun to set in, and she had found even moving through her sludgy dizziness a chore. Even if she had known the language of the people who owned this shack, she would not have been able to speak coherently, for the world brightened and the lights bloomed, and she could barely arrange more than one jostling thought straight.

Through the haze of her delirium, though, the visions of last night pierced, her mind an engine powered by her fever heat. She saw the silhouettes of three soldiers bursting through gaps in the dark, heard the booming of their alien magic, louder than thunder at the top of the Spire, louder than anything she had never heard. The first explosion—

She swayed to a side, head spinning, and she felt as if her stomach were trying to crawl out through her mouth. Shaking, she let herself sink to the ground, and curled up on the roughness of wood.

The first explosion hurt in her ears, and it told her these newcomers were not here to be friendly. Like a stag at the sight of a hunter, she bolted away, and sprinted and stumbled until she hit a swath of fence topped by barbs, the shouts bearing on her from behind. That was where someone else might have surrendered themself, but she was not one of them; she sprang up onto the fence propelled by the terror, fingers hooking the netting. She clambered up its height, panting with panic.

But at the pinnacle of the fence, with their spells booming behind her, she saw that the ground was too far down for a clean jump over the spikes.

So through it was. Between the snarls of wire she tore, the thorns biting into her legs and taking strips of skin with them. She clenched her jaw so she could not waste time on shouting, and flung herself onto the other side of the fence, twisting in mid-air where a barb gashed her cheek. Her feet found purchase on the netting in a jangle of steel, and her fingers hooked the wires like talons.

The soldiers may have had magic, but they—unlike she—obeyed the boundary of the fence. They stumbled to a stop and yelled at each other in their foreign tongue, another boom and a spark of flame erupting from their fire-staff before they turned back. Beside her, something erupted in the sand, throwing grit at her with enough force to abrade skin.

She heard engines roaring in the distance, beasts baying for her blood.

A gust picked up. She had to keep moving. Had to keep moving. Upon the wind, she sprinted away—to where she didn’t care—and all she felt for an hour were her feet pounding earth, and pain streaking up her legs.

There was no foliage for half an hour, but in the dark she made out a shadowy stand of trees deeper inland, black against the blue of night. Her course curved towards it, up uneven mounds and dips. She tripped to her knees every several steps before stumbling back into a dash.

Honourless threw herself into the shadow of the canopy, and landed in a trench among the trees, beneath a sheltering overhang of earth held together by roots. Curled up, she fit into the gap beneath the shelter of earth, where no one would find her unless they entered the trench with her.

She lay amid the scuttle of foreign earth creatures and the rustle of twigs falling through the trees, cuts smarting like fire raking across her legs.

It wasn’t till two hours later that she dragged herself back into the open. She would have stayed forever, chewing on bugs to stay alive, if she had not been able to feel the blood soaking between her toes.

So she continued her race with invisible enemies. As she surmounted the slope blotting out the sky ahead of her, the world began to spin, so dark and so bright she knew she must be about to collapse. She had to find somewhere; she had to find it fast.

Spots of her vision darkening, Honourless staggered over the crest of the hill. On the other side of the rise, there lay, at last, the silhouette of a town, sprawled across the valley. She trembled at the sight, but relief was quickly overtaken by a surge of pain so dizzying she lost sight of the roofs in a whirl of light.

Dragging herself there seemed to take days. She collapsed at the signpost at the village entrance, legs sticky with blood, mind bobbing up and down upon the surface of consciousness. She faded out. Then she felt four arms lift her. She faded out. She found herself here in a room, the hoarse rumble of the sea coming through the walls.

Someone must have brought her here, she thought dimly; someone must have cared enough to bind her wounds.

Her wounds. They stank of pus. They must be causing it. This. Her fever.

This was all the thinking Honourless could manage. The lights were swimming. She sank back into her slumber.

Time blurred in the silence and darkness. There was no way of telling how long they were inside that leather pocket, but they could tell they were moving again by noises from the outside: a new engine, this one more a buzz than a roar, like that of a great metal insect. They listened to General Kirk’s every grumble about the turbulence and the bland food, unaware that he was shuttling two others with him.

A day passed before the lights shone on them again. It was Kirk, and he was seated in a metal chamber, its walls punctuated by round windows. He was laying the pair of cards out on the desktop, perplexion written in his brow. “I don’t know why you came to me,” he whispered, “but lend me your luck.”

Neither answered.

Evening glowed dim in shafts through the oval windows when they were finally returned to the leather sleeve. There they rode, the leather just thin enough for them to hear the commotion of landing, the officious tones of officers rummaging through bags, and Kirk’s jaunty interjections. The chattering, hollow tones of a new engine joined them, and accompanied them for an hour. They heard someone in proximity strike up a conversation with the General, about his station and the British Army’s formidable advances on the frontline, to which his answers were jovially unrevealing.

They left the carriage and the conversation. Others took its place: passed greetings, to apologies, to officials demanding that all bags and pouches be submitted for inspection. Dorian and Orobelle saw light briefly at the behest of one such official, a blinding torch flashing across their faces accompanied by a chuckled remark about sending them to Sotheby’s, before they were returned to their bearer.

So Kirk brought them to the inner sanctum, from which all eyes were shielded. The air changed. Silence drowned out all remaining talk for a time. All they heard were General Kirk’s footsteps.

Somewhere, a door creaked. The first snatches of conversation trickled back in, more hushed than any prior. In the General’s pocket, Orobelle narrowed her focus on the voices, as she fought to make out the intent they conveyed. A tabletop was knocked, and in a wave, the voices fell.

There were greetings. Greetings gave way to a stating of names and numbers: Field Marshal Alexander, Generals and other esteemed officers, Walsh, Mayhew, Hall, Kirk, Russell, Renan, Howard, a list of names too long to be properly remembered, some impossible to even make out. Generals around a table, each speaking in turn.

“Our first order of business," said the Field Marshal, "is Operation Amber.” A cordial smattering of voices swept the room. “We have all watched the recent developments of the Western Front: the armies landed along the Belgian coast in Operation Firefly have pushed the German defences back to the Belgian borders, except in Belgian Luxembourg. The last we spoke, we were uncertain of the fate of many key regions: French Flanders, Belgian Limburg, Liege. All of these regions have since returned to Allied control, thanks to your good work, and the work of countless other generals. With key staging points in our control, Operation Amber is now far more likely to succeed.

“There are five field armies at our disposal along the northwestern border of Germany. The Fifth Army in Maastricht. The Second French Army in Liege. The First French Army and the Fourth Army in Colmar, ready to cross the Rhine and tide into the first crack in the German hull. Dozens of agents are in place in Berlin, ready to nudge them in the wrong direction. All that remains is for us to decide how, and when, we shall push forward. Do we have any new intelligence on the Axis position, Renan?”

“Yes, sir. We have learned from radio interceptions in Belfort that the Germans are directing two armies to bulwark the front from North Rhine-Westphalia to—" Orobelle could not catch the next name. "We do not know how much they know, but this seems more a naïve tactical move than one made in knowledge of our plans. Even so, I would advise that we are not quite in the best position to push the front on such a scale. Not yet.”

“Well, if we must disorganise their front, the means are many: as I mentioned, a full military deception, a second Operation Bodyguard, is not out of the question. We have a bevy of double agents in Berlin, who could sow misinformation, and men across Europe to mislead them about the point of invasion.”

“Sir, that may not be necessary.” It was a new voice. Orobelle could not remember the name that matched it.

“Oh?”

“If I may suggest, it appears the foundation of a perfect deception operation may already have been lain for us, by the Russians."

“Russians. What do you mean?”

“Interceptions all across the 'Y' service have given us a broad picture of the state of current German intelligence, and they appear to suspect a large Russian presence building on various points along the Eastern Front, as if they believed the Soviet Army were about to mount a large, coordinated attack.”

“You know rumours are not useful, Hall.”

“No, no, not rumours. Interceptions from the Germans, dozens of them, in Sardinia, in Canterbury. The Germans believe the Soviets are mounting a final offensive from several staging points along the Eastern Front. These suspicions are vague enough but either way, we are best off having them believe it were true.”

“What are you saying? That we—fly some soldiers over, run a deception operation there?”

“Either way,” a different General picked up the slack, “if there were a Russian force waiting…if, say such a coordinated offensive were to happen on the Eastern Front, and it were as grand as it sounds, then they would be forced to turn their eyes there. And then—then we would begin Operation Amber." He snapped. "We would have them in a pincer grip. And if not…”

Drifting into boredom till now, Orobelle's mind had returned all at once. Like fragments of a painting, the words of this back-and-forth were starting to build a picture of it all in her mind. Three factions involved that she was aware of: Britain, the Germans, the Russians. Britain and their allies were at war with the Germans. So were the Russians, but they advanced from the east. The Germans were caught between the two forces, on two fronts. Surely it was not as simple as this, but it was enough information for her to build her plans.

Meanwhile Alexander had begun to raise his voice, until the disagreeing general conceded, and the discussion subsided in a cloud of mutters. The Field Marshal sighed. “Second order of business. A full update on our work on interceptions and their decoding. Howard, last we talked you mentioned the breakthrough on the Lorentz cipher at Bletchley. Any news?”

“Oh, yes, sir, very important news in fact.”

“Let us hear it.”

“Just a moment...” A metal clasp snapped open nearby, and a rustle of papers followed. “Two weeks ago, the radio security service reported several messages encoded in the new cipher, which they say the Germans refer to as Gaertner-encrypted. We didn't think much of it initially, but last week, two of the service's members independently intercepted a message relayed between Berlin and Budapest—straight from Hitler’s office.” He slapped the papers onto the tabletop.

“The Gaertner cipher has proven...utterly impossible to decode. These messages are sparse, sent once daily at the most, reserved for top intelligence. And they’re quite something, I’ll tell you. Pages upon pages in one transmission. They cannot possibly encode a message all that long, these…they are costly to encode. No, this is completely novel. The Germans are clever, I’ll give them that, clever and ruthless. The glyphs are given in clusters that do not seem to correspond to any comprehensible lettering system; there is little correspondence between the messages we have gathered to date. And it wasn’t until three days ago that the sharpest minds at Bletchley figured it out: that these clusters of glyphs do not encode characters, but meanings, like images. A script of scripts.”

“So, what did the message from Hitler’s office say?”

“Sir, as I had mentioned, we have not,” he cleared his throat, “we have not been able to crack the code to date.”

The pause that followed was filled by a shuffling of feet and paper. “And why do you tell us about this message, if it is not deciphered?”

The recoiling guilt was palpable in Howard’s voice. “It seemed a development of utmost importance, sir, most definitely the most important thing I have to report…”

“That is Bletchley’s job. It is the job of you men who sit with your codebooks and machines all day to decode code. I can’t help you with your little numbers and figures, your scripts of scripts—”

Hidden away in Kirk’s wallet, Orobelle stirred.

“I’m going out to get that code,” she whispered amid the storm of words, and hoped Dorian had heard. “Join me when you can.”

Orobelle took a gamble.

Before Howard had completed his faltering ramble, she poured out of Kirk’s wallet in a pool of light. She lay on the ground behind his chair for a fraction of a second before condensing back into a card. Only Kirk himself could have seen her from this vantage, but she saw his silhouette from the back, and it seemed he was as intent as everyone else upon the conversation at the front.

She had only done this once before, for it had not been particularly enjoyable. But here she had no choice, so she did it again: reaching through the veil, she allowed only her arm to materialise out of the card.

It was like allowing an itch to persist unobstructed, except in this case the itch was a need to rematerialize in full. Trembling with the discomfort, she gripped at the carpet with her fingertips and bent her arm, crawling along in the direction of the fuzzy sound of Howard’s voice, like a bizarre jointed caterpillar.

But the generals were too absorbed in their plotting to notice the thing passing behind their chairs. It was as such that Orobelle arrived beside Howard’s briefcase, with just enough clearance should she need to form in full.

With an inward sigh, she finally pulled her arm back into the nothingness inside her card. From here, she waited until a trembling Howard bent down to slip the document into his case, and then returned it to the spot beside his chair.

His aim was awry; the briefcase toppled on its side with a thump. The man gave it a startled glance before deciding there were other things to pay attention to.

She let her arm reach out of the card and solidify again, and with only the sensation from her disembodied fingers to go by, she found the first clasp of the briefcase.

As soon as Orobelle’s hand closed around the edge of the document, she became aware of Howard’s gaze trained on her. From what little she could see past her elbow, he went very pale in the face, but pulled his eyes away, seeming eager to forget what he had seen.

At once, she snatched a bundle of documents out of the case, and withdrew back into her card in a flash, the documents with it.

Moments later, Howard bowed to take a second glance at the briefcase, and by then, Orobelle was a card again, safely sheltered from view by the briefcase. Once he was confident that the hand had been a vision, he stooped to shut his briefcase.

Now get over here, she thought.

Two hours of futile back-and-forth crawled by, and by the end of it, Operation Amber remained in a state of limbo similar to the one it had been in at the start. By the time the meeting was adjourned, spirits were low—and Dorian had yet to make a move.

Still lying under Howard’s chair, Orobelle felt fear creep over her, but still nothing happened as the generals began to file out of the room one by one, till only Field Marshal Alexander remained seated at the head of the oval table. From here, she could see nothing but his feet.

She knew moving from her spot would only make her harder for Dorian to find, and more likely to be caught. Against her instincts, she waited, till the lights went dark in the room, and the Field Marshal trod away, the heels of his boots clicking on the marble outside while he shut the door behind him.

Immeasurable minutes later, there was another click of the door mechanism.

“Orobelle?” whispered Dorian’s voice. He did not turn on the light, but she heard his footsteps, light as they were, grow louder, stopping feet away from her.

She lit up the room as she reappeared in a flutter. “Took you long enough,” she exclaimed.

“I’m sorry, my duchess,” Dorian said, but she waved the apology away. “What shall we do now?”

Orobelle held up the document in her right hand, eyes racing across the rows of inky black characters. “Here it is, their unbreakable code. Straight from the office of the enemy leader, they say. Could I have some light?”

For all that had happened, Dorian had not lost sight of Orobelle’s luggage, having never left his card since entering it on Kirk’s lawn. He dropped it on the nearby tabletop and pulled two crumpled gowns from inside it with one hand, unearthing her pocket lantern with the other. The translucent structure was held between metal rings. It sprung into its globular form when he released its catch.

Normally, it would be lit by a spark from tinder, but Dorian reached in through its opening to pinch the wick. A flame bloomed when he released it. “Thank you,” said Orobelle, reaching into her own gown pocket for her glass. “Lock the door, please.”

Holding the glass up to her eye, she sorted through the stack of documents one by one, their text blurred but comprehensible. Many were signed by Gregory Howard himself, and one by the Field Marshal, an order to the code-breaking station in Canterbury. Finally, she found the one that did not yield its meaning immediately: this one, she separated from the stack.

It was not easy work translating this document, even with her tools. It was intent that the glass read. But the imprints of the typewriter on the sheet did not bare the writer’s intent as immediately as pen strokes on parchment. When Orobelle lifted it over the words, they refracted into fuzzy clouds, glyphs floating in and out of comprehensibility. The encoding process didn’t only obfuscate meaning: it filtered the writer’s intent to its thinnest, replacing it with an unthinking machine’s soulless process. Still she pushed on through the text, running the glass along the ranks of printed characters.

“‘Russian plans for the upcoming operation…’” There followed a difficult word that flickered from one translation to another, between phonetic and semantic and connotative and denotative, so she could not see a clear one. “‘Upcoming operation…’ I’ll come back to this… ‘…have been leaked. All suspicions have been confirmed. The key attack is at Gerjen Bridge on the fifth month, on the fifth day. 103,000 cross the...’” The name here was of some river, that much she was certain. “‘...to take Kalocsa. Operation…marks the start of a final Russian advance. The Soviet Army outnumber us, but their supply lines are dismal. They are poorly-fed. They must want help…they shall not have it. Morale is our only requirement to defeat them, and keep…’” She waved the glass over the last words. “‘…keep Kalocsa and Budapest out of their hands.’ There we go!”

She paced back and folded her arms. Not only was this “final Russian advance” about to take place, it seemed it was far from certain to succeed.

If it did, however? If the words exchanged by Alexander and Renan before were to be trusted, it almost certainly meant the beginning of the end.

Feverish with thrill, Orobelle brought the glass over the word she had skipped over, the name of the operation, which burst into its several meanings at once. “‘Thunderstorm?’” Orobelle’s brow furrowed. “‘Superyachenka.’ ‘Supercell!’ Operation Supercell. The last I encountered such a term was when I thought I would never need it. Hmph. Now we must find a way to move some soldiers.”

“How shall we gain the authority to do so?”

Orobelle riffled through the documents in her hand, until her fingers stopped upon the one signed by Field Marshal Alexander, immaculately in ink. “We already have it,” she replied.

From this room, there was no easy escape. Century-old windows closed like slabs over the only openings, so grimy one could barely see through them. Wedging his fingertips in the gaps, Dorian tensed his shoulders and strained to budge them. He stepped back. “They are nailed shut,” he said.

“Burn it,” answered the card in his pocket.

Pinching his lips together, he stared at his reflection in the dirty glass, aware of Orobelle's impatience like a chill in the air. He pressed his fingers to the heads of the screws fastening the window in place, and channelled heat into them.

It took seconds for the room to reek of smoke, a minute before he began to feel the sting of heat rippling over his arms. The wood around the screws, hard but antique, began to char, and with every second of heat they burned more of it away. Again he gripped the edges of the window with his fingers, leaving smouldering trails on them.

Dorian wrenched the window up. It budged easily, the nails tearing from the frame. Cold wind gusted in. He pulled Orobelle from his pocket as he climbed up onto the windowsill with a boost from his free hand, crouching on the sill as he raised the window up over his shoulder.

He launched himself into the night air three stories over the pavement below, the window slamming shut behind him.

Two cards fluttered three stories to the ground, swirling away onto the square while a statue of a local duke, proudly astride a horse, watched over the silent grounds.

Revolving Door

Supercell - II

Dorian did not call Orobelle out of her card until he was across a bridge and three streets down.

The first words out of the Duchess' mouth as she sprang out in a swirl of hair and skirts were, “Good! Now we must go to Bletchley.”

“Bletchley?” he replied. They had begun down along the river, pitch black like the night sky it mirrored, and swishing secretively.

“It's a centre for breaking code. It must have the means for transmitting our messages. But we shall require funds to get there, no doubt.”

“How about the gems from your spoiled dresses, my duchess?” he suggested. Over the bollards, the streetlamps shimmered on the rumbling water. “Surely they would sell decently here as well as at home.”

Orobelle’s cheek clenched at the memory of the dresses, but she shook it out of her thoughts. “We shan’t have the time to find out how to sell them until we have delivered our messages. We shall obtain it by...other means.”

“Theft?” Dorian replied at once.

“Shush. It belongs to me anyway,” she answered, lifting a hand. “I am the reason any of this exists.”

It was a more elaborate setup than it had to be. When the sun had risen well past the spires, they made landing at a “fish and potato slice” shop.

The shop's tables were filled to the brim except for one, and it was clearly understaffed, one woman managing to juggle both the kitchen and the cash register by scurrying back and forth, though the sweat on her brow evidenced her exhaustion.

“You sir,” she called out as Dorian strode in past the counter. She cleared her throat. “You with the long hair. Here to dine?”

He turned. “Yes, good lady.”

She smiled oddly, before stepping out from behind the tubs of oil, waving him towards the only empty table in the facility, with a tiny square top and two rickety chairs. As he entered, he reached out and dropped Orobelle by the open boxes of coins and notes, keeping his gaze trained on the variety of fish hanging on hooks over the kitchen counter.

As soon as he was seated, the shop owner materialised beside him, a board in hand. “What would you like?” she asked.

“I would be delighted to try your best fish, and potato slices,” he said in a neutral tone.

Again, an odd look. “Our battered cod is excellent this time of year.”

“I would like that.”

She scribbled the order on her board. “And how would you like the chips done?”

Dorian stared back. “Ah, I would like them...to taste good.”

Now the keeper was grinning. “That's the only kind we serve here,” she said. She sailed over to the bubbling tub of oil by the counter and plucked a fish from a hook, beginning to gut it. Meanwhile, from a corner of his eye, Dorian glimpsed the young Duchess pilfering a minor fortune out of the trays.

It was about a minute before a look of satisfaction came to her face, and she finally scurried, crouched, from behind the counter. The man turned his gaze resolutely back to the rest of the clientele.

“There you are!” she announced as she appeared by Dorian’s table, dropping into the chair opposite him.Several heads turned, including the cook’s, who waved at her and simpered, as one did at a toddler. The Duchess gaped back for a moment. “Don’t patronise me!” she growled, offering a hard glare that the cook answered with a shrug, before carrying on.

Orobelle and Dorian left the shop a hundred pounds richer, and Dorian feeling better fed than he had in years.

“My duchess,” he asked as they resumed down the street outside. Orobelle did not answer. “Is there a reason the Diamond Palace does not deal in food?”

It had occurred to him midway through wolfing down the meal that this was the first solid food he had had in months. The last had been a small bowl, a gift from the market from a man who had not been in the Duchy long, who had not known of its preference for liquids of satiation and joy.

“Dirty,” answered Orobelle without looking. “Unsafe, unpredictable, generally grotesque to the taste.”

“That…is perfectly fair, my duchess,” he replied, as they passed beneath a stand of trees in a corner park. The first flowers bloomed, and every now and then, one heard a cascade of birdsong. Here in the heart of London, one could barely tell there was a war being waged beyond it.

“Hm, I do not feel like walking,” Orobelle said then. Before he knew it, she was a card in the air, which he snatched before it could brush the ground.

The heat lay thick on the city as Dorian wove towards the rumble of carts and engines. At the junction of two roads he stopped, watching the carriages whiz past in rapid succession. He drew many stares; perhaps it was his attiring, or perhaps they simply knew a foreigner when they saw one.

“My good madam,” he called out to a lady beside him with his hand on his heart.

She lowered her cigarette and met his eye with a bewildered blink. “May I help you?” she rasped.

“How should I go to Bletchley Park?” he replied.

“Not from around here?” she replied. “Bletchley is fifty miles up north. You’re not trying to steal government secrets, are you?” She chuckled. Glancing about, she waved a finger in the direction of a dark vehicle stopped at the next junction across the road. “The black cabs don’t usually go that far, but offer him twenty pounds and he’ll take you there, I know their type.”

“Thank you, good madam,” Dorian said smartly. Without a word of warning, he sprang across the road and through a gap between the oncoming carriages, the lady on the roadside yelling after him. Carriages screamed as they hastened to a stop, but he cleared the distance before any could touch him.

Leaving several gaping pedestrians in his wake, he sprinted the rest of the way to the waiting black carriage, waving at its owner who slouched against its door. “You’re in a hurry, sir,” the portly, rosy-faced driver exclaimed at his sudden appearance, opening the door as Dorian slowed to a halt. He only came up to Dorian's shoulder. “Where to?”

“Bletchley Park,” Dorian replied, already slinging the luggage bag off his shoulder.

“Bletchley?” he exclaimed. “No, sir, I don’t go that far, sorry.” He held out a hand to shield him from proceeding.

“For twenty pounds?”

“Twenty!” His arm dipped back to his side. “You can do better.”

“Thirty,” Dorian replied, already reaching into the bag.

Now the driver was on the same page as he: he had returned to his seat by the time Dorian had entered his vehicle.

“Perry. Pleased to meet you,” the driver said, the engine grumbling to life.

“Haste,” Dorian replied as he produced the thirty pounds, keeping them just out of reach.

“Mister Haste, eh?”

“My name is Dorian.”

Perry laughed. With a puttering start, the carriage swerved out of its spot and entered the traffic as the sky burned blue.

“So, are you in theatre? TV?” was the first of Perry’s flaccid offerings of conversation as they left the growling afternoon traffic of the city. “Street theatre, perhaps? ‘All the world’s a stage and men are but players’?” He chuckled at himself, but Dorian did not answer. “No? What’s your work?”

“I’m a bodyguard,” he replied solemnly, thinking for a moment that he should lie, but wondering what sort of lie he would tell, if he did.

“Taking time off?”

“I am always at work, if I can help,” he answered.

“You and I both,” Perry laughed. Dorian did not laugh. The driver pulled back in his seat and nodded, bringing his eyes back to the green horizon as the buildings and their criss-crossing spires pulled away.

Dorian watched the faraway fields sweep closer, just a sliver between the last of the town houses. Everything here was much squarer than it should be, and much too closely packed, like stacks of boxes channelling the tiny automata of carriages between them.

Two years at the duchy had not taken the desert plains and soaring mountains out of him, he realised as he stared past them at the grass beyond. The closeness of the walls of the city made his lungs feel tight.

“Do you like this land?” Dorian asked, offhandedly.

“This land…England?” Perry replied. Dorian nodded. “What can I say, all of London reeks of bilge, and the rats are here eternal…but God forbid it ever be lost. Bless the men shouldering the weight of our country on the frontlines.”

“And the women?” he offered.

“Ye…yes, it’s a figure of speech,” he replied, irritated. “Of course there are women. Engineers. Perhaps soldiers, too, I don’t know.”

“I know there are,” he replied.

And with that, the stumbling conversation dropped dead. Not a word crossed the air between them until the vehicle bumped up Sherwood Drive in the greying afternoon, through wild green thickets of trees, and rumbled to a stop in the fabled Bletchley Park with its quaint turrets and domes.

Here between a lawn and small palatial residence, Dorian counted out thirty pounds with Perry's eager help. Then he alighted, the man's black carriage happily zooming away before could even receive Dorian's thanks.

Swinging the luggage bag back over his shoulder, he was left admiring the strange and quaint arches of the mansion before him. As he did, he produced Orobelle from his pocket, lifting the card up so she could study it as well.

“Tacky,” was her muttered verdict. “Take me to the entrance.” As instructed, he walked by several windows, towards an ornamented archway topped by a curved bay window. At the end of the short hall that the arch opened into, there stood a grand pair of doors. “There it is. Get us inside.”

Stepping into the shelter of the arched corridor, Dorian walked to the door at the end, and bowed to flick her through the gap under it. Then, backing away to take a running start, he dove and skidded towards the same gap, turning into a card halfway.

When the bearded receptionist came down to the entrance, he discovered two cards lying by the door, an Ace and a Two of Diamonds, ornately patterned, a face smiling out of the ace’s lone diamond. He stooped to pick them up, squinted at them, and took them to the counter. “Someone expecting…two playing cards?” he bellowed through the corridors. “This isn’t a piece of code, now, is it?”

Orobelle and Dorian soon heard a clatter of footsteps from beyond the reception table. The ceiling flashed over them, and a new face came into view, frizzled brown hair framing her face, the glasses clipped to her nose so thick they distorted her eyes.

“How unusual…” She spoke with a furrowed brow, as if trying to discern the meaning of her own words. “And they were slipped under the door?”

“The very one,” the receptionist replied.

She nodded. “I’m taking these.”

And then, a blur of ceilings later, they were inside a cryptanalysis room.

The lady laid them lovingly on a desk at the head of a carpeted hall, along whose walls stood a gallery of clattering machines and desks, dials gleaming like eyes. About these milled the dozen-odd scientists in buttoned shirts, who alone bore the knowledge of their inner workings.

Their adopter had the courtesy to place them at an angle, bragging about their beauty as she did, to few replies. From their vantage, they had a view of half the room, of the countless whirring wheels behind the toilers, all tapping away at levers and buttons in coats and eyepieces that harkened to the scientists of the Queendom universities.

Orobelle laid the next plans as she took in the hall with a camera lens’ stillness. Without the ability to swivel her eyes, the scene lay before her undivided, to be filtered in her mind.

Windows let light stream in from outside, lighting squares on the floor. Through the window she saw the grass and trees, blurred through dust.

She noted the map of an unfamiliar continent, spanning half the wall. She listened to them write and chatter about some “difficult Russian encoding”, watched them crank machines, receivers chattering, every now and then tapping out some form of rhythmic code with a button. Levers and receivers stood on their tabletops.

“Hand that to the Don R tomorrow morning!” she caught one snatch of frantic conversation, from a man handing an envelope to someone else: the bespectacled brunette who had taken them inside. “On to the next, Marijk, the war doesn’t wait!”

Accepting the envelope, Marijk brought it to the desk where she had left the cards, and flicked it into a turquoise rectangular basket beside them.

“Thank you,” whispered Orobelle.

Night fell on the grounds outside, but the alien lights stayed lit. The guard of workers ebbed and flowed, thinning gradually till only Marijk was left. She was writing, head bowed, nodding off every few seconds before shaking herself awake again.

At last, the cryptanalyst lifted her head from her current job. She tapped her chin with her pen, and then tossed it onto the tabletop. Rising with a kick of her chair, she shuffled to the exit and left. The door clicked shut behind her.

At once, Orobelle leapt out of her card, brandishing her glass. She landedwith a dull thud on the carpet. “Dorian, pass me the documents,” she whispered, throwing his card into the air.

He sprang out and landed with a bow, swinging the luggage onto the tabletop before him. Unbuttoning the flap on her bag, he swept the stacks of sheets out, holding them out so she could take them.

Then she motioned to the door with her head. “Go make sure she doesn’t come back until I’m done,” she said.

He nodded, and opened the door with only the slightest creak of its hinge. Orobelle heard it shut with a metallic latching sound.

Now, she stood alone amid the click-clack of the machines, and she could set the last leg of her plan in action. Light on her feet, Orobelle went up to the wall map, the translation glass to her eye. As she approached, the map exploded into copious detail, and the words and lines suddenly seemed more dauntingly numerous. Britain was clearly marked for her with pins and tape; she spent a minute searching around it with her glass, until she found the town of Dunkirk, on the tip of a land called France.

She swept the translation glass over the map again. As it passed over a demarcated box of symbols in the corner, the phrase “air field” caught her eye. The symbol beside the pair of words, shaped like a strange seabird, told her its meaning. Her mind raced. The Field Marshal had said they could fly soldiers. Was this how they flew?

Air field. The closest air field…her glass went back to Dunkirk. The closest air field was Saint-Inglevert.

Marijk’s unfinished work lay on her desk: a translucent blue pen, an unmarked envelope, a half-finished letter. Orobelle had spent enough time examining the other addresses to know how it worked. She had not thought upon how she would ascertain her letter’s arrival at its destination—but she remembered the street name. Rue Victor Hugo. And that meant she could write an address.

In a drawer under the tabletop, she found a stack of blank sheets, and plucked one off the top. With Marijk’s pen she began to draft a message, switching her cross-referencing her letters with those of Field Marshal Alexander.

“Your army’s presence is required in Kalocsa, Hungary, on the first day of the fifth month…”

She screwed up her face as she fought to keep her pen steady. Write with confidence, she could hear her mother’s voice around her, inside her, like a ghost, as she laid the foreign marks across the page. Let not your pen dally nor the ink pool—

A shrill alarm wail erupted across the room, making her drop the pen as her eyes darted around, heart pounding. Then it struck her that this had to be Dorian’s doing.

“Not like this!” she muttered under her breath. The sound echoed on the grounds outside, and she heard a single set of footsteps dash through the hallway, their owner shouting about a fire.

Orobelle swallowed, clenching her jaw at the screech of the alarm. She flipped Marijk's envelope over. In an imitation of Howard’s own letters, she wrote her best approximation of the Dunkirk camp’s address on the back. 1 Rue Victor Hugo. Dunkirk. France.

Once, twice, she rehearsed the Field Marshal’s signature on a blank sheet. Without moving her hand, she slipped the perfectly-forged letter below it, and scrawled his signature at the bottom. Besides a stray ink spot, it was a perfect likeness.

Blowing upon the fresh ink, Orobelle folded the letter up the same way the other documents were folded, into thirds, and shoved it into Marijk's envelope.

Sealed, it was identical to the one that the lady had left in the turquoise basket from the front. Breathless with the thought that she had almost succeeded, Orobelle scurried back to the basket.

The letters were switched, brown for innocuous brown, and none were the wiser.

When Marijk returned half an hour later, hair in tangles and stinking of smoke, the only thing she noticed was that the cards were no longer there.

Revolving Door

Supercell - III

This chapter contains depictions of explosives, firearms, electrocution, alcohol use, mass death, and alludes to human experimentation.

On the morning of the Twenty-Eighth of April, Lieutenant Colonel Clarke declared that the battalion had orders to move once again.

Inside Clarke’s office, everything was polished to perfection, a gleaming contrast to the dust of the grounds outside. And it was in the bizarre serenity between those walls, in the grey light not long before dawn and the lamplight that broke it, that Clarke delivered the news to Vesper and the rest of the officers, its weight hanging on every word.

“The Russians are preparing for a breakthrough in Hungary over the Danube, on the Fifth of May. They will cross the Gerjen Bridge near Kalocsa to complete the encirclement of Budapest. We will join them to aid their victory, which the Field Marshal assures me is of critical importance to the War.”

“I don’t understand,” said Major Harris at once. “We’re all the way here. On the other side of Europe.”

Clarke shook his head. “I don’t ask questions about orders. It’s what keeps this machine oiled. They might know something we don’t.”

The commanders exchanged glances.

“I want all men on the quadrangle by nine,” Clarke went on, fixing each one with a meaningful gaze in turn. “I hope your troops like vodka.”

“Orders from the Field Marshal,” declared the Lieutenant Colonel to the three companies lined up on the quadrangle beneath the roiling sky. “We are to be deployed in Kalocsa next. We move to the Saint-Inglevert Airfield this afternoon. Six Yorks have been commissioned to take us from there.”

There was quiet shuffling, and stolen glances of confusion: Kalocsa was a name most had never heard, and Six Avro Yorks was more in one place than most of them had ever seen.

“Kalocsa is in southern Hungary,” Clarke went on. “Our unit will coordinate with the shock division of General Ligachyov, the man who has the Minsk Offensive to his name.”

The emptying corridors of the camp were aflame with chatter and bickering all morning, about the Russians and Hungary and the Field Marshal. Vesper had no time to participate or to eavesdrop; she spent it all yelling and waving soldiers out of their bunks, shepherding them out into the corridors, and down to the quadrangle in the morning chill, where they marched into line among the rest of the battalion. There they stood with stiff backs and stiffer shirts, hands at their sides.

Major Harris nodded to her, and she began down the rank, meeting the eye of each soldier in the No. 60 as she passed. Elliot. Rajan. Dyer. Hart. Marlowe. Gordon. No, Private Gordon wasn’t with them any longer.

She returned to the front of the assembly when she was satisfied that all buttons were in place, all shirts tucked in, all helmets strapped tight.

A parade of armoured carriers rolled into the quadrangle. Troop by troop, the soldiers began to file into the rumbling beasts in snaking lines.

Saint-Inglevert was hardly an hour away, even lumbering there in carriers on uneven roads. When they leapt out, the Yorks were the first thing they saw, hulking over the workers on the barren airfield, their Union Jacks gleaming in the sun.

The troops disembarked from the carriers and were immediately shuttled to the planes under the barked orders of General Kirk, who had come to see them off to their destination. The general overseeing the Belgian frontline was as he had been the last few times they had met him: all grins, with his hair flying as he marched about seeing to the order of everything himself.

“Captain Lovelace!” he stopped Vesper by clapping a hand on her shoulder as she passed under the palisade at the back of the 3 Troop. “I hope you’ve prepared.”

The wind roared through her hair, her efforts at tidying it slowly but surely coming undone. “Yes, sir,” she answered, face freezing into neutrality. “To the very best of my ability.”

“Very good,” he said with a grin, shoving her by the shoulder in the direction of the rest of her troop at the boarding ladder.

For a week now, Honourless had lain in the pile of rough nets, salt rubbing into her hair so she smelled of it constantly. Through the cracks she could see the churning expanse of water that had first greeted them on arrival in this world, and smell its breeze, which mouldered to staleness between these walls.

As she recovered, in leaps and bounds, she began to memorise the routine of the house. Every morning and evening, the owner of the house came in through the creaking door, and offered her small bowls of fish soup with pleasant words that sounded like gibberish to her ears. She acted up her inability to move so he would bring her bread as well. She scarfed it down, as pungent as the soup could be, for this was better food than she had had since the day she had been put in chains: not the first meal she deserved, but warm, and edible.

She may have been covered in scabbing wounds and shaking off the last of the fever, but Honourless still had her wits about her. She did not try to speak; they would be mutually unintelligible and she would rouse more suspicions than she should. She acted out permanent drowsiness, nodding lightly and refusing to speak.

But each day she removed more bandages and moved her joints with greater ease, and soon she would be well enough to walk out of this house unhindered.

In those long, vague hours, stretching into days, Honourless sat cross-legged and tried ghosting again. She traced her sister’s name on her arm with her eyes, and thought of that last memory of her, now a jumble of features: an eye, a smile, a voice. She pulled her legs onto the rope mat, and willed and willed in the way she always had as a child.

But she did not budge. The more she strained to move, the sicker she felt. Her efforts made no more than a faint ripple in space, and attempt after attempt saw even those weakening.

Her shoulders sank, and the trembling of the world around her stilled.

As it did, an ache pierced her throat, more painful for its strangeness. She clutched her head and bit back a sob. It had been twenty years, twenty years she hadn’t ghosted. Twenty years she hadn’t seen Alta.

She was forgetting her.

Honourless clenched her jaw and slammed a fist against the ground, the impact resounding with a hollow bang. Without giving herself room to breathe, she latched onto something else in her rage. The pain of her wounds. The blazing ache, the shivers, the night innumerable nights ago, when they had chased her off the beach.

The air trembled as she channelled thoughts to will, and will to heat. This time she felt the ripples start up and swallow her, so her own body felt paper thin, pulled over the surface of an expanse of fabric.

A minute into her efforts, everything snapped, and the waves dispersed, tossing her back onto the same spot on the mat.

Honourless slumped backward with a groan, cupping her forehead in her hand as the world spun around her. “I’m too old to do this,” she muttered, closing her eyes against the onslaught of nausea.

It was by nothing short of a biblical miracle that all four hundred soldiers jammed themselves into the humid bellies of six Avro Yorks, built to carry thirty fewer each. Vesper's cabin, full of coughing, spittle and unseemly odours, was an assault on all senses, taking them the long way around Germany, across Ally-controlled southern Italy, and into the Russian territories in the east. There were oddly few exchanges: everyone was busy contending with either the nausea of turbulent flight or the growing stench of sweat and bodies pressed too close.

Five hours later, the three commando companies of LTC Clarke’s battalion tumbled out of the plane to a swell of welcome, and a sharp chill. Their shirts were crumpled, whatever efforts they had made to tidy themselves that morning ruined by five hours in the sky.

The officers of both sides were marched straight into a meeting with General Ligachyov, crammed into a tent made for half as many people which had begun to bulge outward.

They were greeted with scepticism and applause both, in words they could not understand. Then from their olive-uniformed numbers burst General Ligachyov himself, broad and tall with a generous moustache.

He proclaimed his welcome in a torrent of incomprehensible syllables. “Angliyskiy? Kuznetsov!” he shouted to the men behind him, who jostled about until one among them reluctantly stepped forth.

Ligachyov began to dictate into his ear. “We are at end of supplies. Men are…tired,” said Kuznetsov with a nod. Beside him the General extended a hand that each officer shook in turn. “There are more armies, three days in south-east direction. But they are too slow. You come at best time. You bring how many men?”

Vesper let go of the huge palm as soon as she had shaken it.

“Four hundred.”

“Chetyresta,” he repeated, for his superior’s benefit.

“And a hundred commandos among them,” added Clarke, to which Kuznetsov turned around and began relaying the Colonel’s words in fluent Russian. “This is the Number Sixty, the best of our best. And I have brought two other companies who trained on the same camp.” He pulled a crumpled wad of documents from his pocket. “Bletchley Park was able to reverse-engineer the German cipher. We received correspondence that you are planning to advance on the Fifth of May. Well, your plans have been leaked to the Germans. It must happen sooner.”

They raised their own tents on the edge of the camp, a collaborative effort in hammering pins and stringing ropes. Piling into the space within, they boiled their canned rations, and wolfed the contents in painful gulps as they massaged their legs.

“Will the Field Marshal just make up his mind about where he wants us?” grumbled Mark Weston.

“I like having something to do,” answered Rajan Menon, digging a fork into his rations.

Vesper had not needed space to herself in a while, but tonight this would change. There was barely any air to breathe between the five members of her squad inside that tent, a far cry from the comforts of their grotty Dunkirk camp.

An hour after midnight, though most should have been soundly asleep, she stole through the tent flaps and out into the night air. Outside was a veritable village of similar tents, canvas roofs serenely sloping.

Letting her heel drop before the rest of her foot with every step, the Captain crossed the corner of the camp where the No. 60 snored soundly. She strolled by the rustles of occasional whispers and pretended not to hear.

Her route passed by the generals’ tent. Vesper did not think she would catch anything of interest as she passed, so she started when someone called out.

“Captain Lovelace!” It was Clarke, his head peeking out from under the flap. “Exactly who I wanted to see. Come in, please.”

Vesper stepped inside on cue, heart still racing from the surprise. She found the man, greying hair and moustache cropped neat again, bowed over a rotting collapsible desk laden with documents and tall bottles labelled in Cyrillic letters. “Spare furniture, from the Russians, sir?” she remarked.

“Yes, quite the hosts, even doing poorly as they are,” he replied, folding his arms atop it. “Let me be straightforward, Lovelace. If this battle goes well, I would give the war no more than three weeks. That means we must talk about what is to come…after.”

She looked him in the eye and wondered at the peculiar feeling of her heart sinking. “Of course, sir.”

“You’re a liability, and a resource,” he said. “They are nervous about you, the ones up top. But I assured them of your trustworthiness. We can trust you, yes?”

She did not like the look in his eye, eager but wary. “Yes, sir,” she said, and once the words had left her, some great grief struck her, like a note on a gong.

“Excellent. His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department dropped me a line two days ago and asked after your status. I spoke highly of you, of course.” He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling with shadows, but she did not answer it. “They have dropped hints that you will be well-decorated. Once you have been awarded your dues, they wish to make you a laboratory aide with His Majesty’s Security Service, under the entire government’s good graces. You will assist the Security Service in experiments, and in the event of another war, if we should be so unlucky, be called to the ranks of the Army again.”

“That sounds...like the best use of my skills,” she murmured. She thought to ask what would happen if she refused. But she had a feeling she wasn’t being asked to make a choice. Unusual waves of dread continued to wash over her. What had changed? Just two weeks ago she would have said yes without a thought.

“What say you, Captain Lovelace?” Clarke extended a hand. Their eyes met, and she saw that scientist’s gleam again. “I would be delighted to present you to them myself.”

Vesper took his offered hand and shook it, ignoring the lump in her throat. “Yes, sir. I would be happy to serve as His Majesty prefers.”

“Majors and Captains,” said Clark in the morning chill, standing beside a tripod bearing a veiled board. “I just left a meeting with General Ligachyov and General Guryev. They were very emphatic that the Battle of Kalocsa will be the keystone of a strategy they have spent six months building. Operation Supercell, they call it. A coordinated incursion across the front. Eight battalions converge here, from four different offensives—all depleted and fighting on borrowed time. We must win the Gergen Bridge by all the means necessary, and I do mean we in particular.”

He tugged on the cord in his hand, and the veil fell away, revealing his map. Upon it, marked in red, were their encampment site, the bridge, and a point on the riverbank one meander upstream.

“While the Axis troops and the Russian soldiers initiate combat over the bridge, we shall travel upstream northward for three kilometres.” Here he traced their route with his finger, ending at the red line. “We cross the Danube here. Then, using the forests for cover, we move back south, and take position along this ridge,” he gestured out its contour, “and from there advance rapidly down to Gerjen Bridge, and squash the Axis army between ourselves and the Russians. Three Troop—” he turned to look in their direction—“early intelligence indicates the unit will have three Grilles. Most likely, they’re there to destroy the bridge. I want you to take them out the moment they’re within our line of sight.”

“Yes, sir,” said Major Harris.

Clarke turned his eyes back to the gathering. “This is the Eastern Front,” he said. “The Russians are given to a rather…grisly strategy. But whatever their course of attack, it is your task to follow your orders and see them through.”

There was a shuffling of hands and feet. “Sir, you mean that they plan to throw bodies at them.” Major Heane from the 2 Troop breathed.

“Their…numerical advantage will keep the enemy busy, yes,” Clarke answered.

“Will they even have enough men left to take Budapest after that?”

“Another army will meet them there. This is part of a greater encirclement that they have been preparing for a long time. We outnumber the Axis army almost thrice; there will be no shortage of soldiers remaining for that battle.”

“Sir, why aren’t we leading the charge?” Vesper interjected. “There would be no need for their tactics with us in the ranks. That is why we’re here, no?”

“Let the them do what they do best,” Captain James cut in. “Their generals are all twisted in the head.”

Clarke’s gaze swept across Vesper and the Captain beside her. “That isn’t my call, Lovelace,” he said. “Matters of strategy are best left to strategists. Worry yourself with the battle.”

And as she always did, Vesper nodded, though the frustration clouded her eyes.

“An entire front’s fate,” Vesper heard Neville Harris mumble to himself as he bowed under the tent flaps to leave, “will be decided by a single British battalion in a single bridge scuffle.”

She lingered till the rest had left. Then, when Clarke lifted an eyebrow at her, she nodded. “Sir,” she said. “Is there a generator on the grounds, by any chance?”

Clarke pursed his lips and cast his eyes to the tent roof. “I haven’t seen one, sorry,” he replied. “But a thunderstorm is forecast tomorrow evening. Oh, and, Lovelace?”

The word was intoned harshly. About to leave, she looked up. “Yes, sir?”

The Lieutenant Colonel’s brow furrowed. “Follow your orders.”

“I always do, sir.”

“Yes, but follow them.”

She left that exchange with a shudder.

Under the trees, in the glittering of the moon on the river, Vesper paused and breathed in. Only then did her head stop spinning. The air was crisp and smelled of the river and the leaves it stirred.

From behind the tall grass nearby, there came a strain of song. Hoarse, a little off-key if she could tell at all, but earnest. She closed her eyes and listened to its tones, and as the cold crept into her fingers, so did the melancholy of the song, palpable though she couldn’t understand a word of it.

“Hello?” she called, walking closer to the bank. Twigs crackled. A silhouette shifted, and a pair of eyes glittered.

A boy stared back from the bushes, crawling from their depths and hiding a bottle behind his back. “From other army?” he said as he approached.

“Yes,” she replied. “Odd place for a meeting, but hello.”

He continued to watch her, face shiny with drying tears, as he composed his reply. He gestured at himself. “Moriz. We fight...same side.”

She nodded. “We’ll be allies for a while.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Afraid, of the battle?”

Moriz nodded, swaying on his feet.

Vesper cast her glance once more to the river. Past it. “Of course,” she said quietly. “Of course I am. I always am.”

He nodded. “I am not afraid. I know I will die,” he said. “And never see Mother again. What can I do? Only drink.”

As he said this, he dropped to the bank with a thud, swinging his feet into the shallows. He resumed his singing. She stood frozen to the spot for a verse and a half.

He stopped. “You know this song?”

She shook her head. “It’s a good one.”

“My Mother taught me. English, it is called ‘The Bird Is Gone.’”

Moriz sang the verse again, casting the words to the breeze, and Vesper stood and listened to him repeat it, until she could hum along. The sound of this song echoing in the silence was so very strange, this calm before the storm, filled by only the sound of their voices, being pulled along by the wind.

This was a story that had been told a thousand times before, in snow and sun, about to be told once again.

On either side of the river, of the bottleneck of the bridge, there gathered the ranks of two armies. Whoever held the bridge held Budapest. Whoever held it won the front. When the soldiers looked at the specks across that river above the churning of the banks, as the commanders bade their marching feet forward, they saw none of these stakes. They only felt their own mortality pounding in their ears, growing louder, and ever louder still.

They knew they hadn’t a day longer. They knew they would kill each other, and that was how it was meant to go.

Vesper and the rest of the battalion were not there to witness its beginning. She sat hidden in the back of a Russian vehicle with half her troop, the rumble of engines warming them against the spring chill, the scent of gasoline mingled with the stench of dried sweat.

No one sat near her, despite the carrier being packed like a train at noon, and she sat resolutely facing the other way, full of last night’s lightning.

The carrier juddered to a halt, and the muffled gunshots and cannon blasts were no longer hidden from their ears. Out they jumped, into the gentle scent of untouched grass and the stench of gunpowder, the rustles of leaves under boots. “Let’s go,” called LTC Clarke as he hit the ground.

Three kilometres upstream from the bridge, no enemy soldiers saw them string a rope across the roaring Danube, the one of Straussian fame. She watched Sergeant Sean tie one free end of the rope to a tree on the far bank, and Harris loop his pack onto its other end. When the rope had been tied taut by Harris, the chain of supply packs was launched across the river, one after another.

Into the river they leapt, swimming across with the ease of otters, commanders first, shouldering along their packs, held safe from the current.

Though it had been a focus of her training, Vesper had to devote most of her mind to holding onto the electric current coursing across her while she cut through the eddies and waves. She was accustomed to this, making the struggle invisible; the lightning always wanted to break away, always wanted to be free and be reunited with the earth. It wasn’t meant to be held as she held it.

She swam hard despite the burning of the current. She retrieved her pack, no different from anyone else’s. Shiver with the cold as they did, they resumed their relentless march through the forests as they had planned, towards destiny, which saw the hours collapse into minutes, the minutes torn to shreds.

And it wasn’t destiny that they found at the head of the bridge, but a version of hell worse than any writer could conceive.

It was impossible to make sense of the milling, mauling mass of bodies at first, bloodied limbs raising guns, raising severed limbs, choking the bridge in a tide, gunfire answered by red mouths opening across chests and arms.

“Jesus Christ,” Private Marlowe’s voice broke on his oath as they peered from the cover of the forests.

Russian soldiers were piling up on the bridge. They had managed to push their line more than halfway across it, and an orgy of bodies lay in their wake, silhouettes of legs without torsos hanging off the edge of the bridge. And yet more Russian men charged to fill the spaces where the corpses slid off, a teeming mass of uniformed bodies, the dead impossible to tell from the living.

“I’m going to be sick,” breathed Marlowe again as the scent of fresh blood hit them on the breeze. Vesper had to choke back her own curse.

To her right, in a head of forest at the top of the knoll, together with the 2 Troop, stood the Lieutenant Colonel. He lifted his hand to signal stop. “Number Sixty, on my command, get out there and start pushing. B Company, C Company, behind me—”

Right then, the boom of a shell colliding with the Allied end of the bridge bent them all double. Like falling jigsaw pieces, the bridge fragments began to collapse into the water from the impact point, and tumbled into the reddening water. White splashes surged like tidal waves that tossed the floating corpses about. Nowhere left to go, the soldiers trapped on the half-bridge redoubled their forward charge.

With the bridge gone, the companies on both sides finally began to spill over the banks of the river on both sides of the road, and the gunshots surged, reigning over the afternoon.

“Go!” Clarke shouted.

“Go!” the order was relayed across the troop.

Out of the forests they thundered, forming their ranks on the knoll—a battalion of four hundred, their rifles loaded and aimed across the fifty metres of slope separating them from their foes. Vesper and Rajan assembled the EMPG in blinding speed, Weston spotting as he always did. The LTC turned to her and gave the thumbs-up.

The Axis soldiers had barely taken notice when the first of their three Grilles began to vomit smoke out the back, before exploding into a fireball. Like ants, soldiers began to scatter into disarray in the wake of the flames. The No. 60 pushed through the rainy mud, stopped halfway down the hill, and sent down a barrage of bullets. The B and C Companies had begun to follow, thinning out on either side and sandwiching the Axis forces between them.

Around her, the first retaliatory spatter of bullets was landing, the first bodies thudding in the mud, and in the noise she gritted her teeth. Again they set the EMPG down, and again Vesper narrowed her eyes on the crosshair.

“Fire!” Weston swung his open palm up. She fired and the electrode dove straight in their next mobile cannon's chassis with a satisfying crunch. A shock travelled down the wire, and that was enough to see that hulking beast, too, go up in flames.

“Go!” Clarke’s third bellow of the same order. They answered with a concerted shout, and tided forward. Nearby, Marlowe sank with a cry, curled up on the ground with his hand clamped on his shoulder, blood oozing between his fingers. There was no time to pick him up. They pushed down towards the river, as Clarke had said.

Foot by agonising foot, they closed around the Axis ranks, their boot heels and knees sinking in the muddy riverbanks, just feet from the roll of the river. Now they were close enough to begin lobbing grenades into the snarls of the enemy ranks, to supplement their gunfire. Pins flew. All was lost in thunder, like the heart of a storm.

At their feet a young corpse, wearing the Russian colours, rolled up onto the bank, tongue lolling out. Vesper looked away from those glazed eyes, choking back nausea. Everything was death, nothing but death, a mockery of life, borne by these tens of thousands of hapless boys who had boarded this train with no destination.

He was just the first of many. Russian soldiers were struggling across the river in messy chains, breaking up every now and then when the current or a volley of gunfire tore them from each other’s grip. Thousands spewed from both banks, Russian and Hungarian, clawing through the river mud. In this storm of faces, Vesper saw that they were all the same: farm boys, hunters, brought out in numbers by the nation’s promise, its burning eyes.

Just as she had been. Swirling on the river like leaves. Choking on the current.

“Lovelace!” LTC Clarke’s voice shattered the thought, resounding ugly in her mind. She whirled, dizzy, to find Clarke on her left. “Lovelace. Get in the water and take them out.”

“What?” She forgot the script.

“I said, get in the water and take them out!”

“But there’s Russians in there, there’s—”

“At all costs,” he snapped, stone-edged gaze cutting the air. “You’re fully charged, there’s plenty of water, do it!”

“I can’t—“

He bristled, face like a hurricane rising. “The entire bloody front rests its hopes on us, Lovelace! Don’t you love performing the heroics? I said, go!”

And as she always did, because the King, because England compelled her, Vesper said, “Yes, sir—”

She let her pack and pouches and rifle fall onto the mud. With a running start, she dove into the red-brown water in a trail of bubbles, eyes clouded for moments beneath the surface. She broke through a torrent of soldiers and drew in a breath, reining in the electrons, reining in their frenzied dance.

Bobbing in the water, which stank of all the dead as it buffeted her gently, the heat of the electric current began to burn in her arms, so she lifted them, palms up, right below the surface.

The lightning was already crackling and snapping in her ears, telling her what to do before she could think about it.

But fight to think she still did, through the strain and the shivering, eyes narrowed on the far-off bank. If she could just relax and direct the current, aim it, dictate its course…

Electric current moves mostly invisibly in water. There is no light nor sound; the current never has to cross the air as an arc.

There was never any chance Vesper could rein the lightning in, nor ever would. The instant she uncurled her hands, it greedily unfurled across the water, death in slow motion.

Across the bend of the Danube, every soldier cried out as a sudden pain seized them, their every muscle clenched so sharply they screamed in tears. They twitched like half-drowned puppets fighting their strings, limbs thrashing willy-nilly, eyes bulging out of their sockets.

The shock lasted just five seconds. In those seconds, five trillion coulombs ran into the ground, burning every inch of grass and sinew it could find.

The chorus of deathly cries faltered as each one was burned from the inside, and pitched face-forward into the river.

For moments in the chaos, a silence spread, holding the entire battlefield captive.

Vesper would later learn, in the sinking light of evening, that she had killed two thousand soldiers in that moment. When others spoke of it, they would pointedly omit the fact that the dead included British and Russian soldiers, people she would never have dreamt of harming.

Here in the thick of battle, she only closed her eyes, and dove into the bloody water to muffle the thunder of war above the surface. She swam and swam through the jostling limbs and loose, bobbing helmets, rolling like husks. The scent of blood and burning, closing in from everywhere, made her insides clench.

She swam under the shadow of the Gerjen Bridge, on and on until the bridge was behind her. No bullets stopped her. She did not stop swimming until she could no longer hear the dwindling cries of battle, the rumble of distant engines.

The water ran clearer here. Vesper finally launched herself onto the shore and crawled out on her elbows, coughing. She dragged herself to the grass. There she sat up, arms wrapped around her legs, drenched hair drooping about her shoulders. She lifted her eyes to the greying sky, and shivered, and breathed in so deeply she swayed with dizziness.

Her entire body ached, and she hadn’t begun to process its cause. She was here on the field, doing what she was meant to, what she had always dreamt she would.

All those years ago, when she had come into an understanding about her bizarre abilities, she had seen a future much like this. She had known, there and then, that more could be made of her skills than she could possibly envision for herself, and that it had to be put in the hands of those with the knowledge and authority to use them—to use her—for the greatest good possible.

And they had! She pressed her face in her lap and snarled. Putting a stop to the Nazi advance, putting an end to their crimes—that was good, so plainly it was hard to think of good even clearer.

But when she had lifted her hands below the river, when she had watched her allies die at her hand—

—that had felt like the worst thing she had ever done.

Vesper spat river water onto the soil. She breathed deeply again. She could finally smell the grass untouched. Her eyes stung, but not enough for tears.

She had let them make her their weapon. She was the one no one in this world could match in a fight—no one should own her this way, and if they did, it was because she had let them.

So why had she? Had she simply been afraid to own herself, to be solely responsible for what her powers did?

What if she fled now with Orobelle and her protector Dorian?

Would she own herself then?

It had been eleven days since Honourless’ arrival in this room of nets and crates and old rowboats. In all her countless attempts since, she had not managed to cross back to the Third World, or come close to it.

In the dimness of dawn, she sighed and sagged against the wall, thinking that perhaps the most plausible explanation was that she had lost her ability to move between worlds. Clearly, she could still ghost in some form: she still felt space distort when she tried. But ghosting successfully was another matter entirely.

On this eleventh day of her stay at the increasingly-frustrated fisherman’s house, Honourless watched her hunch-backed host place a bowl of fish soup on the mat beside her, disappear at the door, and close it behind him with a vociferous grumble.

It was only then, as she downed the fish soup, that she felt the prickle of a long-buried conscience for the first time in while. In its wake, she struggled onto her feet, their cracked soles bearing her weight.

“Orobelle,” she said, and then barked a laugh, as she stumbled over to a nearby crate and sat atop it. “Where are you? How will I even find you?”

Her eyes narrowed. No, if she could ghost, then she could find the child. The brat was the One Around Whom the Light Spun, and she had the attitude to match. Locking her intent on her would be simple.

All she had to do was ghost.

She pressed her fist into her chin. But if the Third World was out of reach…then what if Orobelle had been right, and there lay yet another world in the other direction? A half-formed one, perhaps. These worlds seemed to diminish in power and voice as they moved outwards; she wouldn’t be surprised if the next were a scrap heap. But a world was a world, and if she could get to it, she could get to her.

“How about it, a fifth world?” Honourless said, closing her eyes, thoughts locked upon the assault from eleven days ago, the scorch of pain in her legs as they had torn through the barbs—and on the outward world, the upward world, in the opposite direction from which they had come.

A chorus of blaring horns interrupted her. Her eyes flew wide open. She felt herself stumble to one knee.

A dark monument towered over her, and a black road lay at her feet. Carriages and buildings flashed unsightly rainbow lights in her eyes, making them ache. She blinked at them, shielding her eyes.

From the paved edge of the street, someone with their hair in a wrap called out something she didn’t understand, but knew was a warning. She sprang off the road as the horns were joined by the screech of carriages skidding to a halt behind an ever-growing herd of stalled vehicles with glowing light-eyes. Only when she had flown out of the way did the pileup begin moving again.

The shouter of the warning shrilled something as she approached, but everything they said went unheeded. She gave herself a second to take this new world in, and then to throw her head back and laugh.

And still laughing, her thoughts narrowed in on Orobelle, Duchess of Diamonds, the centre of everything. She leapt, and mid-leap, she found herself lying sprawled out on a red carpeted floor, her ribs aching.

“For all the barbarism of this world, it certainly has its pockets of civilisation,” said Orobelle, sitting with one leg crossed over the other in a blue-satin couch.

The room they were renting cost them fifty pounds a night, but these exorbitant prices had ceased to be a problem. After obtaining a Report of Authenticity from the appraiser she had hired on the last of their fish-and-potato-slice earnings, selling the gemstones had been effortless, and left them two thousand pounds richer.

They had been here just three days, but the Duchess already felt more at home here than she had anywhere else on this damned world.

Upon a low, cube-shaped wooden table sat Dorian with his back perfectly rigid. In his left hand was a crumpled bag marked with Brown’s Hotel; in his right was some form of baked item, half-eaten, from which he took a small bite every minute or so.

This baked item was not in his hand for very much longer, for in the very next moment there came a flash of rough hair and bandages, and then a lanky body crashed into the floor at his feet, causing him to drop his snack.

The unexpected newcomer let out a groan, and Orobelle leapt up on her feet.

“Honourless!” she gasped. “You have some nerve reappearing this late. How dare you abandon my luggage!”

She lifted her head, revealing that the newcomer was, indeed, Honourless. “Your—how dare you leave me to the mercy of their soldiers! I was busy running for my damned life. If I had bothered with your precious luggage, I would be dead, and where would you be now?” With the last snarl, she flipped over to find Dorian offering a hand. She stared at him for a moment, before rising on her feet herself. “So, what now, Your Grace?”

“Did you finally learn to ghost?” the Duchess asked, face taut.

“It turns out I never forgot how to,” she answered. “But we are lucky the Fifth World is much closer than the Third.”

“The—“ Orobelle gaped. If Honourless were to be insolent, she would call her excited. She cleared her throat. “We shall deal with the Fifth World later. For now, we need you to help us find her.”

“Her? Who?”

“The next Core. Vesper Lovelace. She’ll be happier to join us now, now that the war is close to its end.”

Marching through the grass as she and Major Harris led the 3 Troop to camp south of Budapest, Vesper wondered how she would ever find Orobelle.

It was amid the spreading news that the British and French troops on the other side were advancing the Western Front again, that she realised it had to be soon. The war would end soon. She had nowhere to go but back to her homeland.

“Everything alright there, Lovelace?” asked Harris, as they marched. “You look inconsolable, and with good reason.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine, thank you, sir. I’m just…thinking.” She frowned. “What happens when soldiers vanish outside of combat?”

“Never have dealt with that, but I would presume them deserters.”

Vesper nodded. Deserter was better than dead, she supposed.

The evening cooled upon the forest. The Gerjen Bridge was being repaired, but almost four-fifths of the Russian infantry had already crossed by then. While the rest of her squad hammered tent pins into the ground, Vesper left, coat pulled tight around her, and wove through an endless field of tents till she was at the edge where the camp met the river. Some wide-eyed boys called out in Russian as she passed, and she raised her hand in half-hearted acknowledgement.

The water was clear, bearing no memory of the afternoon. Its burble was almost musical, and it was easier to appreciate its music now. Then the thought of the future crossed her, like a chill. Maybe it was better that she gave herself to them. Maybe the world truly needed to be kept safe from someone like her.

She sighed. Her soul felt threadbare, and she wasn't sure she remembered the feeling of comfort.

Ten minutes into her staring at the glittering current, she heard a crunch in the grass, and a whisper of her name from behind her. “Lovelace,” she said.

She whirled back with a start, and saw the man from the beach two weeks ago. Dorian.

She started, stumbled backward. He offered a paper bag, bearing the logo of the Browns Hotel. “A gift of welcome,” he said.

From behind him emerged the young Duchess. “Are you ready to come?” asked Orobelle, eyes glittering brighter than the river. “The war is over—”

“It is not over yet,” the soldier replied, closing her eyes briefly, heart booming. “But I no longer want any part of it. I’ll come with you, if you still want me.”

The Duchess puffed up. “I knew you would come to your senses!” she piped.

A third voice interrupted, a wordless grumble. Crouched to Orobelle’s left was the bony silhouette of someone she did not know. The Duchess’ gaze followed Vesper’s. “Don’t mind her,” she muttered. You won’t understand a word she says.”

Dorian turned to the crouched woman. “This is Vesper,” he said to her, and she seemed to understand him perfectly, flicking her hand upward.

“Wait,” Vesper said, pointing at Dorian and then at the stranger, “how does she understand Dorian, and not I? He just spoke English—”

“He did not. You simply understood him in your own language. And Honourless understood it in hers.” Orobelle said curtly. “That is the Queendom’s power, entangling us with the will of the Light, and the wills of all that was born of the Light.”

“Is her name really Honourless?”

“Until she pays her penance for her crime, yes.”

“That seems rude, to call her ‘Honourless’.”

“You can try giving her a name if you like. It won’t stick. You won’t remember it.”

Vesper frowned. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“You don’t have to.” Without turning, Orobelle waved for Honourless to come, waiting until she reluctantly rose out of shadow. She was tall, second tallest after Dorian, and her face was pulled into a perpetual grimace. The moonlight fell across her thin, jagged face, outlining the claw scars that crossed it.

That look might have scared any other child, but Orobelle snatched her wrist unflinchingly, and Dorian’s with her other hand. The knight extended his hand towards Vesper and nodded. She took it with a furrow of her brow.

“Honourless!” Orobelle shouted. Honourless growled something back that Vesper wished she could have understood, if only because of the face the Duchess made. “Don’t you dare!” the child snarled, but she was cut short as she staggered.

That same moment, Vesper felt gravity disappear.

It was as if she had been torn from the ground and flung up by a tide, though she still felt the ground at her soles. Dorian’s grip slipped. Shouting, she snatched for his wrist before it could fly out of reach.

They were being thrown about upon invisible waves. Everything was a whirling reflection, rippling like the surface of a lake disturbed by a boulder: a forest of trees, a river, the glimmer of the moon, silhouettes.

“We’re leaving?” Vesper exclaimed. “But I haven't even—”

“No! No delays. We go now.”

“Can’t I—” The soldier's eyes searched the roiling visions frantically for Orobelle—“can’t I even see my parents first?”

“We’ve wasted four days here!”

Coinciding with the “here”, Honourless lifted her head to cry out. The sky was invisible through the ripples, pulling everything thin in circles around them. The moon stretched into a ring, a tunnel-mouth through which it seemed everything else was passing.

“When will I be back?” Vesper called out through the opening void.

“I don’t know! Maybe never!”

She thought she might choke with grief.

Then everything was sundered from its place, even the last echo of Orobelle’s voice, and they descended into a world of strange new lights.

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Stars in the Dark

You quickly get used to these starless San Francisco nights.

Between the fire of early evening lights and the fog that tries to suffocate them, the stars are lucky if any of their light reaches the roads. You know there’s no need to search for anything past the smoldering sodium lights, past the pinnacles of those thousand towers. Only the moon glows through, a fragment of a disk.

If you ride to the outer hills and south to the suburbs, you might see their light trickle through. But that’s not how it goes. Most will never leave: queues of tents stand frail under the freeways, and beggars lie in benches by piers of LEDs, waiting for something better than a view of the stars.

From your fledgling days, you’ve learned about the stars from what others say about them. Dozing in a sling on your mother’s hip, you listened to her spin yarns about sailors in space while she cooked. She told you how the stars were brighter in her childhood, how they began to disappear as the city grew taller.

In middle school, you smuggled your tablet into class to watch the launch of the Fortitude 3 under your desk. While Ms. Santos read off her slides about random-access memory, you watched the tiny, historic shuttle draw a path of smoke through the stratosphere.

The year that shuttle passed Jupiter, you began detouring to the corner library after school every week, to borrow the same book again and again. You no longer remember its title, but you remember what lies between its covers: the entire night sky, scattered across a two-page spread, with the ecliptic of the sun marked by a dotted line. The book would never belong to you, but you made it as yours as much as you could, taking photographs of its diagrams and paragraphs.

When you left home for college, you kept those notebooks with you.

Looking up, Lea sees the Milky Way for the first time.

All of Japantown is dark tonight. A third of the city has been snuffed out by the blackout, and now there are only the silhouettes of antennae and jumbles of dark, mismatched roofs, crowding each other out like teeth in a jaw.

Beyond them, this strange vision of stars, crisper than in the two-page spread, unfolds.

There is more depth and distance to the image than Lea could have imagined, a cloud of lights, a pool of glitter. San Francisco has not seen this many stars in a century of flickering neon and sodium incandescence.

As if meeting an old friend for the first time in a century, its many eyes glisten, black windows mirroring the sky.

On the straggly lawn of the Hexagon, a crowd of frazzled tenants mills and mutters around her, a noisy contrast to the silence she’s used to. She herself has only just come down from her window on a blanket rope five stories long. From other windows, similar ropes of knotted cloth flap in the breeze, and flashlight beams swing back and forth.

“Lea?”

She whips around. Someone’s running towards her, and she almost doesn't recognise him, but the name finally breaks through: August, the sleepless office worker she sees at the café, only ever in businesswear with bags under his eyes. The eyebags are still there, but the businesswear has been replaced with cargo shorts and a large sweatshirt.

“What the heck?” he exclaims.

“Auggie?” she shouts in unison. “Do you live here?”

“I’ve been in unit 203 since last year! How long have you been here?”

“Three years, dude! I’m in 509.”

“You’ve been here the whole time I’ve been here? And we never saw each other?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone else who lives here. It’s weird.”

Finding a mound in the corner of the lawn, they sit down in the grass, August complaining about his back. Inevitably, they both look upward.

“Oh, whoa.”

“I know, it’s unreal.” Dark towers reach up into a fogless sky.

August blows out a breath through puckered lips. “I’ve never seen so many stars.”

“You know much about the constellations?”

“Uh, not really?”

“Cool, I can introduce you! You see the three stars in a line over there? That's the Belt of Orion.” Lea points, though parallax means August sees her pointing at different stars. “And there’s Deneb, Vega and Altair, the Summer Triangle—”

It fills their eyes both, and many other eyes around them. The chatter wafts through the summer night. There is no booming of karaoke speakers tonight, no screeching of tires; their voices are thin and alone.

“I wonder when my landlady will come by,” she says absently. “She protects her units like unhatched eggs. She even has a no-guest rule, though I kinda broke that one last week.” The picture of her two friends flashes through her thoughts, the elevator doors closing between her and them. “Maybe the blackout will drive the rent down.”

“God, I hope.”

A torch flash casts long shadows across the grass before them, outlined in white. “Don’t mind me, you’ve got a good spot,” calls out a newcomer, as they drop onto the grass beside the mulling companions. They sigh. “What a night.”

“Tell me about it,” August replies. “You just watch, we’re gonna be out here on the lawn all night. I refuse to sleep out here.”

Lea has flopped backward onto the grass, staring straight up at Cygnus. “What’s your name?” she asks, turning her head to take the newcomer in. Their short, curly hair is bleached to some pale shade, indiscernible in the moonlight.

“Morri,” they reply, reaching out for a handshake that Lea returns with the wrong hand. “You?”

“Lea. You live here too?” she replies.

“Yeah, first floor, in whiffing distance of the garbage collection point.” Morri grimaces while the other two laugh.

“I wonder what the news has to say about the blackout. You guys didn’t happen to check, did you?” August taps a search query into his phone as he speaks.

Lea pats her pocket for her phone, then slaps her forehead. “I forgot to take my phone down with me.”

“Oh, huh, it says here,” August turns his phone around to show them a post that neither can read from where they are, “there was a power surge thousands of times bigger than any we’ve had before. They’ve shut off the power across a third of the city, it’ll come back once they’ve figured out what caused it.”

“Who knows how long that’ll take,” Lea sighs, then immerses herself in the view again. “You know what, let’s play a game. I made this one up myself, it’s actually so good for getting to know people you just met, i.e. like the three of us right now. Basically, you interview each other and try to find as many people you both know as possible.”

“I know one—Morri,” August says at once. “The president. Tim Lee.”

“Not like that, they have to be new connections. Also, no famous people. That’s no fun.”

“Then what if we don’t find anyone?”

“Between two people living in this city? No way. I’ve never seen it fail before, and you know what they say, the universe isn’t getting any bigger.” She pauses. “You guys get it?”

Sometimes, you roam the library shelves together with the daughter of your mom’s best friend. She gravitates towards a different end of the hall, towards biology and history. You watch her disappear behind the shelves while you get to yours, and discover her two hours later, nestled in a beanbag chair, reading about castles and jousting tournaments.

You convince your mom to take you both stargazing, when you are seven and still don't know that the Coit Tower overlooks the glowing piers. Halfway to the tower, it becomes clear that the view is no better than below. Then your companion’s ankle is bitten by ants in the grass, and tears gather in her eyes, sparkling in the lights below Telegraph Hill. The tears are still there when you snap a selfie of the both of you, for a keepsake.

You support her down the slopes back to the car beneath the cloudy orange sky, her arm around your shoulders, heads heavy with disappointment. She falls asleep in the back seat of your mom’s car in the night traffic. You wait for her to stir so you can talk to her, but she doesn't wake till you pull up at her front gate in Daly City.

Morri chuckles. “Okay, Lea, show us how to play it.”

“I always start by asking about work. Do you have a job?”

“Mhm, I have two,” they say smartly.

“Two timer, huh?” August pipes.

They shrug. “I do what I have to. I’m a teller at the Transamerica Pyramid branch, that’s my job job, but I’m also a live sound mixer. I’ve done some big gigs, Overripe this May was actually a dream come true.”

Lea looks them in the eye. “Overripe? For real?”

“It sure was a thing that happened. I didn’t realise how much their performances are EQed. Had to turn the lows on Felipe’s mic way down.” Morri mimes pulling a slider down. “There’s enough bass in that man’s voice to rattle the gates of Hell.”

“That is hella cool,” Lea says under her breath, tapping her chin. “Oh, I know a dude who’s really into Overripe—Zainul Rahim? He drops by Kiana’s Place on Saturday evenings and blasts their music from his tablet while he’s studying. We’ve chatted a couple of times. He tells me his boyfriend Josiah is a big fan too, they met at their job—”

”Wait. Josiah?” Silent for a while till now, August perks up. “Does Zainul have like, big glasses?”

“Yeah, purple ones.”

August is clutching at his head. “No way, I think I know the Josiah you’re talking about. I mean, how many people named 'Josiah' are there, even? He lives in the area but I don’t know where. I bump into him on the trolley sometimes, sometimes he’s with his hipster BF Zainul. Band tees? Huge headphones?”

“Oh! Yes!” Lea raises her voice to a shout, slapping the ground. “That’s Zainul, one hundred percent. Alternative band nerd! There we go, that’s one guy!” She turns to the other two. “You get how it goes?”

August is grinning. “I get it, let’s keep going.” He turns to Morri. “Um, you work at the Transamerica Pyramid? My stockbroker’s office is there too, Leona Mills—seen her around?”

When you close your eyes at night in Japantown, San Francisco, you hear the bassy boom of a karaoke bar one street down, filtered through the rev of outlawed motorcycles and the screech of wheels. The noise seeps through the walls, and you can’t help but to wonder if you might someday discover who that is you hear, wailing into the microphone. The thud of a trance kick conjures images of neon logo signage, noisy red and orange, the weed smoke and frying oil swirling rose and gold in the night.

You’ve walked there in the dark, looking up past the apartment roofs and their tiny glowing windows, thinking it’s the wrong time to be looking for stars. Stars would fit the scene, you think, the temporary against the permanent. But they’re nowhere to be found, sheltered from view by the glowing veil of fog above, the same fog that keeps everything in this city right where it should be.

Sometimes, you like to stand alone on the corner of a street and listen to the telltale traces of other lives around you. The amateur singer straining their voice in a room two blocks away. The veteran motorcyclist veering down a shortcut around the hill. The disgruntled worker banging a fist on their hydrogen car’s horn.

Lea lies back as August and Morri uncover the epic tales of each other’s lives. She offers a helpful word or two every now and then, but they hardly need prompting. From the moment they discover that they have both had company brochures printed by one Veranda Chase at Delphi Solutions (the print store on the third floor of the Marah Tower), the game takes off.

Both Lea and August have been served by the same braces-wearing waiter at Sushi One up at the head of their street. Morri’s aunt and August’s mother were enrolled at the same high school twenty-two years ago; both told tales of the gargoylesque Mister Hornsby, the discipline master with the ancient glasses.

Five years ago—when she was fourteen and they were sixteen—Lea and Morri frequented the library at the corner of Geary Boulevard and Scott Street, and had the same favorite librarian.

“There was this book I read once,” says Morri. “And then I could never find it again, for some reason. It was called A Beginner’s Atlas—“

“—of the Night Sky?” Lea completes the title without a thought.

The stars grow bright above them. Another blanket rope shoots out of a window nearby, flopping down with its tip barely falling past a second-floor windowsill. There’s a yell, and a glow stick lands with a thud up by the Hexagon compound’s gate, and somewhere else, a silent car flashes its yellow lights across the street.

“You’ve read it?” asks Morri quietly.

Lea nods. “I borrowed it every week. Week after week. Ran down after school the day after I returned it every time, just so I could borrow it again.”

“Shit, you’re the reason I never could find that book again?”

She chuckles. “Weird as it is…I think so. Sorry buddy.”

“I swear,” Morri gasps, jabbing their index finger into the earth with every word, “we are heading right down to that library tomorrow morning and finding it, and I’m borrowing it on your card.”

Lea slaps their shoulder. “Sure thing, then we can both swing by Kiana’s Place. Maybe we’ll get to hang out with Zainul and Josiah.”

“You really weren’t kidding,” August chimes in. “Everyone's connected in San Francisco.”

She smiles. “Like I said, the universe isn’t getting any bigger.”

“I’m starting to feel it,” Morri sighs with a shake of their head.

Most of the romance of constellations is stolen from you at six years old, when you read that most stars in the Big Dipper are farther from each other than the earth is from them.

All of a sudden, it seems silly to draw imaginary shapes in the sky, when they really only exist from the vantage of earth, in the brief twinkling of time that humans have been around.

“What’s wrong with the Big Dipper?” asks your mother, giving the steering wheel a whirl.

“It doesn’t exist!” you cry, curled up in the back seat. “It’s fake! People made it up! If we were on a planet orbiting a different star, the sky would be different! None of the stars would be in the same place…”

But night falls again and again, and no stars are visible besides the same handful, pricking through the light pollution and fog: Sirius, Procyon, Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka. You spend a good year disillusioned with the myths that your parents have told about them.

Then your best friend is taken away, to a place behind locked doors where no one will see her again. That May, a star winks out of visibility, according to the American Astronomy Annals. Two hundred million years ago, it falteringly completed its life cycle and collapsed into a black hole, but only on that day does humanity watch its death.

You never thought you would live to see the night sky change, but it seems it can happen more suddenly than one thinks.

The year you leave home for college, the Fortitude 3's crew completes its first orbit of Saturn on Titan. In the radio interviews, the astronauts talk more about home than space, static punctuating their tearful grieving for the world they haven't seen in a decade.

The year you leave home for college, it begins to dawn on you that it doesn’t matter that the constellations wouldn't exist in another galaxy, in another epoch.

Nothing in life has meaning, by that token. All things are just arrangements of atoms. They will only mean something briefly. They will only mean something while you have stories to tell about them.

What difference is there, between drawing shapes in the stars, and molding clay into the figures of gods? Or framing up a photo where you and your best friend are still together?

August points past the facing row of apartments. “I know that one! It’s the Big Dipper,” he says. Lea follows his finger and sees the ladle-shaped asterism over the roofs.

Morri is staring across the road, past the stalled cars playing temporary bedrooms for their owners. “Hey, Lea,” they murmur. “Did you ever see this girl at the library, back then?”

“Who?”

“I used to go down every Wednesday afternoon, and she was always there in the same beanbag chair, by the science section. It all just, man, it all just came back to me, and I don’t know why, but I associate the library with her. The musty smell, the prickly cushions. And her, always there in green, never saying anything when I passed. Always lost in some book.”

“You don’t mean Adelaide Moore, do you?”

They look up, eyes widening. “The…the girl who got arrested for—for the mutant butterfly? The one who escaped?”

“Yeah, we used to have tea together. Our moms had tea together. We’d visit the library when our parents did.”

“My mind is officially blown,” Morri breathes. “I always thought it sucked, what they did to Adelaide. I'm glad she's escaped, to be honest. Danger to us or not.”

“Was it hard for you, when they arrested her?”

“Well, I was only eight at the time, so I cried for a day, and then I moved on with my life like nothing had happened. But—”

When you blink, you can still see her wide-eyed face on the backs of your eyelids, exactly the same as it was that night on Telegraph Hill. Years of silence, and suddenly, she is here again, slipping away again, behind closing elevator doors.

“If you survive, come back and see me!” you call, before the line between the two of you is severed, and the silence returns.

Sometimes, you feel like a star, alone in the dark, light years away from everyone else. A star among other stars in a galaxy, held in orbit by San Francisco’s gravity.

“—You know, it's weird but this whole time, she was always over in the next district. She’s always been nearby, just in a place where I couldn't see her.”

“I hope she’s okay.”

“She’s okay,” Lea whispers.

Revolving Door: Volume 2

City of Eyes and Fog - The Eyes

It was a week ago that Adelaide’s steady life was shattered forever by the appearance of Felix Mercer.

Eleven years of the same week playing over and over, beeping clocks and sliding panels and beeping clocks, and now the pattern is breaking, lying in glowing pieces on that penthouse apartment floor. This stranger stood there outside her room, offering her something she had not dreamt of till that moment: freedom. And afraid as she was of the unknown, of having no beeping clocks to live her life by, she chose to flee, descending through the city lights in the last rain of spring.

It has been a week since their eyes first met. Today they sit watching the sky through a rain-streaked window, the light forming faint parallelograms on the burgundy hotel walls. The paint is old as the furniture and it has not yet outfitted with all the pleasures of modern life, but in some ways, that is for the better.

Felix ponders some handwritten notes, and Adelaide lies under the silken covers, stealing a glance at him over the pages of a novel. He has been bizarrely cautious about never occupying the bed while she is in it, and she cannot tell if he minds sleeping in the armchair every night.

“How many more nights can we afford to stay here?” she asks.

Felix glances at her and loses his unfocused stare for a polite smile. “Don’t you worry your pretty head about that,” he replies, fanning out the receipts in his hand. “As I said, we are in no danger of running out of funds. The first dividends for my shares arrive next week.”

Those ill feelings are dispersed momentarily by puzzlement. She arches an eyebrow. “How did you open a bank account here? You don’t have proof of ID, do you?”

Felix smiles that same unrevealing smile. “I have my ways,” he says.

Her eyes shift to the wall beside her. He keeps so much of himself veiled in shadow—or in light so bright that no one can see through it. How can she know he has benign aims? But his secret ways are keeping them both afloat, and she isn’t about to aggrieve the only person standing between her and capture.

Back in that penthouse apartment, standing in the blue light, she didn't know where her moment's fire and folly would take her, though that "moment" has lasted a week now. She is out here, on the run, unable to show her face anywhere. And nothing is written. And everything is possible. She gets to decide.

The pair know that the SFPD is casting its net wide. Photos of the escaped lab prisoner Adelaide Moore as she was last seen, brown-haired and distraught, have been circulating in the news at every hour for a week now, appearing on billboards between lurid pink-and-yellow advertisements.

This is a city of eyes, hiding in every wall and looming over every screen. But these are the eyes of the four megacorporations that puppeteer life from behind the scenes, and most of them operate with the greater parts of themselves distributed in networks across the world, so they do not answer to any law.

Felix does his best to keep her disguise up about her when they are in public, but even he cannot maintain it constantly, particularly not when she is out of his sight—though those moments are few. Although Adelaide has no doubts that she has been seen by a camera somewhere, the city cannot get hold of that data just yet. Still, she ducks her face away every time she notices a glass lens pointed her way, and averts the eyes of drivers and their dashboard cameras.

In their corner of Noe Valley, where trees stand manicured behind speed-trapped traffic lights, Adelaide buys herself a tiny green pair of scissors so that she can trim her hair. Her roots are growing out dark blonde, instead of the brown of her childhood, and flecks of blue have emerged from the grey of her eyes. She is caught between the past and the future, brown- and honey-haired, blue- and grey-eyed, staring into the dressing mirror of their little burgundy hotel room at someone she only half knows, tufts of hair scattered across the desk and the hotel phone.

It isn’t till they are standing at the intersection by Mitchell’s Ice Cream the next day, drenched in the golden afternoon light, that Felix turns to her and says, “Your present look is very becoming, quite the shame that it wouldn’t do for a disguise. It is too memorable.”

“You mean the disguise you have on me right now?”

“No, your actual look.”

“Ah, thank you,” she murmurs, though she isn’t sure of why this is something she should thank him for.

“Most would pay for these colors, but here you are, changing them without a thought.”

Not five minutes later, Adelaide glimpses a strange visage in storefront window, and halts to stare. That’s me. Isn’t it? Her face is sharp and round-nosed; her hair is all honey-brown.

She sees Felix come to a stop behind her. “Is something the matter?”

“Is this still necessary?” she asks, pointing at her reflection in the Tesla Futures storefront. Lights spelling NEW ARRIVALS glow behind it. “I’ve already changed my looks a great deal on my own. You noted it yourself.”

He lowers his week-old tablet-phone behind the shopping bag on his elbow. If he is putting any effort into her light mask, he barely shows it. “The cameras can identify you from the features you cannot change,” he replies. “Nose shape, jawline, distance between the eyes...those are the parts you cannot hide from cameras.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read an enthusiast’s page on facial recognition technology.”

“Where?”

“On the internet.”

“Did they have the internet at home, in your England?”

“Not at all.” He beams as she turns away from his reflection, and to him. “But it wasn’t hard to master; these marvellous contraptions come with their own tutors.” His phone emits a blip. With a smile, he holds the screen up for her to see it: a ginger cat with a cartoonishly large head gazes out at the two onlookers beyond the glass, tail swaying. “Like her,” he says. “This is Lillie.”

“How may I help you?” Lillie mews.

He smiles absently. “My country built the Tunnel Machine, the very crown jewel of contemporary engineering—sorcery, they liked to call it. Never mind that it dropped me off in the wrong universe. This, however. This is true sorcery.”

Adelaide reaches out to take the phone for a closer look, but he swoops it away.

“Patience, my dear,” he says, letting one cord handle of the paper bag slip off his wrist. His other hand, he plunges into the bag, and from it pulls a large box-shaped package wrapped in plastic film and labelled in silver: PalmNote ES Vert. While she gapes, he hands it over.

Adelaide spends a whole five minutes of the walk staring at the box, not even daring to make a nick in the plastic. “Did you buy this for me?” her question comes five minutes late, as they approach the gas station near their hotel.

“If I were you,” he replies, “I’d be concerned if that weren’t so.” She turns to him with round eyes. “It is for you,” he clarifies.

She finally tears the box open and slides the packing foam out, the device gleaming darkly as it emerges, sitting in a perfectly-sized indent in the foam. She pulls it out and presses once on the power button. Instead of a cat, a green frog pops onto the screen, waving its webbed hand at her and introducing itself as Freddie. “Oh, wow,” she murmurs.

“We can use these to stay in contact,” he says. “Just in case.” She nods, tapping through the onscreen guide, voiceover and all, until it reveals a home page with a menu of icons. One is a speech bubble labelled Messages. Touching it takes her through another onscreen walkthrough, where she is guided through the creation of her profile. Adelaide Moore, she types into the name field. The onscreen keyboard looks like the one she had on the screen back at the—

Seconds before she taps the confirmation button on her completed profile, Felix snatches her hand away. “Use a different name,” he says in a hush. Her mouth forms an “o” of understanding and she erases it, typing out the name of her favourite Greek goddess instead, and then casting her eye about until it lands on the box in her hand.

To the rest of the messaging network, her name is Artemis Glass.

Watching her over her shoulder till now, Felix turns to his own device. “Lillie, search for,” he laughs, “Artemis Glass. I should never get used to referring to you as such.”

“I found four profiles for the name Artemis Glass,” Lillie answers. “Is this what you're looking for?”

“Why, yes, and thank you, Lillie! Four Artemis Glasses…”

“You have received a friend request!” pipes Freddie.

“Uh…show me the friend request?”

“Gladly!” the notification pops out to fill the screen. Felix’s profile image unfolds with it: he is a silhouette in front of a carnival landscape, the golden lights and painted horses of a carousel blurring behind him.

“Is this you?” Adelaide pipes, scanning the profile. Gender: Male. Age: 21. “Are you really twenty-one?”

“It is convenient for me to be twenty-one, especially where the purchase of spirits is concerned.”

She taps her lower lip with her fingertip, slowing to a stop on the sidewalk. “When did you go to the carnival? In here.” She points at the photo on the screen.

He shakes his head. “I made it.”

“Really? How?”

She leaps as a flash illuminates the air around them, and the sunlight cools to black. She stares as a scene resolves around her: an empty carousel whirling, fairy lights illuminating its every edge, like stars scattered across the night, horses bobbing in the glow. The horse manes gleam, pink, white and gold and studded with faux crystals, but their eyes are dark and deep, no light touching them. She can still hear the car horns blaring, and feel the gentle beat of the setting sun.

Adelaide stumbles back, till she bumps against Felix. He catches her by the shoulders. “That’s terrifying,” she says, lights glittering in her eyes. She glances left and right, searching for something to give lie to the illusion—and she finds that the scene scatters into indistinct bokeh at the edges—but front and centre, the vision is so crisp that she can almost hear the carousel music playing, far away. “It looks...real. How do you do that?”

“Lovely, isn't it?” his voice answers from over her shoulder while everything continues to whirl. “I have spent no less than two weeks perfecting this scene. Every detail must be crafted—I must be able to see it in my mind’s eye with perfect clarity, every crystal on every mane, ever fragment of chipped paint.”

“But you missed the eyes,” she adds then. “The horses have no eyes.”

The vision unfocuses and dissolves, replaced again by the sweltering junction, except too bright now. Adelaide blinks. A man with a shopping bag is staring at them as if they were a circus act.

Felix tilts his head. “Ah, so I did,” he says. She looks down at her screen again, recognising the carousel in the profile photo plastered across it—the same horses with the same black eyes. She taps the word “accept” on his friend invitation.

By the time she slides the tablet phone into her pocket, he has wandered over to the traffic light. Hugging the box close, she races after him.

He is peering at a checkered code printed in black on the curve of the traffic light pole. It doesn’t take him long to figure out which application corresponds to the odd pattern, and almost as soon as his camera has registered the monochromatic sigil does the quietly-blipping speaker give a merry jangle and the pedestrian light turn green.

“Did you just—” Adelaide rubs her eyes, coming up beside Felix moments before he takes her wrist, and she lets him lead her onto the tarmac. Cars stop on the other side of the painted line that marks the crossing, their silent engines glowing white.

“I could get used to living here,” her companion sighs.

Two Tuesdays after Adelaide’s escape, they overhear an exchange of shouts in the lobby under their feet that ends in a threat of a police report.

Five frigid minutes ending in mutual glances of terror, they silently agree that it is time to start moving soon. The longer they linger, the more trails they leave.

“We ought to leave the city, go down to the suburbs,” Adelaide says in a hush. “There are not as many people there as there are in San Francisco proper.”

Felix, sitting on the desk chair with a hand on the edge of his suitcase, taps a finger on his chin. “We would stick out there like a sore thumb, suburbs do not often play host to the unusual.”

“They’re looking for me in San Francisco. The farther we are from here, the more places they’ll have to look before they find us.”

He clasps and unclasps his suitcase buckle with his left index. “A fair point, but who would harbor us? The farther we go, the fewer hotels and inns there will be.”

“My parents,” she breathes, more to herself than to him. Feverish with the thought, she turns to him. “We can go find my parents. I remember where they live. They’ll let us live with them.”

Felix takes care to retain a pleasant look, but Adelaide can see his gaze harden with suspicion. “Surely not the same parents who gave you away to the law?”

She feels a pleading anger well up in her chest. “No, it wasn’t them, it was the doctor they called who did that. My parents are okay.”

“Now, now, your attachment to them is understandable,” he presses on, “but I’m afraid it might be misplaced.”

“You don’t know the last thing about them!” The shout startles him straight. “You’re talking badly about people you don’t even know!”

He touches his hand to his heart. “I do know they were responsible for your arrest. Adelaide, you must keep your wits about you!”

“They are the only people in the world who would care about me, why won’t you understand?”

He knocks his suitcase over. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, I only want to keep you safe! Why won't you trust me?”

Like the turning of a tide, Adelaide’s anger shrinks back into her heart where it was caged. She pulls back against the backboard, hugging her legs close to herself. “No, that’s not what I meant, that’s not—I know you care, I know you’re just trying to protect me—we won’t visit my parents, we won’t, we’ll do what you say—”

As Adelaide’s sentences disintegrate into broken-record repetitions of her pleas, Felix’s face goes blank. “I’m sorry,” the words barely break through her pleas. She shakes with sobs, but he repeats himself louder, “I’m truly sorry.” This time she hears him, and looks up, tears splashing on the blanket. He weaves his fingers together. “I didn’t mean to distress you.”

“I just thought it was a good idea. I just…”

“It might prove to be yet,” he says. He stands his suitcase up on its base again and comes to the bedside, sitting down on its edge. “Why don’t we call upon them? You say you remember where they live?”

Adelaide lifts her head enough to nod, a tear rolling out of her eye as she does. From his pocket, he offers the tablet phone, and she taps on an icon that brings up a map. “Um, 68 Belhaven Court, Daly City?” she says, the words igniting a firework-burst of memories, of dry lawns and red roofs. The address appears in the search bar. The map begins to scroll on its own, roads and fields zipping by, before it slows to a stop on a red-outlined patch of roads labelled Daly City.

Revolving Door: Volume 2

City of Eyes and Fog - The Fog

68 Belhaven Court is a small thoroughfare in Daly City, tucked away in some low, dry knolls. On the morning of the visit, Adelaide picks a sunflower yellow dress to wear, her favorite one in her current collection of three. In this weather, Felix has developed a fondness for collared t-shirts, and he exits the hotel room in a deep blue shirt trimmed in black, the top button undone. Adelaide wheels their navy blue luggage bag out after him, and pushes the elevator button with her knuckle.

They alight from the intercity bus with their luggage bag and cross a three-lane road at a junction, the low wind rustling in the silence, punctuated by the steady beeping pulse of the traffic light.

The things that they walk by are starting to illuminate patches of Adelaide’s memory. Morgan’s, the chain diner at the entrance to the city. Sushi One on the corner, paint peeling, red signboards several shades lighter. The decrepit BP gas station where they used to fuel up before driving down to San Jose, sporting a fresh coat of green paint. The family mart beside it, where she and her mother used to buy six-packs of cola for day trips, has been supplanted by yet another Mick’s Mart, occupying the same glass building—the same shelves in a different configuration.

But the houses are unchanged, if faded: the roof shingles are red and the lawns are brown, the one with fairy lights in its fir trees still has its fir trees and fairy lights. Heartache hits her.

“Were you close to your family?” asks Felix quietly.

Adelaide nods. Can she still remember their faces? “We went on boating trips. We flew kites, swam by the beach. Sometimes visited the library.”

“Pleasant pursuits,” says Felix. She glances at him to see what he feels, but his face is a mask, or she is not astute enough to read it. They cross in front of a driveway. “Have you thought that they might have moved since?”

“I don’t think so. The house was my grandparents’, they’ve had it for sixty…seventy years now. They bought it right after the crash.” She paused. “Sorry, you don’t know about the crash.”

“Well, I'm well aware of what a crash is," Felix replies. “I sold all my bonds in the West Indies preceding one.”

“The Caribbean? I…see,” she says noncommittally, turning away.

There is no conversation for a good ten minutes, as the light turns green and they cross another road, passing a chain of shops and the cars parked before them. It is the sort of silence that resists being broken.

As Belhaven Court gets closer, Adelaide’s heart begins to boom. Here the memories gather like swarming flies, and the nostalgia is heady, filling her with a cocktail of hope and dread. The sky is the same heavy orange, lying in layers across the peninsula. An eleven-year-old airplane streaks through the clouds. Some trees are taller, and some are dead. The silhouettes of the faraway hills peek over the same rows of houses. She tastes lemonade and ice.

Can these eleven years be scrubbed from the slate?

Adelaide stumbles on a drain grille, and the corpse of a day eleven years past hits her, of the last time she did the same. She finds her footing, dizzy, and all of a sudden she is standing in front of Number 68.

The gate is open, as if anticipating a car, and there are the sounds of life inside: an advertising jingle, spoken over by a jaunty, cartoonish voice not unlike that of Lillie the cat.

“Is this the one?” asks Felix over her shoulder. The voice pulls her out of her graveyard of memories.

She nods, eyes lingering on the white doorbell. “I’m scared.”

“Us both,” he admits.

Her parents never were gardeners; it was always too hard to maintain a lawn in the dry California heat. She remembers how her father once bought a shrub from a nursery and planted it by the driveway; its dead stump is still visible right where it used to be, beside the pillar.

Drawing in a huge breath, Adelaide reaches up and pushes the doorbell. A chimed melody answers. “Who’s there?” calls a voice that, despite the eleven years of absence, immediately snatches an instinctive reply out of her.

“It’s me, mom!”

Silence answers. The low mutter of the television unit cuts out, five seconds later. All they hear are the cicadas in the trees.

Up at the top of the driveway, the door clicks and swings open. A pale face peeks out, light brown hair clipped in a bun to the back of her head. Adelaide hears Felix’s feet shift in the gravel.

“Adelaide?” she calls, in as much of a whisper as she can manage, eyes large as the moon. She shuffles out in a faded t-shirt, baggy shorts and flip-flops, every bit the same woman she was a decade ago, with more lines in the corners of her eyes and across her forehead.

By the time Mrs. Moore has come up before them, her eyes are red with tears. “How and why?” she mutters between sniffles as she leads the visitors into the house. “Why, after so long?”

Adelaide only starts to speak once in the safety of the living room. A new set of couches sit in a square around a screen mounted on the wall. It takes her a minute to recognise the door to the kitchen, the base peeling.

“Felix broke me out of the lab,” she explains, and her mother turns to her companion with a hand awkwardly extended.

“Pleased to meet you,” he says, shaking the offered hand smartly.

Her mother continues to stare quietly as Adelaide steps through the doorway, as Felix hoists the luggage bag onto the doorstep and wheels it inside. They do not hug, nor even shake hands, and there continues to be a secretive caution to her every movement.

“Millie, turn on the television,” she calls across the living room.

“Gladly!” The screen lights up with the blithe face of a pink puppy, which prances offscreen while the luminescent white background fades into a scene from the news.

“Pineapple punch? Ginger ale?”

“The punch, if you please,” Felix answers promptly. “I have grown quite fond of pineapple since arriving.”

While the woman goes to the kitchen to take drinks out of the refrigerator, they settle into the couches. “This has so far gone better than I expected,” whispers Felix, right hand tucked into his left and resting on his lap. “But I am starting to think it won’t yield the results we were hoping…”

“The forest fires continue to spread across South California, enveloping San Diego in smoke,” the TV says. “PSI levels this afternoon are in the low two hundreds all across Socal. If you are heading out, wearing a face mask is strongly advised, especially for young children, the elderly, and those at-risk…”

“Do you think things could go back?” she whispers. “If we stayed here, in my room, with mom and…”

“Sorry for the wait,” her mother cuts in, placing two glasses of punch on the coffee table. Then she drops into the neighbouring single couch, and her face softens again. “Addie, baby, what have you been up to? What was it like in there?”

“Lonely” is the only word that makes it out of her. When she tries to call up images from her life before the escape, terror clogs her throat.

“I’m so sorry,” says Mrs. Moore, smiling with sad eyes.

“I’ve been…I’ve been getting up to date,” she goes on. “Felix has been here from England for two months, but he knows San Francisco better than I.”

Her eyes turn to Felix. “England? Which part?”

He nods. “The borough of Kensington and Chelsea.”

“Aha, the part most people think of when they haven't visited.”

“Have you? Visited, I mean?”

“A few times, on work-related business—”

A hydrogen car zips by on the road outside, gravel rattling below its wheels. Mrs. Moore leaps from the seat and straightens. She does not settle back in until it has driven out of earshot. When her gaze meets Adelaide’s again, it is disturbed.

“I hate to hurry things,” she says, “but I need you both to leave before Mi—before your father comes home, Adelaide.”

“Why? I want to see him too.”

“He…won’t be happy.”

“Oh…will he be afraid of me?”

She does not answer.

The chasm of dread widens, swallowing the hope she harboured. “So…I can’t come back,” she says blankly.

“When will he be home? Adelaide.” Felix has already downed his glass of punch; he stands, shaking Adelaide’s shoulder, but she is still staring at the rim of her glass. “Forgive me, we must go. If we leave too late, it will be hard to see in the fog.”

If she has begun to sense that things are about to turn, Felix is many steps ahead. He has stood up, a preemptive hand on their luggage. He intently eyes the doorway into the kitchen, through which she peers as well, spying a half-open window over the sink that looks out onto the garden.

“Adelaide, through the window,” he whispers, then turns to her mother. “Madam, we are most grateful for your hospitality. We must be—”

That is when the car tires roll onto the driveway, gravel clattering beneath them, and when her mother whispers, “Michael,” and Adelaide’s mind begins to race.

A door clicks. Steps crunch in the dirt, one after another. A key turns in the lock. Mrs. Moore takes one stricken glance at her daughter, and then her face contorts into a strained smile as the door clicks open. “Honey!”

“Jen.” The face of the man who steps through, aged a decade but no less surly, with his hair combed back from his brow, connects right away with a hundred memories. His mouth opens . “Adelaide?”

“No, you must have something wrong,” Jennifer Moore’s voice veers off pitch. “This isn’t, this isn’t Adelaide?”

“What? You think I wouldn’t recognize my daughter?” He snatches his phone out of his pocket in a flash, trembling visibly with one hand upon the doorknob as he dials three digits. Adelaide already knows which ones.

She feels like she might suffocate. Suddenly the leather of the couch seems to hold her fast. If she leaves the seat now, she might prompt her father to strike. But if she doesn’t move, and doesn’t move now, then she will never move again until the police are here. “Felix,” she gasps, but Felix has vanished.

She leaps from the couch and over its back, not even giving herself a moment to process the startling pain that shoots up her knee as it collides with the floor, springing straight for the kitchen, exactly as she has been rehearsing in her head. Behind her she hears Michael Moore’s thundering steps as he yells, “Stop right there!” She feels as if her lungs were being squeezed by a vice. She lifts one knee onto the edge of the sink, then the other, hoists herself up by the metal faucet, shoes on ceramic, and bends it as she does.

Her father comes barreling into the kitchen right as she springs out across the unwashed dishes and through the window.

Adelaide lands with one leg in a scratchy bush, and her vision is cloudy with tears. But there is no room for tears here and now. She sweeps them off with the back of her right forearm. The air is colder than before. She remembers this yard, it goes around the right side of the house and back to the road, but the gate is the last place she wants to go; her father is surely rounding the perimeter of the house right now.

Her eyes sweep her old yard. A grey apartment looms up on the other side of the back fence, and there is a woody vine creeping over it. If she can make it onto the grounds of the apartment, then she could buy herself time.

She sprints for the vine. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the tall shape of her father emerge from around the side of the house. She has not climbed in years, but in the screaming of her every thought, her arms and legs move as if she’s practiced this a thousand times. Her skirt snags on twigs. Her throat burns. “Get down from there!” His demand only spurs her to do the opposite. She throws herself over the fence at the gunshot boom of his voice, and lands on the other side with a crack on several rocks, scuffing an arm against a chunk of limestone.

Adelaide is back on her feet before the pain has even hit. Without turning to see if her father is following, she runs till her legs are burning, skirt tangling around them. She dodges around the side of the apartment, across the empty road and through the parking lot on the other side. Behind her she hears an engine’s roar echo across the neighbourhood; whether it is her father’s or someone else’s, she doesn’t know and doesn’t check.

For fifteen minutes she runs. Past a church, then right onto Southgate Avenue when another row of houses presents itself, flagging at times until terror spurs her again. The highway swoops across the road up ahead. She doesn’t wait for the traffic light to turn. She narrowly misses a car as she sprints into the highway’s shadow. On and on. Out of the highway’s shadow.

Adelaide is running on the fumes of her fear when, at last, a thicket of green thrusts up from around the bend of the boulevard. Without a thought she throws herself into the foliage, and landing elbow-deep in the grass by the roots of a tree, she curls up and sobs, reining her voice in so they come almost voicelessly.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispers, over and over till she runs out of breath. Then, in her mind, the pressing question bobs to the surface and stays: where is Felix?

Adelaide pulls her phone from her pocket. The battery is in the green. The clock glows a serene four forty-five against a background of water droplets on leaves. There are no messages waiting for her, but it has only been fifteen minutes since they parted ways. If Felix is in hiding right now, as she is, and she sends him a message, it might give him away. Any effort she makes to find him now—she realizes, her stomach turning—could put him in danger.

Instead she focuses on the nearby branch. Watching her companion put his light-changing talents to such versatile use has brought a new question to the forefront of her mind.

Brushing the bark of the shrub behind her, she knows it to be a hollyleaf cherry tree. She read about it no less than five times during her incarceration. It is not their fruit that are prized, but the flour that can be made from their pits after the hydrocyanic acid has been boiled out of them. Either way, the fruit is still edible to birds, and no doubt to humans as well.

This particular tree is not in its fruiting season, but numerous flowers hang over her head like a veil, and now that the sensation of burning coals in her throat has cooled, she begins to notice their gentle scent.

Reaching up, she touches a finger to one stalk of florets hanging before her face, and in her mind, finds the image of cherries, the sensation of them, of the pattern that they leave in her mind, the shape of their epigenomes.

When she opens them, all the flowers' petals have fallen off, unbroken, into her palm.

Her breath quickens. Anxiety bubbles up in her chest. Her mind shrieks for her to fling the branch away, to wash her hands, to scour her skin. But she squashes the terror down, as if she were putting a lid on a putrid jar, and sharpens her focus upon the branch. She squeezes her eyes shut, and squeezes the stalk tight as if pressing her will into it, the way she used to, the way she hasn’t done in years.

The plant’s filament has begun to swell and redden, and her heart has begun to race so loudly that she cannot hear the cars on the quiet road beyond. Even as she looks, the stalks harden to brown, the fruits ripen to scarlet, as if in a time lapse film, till they are deep crimson.

Adelaide’s breath hangs suspended between her lips as she gently lets go of the newly-ripened cherries. Released from her grasp, the branch rises. She watches them bob, almost blithely, in the wind.

She doesn’t notice her tears till they spill over her cheeks, and when the world is all a blur, she reaches up, wraps her hand around the first cherry and plucks it off, cramming it into her mouth. She chews till her teeth crunch on the pit, extracts it from the fruit’s flesh with her tongue, spits it into the grass.

I changed it, she thinks, sobbing as she plucks another from the branch. An electrical car zips silently past. Leaves rustle all about her in a vast, whispering chorus. I changed it and now it’s wrong.

Above her, she silently watches the fog roll in, through the canopies, between trees. It swallows the entire peninsula, and every soul in it. She remembers how her heart used to race when she watched that fog blanket the town, like a creature always looming outside her understanding. Now, she understands too much, and the fog no longer frightens her.

Her dream of refuge with her family has been crushed to dust. Her father wants nothing to do with her. Felix could be anywhere, but he is not here. Here there is nothing but fog.

For the first time since she fled the lab, Adelaide is alone.

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Where Threads Interweave

For a second more, all four of them are standing on Hungarian soil, amid the gentle forest and the rustle of the river.

And then they are not.

As Honourless gives a cry, Vesper sees the world start to stretch and warp into rippling lines, like electrocardiographs charting the beating of a heart larger than the earth.

Then a great roaring surges through her skull, drowning out her thoughts, and she is torn from the world that previously tethered her, like a button from a piece of fabric.

All her years of warfare have barely prepared for this. Forces throttle her in every direction, shaking her loose of all sense of location. She is hurtling through an abstract painting of unplaceable visions. The world has been drawn into threads, stretching on towards the distance no matter which way she looks. She shouts, but she cannot hear herself over the sound of space pulled thin around her. The only thing telling her she hasn’t become a thread in reality’s loom is the feeling of a hand grasping her own, though even that, she fears, might be wrenched out of her grasp at any moment.

There is nothing she can do but to close her eyes against the nausea roiling in her chest, and let this otherworldly storm spin and pull and toss her as it will.

She can’t say how long this monstrous roaring lasts, or how long she is detached from any notion of place or identity. Ten minutes? Twenty? She wants nothing more than for it to end, and when at last she sees things starting to solidify from the striated vision engulfing her—a flash of sky, a bit of grass—she almost cries out in relief.

The lights slow, and still, like a pond after a stone has disturbed it. As suddenly as she was dragged into it, Vesper is thrown out of this space-time vortex.

Her senses are awakened to the world by the rustling of grass. She tries to turn her head. Behind her, she hears the groan of a child’s voice, a thud of a body against earth.

She blinks. Grass fills her vision, bright green in the daylight, and the air here feels…hot. Like the heat in the underbelly of a tank, pressing down on her prone figure.

She looks ahead. Out of the grass rises a dark square plinth. Upon the plinth towers a statue of a seated man, and his name Awolowo engraved in gold beneath him. Ribcage aching, Vesper begins to prop herself up on one arm, sagging as a wave of dizziness slams into her.

On a road off to her left, a grey car rumbles by. She stares at it through her daze, and a strange rising sensation, between thrill and dread, fills her chest, for the car is too flat for a car, and it sits too close to the ground. Its corners are too smooth and its engine does not rattle or chug. She cannot take her eyes from it till it is out of sight.

“Honourless!” The same child’s voice pierces through that thought, accompanied by the sound of her feet stomping on grass. “What in the Light’s name was that landing?”

Unintelligible, gravelly grumbling answers.

That sound is the thing that finally shakes Vesper out of her stupor and drags her back up to the surface of awareness. She turns and sees the tall woman with ash-brown hair—Honourless—sitting on the ground with her head in her hands. She gasps as that vision starts a fast-forward film reel of the past day unspooling in her head.

Orobelle. The self-proclaimed duchess. Orobelle, who first found her on a beach at Dunkirk, appeared before her again at Kalocsa, bringing a man named Dorian and a woman named Honourless who does not speak a lick of any language she knows. They all linked hands on the river’s edge, when the rest of the Number 60 wasn’t looking, and then everything…disappeared.

A rumble swells overhead, almost so reminiscent of the sound of that strange place between existences that another reflexive wave of dizziness sweeps over Vesper. She glances up—to see a large aircraft is passing over them, roaring like something out of an H.G. Wells novel, larger than even the Yorks that took them to Gergen Bridge.

She stares as it passes slowly beneath the blue, and she shivers.

It’s one thing to stand on a beach in the wind, and hear a mysterious child tell rave about other worlds—easy to think she might be going slightly mad, rather than believe the more frightening possibility.

But now, watching an aircraft that could not possibly exist pass overhead, it is beginning to sink in. The Number 60, their tanks and their rifles, the war that has scarred the world indelibly—is not here. It is nowhere. This is not the world she knows. There is only grass, and this serene obsidian sculpture gazing out over them.

“Well, focus harder next time!” Orobelle snaps, while Dorian offers his arm to the child. Honourless groans back, her face buried in her lap. “You are here to do just one thing, so do it right!”

“Give her some slack,” Vesper shouts.

“Tell me what to do again, I dare you!” The glare Orobelle shoots her could melt iron. For once, however, Vesper knows she can suffer no repercussions from glaring back, so she does.

“You can take it or leave it,” she says, walking to Honourless’ side—a movement that makes her head spin again. “Yelling at her won’t help.”

“Dorian, my watch,” Orobelle says coldly, turning away.

While he swings the luggage bag off his shoulder onto the grass and unbuckles the flap, Vesper sits back down on the ground and heaves a great sigh, waiting for the dizziness to ebb. Beside her she catches a glance from Honourless. The woman smirks as their eyes meet.

Only now that they are not hurtling through space does she see the scars that crisscross the woman’s neck and limbs, and the ragged knotted fabric she wears as clothes. There are bite and claw marks from predators much larger than any she’s seen, and some that look more deliberate on her left arm, forming a row of symbols. The hand of that arm is missing the last two fingers.

“Lived quite a life, haven’t you,” Vesper says. Honourless doesn’t seem to comprehend the question, but her gaze is now attentive. “So have I, you know. But I s’pose that’s to be expected, with powers like ours.”

“There! There is one here!” Orobelle proclaims in the background. With a sigh, Vesper begins to stand back up, and Honourless is also making an effort to do so. The duchess strides toward them and plants both hands on her hips. “Let us go now.”

“Go where?” Vesper asks.

“Go find the next Core,” she says. Dorian picks up her luggage.

“Core? An apple core? The earth’s core? That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“You are a Core! Dorian is a Core! We’re here to find the next one like you!”

Her eyes widen. “Someone with abilities like ours?”

“Maybe. Dorian’s domain is heat and cold, and yours are nothing like his, so I assume this third Core will have a completely different set of skills.”

Vesper casts a glance at Honourless. “You’re not a Core?”

“No, she is a Ghost, and she was a convict, and she’s earning her parole by transporting us. Now, are we going to stop wasting time?”

“Ghosts, Cores, this is a lot of words being used in unusual ways,” Vesper mutters. “How are we supposed to find the next person?”

Orobelle motions one of the two gleaming watches forward, and it occurs to her now that it may not be a watch, but a compass.

“Does that thing tell you how far away the person is?”

“No. But we aren’t getting any closer by standing here.”

“But why are we—“

She groans. “How many questions do you have?”

Vesper folds her arms. “You just spirited me away from my company without explanation! You can’t frankly expect me to follow you without knowing what we’re doing.”

“Fine! Take notes, because I will only say this once. I’m gathering you—the eight Cores—to protect me from my villain. Now do what I tell you, move fast, and stop asking questions!”

This is not the sort of storybook I want to be in, thinks Vesper with a sigh. Orobelle and Dorian have already marched away in a direction that she can only suppose the magical compass is pointing, and she follows the strange troupe, lost in the daze of everything she’s still in the midst of understanding.

A day’s walking northwest later, Vesper Lovelace finds that the fact of the matter—that she has landed in a new universe—has slipped straight from fiction to understanding, more easily than she expected. Now that she’s past disbelief, she is on the constant lookout for things she recognises, reference points for comprehending this new place and its relation to her own.

“This is Lagos!” A pair of passers-by, one with hair shaved to her scalp and the other wearing it in fine braids, fill in the group of sweaty tourists with bemused frowns. “You don’t know where you’re having your vacation? How did you know the right airplane to take?”

Airplane? “We didn’t come here on an airplane,” Vesper says. “It’s a long story.”

Vesper would like to know so much more, but that is all she asks, for now. An hour or two longer, they journey northwest with no bearings on time or place, Vesper trying desperately to pick out some sign of what year it is as they go. It is clearly the future relative to where she came from—the cars are quieter, the aircraft are twice as large. But none of the science fiction tales she read and watched voraciously as a child—Flash Gordon, the Rocket Men series—prepared her to reckon with this reality, for this reality is simply, infuriatingly...normal.

Everywhere she turns, there are no silver towers or egg-shaped cars—there are certainly towers, but they are colourful and worn by age, and so too are the people, in colourful gowns and blouses, some holding palm-sized slabs that beam photographs and moving pictures at them. Where she thought there would be steel and white plastic, there are riotous colours, colours and scents, and rust and earth like her own, and heat.

And it is alive with electricity. She can feel it surging through the wires overhead, in hidden conductors beneath her feet, through almost every piece of signage. A great circulatory system of power lines keeps the city breathing, and the farther she walks, the more she finds her heart racing with her growing awareness of its omnipresence, moving as it moves, through this great network, till she's racing around in wonder like a child in a museum for the first time.

Two streets down, on an orange grime-streaked wall, Vesper finds the answer to one of her questions in a film poster.

July 2013, it reads. This is the world past the turn of the millennium.

While Orobelle and her strange entourage catch up to her, Vesper lingers before the poster and stares, awe welling up in her chest. Front and centre, there stands a giant mechanised suit of armour, overshadowing the boat in the foreground. The armour suit, the boat, and the ocean they're in—the scene is blue and grey and uncannily lifelike, but still clearly a fabrication, like a painting, with more detail than a human painter could possibly produce.

An unexpected twinge of familiarity seizes her. For seconds, she suddenly understands why being here is nothing like being inside a sci-fi story. The futuristic worlds she knew as a child were nothing but projections of the present, and their denizens floated in temporal bubbles, severed from the past, dreaming of no distant futures of their own—existing only for the reader, the watcher.

But history is made up of overlapping layers or interweaving threads, past and future bleeding into each other. The city plans of 2013 are the city plans of 1945, though the stone-and-mortar slowly and surely becomes cement and steel. But between them, cars and buses still rumble, wires still criss-cross, and trodden grass lies by pavements by intersections.

Is this the future awaiting her own world, or one of many? That's a trick question. She is standing here, enveloped in sound and colour, and she understands. This is not a future. It is the present, the only present.

Then Vesper blinks, and she is only staring at a film poster again. Around her the chatter is steady and dull, English accented differently from her own.

In this heat, it is not hard to imagine she is simply on a different continent in the same world as always. But this place bears no mark of her twenty-year existence, and she has all at once been cut loose from memory, and obligation.

She finds the thought liberating.

They begin to feel the beating sun take its toll barely an hour into the walk. Orobelle grumbles of thirst and Dorian offers her a glass flask of some pale pink liquid, from which she takes no more than a dainty sip before returning it. Vesper, however, must endure the the heat without drink.

It takes perhaps two or three more hours of northwestward progress for them to realise that finding the next Core isn’t simply going to happen. Vesper can tell from overheard conversation between Dorian and Orobelle that they are reaching the end of their patience. They aren’t about to waltz into the home of their mark and invite them to a universe-hopping adventure over a spot of tea.

By the time the sun has sunk to the horizon, the needle still points unwaveringly northwest. Stopping in front of a boutique whose entrance is framed in rainbow threads, Orobelle turns back to the rest. “That’s it!” she shouts. “We’re not going to find them today. And also, my feet hurt, I’m sweaty, and my mood is poor. We shall find lodging.”

“That seems wise,” Dorian murmurs.

“Lodging where?” Vesper says. “You don’t intend to march into a hotel without any naira, do you?”

Dorian and Orobelle exchange a look that both seem to understand instantly. That same understanding takes a bit of time to dawn on Honourless, but when it does, she grins at the duchess for the first time.

It isn’t until the child and her retainer vanish into the boutique beside them that Vesper realises what they mean to do. She stands in the orange sun and faces away from the door, alone with her horror, until she becomes aware that Honourless is still there, grinning in the shop’s direction. As a breeze blows by, she returns Vesper’s stare with a look that might be amused or curious. She says something Vesper does not understand.

“What was that?” She leans closer.

“Athe,” Honourless replies—or at least that is how Vesper hears it.

She raises an eyebrow. “Athe?” she imitates the syllables as closely as she can. The tall woman chuckles, and then utters a longer sentence that Vesper does not catch the whole of—she points at herself and says, Ka’Inith, or something, then another sentence, slower and with an air of dignity.

“Ka’Inith,” she replies. Honourless. The woman grins wider, tipping her head to a side in an affirming gesture. “I’m Vesper, pleased to meet you.”

“Vesper? Athe,” she replies, and the sound of her name from Honourless’ mouth startles her.

She blinks in the sunset light, and the moment’s reverie is cloven in two by a sudden bellow of “Thief!”

Then Dorian hurtles towards them, setting gowns aflutter, and he shouts, “catch!” There is a flash of white and red as he flicks a familiar card at Vesper. She gasps and snatches Orobelle out of the air as he himself leaps and shrinks into a bright pink rectangle, solidifying into a second card.

Honourless lunges for Dorian’s card and shoves it into her sash. Seconds later, a shopkeeper with a shaven head thrusts his face through the archway of gowns, eyes glistening with tears of frustration. “Where did she go?” he shouts, clutching his forehead with his free hand. “For God’s sake, help me! She took everything!”

It takes every ounce of mental fortitude in Vesper not to apologise, not to turn to the card and threaten to tear it till the girl inside emerges with the stolen money. Gritting her teeth, she puts on as good of a show of concern as she can, pointing up the road and exclaiming, “yes, I saw them go that way!”

And then she sprints off up the junction, only glancing once to check that Honourless is following—and then dashes across, fast as a bullet—dodges in front of screeching cars and leaps off the road and sprints away without looking back.

Only two streets down, as the crowds close behind them and they round the side of a building of cement and peeling paint, does Vesper stumble to a stop and hold up the card in her hand, growling, “You’d better not have ruined someone’s livelihood.”

“Such a doer of good!” card-Orobelle scoffs. “If you would like to spend the evening out on the streets, you are welcome to!” Vesper bites back a reprimand. The card heats up in her hand, and the duchess springs out onto the tar. In her hand, she fans out what must be a fortune in bank notes. “You could stand to sweat less.”

Vesper clenches her jaw. “It’s easily thirty-five degrees.”

“I don’t know what that means,” the child says with a dismissive flick of her hand. Nearby, Honourless laughs as Dorian re-emerges on the earth-stained road. “Now we must find someplace to stay the night, and plot.”

Again, Vesper must fight the guilt welling in her chest, must force the image of the shopkeeper on the brink of tears out of her mind. Orobelle is right; without this, they would most certainly be sleeping in an alley tonight, or worse, not sleeping at all. And even she—who has spent years camping in forests and swamps—baulks at the thought.

Momentarily she is seized by an awareness of the absurdity of this. She has killed thousands. What difference does living on stolen money make?

Still, it almost feels like a crime as she nods in grudging agreement. “Alright, then, thieves,” she says. “Let’s find a place to stay.”

Revolving Door: Volume 2

A Needle in a Haystack - I

As the last of her rage seeps away, Orobelle finds the sounds of this place bobbing to the surface of her attention.

For a minute she stands silently in the breeze. She can hear unnameable machines whining in the distance, wheels turning, and the whisper of rustling grass over these uncharted roads, straight and obsidian-black.

It sounds different from the last world, from the first world: a world with its own history, unbeknownst to the Queendom till this very moment.

Travel from one universe to the next is not a novelty to Orobelle by any means. She is, after all, in charge of the Queendom’s diplomatic branch, and sees the Second World twice a month, going with the convoys to speak for her people.

But hurtling through space with a criminal is a far cry from riding through a worldgate, and entering an unrecorded world, she is starting to learn, is different from visiting one she has always known. Till a month ago, they were sure that only three worlds existed. Now, by the day, it grows clearer that the scientists really did know nothing—millennia of research overturned in a blink.

And that is simply…all right.

Perhaps all the implications are simply jammed at the doorway of her subconscious. She hopes it stays that way for a while yet, for there is enough else to worry about as it is.

That was two hours ago. By now, the reflexes of survivalism have taken the reins, and the only thing that matters right now is finding a place to stay the night. Having "found" their funds for the day, the bedraggled party hastens away from the boutique at the bustling junction, marching at double pace in the afternoon heat.

This may be the greatest trial Orobelle has endured since her journey began. Nothing here in Ikeja makes itself welcoming or comfortable to her: the heat presses down and the edges of the roads are cracked, pieces broken off so that it is hard to distinguish road from footpath. Spans of unruly vegetation interrupt the path so that every now and then, they must detour onto the road, dodging around roaring metal carriages. And the carriages, they smell of something not meant to be breathed, spewing smoke into the sweltering air.

Every minute there comes another inconvenience that becomes the subject of Orobelle's muttering—"damned rocks in my shoes!" or "there's too much grass here!" or any of the numerous offences that this place dares commit upon her.

As she trips on a stone for the third time, she finally stops and cries out, "This isn't fair!"

"Will you be quiet for ten minutes," Honourless mutters.

"My duchess, I'm certain we shall not have to walk much farther," is Dorian's best attempt at comfort. "Would you like to be carried?"

And she would very much like that, to become a card and be taken to the destination—but she knows it would be even worse within the card, stifled without moving air to cool her, and held by someone sweating harder than she. So she grits her teeth and endures the torment of the street.

Another gruelling hour is what it takes them to come upon a lead. "Looks to be a hotel," Vesper declares, pointing across the bushes ahead at a white signboard.

"Finally!" At once, Orobelle pushes to the front of the entourage with a burst of renewed vigour, onto the side-road and through the pedestrian gate.

The attendant at the gate grins at them and waves as they enter. "Good day!" he calls out as they pass. "Reception is up the stairs on your left."

Up the stairs on their left is exactly where they go. A collective sigh of relief escapes the group behind her as the glass doors part, inviting them into the chill air of the antechamber.

As the doors slide shut behind them, the sounds of the outside fall away—the rumble of carriages, the chatter of birds—so that all they hear is the click of their footsteps on stone. Here they are greeted by a room of marble and wood, and what she presumes to be the name of the establishment in bold metallic letters on the wall behind the counter.

Beneath it, there waits a staff member, perhaps a cleric or record-keeper, bespectacled and dark-skinned with her hair in braids, pulled together into a bun on her head.

She looks up with a smile as they enter, but Orobelle quickly finds that smile fading to a look of confusion as the Duchess starts to talk business. "Excuse me, could you call one of the adults?" she asks then.

Orobelle's eyes widen. "What? What do you mean? Won't you serve me?"

“We don’t do business with children,” she says. “Fetch one of the adults, please?”

One tantrum from the Duchess and one harried conversation with Vesper later, the keeper—Ms Olufawo, according to Vesper's reading of her nametag—finally turns to Orobelle with a tired smile, and says, “How may I help you, madam?”

The pleasantries of business eventually secure for them a Royal Suite for two nights, an arrangement that decimates half their funds there and then. It is no matter; more money will be easy to come by, and she deserves the best, even given the circumstances. Still she can barely obscure her frown as Ms Olufawo begins on her spiel, wondering how anyone could ever live like this, worrying at every step about running out of funds.

“Tea and coffee are provided,” says the cleric, tapping on some sort of mechanical device obscured by the countertop. “Free breakfast is served in the dining hall before ten in the morning. Check-out is at noon.”

“Good, thank you,” Orobelle replies. The lady hands her a card over the counter. She stares as she takes it, a gleaming bone-white slip with symbols scrawled in black on the surface. “What’s this? Am I supposed to do something with it?”

Ms. Olufawo briefly presses a hand to her forehead, before resuming her smile. “This is your room key,” she says, taking it from Orobelle and lifting it to point at the symbols. “The room number is written here. You go to room three-four-two, tap this on the panel, and the door will open. Understand?”

That simpering smile would be enough to drive her to ranting if she were not aware that the closure of this transaction hinges upon her politeness. “Yes, yes.” Brow furrowing, Orobelle takes it back, flipping it over in her palm in search of some mechanism, finding none.

She spends their walk up the stairs inspecting it. There’s no one inside, no glow of sentience or power. And yet, on the third floor, it unlocks the door matching the card's numerals when she waves it in front of the panel, exactly as told.

The room is carpeted and lit gold, with a bed the size of her own facing a long couch, a desk in an alcove, and a tall window with a view of the street.

The sky is already dusky outside, windows starting to light up in the distance—fluorescent white and different from the Duchy's lamplight, different from those lights of the last world.

Strolling up to the window, she lets her eyes rest on the heads of the pedestrians below. If two universes have always existed without Wonderland’s knowing, then who is to say there are not ten more? A hundred more? Layers upon layers of other worlds, all with their own separate histories, in a chain stretching to infinity, all bound to her...

She shakes her head and clenches her jaw because the thought of such infinitude terrifies her. ”Nothing is boundless,” she murmurs, before drawing the curtains on the grimy rectangular buildings across the street, and on the pedestrians bedecked in colours. She is thinking about the key-card again.

“Everyone!” she calls out across the room. “We meet in quarter of an hour. There is lots to discuss.”

It is only after this unlikely troupe of tourists find themselves in the cool air of the hotel room that the exhaustion truly hits Vesper, her eyelids dipping as she stares over the sink.

Only then does she realise she has been wearing her pack the entire time. She pats the pockets over her shoulder. No live ammunition, and her rifle is gone—those, she must have lost somewhere in that place between worlds. But perhaps that is for the better.

And she feels the holster on her hip, under her jacket, and freezes. The pistol is still there. “Won’t hurt to have it,” she murmurs.

How far away are we? she thinks, slinging the pack onto the ground by the sink. Surely there was a World War Two in this world, a World War One, a Boer War? The world is more similar to her own than different; there must be a point of divergence, or at least points of convergence.

One of those is tea, it seems. As Vesper lifts an unusually tall kettle from the counter, a power cord unravels, clattering on the countertop. She picks up the plug, inspecting the three-pronged implement before inserting it in a matching wall socket. She feels the voltage leap briefly through her hand before the plug is properly inserted.

Shrugging it off, she leaves the plug, glancing over the books on the countertop as she does. Nigeria Travel Guide, reads the bold text on one glossy cover.

She’s always known a little about Nigeria, from stories told by her friends in the Number 60. She knew it as a colony of the Empire of Britain, starting to rise up in the wake of the War. This Nigeria is no colony. Nothing about this surprises her. She fiddles with the unusual sink tap until the faucet turns on, intercepting the streaming water with the kettle’s mouth.

Returning it to its cradle, she turns it on and waits. The living room shifts with activity: Orobelle and Dorian rest in two cushy armchairs, conversing over a coffee table, their words impossible to hear through the hum of steam. Against the wall facing the bed is a broad wooden desk with a large lamp and a chair on wheels. Honourless is off in the corner by the door, picking at the scars on her arms.

Strange company for a strange journey. What has she landed herself in? How long will she be here?

There are cups, spoons and Twinings teabags in a drawer, exactly as promised; Vesper isn’t picky about the kind of tea as long as it’s strong. The kettle clicks and the red light goes out. She pours out some hot water and drops a teabag in it.

The first aroma of the drink brings an unexpected jolt of home: peeling walls revealing stone, the old television crackling with images of the War, Mum, Dad, the trees bending on the roadside. She knows this scent, through the unfamiliar layers.

Absently she picks out a beige paper sachet of powder labelled Creamer. Brow furrowing, she tears it open to sniff. It smells like it could be powdered milk, yet different. With a shrug, she empties the sachet into her tea and stirs.

The first sip brings a sigh, her shoulders slackening. Thoughts of home ringing clearer, that old place standing in contrast with this angular modernness. It’s not better nor worse, just...different. This is her world and yet not. Recognisable motifs among the alien, like in a fever dream.

Orobelle and Dorian turn when Vesper spins the desk chair to face them and sits down, a steaming drink in her hand. “You’re on time,” says the Duchess, rapping on the coffee table with her fist, glaring in Honourless’ direction. “Get over here, you lazy felon!”

“Could stand to use more flattering nicknames,” she mutters as she rises from her corner, skulking over.

“Let’s get to work,” Orobelle declares. “We are here, in this world, to find someone. One Core, with abilities of the same origin as yours, Dorian, and Vesper, and yet there is no saying how those abilities might manifest. The only information we have at our disposal is what the corefinder will show us.”

Now she places the huge golden instrument on the tabletop. In the wake of her disturbance, the needles swing chaotically back and forth, and it’s hard to read it at a glance—but Orobelle knows how to pick out the settled needles quickly: one points to Dorian, one to Vesper in her rotating chair, and the third comes to rest pointing out through the windows beside them.

“This needle,” she says, tapping her finger on the glass, “will always point in the direction of our mark. We know not how far away they might be, but we know which direction to look. And we could certainly keep travelling in a straight line following these bearings, but that supposes that we can charter a potentially endless ride across whatever terrain should stand in the way.” She closes her eyes before continuing, turning abruptly to Honourless. “What I think, is that instead of that, you,” she says, nodding at her, “will take us, via the Fourth World, towards progressive points along that straight line.”

“No.” Honourless answers.

“Excuse me? ‘No’?”

“No,” she repeats. “You don’t understand Ghosting if you think I could do that. If you think it’s so precise, and so easy. I’m not taking all four of us on a possibly endless gallivant.”

“Then take just me,” Orobelle mutters.

“Did you not hear me? I said it’s not precise. I can’t even promise you I can take you in a straight line.”

“Then what are you even good for?” the girl shouts, throwing a brochure at Honourless’ head, which she dodges.

She picks the sheaf of paper up, stares at it for a moment, and then points it at Orobelle’s face like a dagger. “You haven’t once bothered asking what I can do! Or how I’m doing, even. All you have done is assume I can perform your bidding to perfection. If I’m not what you need, that’s your fault, not mine. I couldn’t care less about your plots.”

“Good heavens, both of you. What about this?” Vesper cuts in, putting her cup down on the tabletop. They turn to her. “It would seem that aircraft carrying civilian passengers are commonplace here. We saw one ourselves when we arrived, and the two pedestrians who gave us directions mentioned them as well. You say we may need to travel great distances in a straight line? Surely we could find one of those to take us. If it doesn’t cost a fortune—and I can’t frankly expect otherwise.”

“That seems our only choice. How much do you mean?”

“Don’t ask me, we didn’t have civilian aircraft back at home.”

“How helpful.”

“I’m only saying there is a way.”

For several minutes, there is a silence between them. Orobelle breaks off, muttering to Dorian about the other two and their insolence, but Honourless and Vesper simply stare at the coffee table between them, and at Orobelle’s corefinder, the brass case gleaming with reflections of their faces.

“Look, I have an idea,” Honourless says suddenly, lifting her head. “Here’s what we can do. You’ll hand me that compass, and then—“

“Absolutely not!” Orobelle shouts, snatching the instruments from the tabletop to clutch it to her chest. “You’re an idiot if you think I’m entrusting this to a criminal.” Honourless throws up her hands. Orobelle’s face hardens even more. “If you must use the corefinder, then I must come with you.”

“You’ll just make Ghosting harder!”

“I shall come with you!”

“Fine!” She bares her teeth as she spits the word out. “Make it hard for yourself, I don’t care. As I was saying, we could get a map of this world, and then, we could Ghost to three, maybe four different cities across it, with the Fourth World as our crossroads.”

“Yes, and?” Orobelle glances about the table. She can tell Vesper is not following, but then again she cannot understand a word out of Honourless’ mouth.

“So at each city we arrive at, or settlement or whatever,” Honourless goes on, “we’ll locate it on the world map, and mark out the direction the corefinder points. It will always point towards the third Core no matter where we are, yes? Then by drawing lines from each city in the direction of the needle, we’ll find the third Core at the place where they cross. And then we use whatever means of travel it is that Vesper is suggesting, but only once.” She folds her arms expectantly. “That’s simple enough, no?”

Orobelle frowns. She refuses to give Honourless the pleasure of knowing her idea is a decent one. “It could work,” she says through drawn lips. “But you just threw a stink about how imprecise your Ghosting is. There’s certainly a better chance of us landing on three suitable points than you miraculously landing in a straight line repeatedly…but if we were to land in the wilderness, there’s not going to be a way to locate ourselves on a map.”

“And that would be entirely your doing,” Honourless mutters. “If I went alone, I’d have no such trouble. Ghosting usually takes me to places with lots of people like that, and I could keep trying till it works. Not so easy with an annoying child in tow. But you insist, so…” She shrugs, no longer meeting Orobelle’s eye. “If we must do this, we must do it soon.”

“We rest first,” she says. “We do this tomorrow, when our strength is replenished. You’d better rest right tonight.”

“That’s one order I’ll follow,” the woman mutters. “Now can I go?”

“Yes. Go back to your corner if you so please.”

“A recap, please?” Vesper looks at the other two in turn. “The two of you are Ghosting to other cities?”

“Yes, to triangulate the next Core’s location,” Orobelle answers. “Once we have enough points of reference, we can find one of your civilian aircraft to take us there.”

“Alright. Then I’ll get us more information tomorrow,” she says. “Find out more about these aircraft.”

“Good,” says Orobelle. She has gone from contrary to cooperative in no time at all, much better than that wildling Honourless.

“Even then…” She pauses, mouth open as if she were about to change her mind. But she only says, “Even by triangulation, we can only narrow it down so much. To one city, if we’re that lucky.” She sighs, picking up her cup. “Like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“Yes, but we have the best instruments in the world,” Orobelle replies. “If there is nothing else, you are dismissed.”

With that word, the duchess withdraws her attention from the rest of the gathering, peering once again at the face of the corefinder. Only once she hears Vesper walk away does she speak again. “Dorian,” she murmurs, “do you think I ought to give them the True Queen’s gift?”

Dorian is silent in thought for nearly a minute. Just like him to be so considered, as if the very Gift she speaks of, in his possession, would not ensure he is perfectly understood. “It would make matters easier between the four of us,” he says. “But I understand it has...formal meaning.”

She tilts her head, takes the metal instrument with her fingertips around the rim and swirls it around, unsettling the needles. “I can’t be giving it away on a whim. Particularly not to the likes of that criminal.”

“You do not have to give it to Honourless, if I understand correctly. If Vesper has it, then all of us would understand each other.”

“Yes, and what of the next one to join us? I cannot distribute the Gift like trade bonds. It is not given lightly.”

Orobelle looks Dorian in the eye, and something uniquely grave passes between their gazes. She has never told Dorian much of the truth about her place in this millennia-old Queendom. It was always her mother Adamanta’s way, her firmest teaching, her last rule. Keep your truths close to yourself; each who holds one holds a key to your downfall.

In the Queendom where every secret can be made a weapon, where the matriarchs have the most secrets of all, there are things about her that can never be known. The barest knowledge of her life is scattered across a hundred subordinates, each with only one strand of her tapestry.

But out here, so far from home, in this world two worlds beyond what the Queendom knows, it hardly seems to matter if she were to tell Dorian just a tiny piece of the story. This man from the Cracked Land, who has proven true time and again, who cannot possibly have any cause to harm her.

“Have I told you about it? About the last True Queen, the duchy, and my mother’s mission?”

Staring past her till now, he straightens up, face betraying the surprise he normally tries to obscure. “My duchess?” he says. “I do not think you have, but…”

“It started almost five hundred years ago, when Queen Candoresse split the Queendom in four.”

Revolving Door: Volume 2

The Story of the Queendom - I

This chapter contains depictions of childbirth and blood, and mentions murder.

It is known—as has always been known—that the Queen of Hearts’ throne stands on a pedestal of worm-eaten wood.

You see, the Queen of Hearts has been the supreme seat of the Queendom for merely five hundred and thirty-two years. Before her there was a True Queen, a queen with reign undivided—her blood a bond to the land, her body a wellspring of its power. So it was for millennia, before the other Worlds were known. So it was until Queen Candoresse.

Candoresse was the last True Queen. Then she made the original mistake, the mistake that ended the dynasty’s unbroken reign. It was by no misdeed of hers, only ill luck—but ill luck, in the eyes of history, is no different from villainy.

This was her mistake: she gave birth to quadruplets.

The order in which the four infant girls left their mother’s womb was a memory Candoresse could not allow to live in her mind. She realised this as she lay there in her blood, in the midwife’s chamber. For in this strange accident of birth, she knew she had seeded endless trouble. This was the way of the Queendom: everyone wanted a throne that held dominion in two worlds, and anyone would do anything to take or keep it. Among these daughters, the order of their birth amounted to a roll of the die. It meant choosing one daughter over the rest, and that choosing could only ever be unfair.

The only way around was murder—but how could she face her people after murdering her own daughters? How could that solution not be worse?

The Queen saw then, in a brief twinkling of clarity, that there was a way to craft a rule of succession that her daughters and subjects might accept. And the order in which these four children were born would irrevocably destroy that solution.

So as the throes of birth consumed her upon that marble table, Candoresse ordered her midwives to turn away. And these four children came into the world with their beginnings unseen, unknown, the memory of the moment lost forever to the obliterating sea.

The erasing of memories is not undertaken lightly, even less so than the process of transferring or confiscating them. By some mechanism that still eludes the universities of the Queendom, such a removal releases an explosion of force that cannot be contained by any structure we have ever built. The first time it was performed successfully, that force shattered every wall of the site where it took place, and brought the building down upon subject and performer.

The procedure in itself is deceptively simple, though I cannot claim to fully understand it myself: it is likened to a song, played on the strings of the Light, a vibration that disentangles the threads of the mind and shakes the memory out of the strands.

The scientists learned that the procedure of destroying a memory could only be done in the depths of the sea, where the water could dampen the force. This is where Queen Candoresse hastened off to, while her children were swaddled and fed their first milk. She, the Last True Queen, went in a sphere to the bottom of the Sea of Glass, to have that melody excised from the score of her mind.

On warmer days, Verna, Aula, Sol and Bernice played on the green in the palace’s shadow. The four sisters ran with ribboned kites billowing above their heads while their nurses smiled at each other and shook their heads, and Candoresse watched serenely through her study window. They lay on the grass by the swan pond, licking nectar from flower sepals and dreaming of the distant lands where swans saved girls from towers.

But the people knew these blithe days were numbered, and their grimness dimmed the prospects of commerce and diplomacy for the rest of Candoresse's life. The Queen herself only delivered vague portents to her daughters throughout their lives, but never quite revealed the gravity of the future she foresaw. While it was still the spring of their lives, and while the roses bloomed, they did not have to think of the fate waiting, like an executioner, for the time of choosing to come.

Those seasons of their lives fleeted by, thread from the spindle into the loom of history. Then all at once, the children were eighteen, and that day of fate—that long-dreaded time—drew nigh. That was when Queen Candoresse first revealed the solution she had crafted in the years before.

Her daughters would play a game.

A game of her devising, a game of strategy—a game whose outcome would fractionate the players by wit and merit. No dice would be rolled; none of it would come to chance. The winner would be named the queen; the other three accorded new titles in accordance with how they played.

None could dispute the outcome of such a game—she thought—a test of the candidates’ shrewdness and foresight, all-important traits in a queen of singular power. At least for a time, there would be none who would come forward with a defensible objection. On the day the game was announced, the denizens of the Queen's City sounded out equally in agreement and anger, but there is no honour in a queen who goes back on her word, so Candoresse pushed forth with her plan.

The game unfolded on a pavilion in the Grand Park of the Queen's City. Four sisters, with all the fate of the Queendom in their eyes, played cards on a table of iron wrought and painted white. They were taught the rules in front of the audience. They passed cards and called their plays, and pondered with masked fury.

The game wore on, hand after hand. Bernice and Solice were not quite the strategists their siblings were; they made their plans plain in their faces. Aula played a psychological game, calling it from the looks of the two when they were trying to take all, gauging from their plays if they lacked a suit in their hands.

But Verna’s strategy did not involve the mind games of her sisters. To her, the suits and the glances were but smoke and mirrors—fancy dressing on a puzzle that was, at its core, mathematical.

As she played her cards, and as her sisters did, she memorised every single one that crossed the table. Two of Clubs. Ace of Spades. She remembered every trick her sisters won, and she held the Four and King of Spades close. By the last three tricks of the very last hand, she was sure Aula's hand contained the Queen of Spades.

She forced the unlucky Queen from her sister’s hand. Aula, all options exhausted, was made to take the deduction, and the game ended with Verna the winner.

Candoresse oversaw the proceedings of the game with serenity and a slowly welling fear. As had been written, she named Verna the first Queen of Hearts, absolute ruler of this Queendom without end.

So it was that the Queendom was split between four bloodlines, each sister given a station befitting her rank in the game: Aula the Duchess of Diamonds, Solice the Countess of Clubs, Bernice the Baroness of Spades.

“The Queen was selected through a game?” Dorian murmurs, letting just a drop of confusion slip through.

“Yes, but, no! That is not the point,” Orobelle snaps. “She was selected by Queen Candoresse, who saw that she would be a good queen.”

“From watching her play a game.” Vesper answers from across the room. When their gazes come to rest upon her, she rolls her eyes. “And I thought we had unusual stories of succession.”

“Shut up! No one invited you to speak!”

“I'm simply curious about this One True Queendom tripe you've been spouting since we met?”

Orobelle bares her teeth, and jerks her gaze away. “Fine, stay and educate yourself, ingrate. But not another word.”

Vesper shrugs.

"Now, as I was saying—"

Verna was a just queen, remembered fondly for her orderly and forceful rule. Her sisters, who were first ashamed that they had lost the game and the Queendom, slowly came into a quietly seething resentment, as she rebuilt the country under her rule.

They knew no challenge could be sustained, for Verna had won the throne fair and square, by the rules of their mother. Still they knew—as did the people—that they could not roll over and allow this to pass without a reckoning. They knew it must come someday.

Duchess Aula, who had played surely and slyly, was the one Queen Verna feared the most. That fear was in its right place—though Verna only feared her in the capacity of a woman fearing an enemy. What she should have feared was much greater than she could see, greater than the two of them alone, and greater than the brief decades in which they were alive.

Aula was austere and an adept keeper of secrets. While Verna had a daughter—the future heiress Rosanthe—Aula had Marinne, within five years of each other. She put on airs of grace and veneration for the Queen, but for every lesson Rosanthe was taught, Aula paid off the royal tutors in street-corner taverns to share their works, and taught Marinne the same in secret.

In her waning years, Aula at last pulled her daughter fully into the weft of her plans. “It will not be your war to win,” was the last wisdom she gave. “Let your fire smoulder. Prepare your daughters well. Make everyone love them, and let them love no one. Let my voice be carried unto every one of your progeny.”

So while Rosanthe was complacent, bred in adulation and praise, Marinne inherited the resentment of her mother, every spite spoken against the Queen of Hearts tangled into her living creed.

Long before Marinne took the mantle of Duchess, she began to craft her own plots, and to further those of her mother. She recorded each one in her most secret book of books, in the vault that only Duchesses could open. We call it The Diamonds' Playbook.

In this book she wrote of her machinations. How she gave the Countess of Clubs servants from the Cracked Land; how she attended the birth of the city mayor’s son and, at the banquet, began a partnership of favours for political influence. How she joined the donor roll of the Queendom University, so that her allegiance to that bastion of learning was recorded on its walls.

And she recorded her anger at the injustice that was the bedrock of this new, cloven Queendom. All the theory and plots she amassed over her lifetime’s planning—all she would seek—she wrote here, for future Duchesses to learn.

It is through the Playbook that we know how she found inroads in all municipalities to the loyalties of the people, made sympathisers of mayors and counsellors, and positioned the Diamonds as their friends and supporters. It is an intricate art, and one I have learned all my life. The Duchess of Diamonds holds control of the World Gate--and though the Queendom officials came and went through it as they pleased, the Diamonds army guarded it well, for Marinne knew it would someday prove a bargaining piece.

The Diamonds Playbook was a cornerstone of my education. This I inherited from her and her mother, and those mothers of mothers between us, forming the chain of birth from her to myself.

“I did not know that all your enemies shared blood with you. It is…” Dorian halts.

“Inevitable,” Orobelle answers. “Our families diverge and fragment easily. Sisters turn on sisters, children on their parents, almost as if war were in our nature.”

Something of the beginnings of understanding are dawning in Dorian's face.

“This is Candoresse's injustice, the original mistake. It needs to be righted, and my mother's purpose was that, always that.”

Forty-two years after her ascension, Marinne was succeeded by her own daughter Arminella. Queen Rosanthe had long begun to read the warning signs in the way each Duchess of Diamonds conducted herself in diplomacy. It was when Arminella took the seat of Duchess, years before she was ready, that relations grew terse.

Duchess Arminella was not like the two who had come before her: she was easily swayed to anger, and her mind was not the right place for a legacy like Aula's. Her younger sister, Alintora, had a better temper than her sister's, but she had come five years later and was never considered for the succession.

Old Queen Rosanthe saw, in Arminella, a weakening of the Duchy and a chance to nip the threat in the bud. She began to march armed contingents through its streets. Mayors began, unusually, to refuse the Duchess' bribes. Not long later, the Queen requested to station her own guards outside the World Gate.

Arminella, of course, could not help but make clear her rage. Against her sister's advice, she delivered a greater insult, by decrying Queen Rosanthe's request before a public audience.

Her story does not have a pretty ending. Though she successfully bought the Barony of Spades over to her cause, she is remembered for the way she died—tumbling off a mountain cliff, on a carriage driven by a mysteriously switched driver.

No court could ascertain the accident's connection to Queen Rosanthe—but of course they could not, how could a puppet incriminate its puppeteer?

Still, to the council of the Diamonds, and to those sympathetic to the house, the bloody transgression was stark as day. And right then, from the dredges of Rosanthe's crime, crystallised an unsolvable vendetta.

And so it was that not one Queen of Hearts could ever think she was safe in her seat. Indeed, all in the Queendom know it is inevitable, like the burning-out of a candle, that her throne must fall one day.

This all happened five, four hundred years ago. Many ancestors of mine have come after, some shrewder, some more authoritative. Each one carried that legacy, that game of waiting, to her daughter's time...

"...till it came to me. That day of collecting our due is nigh at hand, because of a singular person in my genealogy: my mother’s mother, Cotaria."

The door clicks shut, stirring Orobelle out of reveries of the past. Vesper has vanished from the room. “Where is she off to?” growls the Duchess, gaze pinned to the suite door.

“She said something about fresh air,” Dorian answers. As his last word falls away, a strain of snoring drifts over from the sofa.

Orobelle glowers, pulling her lips tight. “Alright, then. We shall continue this tale at a later time,” she says, rising from her seat. “Where's my stationery?”

Revolving Door: Volume 2

A Needle in a Haystack - II

Content warning (may contain spoilers)
This chapter depicts graphic injury and trauma response.

The royal suite sinks gently back into silence. Orobelle retires to the queen bed, sipping liquid satiation under the rosy warm light. Dorian contemplates the room from the swivel chair, brow furrowed in thought.

“So…how about dinner?” Vesper ventures, standing. She can see Honourless gnawing on her fingernails.

Orobelle does not dignify her with an answer until she has drained her pink bottle. And even then, her answer is not to Vesper. “Dorian! Get these two some dinner,” she declares. “The money’s in the luggage.”

He clears his throat, lowering his head with such a deep bow that his long hair tumbles over his shoulder. “Of course, my duchess…and may I—purchase dinner for myself as well?” he asks.

“Oh. Go ahead.”

“Thank you, my duchess.” He is already at the door.

With his departure, Orobelle returns to the journal on her knee, and Honourless curls up on the couch.

Sighing, Vesper unbuckles her pack and sorts through its contents: packets of jerky, a can of luncheon meat, twenty pounds from the wrong decade, two water canteens, and a change of clothes. She pauses on the last finding: a shirt and a pair of mud-stained trouser.

“Anyone meaning to use the bathroom?” she says as she scoops them out, and pauses. “No? All right, excuse me for a minute.”

It is the most pristine bathing facility Vesper has ever set foot in: the floors are bright enough to see herself in, and the sink shows no stain.

It's hard to leave the balmy shower once it's running. For almost twenty minutes, she stands in the mist and washes and scrubs, scouring weeks of mud and soot from her body.

She towels herself dry on the mat in front of the sink. The spotless mirror reveals every tired line on her face, her hair briefly tamed by the water. The omnipresent odour of sweat has been replaced by the gentle fragrance of their liquid soap. She digs her fingers into the towel fibres—it is plusher than even the ones at home.

Home. She mulls over the thought as she dresses, running a hand over the scars on her arms. What has she gotten herself into? A bloody predicament is what—strong-armed into waiting on a child who thinks herself the queen of the universe.

Vesper breathes out a long sigh. Almost as soon as she starts scrubbing at her hair does it begin sticking out in unruly spikes, and she wonders how she will last on two changes of clothes.

When Vesper returns to the hotel room, Honourless has unfolded the couch into a double bed.

“Oh, wonderful,” she calls, walking the long way around the counter to avoid the luggage. The woman looks up, and Vesper’s smile seems to register, for she grins back with a few chuffed words and a pat of the seat’s edge.

Vesper drops onto the other end of the couch-bed. “Oi, Orobelle,” she says.

“What, knave?”

“We might need an interpreter ‘round here. I don’t think I could learn Honourless’ language without any words in common. Not quickly, at least.”

“Well, too bad!” Orobelle mutters, not looking up from her writing. “I don’t do the bidding of commoners. The Gift of the Light is not shared lightly.”

“The gift? Is that what translates your words before I hear them? Some form of magic?”

Orobelle does not reply. Vesper rolls her eyes.

This child is going to be the death of her, if this mission isn’t. She thought the English nobles were insufferable, but this is something else. Does Orobelle even eat? Or bleed? Or bathe?

The answer to the first question quickly turns out to be “no”: Dorian returns with three meals. The fragrance of the rice that blossoms through the room would more than rival ten British dinners combined. Vesper and Honourless dive upon the food, the latter somehow more eager than she, but not by much. Dorian, though measured as he always is, has a light in his eye for the first time she has seen.

The dish of rice, fried meats and plantains busies them for a good ten minutes. Now that Orobelle’s protector has returned, Vesper renews her determination for a translator. “Dorian,” she calls, “would you by any chance be willing to act as an interpreter, so that I may speak to Honourless?”

He swallows a mouthful. “Certainly. What shall I convey?”

Vesper almost blinks with surprise. She considers Honourless, who is shovelling rice into her mouth. “If you could tell her I said this: Thank you for bringing us here, and also figuring out how to do that with the couch.” She gestures at the upholstery. “And, I’m sorry you ferry us about so thankless; you deserve better.”

Orobelle hisses at these words. Dorian repeats them with slightly different phrasing.

As he speaks, Honourless begins to smile lopsidedly, licking rice grains off her lips. She utters something back in a gravelly voice. “She says,” Dorian addresses Vesper this time, “‘A shame about this language barrier. I like you, you are a good one.’”

“Hah, even I am not sure of that some days,” Vesper answers, and Dorian echoes her words to Honourless. “So I appreciate your kind words.”

Honourless wrinkles her brow and speaks again, in those curling, lisping syllables. “‘What do you mean?’” Dorian translates. “‘You are compassionate and responsible. No?’”

“If you had found me just a day sooner, you wouldn’t think me such a good person.” She props her head up on her elbow, now looking the woman in the eye. “I’ve killed more people than you would meet in a year.”

Honourless chuckles as Dorian repeats her words. Her reply—and his—is: “So you’ve killed five people? You overestimate how many people I’d see.”

“Ah, sorry, I forgot about that. You’re helping that little brat over there in exchange for freedom, aren’t you?”

“Shut up!” Orobelle screams, and Vesper hears a pillow thud on the floor behind her. “I am the Duchess of Diamonds! I am the One Around Whom The Worlds Spin!”

Honourless is guffawing as Dorian translates, increasingly flustered with each word. She slaps the tabletop where the wrapper of her meal sits. “‘Exactly right,’” is the reply he interprets back. “‘And she knows she cannot do without us, so she must put up with all we say, too. Let’s make…’ I’m sorry, I cannot say that of my liege.”

Vesper has to pause to register that Dorian is no longer translating. He glances away, eyes cast down with poorly-obscured remorse. Honourless sighs and mutters something to him, which slackens his shoulders. Her eyes meet Vesper’s once more, and the next words she speaks are directed clearly at her.

“She says, ‘Are you alright sharing the couch tonight? It may not be as comfortable as you are used to.’”

“Hah, I’ve slept in conditions that would make a duchess hurl,” Vesper replies. “A shared couch is a luxury.”

Dorian sighs as he translates.

“‘Us both.’” Honourless gives a satisfied nod, grinning with broken teeth. “‘How is the bathing room?’”

“Also a luxury.” Dorian raises his eyebrow at this. He repeats the words for Honourless.

And with just a smirk, the woman rises from her seat and disappears through the doorway into that plush lavatory, slamming the door shut behind her. There are a number of clattering sounds from within, and the intermittent splash of jetting water, amid furious laughter. Dorian and Vesper look at each other.

“So, for tomorrow,” she says then, “what are our plans?”

“Well, my duchess has raised the need for a map of this world,” he replies. “If you are able to help us locate one, then it would be invaluable to us. I know too little about where such things are found in this world; you seem more familiar with its ways.”

She nods. “I might be able to. Never had to ask a stranger for a world map, but it’s nothing too rare, I’m sure.” With her belly full, she feels the first of pull of sleep on her eyelids. “For now, however, it may be bedtime.”

Vesper is creeping through misty forests, but she is not alone. Marlowe, Weston and Rajan walk at her side, following her silent lead. She knows she is meant to be somewhere, but the place eludes her. Somewhere in Hungary, somewhere that isn’t here.

Far above, there is a scream of planes. Her eyes flick to the sky. She watches the propellor aircraft pass, but no telltale specks of bombs fall from their bays.

A shout her cleaves her attention. As her eyes return to the ground she finds, all at once, that soldiers in the Nazi colours are tiding out from behind the trees, rifles glinting, sharp as death.

Vesper yells as she dives behind a tree. A rat-a-tat of gunfire. A rain of bullets. All miss her. Then she hears the keening, and her head whips around: not two feet away, Marlowe has stumbled to his knees, telltale red blossoming from his side. He reaches a trembling hand towards her, calling weakly before a bullet splits his shoulder and he screams, spattering blood on the leaf litter. She whirls around to see Weston dashing towards her—but a round the size of an EMPW electrode blurs from the trees, blowing his head off before he can clear the tree line, and Rajan shrieks, “Captain! Captain Lovelace—”

He only manages that many words. Convulsing like a puppet, he tumbles to the leaves in a puddle of red, an electrode round in his back with its wire tangled around the nearest tree.

“No! No, no, no! Rajan!” she yells hoarsely, as if his name might bring him back. When she dives to check for a pulse, a volley of bullets tears her hands from his corpse—

Vesper jolts awake with a yell, and feels her hand connect with a face.

Beside her, a stranger, too, springs awake—and with no more than a beastly snarl, lunges for her neck with hooked fingers.

Terror seizing her, Vesper winds up her legs to kick.

As those hands connect with her throat, their eyes meet, and she suddenly recognises the stranger: Honourless.

More memories resolve from the glaze of confusion. The room. The past day. She's not on the battlefield anymore.

Recognition seems to dawn on Honourless in the same moment. She retracts her hands with a jerk. They sit there, gasping for breath for many seconds.

Then the woman chuckles. She says something that Vesper can only assume is an apology, shaking her head.

“No, no, I'm sorry,” she answers listlessly. The dawn light seeps through the curtains, silhouetting her.

When her eyes sweep over to the queen bed, the young duchess is still snoring soundly. But Dorian lies awake in a bedroll beside it, propped up on one elbow. His eyes glitter in the early dawn light. “What's the matter?” he whispers, just loud enough for them to hear.

“Nightmares,” Vesper replies. “The usual.”

Honourless says something.

“Nightmares,” Dorian repeats for her.

Turning to Vesper, Honourless awkwardly reaches out to pat her forearm, an odd smile—maybe concern or pity—crossing her scar-furrowed face. Then she withdraws it again, and, mumbling one last thing to Dorian, slumps back down into her sleeping spot.

“She says she's sorry for attacking you. It's an old habit.”

“That's all right. I—I started it.”

While the rest of the room settles back into slumber, Vesper finds she cannot. She rises to her feet and shuffles to the bathroom, splashing her face at the sink. Then she steals quietly away with the keycard in hand, the hotel door creaking shut behind her.

As she descends the polished stairs, tree shadows rustle on the hallway below in the first light of morning. The last of her panic washes away with the sound. Clinking cutlery draws her gaze: she ducks over to the cafe, and finds a catered breakfast waiting, two other guests dining with her. Buttered bread with jam, a comforting classic.

Then, she figures, it is time for business. It may as well be.

The reception desk opens at an astounding hour of day—a different clerk sits in attendance now, with a shaven head under his cylindrical cap, polishing the countertop.

She reads the badge on his chest. “Good morning, Mister Ibrahim,” she says with a wave.

He lifts his head from his polishing. “Ah, good morning! I hope you are having an excellent stay,” he answers, smiling toothily.

“It’s been excellent so far, thank you,” she replies. “If I may, sir, I’d like your advice on the matter of…travel.”

Dropping his cloth, Ibrahim folds his palms on the countertop with a curious smile, a quirking of eyebrows. “Of course. I’m not an expert, but maybe I can help. What do you want to know?”

“Two things,” she says. “Firstly, I'm wondering where I may find a map of the world.”

“You can look for a bookshop, there are a few if you walk...” He trails off. “Hrm. Actually, maybe we have a spare, there used to be maps on the wall. I can check for you.”

“That would be very kind, thank you.”

He nods once. “No problems at all. What is the second thing you want to ask?”

“Oh, yes. What is the price of a trip by airplane these days? We came by…not by airplane, you see. In fact, would you tell me more about flying in general?”

He chuckles. “You walked all the way from England?”

She can’t help a grin. “Something like that. I haven’t seen England in…years.” It’s the truth in more ways than one.

“Oho, travelling so long. Do you miss home?”

“I miss my parents,” she replies.

He nods. “I hope you can return soon, then. Air tickets to England, I can help you check, but it will definitely be more than eighty thousand naira.”

Something has occurred to her then. “And…I’ll need a passport to fly, wouldn’t I?”

At this, Ibrahim chuckles. “Yes. You must have a passport, just like any other border. There are other things…they allow no liquid in your bag. And no scissors and no nail clippers. They are strict these days.”

“Huh. That's good to know.”

Vesper does not have a passport. Her father is the sole bearer of the family’s travel documents. And there is no way the others are in any better standing than she is.

While she ponders the implications of this fact, Ibrahim busies himself with unlatching the counter door. “I can check for your map now, one minute.” Then he steps out from behind the counter and vanishes into the corridor to the right.

It turns out that there is a world map in the stores, one that used to hang on the wall for years. Vesper returns to the hotel room with the rolled poster under her arm, and as she pushes the door open, she declares, “I found one.”

Amid their stares, she spreads the map on the hardwood dining table, where Orobelle is polishing off her pink vial of breakfast. Each country on the map is coloured differently from its neighbours, forming a rainbow quilt. Though faded, the city names have yet to disappear, printed in stark black.

Orobelle places the empty vial next to the map. “Alright, let us see.” She lays her translation glass on the tabletop.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Vesper murmurs as she squints at the city names through the lens. “Does your compass account for the curvature of the earth?”

“The corefinder does, thank you very much. Do your instruments not?” she replies. “Primitive.”

“Sorry that we don’t have magic, I guess.”

“Alas for you. The Light flows weak through these worlds.”

They pore over the map for a minute, Orobelle uncapping a stick of graphite in a metal holder. “This city is…” She reaches for her lens, but Vesper quickly points out the capital of Nigeria, nestled in the Gulf of Guinea.

Orobelle marks it with a circle. “Do you have a magnetic compass?” she asks.

“Do you not?” Vesper replies.

Orobelle glares at her for five full seconds. “Bring it here.”

With the patience of a hundred saints, Vesper opens her pack. Sure enough, it is right where it has always been, hanging on a keyring from an inner zip in her pack. She teases it off the zip and brings it to Orobelle.

The duchess lays the two instruments side by side, the compass and the corefinder, and begins to draw straight, ruled lines with her graphite.

Vesper cannot help noticing the steadiness of Orobelle’s hand. She draws without a ruler, and yet the line, marking the trajectory from Lagos to their unknown mark, is so clean as to be severe, like a knifestroke. It curves to match the map projection—it is unclear if she can perceive the distortions, or if it is by rote, but the markings appear sound.

When she is done, she squints at her handiwork. The line extends northwest, across the Atlantic, bisecting North America, and then halfway across the Pacific Ocean. It passes through no labelled cities. “Well, hmph, that’s my closest guess,” she says. “Without a globe nor the right instruments, I cannot say for sure.”

Then she peers over the map, and her pencil comes slowly to rest over the city of Lima. She waves her glass over it, and circles it with her pencil. “Our target is almost certainly in this half of the world,” she says, waving at the Americas. “And this city here ought to be the ideal first staging point. Honourless, fetch me some funds.”

Hong Yi’s phone starts to explode with texts about a week before he’s slated to return to the States. It wasn't two hours ago that the entire Marine Bio gang declared a video call—for the sole purpose of catching up with him. That's what they say, anyway.

“Hey, Hong Yi, my man!” It’s Jake who's first to pipe up, then he's joined by a chorus of exclamations from Tana, Andrea, Berrigan. Berrigan looks like he might burst into tears.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he replies, breaking into a grin despite himself, at his friends' faces filling the laptop screen. “What's up?”

“Not much, man. You're back in town the day after tomorrow, right? You got an ETA on that?”

Hong Yi squints. “Are you planning something?”

“Wha—nah, literally why would we plan anything just ‘cause you’re coming back? We barely even missed you, lol.”

“Jake, shut up! Hong Yi, we love you and we’re not asking for any reasoning in particular.”

“Suuure… So, my flight lands at eleven in the evening in NYC day after tomorrow, but I'm holidaying there for a couple days. I'm back in Boston on, like, evening of the 20th.”

“Twentieth August?” “Twentieth evening.” “Gotcha!” Hong Yi chuckles.

“So, how’s it going, man? How are the parents?“

Hong Yi feels a twinge at this, though he doesn’t suppose they can see his ambivalence through the webcam. “Oh, you know, same old parents, same old house, same old invalidation…”

“Hey, Hong, can we set them on fire?” this time it’s Tana who pipes up.

“Yeah, like, parents, man,” Berrigan mutters. “If they ever visit us here, boy am I giving them a piece of my mind.”

He glances over his shoulder at his bedroom door. “Chill out, guys. They’re still people, you know. I mean…” He sighs again. “My dad had cancer while I was away. He’s almost better now, but…”

“Goddamn.”

“Oh…I’m so sorry, Hong.”

“Hey, Hong Yi,” Tana interjects, “when you get back, I am gonna give you a hug at the party—that totally isn’t happening!”

“Tana!” gasps Jacob.

He chuckles, shaking his head. His luggage lies half packed at the foot of his bed. He’ll have to put it all away soon—his hopes and sorrows, and the half-written dreams of his past, so intricately bound to this tiny house that he cannot take them along with him.

But it’s about time he wrapped up this month-long ordeal, anyway.

The flight from Beijing to New York is like every other flight before. Twenty hours across the Pacific, cold dry air and tongue-burning food, barely a drop of sleep. He lands in the only city on the East Coast that sees direct flights from China, the signs above the baggage claim welcoming him back like it has every year since he began flying.

Sleeplessly, Hong Yi boards the MTA to his lodging by Central Park. Even at one in the morning, he sees people milling in the dark—smokers, guards, retail workers on tired feet. Reaching the door of the hostel, his eyes ache with drowziness. He piles his luggage into the room with the others, takes his tag and toiletries, and goes straight up the curving stairs to his room.

For a three-day stay, it’s not too bad, despite the moldy blankets and the uneven paint. Even the snoring of his temporary roommates is not unwelcome. The light is rickety and white, and he is here on his own financing. All this looks and smells to him like…relief.

Honourless has no qualms, when asked, about theft. By the time Vesper returns with three people's lunch, the exile is the only one there, and littered across the table are stacks of notes, of which she is sorting through one, grinning. She waves Vesper over, and then holds them up for her, saying something: “Ko’the i?”

The woman has handed her the rainbow stack of bills in her three-fingered hand. Vesper starts counting them, each with faces of famous figures. The man said eighty thousand would buy a person a flight to London, and if she knows anything about flying, it’s that the fuel costs a fortune.

When she passes the eighty thousand mark, and notices that she hasn’t gotten through even a tenth of the money strewn here, she meets Honourless’ eye and says, “This is a proper fortune, blight me.”

“Fortune?” Honourless repeats the word back, phonetically. She makes two gestures—sweeping a hand upwards towards her face, and then downward to the table.

Vesper thinks for a moment. Picking it up or putting it down? “Yes,” she says, imitating the gesture of lifting her hand towards herself.

“Ah!” Honourless grins, and then starts to sweep the stacks of notes across the tabletop towards her.

Vesper stares in horror at the hundreds of thousands of naira gathering before her in a tangle of colours. She starts stacking the notes in roughly hand-sized lots, then glimpses the red rubber band pile she has gathered on the other side of the mountain of funds.

“Now you're just mocking me,” she mutters, taking the first rubber band.

An hour before the jump, Orobelle makes Vesper teach Honourless about the city of Lima: the name, the geography, everything she remembers. “I've never been there,” she quickly admits, “but here's what I remember from my mother…”

It is a coastal city not far from mountains—the capital city of Peru. It was an old settlement, then it was colonised, and it is at least half a millennium old.

“And,” she adds, closing her eyes as if to uncover her memory of the city, “it’s where the raw fish dish called ceviche comes from.”

Orobelle turns to Honourless. “And is that enough to get you there?” she asks.

Honourless hmphs. “It should be. It may not be. But even names have anchoring power.”

“Then let's find out,” the girl answers, holding the Corefinder close as she is swallowed in pink light, to be replaced by her card-form. She watches Honourless pick the map up with one hand, and her with the other. “Alright, let's get moving.”

Vesper steps back. From within the card, Orobelle feels the distortions of spacetime in a muted way—they are almost no different from feeling her card bend or flutter in wind, but all at once she sees the world streak away in a vortex, and swirl, ripple, stretch.

It is an unnameable time later that the streaks snap back into steadiness, and the cold swallows them. The wind tears with its teeth and flecks of snow sting their faces.

“End me!” Honourless spits, steadying herself on her feet. Far beneath the peak, an endless blanket of clouds unrolls.

“Hurry on with it,” Orobelle answers.

“Shut up, girl,” she answers.

“What did you just call me?” In her white hot rage, she begins to glow and vibrate, but then remembers the blizzard and stops short of materialising.

“What should I call you, prissy pants?”

“Insolent wretch! My name is Orobelle Brilliant, Duchess of Diamonds, Bearer of the Knot of Worlds!”

“Oh, perfect, that's what I was forgetting! Let's get out of here.” Then, as the cliffs and crags start rippling again, Honourless mutters the name of Orobelle Brilliant while she screeches to unhearing ears.

Honourless lands back in Lagos almost an hour later, atop the coffee table at the precise midpoint between Dorian and Vesper. The two are sipping tea in the armchairs, and apparently discussing the Second World, when she crashes onto the furniture piece and tumbles onto the floor.

Orobelle rematerialises with arms akimbo, while Honourless lies sprawled on the carpet, the map several creases rougher in her fist.

“What in the Light's name was that?” screams the duchess.

The exile’s eyes are squeezed shut. “I told you it wasn't precise. I told you the names may not be enough.”

“You disappoint me, exile.”

“You infuriate me, child.”

“Oh! Oh! You've gone and done it again! I will scratch my name into your eyes if you do it one more time!”

“I didn't spend your name, Orobelle Brilliant, Duchess of Diamonds, Bearer of the Knot of Worlds. I just don't care to call you by your name when you’re calling me exile.”

“You, you—”

Orobelle sputters and points and before her next word can exit her mouth, Dorian puts his tea down and steps between them. “My duchess,” he says, bowing low with a hand to his heart. “Please, what may I get you, if anything at all?”

“Tranquillity!” she snarls, holding out a hand, and he dashes to her luggage, while she turns away with a sniff and walks after him.

Vesper massages the bridge of her nose and shakes her head. She bends over to pick up the crumpled map where Honourless left it, and unrolls it to find a matrix of arcing graphite lines scrawled across it, all intersecting near the north-eastern corner of the United States.

The markings sequester a large triangle on the map, overlapping the northeastern coastline of North America. It encompasses multiple cities: Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Providence, Newport.

The quarry of their search, it seems, resides in one of the most densely populated corners of the northern hemisphere.

“Hm. Well, if we were to choose a landing city,” Vesper says, after a prolonged pause of ponderance, “I daresay New York City gives us our best chances.”

By now, Vesper has explained the particulars of air travel that make it—at present—a useless option. “But that begs the question—Honourless—” she motions at Dorian across the room— “can you ghost twice with all of us in tow again?”

As he translates, Honourless meets his eye, then hers, grumbles out a reply, and shrugs.

“She says, ‘I’d hate to. But if it is the only way, then, sure, we may as well try.’”

At a bank on Oba Akran Avenue, Orobelle switches a hundred thousand naira for six hundred and twenty-eight United States dollars. Then, ducking into a dusty carpark nestled between two shop houses, they link hands in a circle on the concrete, amid the blaring of horns and the patter of pedestrian feet, closing their eyes to the grimy walls.

As the world starts to warp, Honourless yells out—but to all others in the vicinity, they only hear her voice. Her last cry echoes across the compound, long after they have disappeared.

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Chapter 30: A Needle in a Haystack - III

Honourless’ feet collide with stone in the centre of a blinding town plaza. Glass walls soar into the sky, reflecting clouds and trees onto the street. Rectangles of light glare down on her, and moving images scurry across them, brilliant as the crossing gates of Wonderland.

Then her elbow is knocked away by a man in a garish pink costume like a child’s stuffed toy, tearing Orobelle’s wrist from her grip. Someone points a handheld machine with a lens at her, flooding her vision with white.

She only lasts that long, and then she keels over and lands on bent knees, palms slamming into the ground. All around her is a whirl of voices she doesn’t understand and the glistening eyes of strangers, some reaching out to help her. Dorian gets there first, offering an arm that she grudgingly takes.

On one knee, she clutches her head. The world spins, it spins too much. “I can’t…keep doing this,” she groans.

“Could we find some lodging?” Dorian says urgently to Vesper.

She mutters something, and then takes off into the crowd.

“Wait here while she finds a hotel,” the duchess’ protector says, supporting her to the roadside, where she bends unsteadily to the paving. “She wants you not to move until she’s back.”

“Hah. Now I’m embarrassed.” She grimaces. “Look at me.”

“You did very well, my friend. You deserve a rest.”

A pair of pink shoes appears in her vision.

Orobelle swipes a pair of bills towards Dorian. “Get her a drink,” she says. “I’ll keep watch.”

Honourless stares. The duchess does not meet her eye, even as Dorian scrambles away in search of the first of several market stands. They listen to the racket around them, the clicking of handheld machinery, the roll of alien syllables off tongues.

“Awful nice of you to care, Orobelle.”

“You’ve proven yourself,” she replies curtly. “We shall need you again. Don’t get used to it.”

Honourless snorts. It is as if this child despises the very thought of being in her good graces. Of course she does. She’s the duchess. I’m a criminal.

In a day, Hong Yi relearns the fickle system of the New York subway. It’s all a ritual in basking in its tepid warmth and trash and excess, something he throws himself into so that the past month finally starts to evaporate off him.

The train he’s meant to catch at Madison Square Garden only stops at every other station, and he checks twice to be sure he’s boarding the right one. But he isn't on the right one: it takes him all the way up north to the edge of the Bronx, and even then he doesn’t notice for all his people-watching, the chatter of four different languages in his ears.

By tomorrow, he thinks, he will be home again. Boston still takes pains to remind him he isn't there for good. But right now, he is not there.

He wanders up streets of cigarettes and buskers, stops to pick up a bagel and coffee at a corner store. He finishes lunch leaned against the brick wall of a hair saloon.

There's a wistfulness to being here in this old and storied city—a kind Hong Yi cannot place, as if it belonged to another person. Lunch long past, he strolls under a red and white canopy in Queens, and watches people pass whom he will never know.

The plazas before shops are the territory of guitar-toting buskers, and the street corners outside clubs are patrolled by loiterers looking for spare change. As he passes the last row of shops and wanders past the first hedge of the public green, he closes his eyes and listens to it all—the thud of a basketball on a pavement, the beep of a car.

He has never been sure of his place in all this: in the world, in reality, in time. Maybe that is why he likes the streets more than any tourist landmark: there is no need to be someone, after all those years of having to be everything. Time could stop now, and he could live suspended in this moment, and he would be happy.

And maybe he could, too, if he understood his powers over gravity. There is something odd about them—though just why they exist, he accepts he may never know. They upend just about every theory ever written about gravity and relativity and space. They can't have arbitrarily appeared. But where from?

Hong Yi falters to a stop. A white gazebo has emerged from around the verdant bend in the path. Before the gazebo, a woman in a dark tank top peers up at the vines curling around its pillars. As he creeps closer, he hears her clicking her tongue, watches her beckon up at the leaves with her fingers. Two steps closer and he notices a tiny green parrot, perhaps a budgerigar, nestled among the ivy vines above her.

“Hey, ma'am! Can I help you?”

Her head whips around. He waves. She wears her hair in an afro and her glossy red skirt goes up to her knees. Tear-streaked mascara stains her cheeks. “Oh uh, yeah—I'm outta ideas, honestly,” she answers. “That’s my boy Mango up there…won’t even come down for his favourite snack.” She sags, waving the sealed bag of birdseed around. “I guess it’s good he hasn’t gone and flown off, but that's got me worried, too. You think you could reach him?”

Bravado surges like heat through him. Hong Yi steps up to the pillar. “Sure, I've got a trick or two…”

He studies the pillar, the vines weaving through the trellis. Then—with a weakening of gravity—he springs, clinging with four limbs like a lemur. Boost by anti-gravitational boost, he scrambles weightlessly along its height.

“No way! No way, that’s crazy!” she cries. “How are you doing that?”

The ground, and the woman, are a dizzying height away by now, but still he peers down and winks. “Superpowers,” he says. Hooking his left hand into the ivy, he stretches the other towards the budgie. It grows heavy, the vine sagging with its weight. The creature barely has a chance to cry before he swipes it off the branch.

With a screeching Mango firmly in his grip, Hong Yi shimmies down the trellis, breaking twigs on the way. The moment his feet hit the ground among scattered leaves and gravity returns, the woman flies to him, taking the bird.

She scrubs its head with a finger. “Mango! You silly thing, going off all on your own like that.” Then she raises her huge eyes to Hong Yi. “Thank you so much! You’ve gotta be an angel sent from heaven or something.”

“Hah! I can be an angel if you want.” He grins. “But call me Hong Yi. Nice to meet you!”

“Hong Yi? I'm Terri,” she says, extending a hand for a shake—but he hesitates, noticing an itch on his arms.

“Wait, wait,” he says, flipping his palms up. The beginnings of a red rash are surfacing on his hands down to his elbows. “Oh boy, yeah, that’s the ivy.”

Terri chokes back a sound between a laugh and a cry. “I can’t believe you copped that for my sake! Come back to mine, I’ll get you some lotion.”

Well, Hong Yi can't say no to an invite from a cute stranger. Beaming thoughtlessly, he tags along as she dashes to the closest traffic light and then across the road, to the block of brick apartments gazing over the traffic. The sky is stark blue and burns like a stove, though the sun is sinking over the antennae.

“So, where'd you learn to climb like that?” Terri asks at the far end of the junction, and giggles. “I mean, superpowers aside.”

“Oh, you won't believe me, but…playing pranks in college. I’m a big fan.”

Her chortle turns into a howl of laughter. Mango chatters back. Hong Yi wiggles his arms to ease the itch, stepping over the sidewalk cracks as she wipes tears from her eyes. “Man, you're something else. I love it.”

As they scale the creaky apartment stairs, Hong Yi trails a step behind. “My roommate may be home,” Terri says—but opening the door reveals an empty unit, bigger than his own dorm room, but no tidier. Jackets are draped over the couch, and Xbox controllers sit among the cushions and delivery boxes.

At the door, Terri pops open the wheeled birdcage and hums. “I'm gonna take him to the vet later this week,” she mutters as she returns the budgie to his roost. “You need that, don’t you, sweet little thing.” Then she strolls into the kitchen and he follows, becoming uncomfortably aware that the itch has advanced to stinging.

While she shuffles cabinet odds and ends about, he runs tap water over the welts. The white cabinet doors are peeling. The floor is a mosaic of unevenly white tiles and the fridge opposite the sink is plastered with gaudy magnets and faded notes. He can hear children laughing outside the window.

“Here we go,” says Terri as she pulls her head from the pantry, presenting a bottle of pastel pink liquid labelled calamine lotion.

“Ooh, I've always wanted to try that,” he replies, as he takes it.

“You've never used calamine lotion?”

“My family used tiger balm for basically everything.”

“That shit smells so good though.”

“Oh yeah, I know.”

Terri fills two glasses of water and brings him to the living room. They laugh as he sweeps clothes and controllers off the couch, sitting in their place.

The lotion is earthy pink and cooling on Hong Yi's arms, and the itch dulls almost at once. “Hey, thanks, by the way.”

“No problem—I mean, you got Mango down from the gazebo thing. It's the least I could do.”

“Mango is adorable though. Who wouldn’t wanna help him?”

“So true.”

He looks up as he pats the lotion dry with his palm. She's already staring at him.

“Hey, we should totally catch up again,” Terri murmurs, her eye contact unbreaking.

“T—that'd be amazing,” Hong Yi answers, heart leaping to his throat. “But there’s just something you should know…I don't live here. I'm leaving tomorrow.”

Five seconds of shell-shock. “Oh.” Terri tries to smile. “Where to? And what time?”

His heart hammers wildly. “I’m catching a bus to Boston tomorrow evening.”

“Oh, uh, so you're free in the morning?”

As Vesper jogs in search of a hotel, she notices it: the electricity. It crackles under the street and it surges up the glowing screens around her, and it shines out of the brand names on the walls. Everything is electric—screens in pockets and screens on walls and so much electricity she suddenly feels like she could disappear into the scene, a part irremovable of it all.

She runs down two blocks between dizzying screens with flickering faces—where are the bloody hotels? She swerves around other pedestrians, hair wild in her reflections, and turns onto a perpendicular street.

Hotel Riu Plaza presents itself just as she is about to backtrack—a black marble facade, pinnacle lost in the brilliance of the sun. She studies it for a minute, watching guests wander in the lobby and through the doors. It'll do. She commits its location to memory, then turns on her heel and sprints back the way she came, jostling other pedestrians who barely bat an eyelash.

There are too many things here: crowds and carts and shop names glaring down in light and steel. Times Square is declared on every shopfront and sign. She has heard its name before, but never seen it till today. These crowds put the ones in her London to shame, and these lights, they render it all a heavenly vision.

Vesper veers onto the fabled Square and along the pavement among the stands. Honourless now sits with her head in her palms, a half-finished bottle of bright green juice beside her.

“What the devil is that?” she asks as she skids to a stop, pointing at the bottle. Gatorade reads the label.

“Some kind of rehydration potion, as far as we can tell,” Dorian answers.

“It certainly looks like a potion,” Vesper mutters. Honourless snatches for another swig. “Well, you'll be happy to know I’ve found us our hotel.”

After some bickering, Vesper books a night in a family suite at Hotel Riu Plaza with cash out of Orobelle’s luggage. Then they are sent to the elevator with keys and their heartiest compliments.

Not one of the four can keep a straight face as the gleaming lift doors click shut, deadening the air, and the floor begins ascending with a breathy hum. Orobelle studies the buttons and doors with wild eyes; Honourless curls up in the marble-floored corner and makes a gagging sound. Vesper is readier for her third time on a lift, but this one rises like a bullet, faint lights flashing through the crack between the doors.

At the twenty-second floor, they pile into their reservation. The others head straight for the desks and beds, but Vesper pauses to take it in. It is a beige-carpeted room, outfitted with all the plush comforts of the royal suite, except with three beds and a tall window that makes the most of its elevation. Beyond the white armchairs, it's nothing but sky, roofs and windows of other towers, some yet taller than this one.

Weaving her way to the window, she gazes out the glass. Twenty-two floors up, and they are still walled in. Everything here, in every world, grows towards the sky.

Honourless groans and tumbles onto the innermost bed. “No one wake me,” she mutters, pulling the pillow over her eyes.

While snoring takes the place of her voice, Dorian and Orobelle have already set to work. The duchess has her watch, corefinder and map laid out on the gleaming desk, and she pulls the chair with the same severity as always, glaring at the instruments and the map in turns.

“Northeast,” she says. “There are no other cities in that direction—none on the map. We could well be in the right place.”

“If so, we’ve still got our work cut out for us,” Vesper mutters, staring down at the crowds as they flow like water. “But surely we can triangulate this Core’s position across the city, too.”

“This document may be of help,” Dorian says, laying his offering of a garish brochure before the duchess.

She picks it up, flips it over, and unfolds the sheet. As she shakes it out, she shouts, “Dorian! This is brilliant!”

Vesper cranes her neck. The brochure is a map, more intricate than a monk’s manuscript, criss-crossed by a net of routes in ten different colours. Threads of streets and bridges bind the three bright yellow pieces of this city together.

“We venture tomorrow,” Orobelle says with a hardened voice. “I shall allow one day here. That should be enough to tell us if our mark is in this city.”

Hong Yi wakes up with butterflies. There's no way, he thinks as he is brushing his teeth in the downstairs bathroom, even as he is shoving his toiletries and laundry away. No way I just scored a date here.

He's checked out and boarded the MTA almost an hour before Google Maps said he needed to, lugging his comically boxy maroon trolley bag between standing passengers.

At this hour, it's all yuppies and high school kids on the subway, conversing in undertones or lost in frantic phone calls. The train wheels roll on iron, lights scattering rats in the dark. It lets him off on 3rd Avenue where he lugs his trolley bag up the grimy stairs with his eye on the map onscreen.

Then he is there at the nameless cafe, dappled light sprinkled on the paving, umbrellas outside to catch the sun and faded birds on strings in the door.

Under the umbrellas, Terri is wearing a new tank top, this one pink with a print of two cherries on the front, and velvety purple lipstick. When he flies to greet her, she laughs, hand brushing his. His heart flutters at the brilliance of those brown eyes.

They find bar seats facing the window, but are almost at once caught up in each other. “Hey, so, how'd the packing go?” Terri asks.

“Oh, I didn't unpack much in the first place,” he replies. “Pretty much just shoved my laundry in one compartment and skedaddled. Hope I wasn't too late.”

“Oh, nah, I've been here for five minutes.” She is wearing mascara, this time unmarred by tears, and once his gaze catches on hers, it cannot turn elsewhere.

She takes his hand, and he fights down a compulsion—to get attached, to want her too much. He won't be here to see it through. The palpable film of temporariness coats everything—the words exchanged, the gleam of their coffee cups as they sip, and the warmth of each other’s skin.

“You worked at the big aquarium? That’s so damn cool.”

“Yeah, as a research assistant. It’s mainly ‘cause I’m studying Marine Bio.”

“Wait, the whole degree’s about marine biology? Like you stare at fish all day?”

“Well, that, and octopuses, and sea slugs…”

“And shrimp?”

“Yeah, heaps of shrimp.”

The fact that he has scored his first date in months in a city he doesn’t live in has to be fate's cruelest trick yet. For all of five seconds, he toys with the idea of postponing his departure. They can do without me for a bit longer…can't they?

“So when you get back to Boston, what’s the plan? Semester is a couple weeks out still, right?”

He props his chin up on the table, smiling as his mind wanders. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure my friends are planning a party for when I get back.”

“That’s so sweet, what? You totally deserve it.”

“Aw, I'm sure they missed me after like, one whole month out of town. But enough about that, what are you up to?”

“Not much, honestly. I work down at the grocer’s two blocks from where I live. But it's just a holding pattern, kinda. What I really wanna do is start a band…get a buncha folks together, hit up an open mic or two, get our name out there…”

It’s hard for Hong Yi not to smile along, despite the growing ache in his chest. The conversation unfolds as naturally as breathing, as it hops from music to aspirations to weekend chores. Their coffees sit unfinished for an hour.

Terri giggles at a joke, shoulders hunching, and in that sunny light, her smile pierce his heart like a lance.

They’re both here grasping at this tenuous bond, though it is doomed to end by tomorrow. She knew this, and she still asked him out. And he knew this, and he accepted. Maybe she’ll become a distant dream, just like her dreams of starting a band.

But hey, they could do something about it. Boston is only four hours from New York, and if Terri wants to keep this going, however unlikely, she would be worth it…

After waking, Vesper is not to have more than two hours of quiet. While Honourless snores in bed, Orobelle and Dorian drag her off on what is to be the most hurried introduction to the city possible, beginning with the Times Square station. Picking up the flat-priced tickets, they invent their journey as they go—one trip northbound and then another south, plotting the bearings of their mark as they go.

There is little that can be perceived from underground besides the names of stations, and a blur of people hopping on and off. Orobelle spends the whole thing staring at the map with her pen while Dorian holds up the corefinder for her.

Vesper watches and nods along. It was a distant dream once, riding the London Tube. She doesn't know how this compares, but there is no mistaking it for London. She hears snatches of English and Spanish: chatter about the mundane, a father berating a child, and a flutist busking amid the faint scent of urine and tobacco.

Her pondering is cleft in two by Orobelle shrilling, “This is the right city! Look, they're somewhere southeast now. Dorian, hold the corefinder for me!”

Within three train rides, Orobelle narrows their mark's location down to “southeast of Central Park, and not by far.” Vesper follows the girl as she marches them up the block, across the road at the flashing light, and then down the next left, keeping apace with Dorian.

As they go, Orobelle’s eyes narrow on the instrument. She slows past a small crowd of diners in outdoor tables, muttering to herself. Dorian and Vesper slow behind her.

When she comes to a halt and turns to peer through the cafe clientele at the shop's facade, the two exchange a glance. Orobelle has ploughed straight down to the door, waving her instrument about like a metal detector. And then…

“It's you!”

The inevitable disruption. Her voice is loud enough to penetrate the front door. Vesper and Dorian sprint in after her.

Orobelle has accosted a young man with a pair of rectangular glasses perched on his nose. He squints back, brow furrowed. He’s dressed casually, as is the woman beside him, with whose fingers his are tangled.

“What do you want? Cash?” they hear him say.

“I'm no beggar,” Orobelle answers, effecting a grave tone. “I said what I said. I am here for you. I am the Knot of Worlds, and you are a Core of this multiverse. I require your protection. I have come seeking you out for that singular reason.”

“Protection? Uh, sorry, kid, I’m a marine bio undergrad.”

Vesper winces as Orobelle seethes, but she keeps a rein on her rage this time. “Yes! You have abilities you do not understand, I know you do. You must wonder why! And I can answer that for you. I am the reason your abilities exist. Your duty is, and has always been, to protect me.”

He freezes for too long. And then, haltingly, he answers, “I'm kinda in the middle of a date? Can I at least finish up here?”

Vesper rubs her temple, meandering up to Orobelle’s side. “Sorry about that, sir, we’re…working on the introduction.”

“You must understand! I come with a mission for you, one that was written for you all those years ago, when you first assumed the role of Core. You must become a part of it. There can be no avoiding it. Fate demands it.”

“Okay, how long will this mission take?”

“Sixty days, in the Queendom's time. Perhaps three hundred days in this universe.”

“You want me for a year? I mean, an adventure sounds cool and all, but I have a life. A degree. My friends are throwing me a party tomorrow!”

With a huff, Orobelle turns to her companions. “One of you, make him see sense. With force if you must. But we are not leaving until he agrees to come with us.”

Dorian glances helplessly at Vesper. Drawing in a deep breath, she steps forward and pulls the chair on his other side.

“Good morning. I’m Vesper, pleased to meet you,” she says. “What's your name?”

The furrow of his brow eases. “Hong Yi,” he answers. “Okay, Vesper, what is going on here?”

To that, Vesper can only sigh. “This might take a while. And before we dive into it, ma'am, you are…?” She gestures at the woman beside Hong Yi.

“Terri.”

“Terri, do you mind if I borrow him for a few minutes?”

“I get the feeling I wouldn’t be able to stop you,” she laughs.

Vesper chuckles back. “I promise I’m not as mean as I look. And, Hong Yi. Am I saying that right?”

“Better than some I've heard here.”

“All right. Can you answer this honestly? Do you have any abilities beyond your comprehension? Ones that seem to defy reality, even?”

“Oh, like my good looks?” he says. She sighs. “Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't be entertaining this…weird interruption if I didn't.”

“I thought so,” she replies. “We all do. That's why we came here. Orobelle has an instrument in her hand that has one sole purpose: to find the likes of you and I.”

At this, he blinks. “You…?”

She nods. She can see the realisation hit, like a train crash in his eyes. “As recently as a week ago, I was a soldier in the British army, fighting the biggest battle on the Eastern Front. And then, well, I deserted—on account of Orobelle calling on me to join her…”

“Wait, wait, wait, how old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“What? You just said you fought on the Eastern Front. World War Two?”

“The very one.” From her shirt, she fishes her bullet pendant. His eyes widen on the metal trinket.

“But that was seventy years ago.”

Vesper shakes her head. “The story is…strange, but bear with me. When she appeared, Orobelle—our young duchess here—claimed she had come from a different universe in search of me. And I thought it some kind of improvised theatre, too, at first. But then she took me here, to this place. This world. It is both like mine and not. There are civilian aircraft. And…rehydration potions. Things I have seen, and things I have never seen. And the more I think about it, the more I’m realising that nothing about the situation—the things they've done in my presence, the things I can do—make sense unless they're telling the truth. I have always thought my powers must serve some purpose, and I think that purpose is this one.”

“No way. No way.” Hong Yi has been clutching his head the whole time she’s been speaking. “You're gonna have to give me a few minutes to process this. This whole time I've amused myself thinking these gravity powers were—”

“—oh, gravity?—”

“—were like some sort of superhero thing…and now you’re telling me there’s a multiverse, too? Just more universes that we can travel between? It's just like in…” He pauses short of speaking the name of whatever tale he was about to reference, then looks Vesper in the eye. “Okay, I think…I think, I think I could believe you. But...what convinced you to just up and leave like that? Surely not just Orobelle's words.”

To this, Vesper smiles wryly. “I had no reason to stay. My world, my time, was a cruel one. I suppose I relished the room to breathe.”

Hong Yi nods, pausing for a spell. Then he says, “That’s where we’re different, I guess. I have a whole life here, and it's one that I like. I’ve got studies to complete. Friends to see. I'm in the middle of a date, dammit!” He glances at Terri with a pitiful smile and says, “I swear I had no idea this was gonna happen.”

“It's, that’s alright, man. It sounds super important.”

“I'm sorry,” Vesper puts. “I understand. You should finish your date.”

“We can't wait forever!” Orobelle hisses. “Promise you'll come with us after you're done.”

Hong Yi’s face is scrunched up in thought as he meets Vesper's eye again. “So, you must know how absurd everything you've just said would sound to a stranger.”

She nods, hands parting in concession. “I was that stranger last week.”

“But you did find me, the one person with powers, among all the people on this earth. There's gotta be something going on. But…just one more thing, help me out here. You've got them too? Powers?”

She nods.

“Okay, can you show me?”

Vesper lifts a hand, palm up. Hong Yi watches unblinking. A blinding electric arc loops between her fingertips, snapping, waving like a ribbon in the wind. Terri yelps, then her eyes brighten, like polished mirrors.

Solemnly, he continues to stare for half a minute, studying her face. She becomes aware that the shop has gone dead quiet, except for the two of them.

Then he says, “You won't let me refuse, will you?”

“I'm afraid finding you is the only reason we are here.”

Hong Yi nods slowly, swallowing. “Alright.” Pauses. “I've made up my mind. I'll wrap up this date, and then I'm yours.” Another pause, this one more sheepish. “Erm, one more thing. What…are your pronouns?”

“Mine? As in, how I'd like you to refer to me? Well. I generally think of myself as a woman.”

Once Vesper and her companions have stepped outside, Hong Yi fights to push the date with Terri to the front of his attention again. But his thoughts are feverish and refuse to stop racing, and he can see from her intermittent frowns that her mind is wandering, too.

Hong Yi isn't sure why, but he feels an unbreakable thread pulling him along now, towards some invisible destiny. Maybe it is that this is the first time the greatest mystery of his life has seemed solvable. Maybe it is that Orobelle's summons feel inevitable—something that will come back to claim him if ignored. It is a glimpse, of a plot so strange and momentous it makes the cafe feel paper-thin.

Or maybe it is just that he is oddly fascinated with Vesper. Something about her—perhaps the scars on her neck and arms, perhaps the steadiness of her gaze and voice—tells him every word she spoke was true: she was a soldier, one without compare, and powerful in a way he cannot yet imagine.

That, and she's stronger than him, and probably has fewer qualms about putting him in a sack and dragging him off.

But no matter the sensible arguments to the contrary, Hong Yi cannot muster up the will to resist the pull. He has grown familiar with this feeling, of pulling his future apart at the seams, and he could do it again. A hundred times over.

Well, if he must leave, then now is the time. Now, in limbo. Before Boston sinks its hooks into him again.

“What were they saying? That they need you to join them?” Terri asks, finally accepting the new course of the conversation. “That you have powers or some shit?”

He nods slowly. “Man, people always joke about superheroes hanging out in NYC, but this is just absurd.”

“So…you actually have superpowers?”

“Yeah…they’re no big deal, honestly. I can change the pull of gravity. Make things heavier…lighter…I used it to rescue Mango yesterday.”

For a revelation so world-rending, Terri seems quite unperplexed. “So, you’re cute and funny and you’re an undercover superhero,” she says. “What don’t you have?”

“A clue about what I’m doing with my life,” he chuckles, eyes unfocusing on her. God, this is going to hurt, isn't it? “Hey, you’re amazing, you know? And if I come back in one piece from…whatever the hell they want me for…I wanna hang out again.”

Both cups of coffee sit empty. Terri gives a smile. “Promise?” she murmurs, laying a hand over his.

“One hundred percent.” But even he isn't sure. The universe has such a way of changing without warning.

She hands him her phone—her Facebook homepage is open. A bird video autoplays silently. He types his name and city in the search bar—Hong Yi, Boston—and taps on his profile picture, which feels embarrassingly nerdy when he hands the phone back.

All the while, he feels the stare of Orobelle burn into him from beyond the cafe glass, severing him from Terri by the second.

Before she leaves, Terri gives Hong Yi a head-spinning, soul-rending kiss. As the door swings shut and she vanishes from his periphery, he sucks in a deep breath, and steps outside himself, the afterglow of her company quietly fading.

By now, the strange party of three has diminished to one: Vesper waits by a tree on the sidewalk. Her eyes lift at the sound of his footsteps.

“Where did the kid and the tall guy go?” he calls out.

“Orobelle and Dorian?” she replies, reaching into her pocket.

In her hand she fans out two cards, and from the cards issues the shrill voice of the duchess, crying, “Don't you dare sweat all over me!”

He stares at the card for several seconds. “Okay, so, you've turned them into cards.”

“They turned themselves. It's one of their Lightly arts or something suchlike.”

All considered, he this doesn't bewilder him much. Vesper can generate electricity, and those two can turn into cards. It's not the comic book opener Hong Yi fantasised about, that's for sure.

Amid the chatter of the MTA and the rattle of a boombox, Hong Yi files a leave of absence form on the BU website. He becomes aware of Vesper staring at his smartphone when he glances up at a baby's wail.

“You wanna try my phone?” he asks.

She hastens to look away. “Not at all, I didn't mean to be nosy. Is that a phone? It appears more like a book, of light.”

“Oh, it's so much more than a book. Like…what did you do when you were bored at home in the 40’s?”

Vesper shrugs. “Go outside, read the news, watch the television, write journals…”

“You know, you can do all those things with a smartphone.”

“Even go outside?”

“It can definitely help with that.” Chuckling with a shake of his head, Hong Yi opens the Skype app, which haltingly loads all his chat groups.

Even as his heart pounds with knowing he is about to veer off course again, the ache in his throat grows to drown it out. Never one for the beaten path, this one. He's torn his life a thousand times, but no one said it would ever get easier.

If nothing else, he has a feeling Vesper will be decent company, at least.

There is, however, one more loose end to tie.

Guys, I have some…weird news. I won't be coming back to Boston for a while. The reason is too wild to explain. But you might not see me till next year.

Still, throw that party in my honour, OK?

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Chapter 31: City of Smoke and Mirrors - Denouement

Content warning (may contain spoilers)
This chapter contains depictions of vomiting.

The lights of houses glow through the muddling gray. Adelaide can no longer remember the taste of berries, and all she wants now are food and warmth.

As her tablet phone's clock ticks to 7:30pm, she comes upon a bin in the dark, the corner of a pizza box peeking from inside. In a past life, she might have worried about the state of its contents, but today she is too starved to care.

She yanks the box from under the plastic flap, and flips it open to find a wedge-shaped slice covered in wrinkled discs of meat. It is greasy to her touch. She shoves it into her mouth, salivating for the sting of salt and spice. As she chews, her feet leave the bin and hurry her on, on and on, which way she doesn't care, as long as it's away from home.

All this while, Adelaide finds the inside of her mind crumbling into increasing disarray, as she wonders where Felix has gone. Has he left the house? Surely he has.

She stumbles to a halt on the edge of someone’s front lawn, and slips her tablet phone from her pocket.

“Freddie,” she whispers, shivering. “Show me Felix's profile.”

“I found Felix in your friend l—” Adelaide clamps her palm over the speaker, glancing over her shoulder at the misty window across the yard.

Tapping into his profile, Adelaide's eyes wander over the row of buttons beside his name, and selects the speech bubble.

felix where are you?

Her breath catches as she taps send.

Before she has closed the window, a new reply lights up on the screen:

I'm as far as I care to go.
But I can come find you. Are you safe?

Her shoulders sag, and she replies: i think so, in a neighbourhood but away from eyes

Perfect. Stay put, do you know what street you're on?

She glances across the street for a sign.

simpson drive

Felix spends a few seconds typing, then his answer comes through: You got far! Half an hour's walking from my location, but I shall be there. Do not move!

Adelaide does not move, not even to adjust her posture. If it will help Felix find her faster, then she will do as told.

The minutes tick by—five, ten, crawling like spilled tar. Felix is still not here. Every second she stares at the street lights, she tries to believe, like she did in that penthouse apartment when the lights had lit up her floor.

Her joints grow stiff from standing like a scarecrow, and she cannot tell if the blurring of her vision is from the fog, exhaustion or tears. At long last she lets herself sink to the sidewalk paving, and hugs her legs close, though it does little to warm the chill away.

Staring up through the humid air, she feels the weariness weigh on her body. This is the only life awaiting her: a forever-after of living on the run.

At least, when she was living in the lab, no one was hounding her every footstep. No one toiled to track down her scent, to push her out of every place she dared settle in.

Now, she can never belong anywhere again—anywhere but that room they built for her.

Adelaide buries her face in her lap and fights her tears. The stale bin pizza sits wrong in her belly. “You should have left me in the room,” she croaks, shaking in the bite of the wind. “Why did you do this to me? Why did you do this to me?”

She rambles on and on into incoherence for several minutes, grasping at her knees and the linty fabric of her leg-warmers. Is this how it is to live in the world below her penthouse? How is it worse than captivity?

Then, footsteps. And the rattle of wheels—to her left, down the road, soaring towards the houses.

Her throat clams up. The steps hasten closer, breaking into a jog. Eyes wide, she looks.

In the same moment, a golden searchlight glares upon her, lighting every speck in a circle on the sidewalk, filling her eyes with such fire that she gasps.

She blinks, heart leaping to her throat as she tries to make out if the silhouette between the streetlights is who she hopes, or if the police have found her at last, and her brief flight is finally at end.

“There you are!” comes a voice she knows.

“Felix?” Adelaide chokes, springing to her feet.

Felix flies to a stop before her, his coat trailing after him. He smiles even while he catches his breath, disheveled and covered in fragments of leaves and twigs.

She dashes over and flings her arms around him, trembling with the relief of his warmth. “Felix! I thought I’d never see you again…” Her voice wobbles with tears, and she clings and clings because it makes her feel a little less worn down.

“Oh, er, good to see you too,” he says. This time, he makes no reprimand—in fact, he returns the gesture haltingly, a hand laid on her shoulder. “How are you?”

“I’m bad.” These are the only words she can find. Stumbling back, she notices dirt stains on his blue shirt, and twigs and fibers. “Were you crawling through the scrub to get here?”

Felix wrings his hands and glances aside. “Well, let us say the way here was…well off the beaten track. You have a fine talent for losing pursuers, it’ll serve you well.”

“I’m sorry…you didn’t have to do that.” She watches him attentively, then reaches out and picks a twig out of his hair. She lets it fall to the pavement; they both watch it go. Then she pulls out a leaf. A bit of an anther. His hair could really use some combing.

He meets her eye, seeming either startled or confused—and it makes her squirm in a way she can’t pinpoint. “All’s well that ends well,” he murmurs, and before she can remove anything else from his hair, he gently maneuvers her hand away. The light around them glows brighter, revealing the sidewalk for two feet in each direction. “Let us go now. It's only a matter of time till your father reports you to the police…but we shall worry about that once we've had dinner. Turn off your PalmNote for now, it'll give them one thing less to track.”

She nods mutely and does as told. Meanwhile Felix glances at his own device, the map glowing on the screen. “There is a gas station a few streets down, we could pick up a meal there.”

Adelaide twiddles her fingers. “I’m not hungry.”

“How could you not be?”

“I ate…”

“Here? What did you…”

She glances guiltily at a bin as they pass.

“Addie…” The nickname makes her eyes widen. “If…I may call you that…”

Of course, he heard her mother call her that. “Yes, you may…”

“...you know that discarded scraps aren’t fit for consumption?”

Her head sinks. “I was just…so hungry.”

Felix sighs. “Fair enough, you can’t uneat what you’ve eaten.”

They trudge on through the alternating light and shadow, Adelaide in a growing haze. Five minutes later, as they reach the edge of the suburb, the unpleasant roil of her stomach becomes chilling nausea. She stumbles to a stop, bends double at the roadside and vomits.

Her eyes and throat burn, and she starts to wail, wiping her mouth on the backs of her hands.

“Oh, dear God,” she hears Felix murmur. His hand extends a handkerchief into her view. She stumbles backward against him, taking the proffered handkerchief to scour her face and hands clean. He offers his arm, and the deepest look of pity.

Her vision spins. She crumples the fabric into a ball and snatches for his elbow.

Adelaide doesn’t notice when Felix drapes his coat over her shoulders, but she eventually realises that she is no longer shivering.

She clings onto Felix’s arm as they pick their way towards the BP station, their luggage bag trailing after them in a whir of wheels. Its sterile white-green glow seeps onto the walls of the neighbouring houses, announcing its presence above the prickly trees.

They stumble through the peeling pillars and sliding doors, Adelaide’s vision swimming so that everything looks like a dream of sorts. She’s only vaguely aware of it when the service robot rolls up to them with a bottle of water, a few protein bars and two chicken wraps, and her companion taps his card on the reader.

“Addie,” Felix says, sounding almost as tired as she is by now. In the baring white light at the edge of the station, he hands her the water bottle and a P&E protein bar, both too clean and shiny in her grimy hands. She bursts into a flurry of thanks, only noticing that her throat is parched when she gulps the water down, droplets spilling down her face.

“So…” she mumbles as she caps it again, watching as he leans on the luggage handle and demolishes a wrap. “What are we doing next?”

Lifting his face from his meal, he says, “Is there anyone else whom you’d trust to harbour us?”

At this, Adelaide withdraws slightly. “I don’t want to be wrong again. I messed that up the last time.”

“Don’t you worry about that, my dear. Family is…unique, in how we judge their character. Do you remember any friends?”

“Yes.”

“Oh?”

“There was Lea. She was my best friend—she was my only friend, actually—we used to go on little adventures together. I don’t know that she’s still here, in this city, or in this state even. But she was…she was always good to me.”

“Lea. Surname?” Felix has pulled up the social network search bar.

“Lea Johnson.”

“Lillie, find Lea Johnson.”

“Certainly!” declares Lillie. “I found two hundred and seventy profiles for the name Lea Johnson.”

Felix tilts the screen towards Adelaide; she leans to watch as he scrolls, searching every icon for the girl she remembers, with dark curly hair and a predilection for the stars.

“Wait, stop.” Felix stops scrolling. Onscreen is a profile with the name Lea “Twilight” Johnson. When Adelaide lays eyes upon the photograph, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle click together in her head. Her hair is dyed indigo at the tips, and the image itself is decorated by a frame of blue stars, but she would know that face from among a thousand.

Adelaide points at that icon. “That’s her. Lea Twilight.” Under her name is her city: San Francisco.

“Well, how serendipitous. How shall we proceed?” Felix stares at the profile. “I’d think it wise to question her, before we show our hand. Of course, that is assuming she even dignifies a stranger with a reply.”

Adelaide calculates for a minute, and then holds out her hand. “May I pretend to be you for a minute?”

Felix glances at her, and then hands the device over.

She taps Lea’s profile and then the speech bubble beside her icon. Beneath her name, her status currently appears to be “Offline.” All the better, then. She taps on the text field, and begins to draft a message.

Lea, how are you? I’m contacting you about the subject of Adelaide Moore, the recently escaped laboratory subject. I understand you were close friends with her in the past. As a private investigator entrusted with this matter, I have intelligence suggesting she may be seeking you out. May we discuss?

Felix is watching as Adelaide types the words. She hesitates over the send button for a minute, before closing her eyes and tapping it. The new message, framed in grey, sits out in the open. Her heart feels like it might burst.

“I couldn’t have done better,” whispers her companion over her shoulder.

Lea’s status flips to Online.

An animated speech bubble pops up at the bottom.

Adelaide shrieks. Felix lays a hand on her shoulder, but he, too, is leaning in, both pairs of eyes trained on the grey bubble as it is replaced with:

if this is some weird phisihing scam then get lost
why the hell would i wanna help you hunt her down anyway
fuck off

They glance at each other. Adelaide’s mind is racing faster than her heart, a hundred possibilities springing from this message, and a thousand possible replies. But most of those, she decides, can wait.

She simply writes:

Lea! Sorry for the weird intro—I couldn’t be sure.
Can we meet on Telegraph Hill tomorrow? The place where we went to stargaze when we were seven? You remember that place, right?

This time, the speech bubble doesn’t pop up. Adelaide goes breathless. The gas station lights and the bare concrete floor and the tire marks spin in her peripheral vision.

After five minutes, Lea is typing again.

oh my god. no way.
what time?

The glow of entrance spotlights at the BART station welcome them out of the dark. When she glimpses her reflection in the perspex signage, Adelaide sees a different face yet again. They pass the gantry with paper tickets—a holdover from a past era, but ever necessary—and ask around for directions until the Blue-N hisses into the station.

In the seat behind the door, Felix slides the luggage under the chairs, while Adelaide settles into the window seat. As the hum of the engine crescendos, lights flash over them, to the rhythm of the clattering wheels.

“I could sleep for days,” she whispers.

“You could catch a few winks here,” he replies, glancing again at his tablet phone screen, where the route is drawn, a blue line connecting circular nodes together. “It’s half an hour before we alight.”

She glances out the window and watches the pipes of the tunnel flash by. So much has happened so quickly, after years of silence. Scenes flash through her thoughts like a fast forward reel. She lets her head sink against his shoulder, and closes her eyes.

“Ah, Addie, I don’t know if…”

“Huh?” Her eyes flutter open. “Sorry, I can move if…”

He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

“I have a question…where are we gonna stay tonight?”

“We’ll find a hotel. We can keep our cover for one night. I’ll make sure of it…”

Before he’s finished speaking, her eyelids have drooped shut again, and the quiet rattle of the train wheels, and the warmth of her companion, lull her to sleep.

The screech of the subway as it brakes at their destination station, and the strobing lights that it brings, throw Adelaide from her slumber.

The underground escalators are gray and tarnished, but the streets above are polished glass—not silent even at this hour, although the screens have dimmed to throbbing dark shades. Through the smoke-heavy air, hotel names gleam down at them, some advertising their rates from unlit shopfronts, others showing no more than a gilded logo.

“Fancy any of these for lodging?” says Felix as they pass in front of the polished facades.

She looks about. “They all look the same to me,” she replies, then points at the one to their left. A golden plaque declares its name: the Acropolis. “But I don’t feel like walking anymore. How about this one?”

She is alarmed, briefly, to hear the thoughtless demand in her own voice, before it is allayed by his equally unbothered reply— “Let us see if they have vacancies.” He waits by the automatic door for her to enter, before tailing her into the air conditioning with their blue luggage bag in tow.

It’s a slightly glitzier one than the last, one for the heart of the city. Dark marble reflects her false face back at her, Felix’s coat about her shoulders. She watches herself with suspicion while he handles the formalities at the counter. When she frowns, her reflection does not. The lobby is otherwise silent, not even muzak to fill the frigid gaps.

Their feet tap on the marble until they enter the carpeted elevator lobby. The perfumed lift closes its doors to engulf them in a kaleidoscopic vision of blue LED particles, rippling like water.

“What do you think of those?” asks Felix in a whisper, waving at the screen and its reflections.

“I wish they were brighter. I can barely see anything.”

He waves a hand, and they shift to green, and then to brilliant gold, and she can see that their patterns are warping around him, just a little. The way he does this—gives in to her demands—makes a lump appear in her throat.

Their room is halfway down a gray hallway on the fifteenth floor, and when Felix unlocks it with the keycard and pushes the door open, Adelaide studies it intently. It’s bigger than the lab’s penthouse apartment, and perfumed, with petals scattered on the king bed. A ceiling-high window looks over the sleepless city, lights studding the dark like gems in velvet.

For minutes, Adelaide wanders through the room and stares down at the streets, feeling the cold radiate off the glass. In the background, Felix’s reflection lays the luggage bag down and opens it like a clam shell.

Gradually, her eyes glaze over to the lights, and she begins to watch him instead—in the glass, then over her shoulder. He picks out a few articles of clothing, and fishes his jonquil Cel—now a couple of leaves balder than before—from his pocket. He drops a small bottle of shower gel and chases it halfway across the room. She laughs under her breath.

When he disappears into the bathroom, she finally wanders over to the bed. Sitting on the edge of the creaseless blanket, she tears off her sweater, tosses it onto the ornate armchair by the bed, and sinks onto the bedding. Her eyes droop shut to the gentle rustle of water in the next room.

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Chapter 32: City of Smoke and Mirrors - Turning Point

Adelaide wakes to daylight and silence. Her feet hang off the bed, frigid in the morning chill. Everything is still around her.

As her eyes slowly focus on the bright hotel room and its furnishings, she begins to remember again. The escape. The fluorescent gas station. Her green sweater, hanging on the armchair beside her.

Then she notices Felix asleep in the three-seated leather couch, nestled against the diagonal wall across the room.

“Good morning?” she calls as she crawls out of the covers. Rose petals scatter on the carpet. No answer.

Inching closer on tiptoes, she discovers him lying on his side, one arm dangling off the couch and the other curled around a cushion. Her shadow falls across him. His eyes are shut, shoulders rising and falling with steady breaths.

He must be more tired than he lets on—sleeping in chairs and couches night after night. She has never seen his hair this unkempt before. His eyes move under his eyelids.

He clearly thinks it wrong to share a bed, for some reason or other. But she used to share beds with friends at sleepovers, and her mom and dad shared a bed, too—so why? Maybe he sees it in a different light. In his time, she's read, women did not wear dresses higher than their ankles. They must have different ideas of what is good, and what is right, and...

Adelaide is so deep in her pondering that she does not notice for many seconds that Felix’s eyes have opened.

“Oh, hello there—good morning.” It is only at his voice that she starts.

The sunlight glows through the window behind her, scattered in his grey irises. He stares, and she stares back, not a single thought seeming to pass across either gaze.

“Ah, I—I’m sorry, I didn't mean to be rude,” she stammers.

Felix props himself up on one elbow. “Nothing to be sorry for,” he replies. “Was I entertaining in my sleep?”

“No…you were very quiet.”

“Well, then, I hope to be more interesting awake.” He smiles, finally combing hair out of his eyes. “And might I say, you look like a proper deity with the sun behind you. Like your namesake, perhaps.”

“Oh…” At these words, Adelaide's vision starts to spin. All at once, her head feels feverish and light—she must be ill; she needs food, or water, or something, anything but to keep looking him in the eye.

“We ought to go looking for breakfast.” Heedlessly, Felix wanders over to the kitchenette, while Adelaide returns to the bed and lies down, waiting for the fever to subside.

The sun is hidden by clouds when they check out of the hotel and carry on away from the downtown. There are cameras on every wall, flocking like all-seeing flies.

They allow for one afternoon in the warmth, drifting from one shade to the next, giving the tourists a wide berth. Adelaide wears her disguise still. A popcorn stand chugs on the corner, its buttered honey wafting up around street corners. As they pass, Adelaide pleads with her eyes, and Felix buys a box that they share in the shadow of a skyscraper.

A flock of pigeons flutters by in the wake of two playing children, landing near their feet. Adelaide glances at her companion, while the shadows of wings pass over them in the burning sun. He is frowning. “It’s…comfortable here, too much so,” he says. “I worry for you, that you cannot simply be here.”

She twiddles her fingers. “Could there be another place in this world that would have me?”

“I know not the answer to that. The world is being engulfed slowly in flames, or so they say. This city is an oasis in a burgeoning desert.” The sunlight on her skin suddenly doesn’t feel so benign.

They linger for a while on the green, and for half an hour, Adelaide can fool herself into feeling like a part of the scene. But when a police car rumbles by, they take flight again.

“There's no way. No way. No way. No wa—”

Lea's mutter turns into a shriek as she swerves around a woman in heels, wheels and pedals clattering into the last intersection. She hears a shout while the lights cascade on behind her, and then she pedals onward.

Seven o'clock. Seven o'clock was the time she had been told to go to the foot of Coit Tower, to meet Adelaide. Or, the person she assumes to be Adelaide, though she went by the identity of “Felix Mercer.”

There's no way a private investigator would know—or care—for all the biographical details they discussed in that brief time: how “Felix” knew of her dream of writing for science magazines, of the library, the night on the hill, the disappointment that had permeated her mother’s backseat afterwards.

Yet Lea's knees tremble when she leaps off her bike at the bottom of the hill, and she cannot hear her thoughts over the boom of her heart, as she wheels the bicycle up the slopes, up and up past the straggly copses of trees, thinner and drier than a decade ago.

Adelaide, the prisoner. Adelaide, the friend I lost. Her name is a refrain sung by her thoughts. She feels like she's wading through a memory, as she glimpses the silhouette of someone—two someones—at the base of the tower, dim against the glow of the spotlights on the decaying building. She stumbles through gold and blue and green, and she sees one tapping the arm of the other, who calls out:

“Lea?”

She still says it the same way, a long E and a closed A. Timid, thoughtful, hyperliterate, withdrawing, wanted escapee Adelaide Moore.

“Ad—” Lea shuts her mouth halfway, glancing backward over her shoulder, and then holds down the power button of her phone in her pocket, until she hears the shutdown jingle. “Is that you?”

“Yes! Lea! Yes, it’s me!” She’s sprinting to meet her now.

The grass rustles underfoot and the thin trees sway. There are no eyes here, when she finally comes face to face with her friend of eleven years ago. They've both changed in many ways—Lea is half a head taller now, and Adelaide's hair is much lighter than she remembers—but it’s her voice, her face, her huge eyes that stare with such intense fright that one feels like she might flee at any moment.

“Oh…Ad…do you have a name I can use that won't ring alarms?”

“Artemis?” she offers.

“Art…Artemis…” She practices the syllables. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Adelaide says haltingly. “But I’m scared.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Lea answers. “I’m happy to help you out. But I gotta ask…what’s the plan?”

“Do you have a home? Or a place we can stay, just for now?”

“Yeah, I sure do, but…”

Adelaide’s companion approaches from behind her. From afar, she couldn’t make much out, but now she begins to realise she recognises the silhouette: he wears a black jacket over a collared tee, and his light hair falls almost to his shoulders.

Her thoughts are only just clicking together when Adelaide says: “This is Felix.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Felix puts in with a smile, extending a hand for a shake, which she returns. “I’ve heard plenty about you—all good things, I assure you. A…Artemis trusts you with her life.”

His smile is perfectly practiced, and his accent is perfectly posh. He sounds like the protagonist of a moldy pre-secession English paperback novel.

“Are your phones turned off?” Lea asks. Felix nods. Adelaide pauses, reaching into her pocket, and then gives a thumbs up. And only then does she say: “I’m so, so relieved to see you again, Addie…it’s been horrible out here, everyone is trying to hunt you down, even your dad—”

“Wait…you know about that?”

Lea starts walking them back towards the station. “Yeah, it was in the news. He was talking about how you visited, and I just…couldn’t keep watching.”

Adelaide and Felix are silent, and she can feel the consternation passing between them.

“Yeah, that’s why we need to be out of here as soon as we can,” Adelaide finally says. “Out of San Francisco.”

“Seems wise,” Lea murmurs. “Maybe you wanna go to a different country? The US government probably can't reach you there. In the meantime…you can hang at mine, no problem. I don’t know if it’s weird to say, but I’m honoured you thought of me.”

Adelaide's voice lightens. “I mean, I wasn’t sure at first either, after my dad and everything…but when you said you’d never help the police hunt me down…”

At this, Lea laughs. “You’re unbelievable, pretending to be the police,” she says. “I almost deleted the message, you know. I was like, who the hell is this Felix Mercer with literally nothing on their profile. But nah, you won't catch me snitching to the SFPD. Anyway. Before we head back, I’ve gotta set some expectations.” She gestures with both hands as if laying a tablecloth. “I’m renting a unit at the Hexagon right now, and it’s not amazing. I’ve got a double bed and an inflatable mattress. I think I can fit you both in there if you really have no other options. It'll be a tight fit, buuuut…”

“You have my eternal gratitude,” Felix says, hand to heart. “But I needn’t stay with the two of you, if my doing so would inconvenience you.”

At this, Adelaide immediately says, “But…Felix…”

“Oh, Addie, you know I adore your company—I shall visit with you at the very least. And then we could decide our lodgings thereafter.”

“Okay…”

Lea purses her lips as she listens, trying to fit it in with the rest of the messy jigsaw puzzle that's coalescing in her head. Meeting Adelaide again has been a surprise—but the existence of Felix is another matter, a gaping hole in the fabric of events.

Considering Adelaide escaped less than two weeks ago, they can’t possibly have known each other longer. And yet they appear too close for that—especially for the likes of her. Did they meet in the lab? Is he a childhood friend she never mentioned? There was no mention of him in the news of her escape, not even in the reports of her visit to her father.

All of this mulling leaves her mouth as: “So, Felix, how did you end up getting involved in this…this situation?”

“Ah, well, when I first arrived here, little more than a month ago,” he begins, ringing the first of many alarm bells in her mind, “I learned of Adelaide from my forays in digital libraries. She being a prisoner of such extraordinary skills, taken captive so unjustly, I found I could not abide her situation. And so, I trespassed on the facility and left with her.”

“You make that sound like a walk in the park.”

“I assure you, it involved much preparation.”

“That lab has a lockdown system. You need an access card to even get past the lobby.”

“I have ways of bypassing that.”

She grimaces. “Fine then, keep your secrets,” she mutters. They fall silent as they approach the junction of the winding hill road and the arterial, the first of many cars soaring silently by.

When Lea turns to Adelaide at the station gate, she leaps. The person walking alongside her is Adelaide’s height, and wears the same dress, and yet she looks nothing like herself from the neck up: her nose is straight, her cheekbones sharp, and there is an indistinctness to her expression that gives off the impression of a mask.

“Uh, Artie?” she whispers, as a subway rumbles up to the platform. “Why do you look…different?”

Straightening, Adelaide glances in a train window, as if to confirm what Lea sees. “Oh, it’s a disguise. Felix does this sometimes to make sure I…”

“Felix does what?” Becoming aware of her volume, her voice drops. The doors creak open, and they step across the gap one after another. “He does what?” she snaps in a whisper. “He makes you wear hyperrealistic masks?”

“Yeah. I…don’t know if he wants me talking about it, so I think you’re better off asking him—”

Two passengers pass—Adelaide recoils, turning her face to the door until they’ve gone. Lea feels a twinge, and, wheeling her bike between her and the rest of the passengers, waves her to the chairs.

“This guy sure likes his secrets, huh,” she whispers, leaning towards Adelaide, whose unfamiliar face surprises her a little less this time. Felix has sat down on her other side. Their voices drop to a whisper.

“He is nothing but secrets,” Adelaide replies, matching her volume. “Sometimes, I feel like I don’t know anything about him at all. What he was doing before he got here, who he was. But he helped me, so…so I guess I have to believe he has good intentions.”

“There’s just something I don’t get. If he’s the one who got you out…then why is this my first time hearing about him? Why isn’t he in any of the reports as an accomplice or a suspicious figure on the scene, or, or something?”

“He…is really good at not being seen. It’s related to the…masks and everything.”

Lea sighs gently. “I don’t wanna question your judgment,” she goes on, “but this is what it sounds like to me, okay. This dude shows up in SF a month ago, and decides that the first thing he wants to do is break you out of the lab, and then he just does that. But he somehow doesn’t show up on any footage or eyewitness accounts or whatever, meaning if you get caught, he gets off scot free. So now you're depending on him in order not to get caught. Right?”

She freezes for a moment. “Yeah…well, but he’s been so friendly, I can’t imagine…”

“I know,” she replies. “Some people are really good at seeming nice on the surface. And I really don’t know what he’s playing at, and I’m glad someone with his talent for avoiding detection is on your side—or at least I hope he is—but, keep your wits about you, okay?”

“Okay—”

“Six car, two door Santa Rosa train now approaching Japantown.” The train screeches on its braking wheels to drown out the robot voice, and they are all flung forward by momentum.

“That’s us,” Lea announces, voice ascending above the scream of wheels as she rises from her seat.

The Hexagon is tall and surly, and as its name suggests, sits on a six-sided floorplan. Keeping her head down, Adelaide lets Lea drag them through the entrance gate and into the elevator, already awaiting them on the ground floor.

The circular chamber is a rusty far cry from the one in the Acropolis, laced with the musk of industrial metal and concrete. The doors clang shut, and the metal tank judders upwards, decelerating to a stop some unnameable time after. But its doors do not open. It begins rotating counterclockwise like a lazy susan, to face a touch left from centre.

The doors slide apart. They pile out of the lift—and straight into an apartment half the size of Adelaide’s lab penthouse. The lights wink on, revealing a lifetime’s worth of odds and ends. Piles of pots lounge in the sink, and clothes are scattered on the floor that Lea swoops off the carpet with a shout. A window at the far end looks out into the night, and by that window, a bed spans the entire width of the apartment, looking like just enough to fit two people. A linty blanket is draped across it.

The lift doors roll shut behind them, and Lea waves once around. “Welcome!” she declares, lunging for the panel at the head of the bed to jab a few buttons. Beneath the kitchen counter to the left, a matte plastic bench swings out of the wall with a thump. “Make yourselves at home, please.”

Dodging around a stepladder, Adelaide sits down on the pop-out bench. Felix opts to continue standing, occupied with inspecting the upper shelves, the pantries, and the crowded countertop. “Colour me impressed,” he says. “I have never seen space used this efficiently.”

“Thanks! I’ve been living here for like,” she counts on her fingers, “three years now. Cindy, the landlady, comes by to inspect it every month. But I’ll give you the heads-up if she ever schedules. So.” She catches her breath. “What do you think, Felix? Does my place meet your, uh, standards?”

He ponders the space for a moment, and his eyes come to rest on Adelaide. “I wouldn’t mind it,” he replies. “I’m loath to part ways, even so briefly. And we must plot our next venture, the sooner the better.”

“Cool, cool, no problem, then! Could you pass me the mattress?” She points at the shelves by his head. “It’s up near the ceiling.”

Felix plucks the rolled-up mattress off the shelf and hands it to Lea. Pulling on a tab cord, it begins to inflate itself with a hiss of air, and she lays it down parallel to her bed. “I’m just glad I finally have a reason to use this,” she mutters, hands on her hips. “What’s our arrangement here? Who’s on mattress duty tonight?”

“I shall take the mattress for all the nights we are here,” Felix says too quickly. “You two could share the bed.”

“Sure, that sounds fair to me,” Lea says.

At this, Adelaide frowns. “Now I’m confused.”

“About what?” Lea says, hands on her hips.

“I thought sharing beds wasn’t okay.”

Felix looks oddly at her. “Well, you are both women, and it is not improper for two women to share a bed.”

“Oh—oh! It’s,” Lea gestures, suddenly frantic, although Adelaide cannot fully understand why. “It depends on the person, and I’m totally fine with it.”

From that point, all goes silent in the room. Lea resumes her halfhearted tidying efforts, rolling a telescope under her bed. If there is a reason for her shift in demeanor, Adelaide cannot grasp it, let alone begin to try and diffuse it.

That night, Lea defrosts a noodle box and dines in the corner of the bed while Adelaide inspects the pile of belongings on the dresser. Her friend stretches past her to push a combination of buttons on the headboard, and the lights over the bed fade to a rosy hue.

“Hey, Lea,” Adelaide pipes up then, “I need you to explain the bed thing to me. And why Felix thinks it's okay for two women but not a man and a woman.”

Lea sighs, lowering her noodles. “Okay, okay. Right. Before that, I gotta be honest with you. The fact we’re meeting right now feels like such a surreal miracle to me, and I really, really want you to be safe. But I don’t exactly trust Felix right now. He’s…been nice, but some of the things he’s said are giving me weird energy, you know?”

“I’m glad you can sense things of that sort,” Adelaide replies, “because I don't think I could. I don't think I have the ability to.”

Lea chuckles. “You haven't changed one bit, huh? So, the bed thing. As chill and open as people are now, there’s still some people, usually the old-fashioned ones,” she casts a meaningful glance in Felix’s direction, “who think romance is something only a man and woman can have with each other. And, like, it’s really common for them to think a man and a woman sharing a bed implies that they’re banging, in a way that it doesn't for two women.”

“Banging?”

“Uh. Having intimate relations.”

“Do you mean copulating?”

Lea blinks several times at her, then bursts out laughing. “Yes, that’s what it means. My God, you’re unreal,” she wheezes. “Anyway, what I’m saying is, Felix seems like one of those people, with outdated ideas about that stuff—I don’t have much to go off of other than a couple of the things he’s said, but it’s a feeling, you know?” So, she can tell he is from the past without asking, too. “Now, in his defense, he seems…respectful. It’s like, the bare minimum, but he hasn’t tried anything weird with you. Right?”

“Nothing I can think of.”

“Good. Good, good.” Lea waves a hand about. “But, if he turns out to be an asshole, drop him, okay?”

“What if it’s not safe to just leave?”

“You’ve gotta be honest with yourself, then. It feels like there’s a power dynamic here. You’re relying on him to be safe, right?”

“Right.”

“And I'm not saying he will, but if he tries to use that to force you to do anything you don’t wanna…that’s your sign to hit the road.”

“Okay, got it.” Adelaide doesn’t like the way this new thought sits in her mind. Up till now, these fears have only been bubbling under the surface. But if she must live a life of hiding under Felix’s good graces, then…

“So, change of topic. How’s your life been since escaping?” Lea wears a softer smile now.

“Oh! It’s been…a lot. It’s like I’m relearning the world from the ground up.”

“Damn…that must be so much brain work. I don't envy you, the world moves so fast these days. But I can catch you up on everything. Did you hear? the Fortitude 3 finally reached Saturn. It was three years ago now.”

“Wow, I cant believe…they reached Saturn before I got out of the lab.”

Lea and Adelaide talk of the world. She explains all that has changed, and all that hasn’t: that self-driving cars now make up most road traffic, that cameras can read the moods of passers-by, and that half of Asia has closed its shipping lanes to the US. These days, not much passes between these continents other than humans, and even then, relations are fragmenting as they speak.

As evening segues into bedtime, Lea dims the lights to dying embers, and bundles in with her tablet phone to watch videos. “Come join me here whenever,” she calls out sleepily as she flops onto her side, hugging a plush comet close.

As Adelaide wanders to the kitchenette to brush her teeth, Felix waves from the pop-out bench. “May we talk?” he says.

Her pulse quickens. Lea’s words flash through her mind. “Sure.”

Taking a sip from his mug of tea, he gestures with his elbow at the bench seat beside him, and waits till she has sat. “Addie,” he says in an undertone, “we must decide what we’re doing next. I much appreciate Lea’s hospitality, but this cannot be our permanent arrangement. It is only a matter of time before they scent us out. There is no permanent arrangement to be had in this city.”

Her head spins. Running, running for her life—it's all that awaits her now.

“We?” she murmurs. “They still don't know you're involved, you know. You could leave without a trace.”

“And I shan't. I cannot leave you high and dry.”

“Why wouldn't you?”

“Well, believe it or not, I care for you. And if I must lose your company, then I'd have no reason remain in this world.”

“Oh, I…” She has never imagined someone liking her presence before. An odd, pleasant embarrassment flushes her face. “I thought you didn't have a choice but to be here.”

Felix stares over the plastic mug, at the cupboard panels opposite them. “Addie, may I be honest?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“I never mentioned it before, but home…home has been consuming my thoughts. More so the longer I spend here.” He massages the bridge of his nose. “I still entertain the fantasy of returning, and to that end, I’ve been scouring every repository of knowledge I can find for a sign of something, anything, that might resemble our Tunnel Machine. And there might be…”

She watches his face just long enough to recognise something there that she’s never seen before: a sadness in his gray eyes that he’s no longer trying to obscure.

“What was your home like?” she asks then. “You haven’t said much. But I always wonder, because you miss it so much, and I wish to know more. I mean,” she twiddles her fingers, “if you don't mind telling me about it—your London, the…transatlantic race, the…”

“The solar machinery?”

Her eyes widen. “Solar? Really?”

He allows himself a smile—a warm one, not like those all-knowing smirks she’s grown accustomed to. “That’s right. It was everywhere, on every house: glass for capturing the sun, the way leaves do. We discovered it almost a century before your world did.”

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Chapter 33: Phantasmagoria

Content warning (may contain spoilers)
This chapter contains depictions of physical assault.

It was the dawn of discovery, the sunset of silence. It was the gilded decade, the godless decade, the decade when the world began to feel small. It was the Year 1892, and that was the year I fell in love.

Across the sea, cities were swept by revolution while in London, streets brightened and steam cars plummeted from favour. For a century we had sung the praises of coal and boiler, watching as it had eagerly reshaped the world—but today, something new had risen to overshadow it: the sun.

It was upon our soil that we learned to conjure electricity from light, and saw, in a flash of clarity, the endless possibility within it. Once the metropolitan railway inaugurated its first solar train, the rest of the city was quick to follow. Suncatchers sprouted on every eave, till we saw more glass than chimneys, and councillors now blustered about the peril of too many windows, the birds they slew.

On a placid day in the middle of all this turbulence, I sat at my desk and wrote an essay, gazing out across the manor grounds at the catcher glittering atop our greenhouse. From my study, I had a full view of the green, brushed by summer and bursting into bloom. It was all of a Baroque construction, the yield of wealth older than the house—older than the road beside it.

Today, a rare sun lit the land in gold. Light fell through my window, scattered by leaves. As the birds burst into a bright refrain, I thought about Lucille.

Lucille had been no one to me till two weeks ago. Then at once, she was the young lady on the balcony at the Herberts’ evening function, waving a violet fan to set her pale curls aflutter. If she came from money, I would have known her by now—my father made sure to mingle me among families of our ilk.

So I could not fathom how she had landed in the company of these preening swans. But I met her eye, and she met mine, and we drifted together on the landing, illuminated like a tableau.

As we danced and talked and laughed, I felt a keen adoration—perhaps for the way she sang of her dreams, or the dance of chandelier crystals in her eyes—perhaps the way she had quipped, “Lucille Mercer, it has a nice ring, doesn’t it?”

In truth, it was none of those things, but the glamour of the change that was sweeping this smoky city, leaving its glitter everywhere. We, the youth of 1892, hung on the cusp of change. Daughters wrote where their mothers never had. Children could point at moths and speak to how their colours had changed, for they had a word for it: Evolution. And families had begun to shed the old manner of love, whittling away the vagaries of courtship till only the beating core was left. Our fathers and mothers had long dreamt of living by the whims of our hearts: we were the children of that dream.

Adoration was enough, in this world, to pledge our love. So I did, two meetings later.

As I thought upon Lucy and dallied on my homework, I heard a knock on my open door that could only be my mother. She was as she always had been, gliding in in blue paisley, her long hair knotted tightly on her head—the vintage style that was fading from favour.

“Felix, dearest,” her voice woke me from my pondering. “Your father arrives in London this evening—he shall wish to see you. Please come to the foyer at six on the clock.”

So that evening, in my summer best, I met her in the antechamber to await my father's car in the dusk. Mata was there, too—the kind, matronly maid preparing the polished tabletops with a feather-duster.

It would be my first time meeting my father in a month. We had all grown accustomed to the cycle of his visits, wondering at his adventures while we kept busy. But this was the first time we would receive him without my brother.

He had been informed already, of how Jasper had vanished to join some motley travelling crew, and he had doted upon me in letters, the only heir of this family left. He had spat poison at my brother's name, the boy I had grown up with. I was the good son, the one they were lucky to have.

Under the shadow of her lacy hat, I saw the crease in my mother's brow and, plain as sun through glass, the crumpling of the heart beneath. Theirs was a marriage forged in the furnace of the passing zeitgeist, and I knew how they loved each other. John Mercer was like an illusion—here for a blink, gone in the next.

“Are you excited to see Father?” I said.

“How could I not be?” she answered. “Every day I thank God to have been wed by a man like he. How I yearn for his smile! I see it in the glow of the paving stones every morn.” She waved her hand about—at the veined floors and the long mirrors mounted in ornate frames, their carvings telling tales of lands she would never see. They reflected the floor, and the floor reflected them, foggy in each other. “He gave us all of this, the roof over us, and the land that warms our soles! That is the utmost love one can show, and how lucky we are to receive it.”

And I suppose that is why Jasper ran away, I thought, but did not say.

It was not long: John Mercer appeared as he always did, a vision of gleaming brass and clattering wheels. But this time, there was no fanfare of steam. He soared up the boulevard in a carriage pulled by light, adorned by leaves of glass and not a horse nor chimney in sight.

“I am home, my love!” he declared with a flourish that was heard before it was seen, the maids parting the doors to invite the pink sky inside. The golden man swept into the hall like a summer wind and scooped my mother into a kiss, and she tittered and swooned. Even as he strode out of the embrace and into the hall in search of supper, Catherine Mercer wandered after, wanting only to see the shadow of his back.

Among the cohort at my school, it took no mean feat to be well-regarded. With this illustrious brood, friendship always lived at close quarters with jealousy. But I excelled in what I could: I was a student of the arts, physics, astronomy and French, and enrolled in the choir. I toiled to be loved, for I feared nothing more than hatred. And I must have succeeded: if any rivalry brewed against me, I never heard of it.

I had discovered in childhood my sorcerous control over light, though it was not something I would make known to my classmates, God-fearing as they were. But it did not need to be made known: I chose to perform my conjurings when I could pass them off as real. Tricks of the light could fool my friends into believing they had seen preposterous things, and here and there I stole a glance at the teachers’ reports.

On one occasion, I did so on a grudge—a Robert Hanlon had spread a story about my sordid relations, so I ruined his experiments and sent him home with a failing grade in Physics.

But aside from Hanlon, I had all one could wish to have, for my father had made it so. He was a man of such vision his body could barely contain it, always chasing a certainty that he could improve any life by his deeds and financing. So my youth was a phantasmagoria of dreaming, wanting, and receiving, though I never quite fashioned my hopes to knife-point like he did.

Perhaps it was one of these things, or all of them, that began to change Lucy's affections. As the months flew on, I saw the first flecks of jealousy blooming through her adoration. She started to seek me at the school gate each afternoon to walk me home, unannounced and unyielding. The first time, I learned of it from my classmates, when they whispered about a woman at the foyer asking after me.

She was rosy with joy every time she met my eye, and eager and outspoken about her adoration. But once she showed her face at school, my classmates began calling her names I cannot repeat. As I listened to their crass utterances, I felt a kind of withering in me—a sorrow that had been there all my life.

“My love,” I finally said one evening, as we met for our promenade, “must you walk me home from school every day?”

Lucy was silent a minute while we passed wrought fences and summer trees. Then she said, “Why should I not? I love you too much to be parted from you for so long.”

“My friends are spreading rumours about you and I, and I find it…vexing.”

There was a flame in her bright blue eyes that I chose then not to heed. “Why should you be ashamed that they know of our union?”

I acceded, as I do, to Lucy's force—for it was what I loved in her, and I did love her, I was sure of it in my foolish young mind.

Supper was, like every supper, seasoned with a tale of my father’s escapades. Watched by the wall reliefs of angels in the banquet hall, he waxed lyrical about the Project he had returned for—this grand and wondrous new machine that would put all of France's efforts to shame.

He had whiled some weeks in Oxford with the President of the Travel Society, and written a grant to the bright minds who had convinced him that their machine would usher in the future. “A flying craft, L'Avion? Pah! If our head physicist is to be believed,” he declared over the roast, “then this marvellous contraption could transport the passenger thousands of miles in the time it would take to sign a letter! The Tunnel and Cage, they call it—it shall change transatlantic travel for good.”

“And will it be powered by the sun?” asked Mother.

“Of course! Sunlight, sunlight was always the answer. The engine that powers our world. We would accumulate its power in a stack, and then discharge it all at once. A suncatcher larger than the Big Ben, all glittering glass! It could repeat its feat ad infinitum. We are in talks with the County Council to begin constructing such a tower, the Society President and I—one grander than any you have ever seen. It is but a matter of time before our dream is realised. It must be done!”

As he spoke, my father's eyes lit up with madness. He was in love, and all of us knew it, though it was never said. My mother beamed and nodded, as she always had, dazzled and believing.

I longed to comprehend every word and excruciating detail of my father’s pursuits. While my mother attended to his whim for the rest of his stay, I whiled hours away in his library, toiling through a tower of books on space tunnelling. I lost myself in their pages, reliving a century of science, till I knew where the frontiers lay.

I could not claim to understand all of it, but it seemed my father’s project sought to achieve what had long been thought beyond the reach of mankind—a machine that demanded the horsepower of ten thousand steam cars, discharged in seconds. With the work of the sun and an immense series of electrical accumulators, such volumes of power could be amassed and fired at once. Mere seconds of blinding electricity, weeks of sunlight burning in a blink, and one would soar to the ends of the earth.

Three mornings we breakfasted together. Three evenings I spent in the company of those books. As the third night fell upon the library, I heard the wheels of the sun car churn gravel outside—and so my father was to leave again, this time for America—but he had left behind a curiosity that would thread itself through my days.

As the world changed, so did our hearts. With uncertainty came fear, and with fear came vigilance. It did not take long for Lucille's passions to tip in favour of that bottomless terror, as the withering days of Autumn fluttered by. I clearly perceived for the first time how she had changed when she handed me a locket of her hair.

She had watched me two days before, staring in wonder at the dancer busking on the market square. Red-haired and sharp-eyed, perhaps my eyes had rested on that woman’s too long, though she had clearly been of an age beyond either of us.

“Do you take me for a fool?” Lucy had cried that evening. “I saw you staring, I saw you!”

So today she brought a golden chain, one to keep me. We walked together upon the manor grounds hand in hand, I with her locket on my neck.

Something about it sat strange, burning my skin. It was dawning on me that I knew not where we stood. What was infidelity? If our partnership had been made so cursorily—no word exchanged between our parents, no estate to lend it heft—then did it take something equally cursory to defile it?

But she had me under her thumb, and how I would bend to remain hers.

We wandered up the boulevard, my hand in her talon grip, my rabbit heart thumping. She wanted anchorage, some true solid ground to affix our souls to. Perhaps I should have, too. And only houses and oaths could be so sturdy, though the world had agreed to leave such promises behind.

The next time my father returned to London, it was to inaugurate the sun tower. This was the project he had dreamt up last Summer with Sarah Hughes, the very President of the Travel Society, which had furnished its connections to seeing it through. For months I had watched it grow over the rooftops, like a strange flower reflecting sunlight onto the streets of Hampstead.

“A glorious day, a glorious day for John,” my mother sighed as we boarded the chauffeur’s car. “He really did it. He said he would, and he did.”

We detoured to Bromley for Lucille, for I had thought this a good occasion to share with her. When we found her, she was gorgeous as a dream, silky golden tresses flowing in loose waves even as she frowned at the itinerary of the day. Together we milled among the crowd, awaiting the grand opening of my father's crowning achievement as it loomed over us all in its paradise hues.

Beneath its penumbra, John Mercer declared its opening with a flourishing wave on the rostrum. He shook hands vigorously with Sarah, who was as radiant as the tower, dressed in gold silk with her dark hair cut in a modern bob.

Lucy frowned. “Why are we here?”

“To witness a happy day,” I answered, waving a hand at my old man.

“He looks like you, but stouter. How come I am only seeing him now?” Her voice drowned his out.

“He's a terribly busy man,” I replied.

“Well, I would much rather be alone with you. We should have stolen the chance, your mother and father would not be home to see us—”

I felt pressure against my shoulder as Lucille began to lean towards me, lips puckered for a kiss. But it was when her hand crept down my leg that I became aware of too many things at once: of the eyes of my mother, and of strangers besides, and the creeping shame that I had nursed all my life.

I jolted away in a panic. She cried my name, but I could not look. I sprang from my seat, dashed through the crowd, and disappeared into thin air. That is what I appeared to do, to all who were watching. Lucille could not find me, and when she screamed my name, the president of the society fell silent.

I fled down the streets of Hampstead, wandering by the houses and inns and shops till my heart had ceased to race. Only then did the guilt show rear up, clawing through me like a dragon from its egg.

It was only half an hour later, when the shudders had deserted me, that I slunk back to the square. By then, the function was over and the crowds were scattering into conversation. And my Lucille awaited me under a banner, glowering like a storm cloud.

She took me to a small green on Southend Road, wordless until we stood face to face in the shadow of a tree. Then she slapped me.

“How could you?” she growled. She pulled her hand back, and I could not so much as recoil as she slapped me again. “How dare you treat me as dirt?”

“I'm sorry, Lucy, I was afraid of to be seen—”

“Why? Why should you be ashamed of your soon-betrothed?”

I could not find the words to answer, for now it became achingly plain, plain as the stinging of my cheek, that we were two pieces irreconcilably misaligned.

“Are we soon to be betrothed? I did not think we were quite that close.”

She pummelled me on the same cheek. Sparks flew. I tasted blood, and I knew it had left a mark. Wailing like a hound, she cried, “Then what are we?”

It drizzled as I called a cab home, for the family chauffeur had long left by the time I had gathered myself. Before I stepped through the door, I saw myself in a window, the bruise stark and blotchy. Before I entered, I lifted my hands and conjured, out of light, a covering for the wound.

Even without seeing the injury, my mother fussed over me like a hen who had lost a chick. “Felix, dearest, wherever have you been?” she sang like a lady from a nursery rhyme. “I feared you had gone the same way as Jasper…your father is dining with the Society tonight.”

I wore my mask to supper. Without Father, Mother was reticent and paltry in her offerings of conversation. She spoke of her most recent project: a novel, like any number of other novels she had begun and never finished, a tale of a rugged young street urchin. She barely acknowledged Mata when the maid came to take our dishes; I had never heard her speak the woman's name.

We conversed over dessert cakes, Mother and I, of the odd world we lived in, of the lobbyists seeking to bring coal back into vogue. Then she retired, leaving a perfect silence in her wake.

I sat with the quietude and stared at my empty plate for several minutes, until Mata wandered over again.

“I take it for you?” she said, timidly. I offered her my empty crockery.

“Mata,” I murmured then. “Do you have a family?”

She paused and blinked, seemingly startled, as she always was. Perhaps I was a fool for thinking every person had a story I wanted to know. “Yes, I have a son. Five years old. He talks a lot, like you.”

I chuckled at that, but as I met her mournful eye, the sorrow I'd come to know well roared in me again. “Thank you.”

She nodded mutely, and with a gentle smile, took my plate to the scullery with her.

I followed my mother’s lead and returned to my bedroom early for the night.

Lying on the silks, I tossed and turned like a stormy sea, the ache of my cheek igniting in perfect clarity the vision of Lucille’s rage—creasing her brow, moving her hand.

I burned with fear, for though I was infatuated, I saw that our joy had grown thorns. If I told her we were to part ways, she could not take well to it, but if I remained her partner, I could only see our misery compounding. And to marry—that was an idea that I could not stomach, though I could not say why.

So spun my thoughts, round and round, like a dog chasing its tail, until the lamps went out and the sliver under my door went dark.

Then, I finally crawled from my bed and opened my door. In the dark, I wandered down the hall. It was the forbidden part of the night, the one I had never been allowed to see as a child, on pain of punishment.

Everything was strange and blue in that light: the ornate drawers and vases, the antique masks on the walls, rendered ghost-like by the moon. I passed the dining hall, the empty chairs a spectral invitation. I halted at the top of the stairs.

I was not alone. In the stairwell, I heard voices whispering in the antechamber below. Heart booming, yet morbidly curious, I crept down the stairs, the carpet deadening my footsteps.

At the third lowest step, I glimpsed the silhouette of someone in the far corner, outlined against a window faintly reflected off a mirror. I sharpened the light to clarity in my eye, and saw a haircut I knew. But I did not fully understand, till I heard the voice.

“...but it is the forbidden fruit that tastes sweetest, no?” Sarah Hughes.

My father’s voice answered in a gravelly tone—his was the silhouette I saw next, tall and stocky and grasping the woman by the waist. They leaned together, and then they began to kiss.

I choked back a cry, ready to turn and fly. But instead I watched, breath shortening, as they leapt out of the kiss and turned to me.

“Felix?” said John flatly.

And then Sarah gasped, and stumbled backward, away from him, and flew to the door, disappearing like a moth into the night.

We stood for an endless minute, staring across the room at each other.

I had long adored my father, in the same way one does a hero—following his exploits, his daring, and his folly, wanting his victory through it all.

I had hoped to grow into him—to be his equal in all things. Where he had bought trade bonds, I had asked him to spare me the funds to do the same. Where he had begun travelling for work, I too had sought to travel, although never as far afield as he did.

Some of that adoration held me captive now, even as it splintered around me.

John Mercer strode steadily across the hall. In the dark, his blond hair glistened. I recoiled, but now he was close enough that I could smell the wine. He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Felix. My only son. You must say nothing of this.”

I saw, now, that in this secret, I towered over him.

“It would ruin the Project and the Society,” he went on. “It would ruin all that we have built. It would ruin me. And it would ruin you, too.”

“This isn't fair to Mother.”

He clenched a fist, and I remembered the sting of hands on my face all too well. “What she doesn't know cannot hurt her.”

I clenched my jaw and trembled as I thought upon it all—his name, his house, his reputation, and Mother. I had seen the trouble on her face at dinner, and some part of her must have known. But if she ever found out, I knew she would stay—here, in this house without compare.

I knew, for I would have done the same.

“Then I shan't speak,” I answered, “but only to save Mother the sorrow.”

“Good boy,” he answered, and I felt my heart war with itself. “You were raised well. Don't let your curiosity spoil it.”

That, I recall, was the first night in my life that I did not sleep a minute. I lay and stared out my window and its gilded frames, at the light gleaming off my dresser and felt, all at once, that it was all thinner than paper.

In the next room, my mother dozed soundly. I heard no whispering when my father shuffled up the hallway and opened their door.

The next day, I called upon Lucille in the midst of a gentle drizzle. It was a modest townhouse, her father's—two stories, grey rain-weathered shingles, crammed between two similar ones. Out of the rain, under the eaves of the doorway, I stood and waited.

The door clicked open. From within emerged Lucy, like a butterfly from silk, in a light lace gown—beautiful and alone. She met my eye with a face of terrified joy.

“My love,” she said.

“Lucy,” I replied. She must have seen the leaden weight in my eyes, for her face grew cold.

“Why are you here?”

I swallowed. We looked each other in the eye: the dying bird, the tattered husk. “I have loved you dearly, Lucy, but this cannot sustain. I am no longer willing. We must part ways.”

It took her a minute of silence, and then three minutes of screaming, weeping and clawing at her skin, to finally speak again.

“I knew—I knew you never meant to stay! I saw it in your eyes that you longed to be elsewhere, that you would rather be rid of me! But I cannot call you evil for it. You are like all men. They will all leave, they will, if they are not bound!”

And though I knew I had no cause to rue my choice, to think her accusation any more than heartbroken raving, I heard her words with full clarity today.

Of course she had always suspected me. Of course she’d had to cling. I could have been my father.

But now, I took a step backward, and she did not pursue, like I had thought she would. We weren't promised to each other, and so there was no thread that ran between us, and she simply let me go—back into the summer morning, into the summer rain.

To let out hearts decide the trajectories of our lives—that is dangerous, and wondrous, and foolish. But this was the dawn of discovery, the sunset of silence, and I seem to have a penchant for it—this sentimentality, this love for poetry.

So when the Tunnel Machine, the lovechild of my father and the President of the Travel Society, was opened for its inaugural passenger, I was the one who bought the ticket. They were all there—my father, my mother, the president, when their mysterious correspondent stepped up to the podium and beamed, like a magician before his act.

The public attendees all thought it a trick of my father's—to demonstrate his confidence in this invention by offering his son as its first subject. He could not so much as frown as they led me inside that tank of metal. Somehow, he knew, and I knew too, that I was about to be torn away from him, just like my brother had been.

It only took ten seconds, as they had said it would. It is the strangest thing, being torn from the fabric of the universe. I heard all the sounds from beyond the chamber vanish from knowing, and all at once, I began to miss him—the great man, the terrible man, the man who had given me all I had.

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Chapter 34: City of Smoke and Mirrors - Overture

The room is silent, save for the whispered story that Felix is unfolding. As Adelaide follows its twists and turns, she feels as if some fog were clearing, which once obscured his person from view.

“I am one of the luckiest people alive,” he says. “And yet there were times I wished to trade my life for something…else.” He meets her eye again, then laughs, pressing his fingertips to his forehead. “I cannot believe I just told you all of that. I'm sorry.”

Whether because his story has made him easier to read, or because he has given up pretenses, she can suddenly see the chagrin in his eyes. “Don't be sorry about that. I wanted to hear it, and I'm glad you told me.” She’s vaguely aware of Lea dozing on her bed in the dark, swaddled in blankets, the phone beaming soundless images to her closed eyelids. “But if that’s what your family is like, then…why do you miss it?”

“That’s a mystery to me, too. The being there, perhaps. Or the knowledge of the terror I must have caused in my wake. I underestimated it, I truly did.”

His gaze is dim with trouble, and Adelaide feels as if she must do something. “Um…do you want a hug?” she murmurs, lowering her gaze as soon as the words have left her.

“Oh? I…wouldn’t mind, I suppose.”

Adelaide spares a second to be surprised, then leans over and wraps both arms tightly around him.

He exhales, shoulders sinking. “Er, I’m sorry I’ve been such a stickler for arbitrary rules of propriety,” he murmurs. “And for reacting so poorly to your kind gestures. I was the one who knew too little about the social conventions of this place.”

“It’s fine. I know there were a lot of rules where you're from.” She finally slackens her arms and lets him go, wringing her hands together.

He nods. “Indeed. All this embracing would never do there, not unless we were, well…”

“Banging?” she offers.

“What?” he answers, the brief confusion lingering on his face, until his eyes widen. She watches his face flush before he covers his discomposure with a laugh. “That’s not what I meant to say…but you’re not wrong—hah!”

Her vision sways; a familiar feverish haziness is blooming through her thoughts, brightening when he mutters her name with a sigh. It is sweeter this time, and she floats in it for a while, before admonishing herself.

For four days, Felix leaves the apartment in the early morning, before anyone else has woken. Then Lea does, the clatter of cutlery in the kitchen waking Adelaide. She departs for work with a hasty goodbye and an explanation of the fridge’s contents.

Adelaide does not leave—it suits her to be safe from eyes. She likes feeling the walls press in, just a little. She opens the windows to hear the birds. The scent of smoke and cooking wafts from next door. When she can, she sits with her PalmNote in Lea’s bed, and takes voice notes.

Japantown feels like a different place at night. I’ve smelled more new things in the past week than I have in the decade before, and I’m so happy we’re here, but I also know we need to go soon.

Even from Lea's window, I see more of the world in a day than I did in a year from my books.

The truth is that I do not enjoy pretending to be someone else just to stay alive. I don’t feel like a real person, like Felix and Lea are. What does the world want of me? Who does it want me to be?

Felix returns first. Once he’s home, Adelaide lays aside her preoccupations, be that her phone or one of Lea’s books. There is not much conversation between them, but he doesn't seem to mind. She knows he’s on some kind of mission, but he says little about where he’s going, or why, and again she finds her view of him clouded by doubt.

Then when Lea gets home, she brings dinner for three with her. Over food, they talk of mundane things, like the latest in tech news or the trials and tribulations of baristaing at Kiana’s Place. As they discuss her work over the offerings of each day—sandwiches, bento, café leftovers—Adelaide sees the world through her friend’s words, and imagines herself there at Lea's cafe, warm and watching the world fly by. But that is not the life she will live.

For these several days, Felix finds his thoughts too crowded for him to be more than shallowly present in the apartment. His mind is elsewhere. His greetings are brief, and he lies awake while his companions slumber.

But when the trio dine together on the fifth evening, all the possibilities have finally begun to narrow in on one—a single picture of the surest path forward.

“I swear, some customers think they’re royalty!” Lea mutters from the edge of her bed as they dig into their takeaway boxes. “Like I get it if it’s because I messed up an order. But sometimes they’ll take one sip and be all like, ‘this isn’t what I asked for,’ and then I've gotta remake their order and be chill about it. Like, excuse you, sir? You ordered a pumpkin spice latte with oat milk and double whipped cream?”

“What is pumpkin spice?” Felix asks, battling in vain to keep a noodle on a fork. “Surely you're not putting pumpkin in coffee?”

“No pumpkin in pumpkin spice, thank God,” she says. “It’s like this mix of cinnamon and nutmeg. Y’know, pumpkin pie vibes…without the pumpkin…” She stares pensively at the door. “So anyway, how much longer are you two staying?”

“Not long. We may need to depart soon. Your hospitality here has been much appreciated.”

“When?” Adelaide straightens.

“Perhaps tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Oh, that’s good timing then,” Lea says, “‘Cause I’ve got news, too. The landlady’s coming over for an inspection the day after tomorrow.”

“Well, then, we shan't be here when she visits,” Felix replies.

“If that’s okay?”

“It suits me, too.”

Lea sighs. “One more day here, huh,” she murmurs. “Where are you off to next?”

“Hong Kong.”

“Hong Kong?” Adelaide turns to Felix. His heart aches at the shock plainly written on her face.

“Addie. I’ll explain in a minute.”

Lea’s face shifts between three different emotions. “Hey, Hong Kong sounds like a good idea, if you have a way to get there. It’s been hella nice having you here,” she says. “But if you ever come back…I’m always happy to have you again. Remember that, okay?”

“Of course,” Adelaide replies, attempting at a smile. “I’m so glad we got to talk again.”

Silence settles upon the room, which has grown homely in his heart. He points out a white tube with black joints peeking halfway out from under Lea’s bed. “Is that an astronomer’s telescope?”

“Oh, that!” Lea’s expression shifts at once. Abandoning her food, she bows to nudge the instrument out, and then its stand. “One of the best I have, this is a Dobson six inch… Hey, I can set it up here for you to try!” She is already piecing the stand together, screwing the telescoping beams in place.

“You stargaze from inside here?” Adelaide says.

“With the window open, but yeah, I don't always want to be out on the lawn. The light pollution makes it all the same anyway.”

Lea flops onto her bed and fiddles with the panel buttons. The room lights wink out in a cascade, and the panes of her window begin to grumble aside. The sky is already flushing deep purple as Lea fastens the telescope with her eyes on a gyroscopic star chart in her phone.

“Oh, look at that. We can see Jupiter from my window. And Neptune, too.” She presses one eye to the scope and twists the focus knobs. “There it is! Lookie here, my beautiful gas giant.”

While Adelaide and Lea take turns at the scope, Felix ponders it quietly. In his city, telescopes are jealously guarded, the exclusive property of scholars and universities.

“Did it cost much?” he asks.

“Kinda. I had to save for it—just cooked all my meals for a few weeks instead of getting takeout.” She laughs to herself, and he thinks, how fortunate of a world.

“May I?” He inches up beside the two. Adelaide vacates the spot, and he takes her place.

When Felix peers through the lens, he sees a disc of golden light, while Lea explains it—the conjunction of Neptune and Jupiter, and how he may notice some of the Galilean moons if he looks closely.

“Galilean? From Galileo?”

“Yeah, the guy who named them.”

“He was the first to name these moons in my world, too.”

“World? You an alien or something?”

“A universe hopper, actually.”

“Wait. Really?”

“Oh, I neglected to mention that, didn’t I? Just like I haven’t mentioned how I can manipulate light at will.”

Lea doesn’t respond. When he straightens up from the telescope, she’s gaping at him. Adelaide scurries away with alarming speed.

“Where do you come from?” she breathes.

Felix beams and shrugs. “I’m stranded, you could say, in the wrong world. Mine is similar to yours in some ways, and utterly different in others. It was the year 1894, the last I saw of it.”

“Oh. My. God. You can’t be saying you’re literally from the Victorian era.”

“Ah, yes—Queen Victoria, she is the current reigning monarch.”

Lea continues to glance between Felix and Adelaide, eyes growing rounder each time. “So…this is the secret you've been keeping this whole time? You both…have superpowers?”

“Well, I wouldn't think it wise to discuss it with abandon.”

“Okay, fair point.” She’s taken the spot by the telescope again. “So…the masks you put on Adelaide…the sneaking around the lab…the fact no one knows you’re part of all this…that’s all because you have light powers?”

“I make the most of them, if I do say so myself.”

“That is…that’s actually cool as hell,” she mutters. “If it’s true, I mean.”

“Shall I prove it?”

Lea turns to study him, then pats the barrel of her telescope. “Sure…can you make Neptune's rings visible for me?”

His eyebrows rise. “Oh—I can certainly try. How; should I brighten your view?”

She puts her left eye to the scope again, closing the other. “Yeah, and magnify it.”

“How far away is it?”

“Almost three billion miles.”

Felix places a hand on the plastic barrel, and pictures it. The stream of light resolving, from this planet floating out in the cosmos, farther than anything he could ever imagine. Farther than my home, perhaps.

Lea twists the focus knobs, back and forth in decreasing motions, and then…

“What the hell?” she breathes.

He looks up. “Do you see it?”

She pauses. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s massive. This is the clearest I've ever seen it. Rings, check. Triton, check. Dark spot, check. No way. How is this…oh my God.”

She doesn't stop fiddling with her telescope for a while, and he holds the light in its pattern, sighing.

In the waning hours of the evening, Adelaide halts Felix at the kitchenette chairs, her face still, all her thoughts flurrying.

“So, we’re definitely going to Hong Kong?” she says.

“Yes. But I shall not remain there for long. Not necessarily. The future is hazy, even to me.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

His eyes dart about, from her face, to Lea, and to his hands. “You might remember how I spoke of my search for a Tunnel Machine. Well, I’ve found a lead. There may be such a project in the works—a wormhole portal, they call it—in the very laboratory where you were imprisoned.”

Adelaide’s breath catches in her throat.

“However…one problem has hindered its completion. It requires a part—a capacitor of some kind—that would allow it to amass the power to tunnel between worlds. Such a part has been crafted in a laboratory in Hong Kong, where there is an embargo on trade with this country.”

How easily such secrets come to him, she thinks. If he were of this world, surely they would want him in the corporate offices, doing their dirty work. “And if they did complete the machine…if you brought the part back here…you could go home?”

Felix nods. “Perhaps. I think it would be within my abilities—to retrieve that part, to return it here, and to affix it to the machine,” he replies. “There are many caveats to this plan, but it could well be my ticket back.”

A chasm of despair opens in her, and she feels as if she were falling, falling, away from all she knows. “But what will I do when you go?” the words tear themselves from her.

At this, Felix’s gaze softens with—concern? Sorrow? “Well, that depends on you,” he replies. “You could start a new life in Hong Kong, away from this nation’s jurisdiction. Or, you could come with me, back to my world.”

Hearing the choice laid out, Adelaide chokes with the agony of being torn in two. She doesn’t understand why it should be so hard, to give up one or another.

But either way—no matter what she chooses—she must let this go. Her bond with this city, with Lea and her childhood and the streets of San Francisco. The burning air. The glittering screens. All of it must be severed.

But which blade will hurt less?

“I…I’m…I don’t know.” Her eyes are wild, resting on nothing for more than a second. Tears splash down her cheeks. “I don’t know! What should I do?”

“Addie, it’s a terrible lot to be saddled with,” Felix replies, eyes mirroring her distress back, in his own muted way. “But I want you to choose for yourself, for it is your life that will change for good. And whichever you prefer, I also prefer. We may discuss it anytime—between now and when the part is procured, if ever.” He laughs bitterly. “Perhaps I shall never find that capacitor, or never bring it back here. It’s all a grand gamble, in the end.”

She bows her head, wondering at how he can live with such unknowns. “You’re the only person who could win a gamble like that,” she replies.

Adelaide is lost in her dreams. The sky is indistinct—grey or blue—and all about her tower skyscrapers she doesn’t recognise. Her head turns about as she flies through the streets, left and right. Her face is reflected back to her from a thousand glass panes, and it is different in each one—different mouths, different eyes, all expressionless, even when she screams.

She keeps feeling like something—or someone—is brushing past her shoulder. But when she turns to look, she sees no one there.

She races up the street and the street grows longer. There are shopfronts here with no names, no people, glass doors open to reveal empty counters inside. Paper blows across the street. Solar panels sprout out like rectangular flowers from the walls.

“Where am I?” she wails as she stumbles. She spins about, in search of that shadow. “Someone! Please—where am I meant to go?”

Adelaide rolls off Lea’s bed, and awakens mid-fall.

The world spins as she lands with a thud. By then, she’s still gasping for breath, her body still burning from her dreams. Nothing resolves from the shadows, and for a while the vision of skyscrapers and reflections crowds the darkness out, so she is no longer sure where she is.

She draws a shaky breath, and blows it out. Her thoughts settle. She inhales again, steadier this time. She tries moving her limbs, and feels pins and needles ripple along her arm.

Flexing her fingers, she reaches for the floor to prop herself up—and grasps an arm.

With a gasp, Felix’s eyes fly open before her. Adelaide yelps, tears spilling out of her eyes.

“Addie,” he whispers. A gentle glow fills the space briefly, just long enough for her to see the worry in his eyes, then it winks out again. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I fell off the bed. I was having nightmares.” By the end of the sentence, she’s wracked with sobs. “I’m scared. About the future—and everything.”

“There, there,” he answers, patting her arm. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I hate to see you so upset, and I apologize for my part in it. Can I do anything to ease your mind?”

Of all the things that could enter her thoughts at that moment, the first is that they are lying in the same bed.

The guilt sweeps over her like a flame, moreso because she finds this not to be unpleasant.

“Um… Can I stay here?” she asks haltingly. “Just until I feel better?”

He blinks at her. She braces herself for a reprimand.

But he only says, “Well—if it’ll help.”

The mattress is not a large one, not made for two people. Adelaide has been lying halfway off its edge, the surface shifting with her off-centre weight. She shuffles inwards, inch by inch, until she fits atop the velvety mattress, pressing up against her companion.

“Is this all right?” he asks, and she can hear pitches in his voice that only touch transmits. Every tiny movement lights flares in her mind. For now, his presence crowds out the dread of tomorrow.

“Yeah…this is good, thank you.” She’s burning up again, but not from her dreams this time. “I’ll go back in a minute…I promise.”

:::

Lea is off work, so she has all the time in the world for goodbyes. “You take care, okay?” she says to Adelaide, squeezing her in her arms. “Be nice to yourself. You’re so strong, but it’s hard being strong all the time.”

“I don’t feel strong.” She tries for a smile, but it’s not enough to warm away the cold of the impending parting.

“And you,” says Lea to Felix, walking past him to call the elevator. “I didn’t trust you at first, but now I think you’re okay.”

“Why, thank you,” he answers.

“For real, it’s been nice getting to know you. Even if it was so short. I don’t know what your next plans are…but stay safe, okay? Both of you?”

“Yeah—we will, I promise,” Adelaide replies, knowing full well there is no way to keep promises like that.

The lift doors slide open, welcoming them to the other side with its perfume of steel and concrete. Felix boards first, and then Adelaide after him.

By virtue of serving ninety units, the elevator keeps strict time on its stops. It is almost too soon when they hear the hydraulics hiss and the doors start groaning shut.

“Wait, one more thing—” Lea cries out through the narrowing gap— “if you survive, come back and see me! Even just one more time—okay?”

“We’ll try!” is the last thing Lea hears, as the doors thud shut, and her friends disappear once more from her knowing, like stars passing behind a deep space object.

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Chapter 35: The Recruits - Side I

On Liss and Lacar's strength combined, the painted rowboat, severed from its ship and now its own vessel, shot through the cloudy blue between one patrol boat and the next. Within fifteen minutes, they had pummelled past the patrol route, and the forest had shrunk to a green carpet in the distance.

The boat was painted to be visible from afar, so even then, Liss rowed despite the burning of her arms, shoulders heaving with panting.

“So you’re a smuggler,” her attempts at conversation were not potent. “Was business good?”

“It was worth the price it fetched,” Lacar answered between wheezing, “if only to feed my family.”

“Family. Where are they?”

“We'll talk about that later.”

Panic wound through every second, spurring every thought in a singular direction: the triplet of islands on their bow. At its speed, the rowboat sliced waves like a larger vessel. Liss’ vision flashed with pain, yet still she hammered at the oars.

Over her shoulder, the hills grew and grew into visibility, distant salvation at the end of this wet, burning purgatory.

“We’ll make it,” said Lacar between gasps, long before they had reached the island shores. “We’ll make it, we can slow.”

Liss did not ease up for minutes more; she worked down from the pace she had set, feeling the burn set in in earnest now that she was not too numb to feel it. As they caught their breaths, sensations rose back into awareness: the sweat rolling down her neck, the rustle of the leaves that leaned over the atoll.

“Round that way,” Lacar croaked as the rowboat slowed, pointing to starboard. They switched to one oar and then back to two, tracing the ivory arc of the coastline.

The far coast of the island gazed out into the open sea, the expanse was grey to the edges. Through the clouds, the pale glow of the sun hung higher in the sky, rippling across the waves. From the trees, there peered a large rocky inlet, opening into the heart of the atoll. Lacar pointed them through it.

As they passed under the overhang of leaves and into the embrace of the ring-shaped island, Liss finally let her arms slacken. Lacar did too, drawing a huge breath and releasing it in a groan. The boat floated onward into the sheltered circle, jungle trees towering on every side like a fortress, from which trills of birds echoed.

“Where is the den?” Noma whispered.

“Can’t be seen from here,” Lacar answered, then pointed at a rocky cliff to starboard. They now picked their way towards it, across the placid waves.

At the shore, they dragged the boat up the sand and tied its rope to a shrub. Into the shadow of criss-crossing canopies they tiptoed, down a vegetated slope, over bushes and roots of trees. Now the rumble of the waves had receded into obscurity, overtaken by the whisper of leaves.

“How did the authorities not see boats coming and going?” asked Liss.

“We operated at night, and only with single-handed vessels. There were strict rules on the comings and goings…everything rested on that. Its location was a well-guarded secret.”

They circumnavigated the hill, and the muffled roar of waves ascended again from ahead, though no sea peeked through the trees. Carved into the other side of the rise was a short cliff face. And nestled in the curve of the overhanging cliff, one end recessed into it, was a wooden storehouse, draped in vines and moss. Gaps striped the walls where old planks had caved in, but the structure itself stood tall. The door hung ajar, revealing dimness, as did two decrepit windows with their slats open.

Once it had risen into view, all three tracked a straight path through the rustling undergrowth. A bird fluttered off, its glossy green feathers rippling. Skinks scampered under the leaves.

“This is the storehouse?” Noma asked, voice dropping. “It's barely bigger than my parents’ hut…”

“This is only the front half,” Lacar answered.

It was about now, as they trudged through the thinning foliage to the doorway, that Liss began to feel an inkling that something was not right, although neither of her companions seemed to have the same intuition. She glanced about in the clearing. The place felt used, although she could not place why.

“What are you looking for?” Noma asked.

“Call me too vigilant…I don't think we're alone.”

“Can't be too vigilant,” Lacar answered, one hand shifting to his sash on his belt. Then he pushed the door open with a creak.

Sunlight streamed gently through the windows and illuminated the wooded floor, and a snaggle of vines that had ventured in. Out in the middle of the storehouse, more thin beams of light filtered through gaps left by fallen planks, illuminating shelves upon shelves, at least five rows on either side. Between them, they had line of sight to the inner wall, little was visible in the dark. Metal gleamed on some of the shelves, and glazed ceramics on others.

In the wooden half, the ceiling was twice as high as the shelves, topped by a sloping roof. Then it became stone halfway in, and the ceiling descended, forming an alcove. At the other end, only dimly visible, lurked the faint shapes of tables and old barrels. The tables were empty, and chairs were tucked under them.

“I would have thought there might be some remains of the dead,” he murmured. “People preferring to hide here till death than to return to captivity. Lucky for us, we shan't dwell with their graves.” But these words only made Liss go tense, and she began to reach into her tunic pocket for a coin.

Lacar waved Liss and Noma inward. In the dim light, he wandered across the stone floor to the first of many metal scaffolds that held the place together. Tying a knot into his sash, he lit the first of several lamps in a hiss of gas. It burned golden and bright, and at once they could see the sparse rows of ceramic bottles on the shelves, in a variety of sizes and shapes. Lizards and spiders scampered away.

“I suppose oil doesn't spoil,” Liss heard him mutter, as he disappeared beyond a stack of shelves. Another hiss, then another, and each new light revealed more of this strange set: shelves of boxes, some of them misshapen, stepladders, a booth in the far right corner, where the floor and walls became stone, much like the one at the barter house on Henkor.

Henkor. What had become of the island since her deed? The only person she missed was Boka, the woman who had told the stories of old. But she couldn't help the rage that flared as she thought about her island and its forests and grave trees, then smouldered again.

“Liss,” whispered Noma, watching her with fright. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Noma,” Liss answered seriously. “We’re safe as long as I'm around.”

She seemed about to retort, but only glanced away and smiled oddly. “Yeah, you're probably right. How are you feeling?”

The truth was that she would much rather be lying down than standing, but she considered the ways Noma might react if she knew her arms were still smarting with pain. So she said, “A little sore, but not much worse than whenever we went tree-climbing.”

“Do you need anything for it?”

“Atuis will help,” Lacar said, holding out a wooden string-tied box between them. Liss caught a cloying whiff of the herb. “I should probably not be offering it to children, but hey…”

“No, I'd much rather be alert,” Liss growled.

“More for me, then,” he said, already unravelling the twine.

It took a tenth of the day before Liss was finally convinced that they were not about to be ambushed. The comforts of this storehouse were meagre, but were more than she had enjoyed since they had left Henkor. By the lit fireplace in the stone alcove, she reclined in a misshapen hay sack and inhaled beef jerky, while Lacar’s atuis smoke diffused into the mustiness.

Liss flipped on the couch, taking care not to prop herself up on either arm.

Noma, who had been watching her with a frown, now said, “Liss. I can go forage for some herbs. It'll ease the aches.”

Had she made it so obvious? Noma is a trained physician, I can't hide that from her.

“I'll come with you,” she answered firmly. “Just in case. Not that you can't protect yourself, but two people will improve our chances.”

Noma blinked back, but eventually nodded. “I'd like your company.”

Leaned all the way back into his sack with the blunt between his teeth, Lacar lazily shifted. “Get me some.”

Together, the pair ventured into the forest outside, peering beyond the trunks. It was nothing but a tangle of vegetation, yet Noma seemed to read it like a book in a language Liss didn't know. Her friend glanced over her shoulder every now and then, as if to check if she was still following. Then she pushed on through the understory, following some invisible trail, until she slowed to a stop at a small mire that stank of sulphur.

“You're not about to scoop mud onto me, are you?” Liss laughed, but then Noma unravelled her leg wraps and plucked off her shoes. “Noma! I was joking.”

As Noma began to wade into the murky bog, Liss finally perceived the quarry of her search: a bundle of coin-shaped leaves, floating on the surface of the muck. She watched as her friend waded in to her shins, step by wide step, grimaced and leaned with fingers outstretched for the leaves, and then—

As she snatched the bundle, the splash of the viscous liquid gave way to a horrendous sucking as Noma toppled forward, shrieking, face first into the mud.

The sound spurred Liss, and before she even began to yell, she sprang for a vine and tossed it. It floated on the bog, the tip only just in Noma’s reach; she snatched it and wound a loop around her wrist while Liss began to drag her back to the bank. Noma gasped with fright as she toppled halfway onto the bank, trailing mud and dead leaves behind her, yet her left hand, grasping the bundle of leaves, she somehow kept above the muck.

“Noma, you scared me,” Liss muttered, grabbing her friend by the muddy shoulders and dragging her out of the mud’s grasp.

Noma did not speak for a minute. Her body heaved with her frightened panting, and Liss sat her down on a tree root, handing her shoes back. “Sorry,” she finally groaned. The girl began to wipe herself down with her hands. Liss, watching for a minute, finally wandered across the clearing till she found a shrub covered in a proper gauze of plant fibre, and returned with a handful.

Sitting amid the stench of sulphur, Liss began to wipe the boggy mud off Noma’s shins, upon which her friend halted in her own efforts. Liss worked away for a minute, until Noma gasped, “why are you doing that?”

Liss looked up. Noma's eyes were huge and cast down at her hands. “You just dove into a mire to get herbs for my sake. Why'd you do that? I could have recovered just fine with two nights’ rest.”

She returned to scrubbing mud off Noma, and the girl became very quiet, and looked away, seemingly unable to watch. “Why are you doing that?” she asked again. “You shouldn't be, you're not my servant!”

“Because I like you, and I am thankful for the effort you went to, is that a better answer?”

“No!” Noma cried, grabbing her cheeks with her hands and looking deeply ashamed. Liss chuckled. That was the end of her protests, and aside from a little indignant wiggling about, she let Liss assist her while she resumed scrubbing herself.

The pair returned to the storehouse after one detour in the wrong direction which took them to the inner coast. By then, Lacar had gathered up some old supplies in a pile, and was spinning a metallic object in his hand beneath the steady gold lamplight. He gave a lazy wave as they wandered in.

“Phew, where were you?”

“Noma went bog diving,” Liss said, watching as Noma picked out a mortar and pestle from below the counter and laid the herbs inside. “What's that you're holding?”

“A firestick, what else? Never seen one?” Lacar lifted the metal rod, and Liss saw that one end had a textured grip. “Imports from the northerly lands of Beghul, or so I was told.”

“You didn't say there were weapons here.”

“Why wouldn't there be weapons? We smuggled those, too.”

“You should have mentioned. We could use those.”

“You young ones think too much about violence. And you especially so, Liss.”

Noma wordlessly churned the leaves as they spoke.

It was ten minutes of effort on her part, then she tapped wine out of a barrel and mixed it in. Then she rejoined them before the fire, dipping her hand in the ceramic bowl. As Noma knelt beside Liss and began to smear the salve on her arms, she felt an odd sensation blossom on her skin: cooling, as if she had dipped her arm in water on a windy day.

Noma began to massage the paste in. As she did, Liss closed her eyes and sighed. “I don't know how you do these things. You knew those plants would do the trick, and then you found a bog in the middle of a forest. It’s amazing.”

“Me? I’m—I—” Noma sputtered, then drew her mouth shut, continuing with the circular motions of salve application, albeit more erratically. Lacar chuckled.

The man did not enjoy the same special treatment. Noma simply left the mortar with the herb at his feet and said, “don't let the fire dry it out.”

“Alright, alright. I getcha.” He picked up the stone receptacle and dug a finger inside.

“How long do we plan on idling here?” Liss asked.

“You make the call on that,” he answered, looking up from the dollop of plant matter on his fingertip. “You're the one in a hurry.”

“Once we know what we intend to do,” she said, “we can move.”

“What's your goal?” Lacar muttered, lowering the mortar.

“To free the world of the Orsandin grip.”

“Well, tough luck, then. Their empire spans lands we do not even know the names of.”

“Madan is the biggest town here, no?”

“It is the Orsandin base of operations in Makor Kirikiri, yes.”

“Makor Kirikiri?” Noma murmured. “Is that what you call these islands?”

“‘s our name for the Greater Isles and Doganir combined, yes.”

“Then if we wrest back control of Madan, we take back our islands.”

“Only if they do not send more ships from their next base.”

“Where is that?”

“Malogo, a city on the other side of the Mouth of the World.”

“Then how do they send for help, if it's an ocean away?”

Lacar folded his arms, frowning. “You cannot be plotting to overthrow them.”

“Not alone. But with weapons, and more people…”

He shook his head. “I cannot tell if your bravado is greatness or folly. Well, Orsand sends a warden every moon to assess the state of its colony and report back—I reckon a moon is how long it takes to sail here and back. Meanwhile, we would have closer ships to worry about, too, not just the ones from Malogo. Orsand has at least fifty ships patrolling the archipelago.”

Liss chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Alright. What happens if the warden arrives and finds unrest?”

“Then they send a fresh fleet to take it back. Makor Kirikiri is where they farm aroca, they would not let it go without a fight.”

“I thought so.” Liss frowned, her brow knitting. Was there an answer? She could only explode coins and nails. There must be more she could do with it. She only had to learn…

“Would Madan answer if we call? Would they fight to be free?”

“If they have reason to… A leader of the cause, and some hope… We were proud warriors, long before Orsand…"

As she fell silent, the gentle chirp of insects rolled in through the far window, and she noticed the light glowing dim through the gaps in the walls. “I shall think upon it.”

“Well, don't think too hard. At least not before dinner.”

Lacar did the group the kindness of roasting their salted fish on the fire. They ate quietly as the light deserted the forest and the chill of the night seeped through the missing planks of the roof.

“What happens if it rains?” Noma muttered, peering up through the gaps.

“The wood shall continue to spoil,” Lacar answered, “and eventually this storehouse becomes a part of the forest again. All things return to the Being in the end.”

“Yeah…but what do we do? Wouldn't it get cold and damp in here?”

Lacar shrugged. “We could sleep around the hearth.”

Liss watched the other two mumble in conversation for a while, leaning back in her sack, while three years of tension, of living under the eye of Orsand, seeped out of her bones. This was a good troupe to be travelling with. Lacar had proven a worthy ally, despite her misgivings. And Noma was, well, Noma.

“So, your family…how are they doing?” said Noma.

A chuckle. “They're not ‘doing’ much these days.”

Noma was, in all her hapless compassion, everything Liss was not. Liss could destroy anything she pleased, could extinguish a life in a snap. But it was much easier to end lives than to save them. And you're so good at saving, you know.

She watched her friend meticulously undo the wraps on her wrists and shins, smiling to herself. Then her thoughts drifted again to Lacar's disclosures.

Orsand held the world in its iron grip. A world whose depths she, in her youth and with her insular childhood, knew nothing about. She had only ever waded in the shallows. But to end the reign of Orsand would require her to ply every last fathom, to dive deeper than even they.

Who could do that, short of a god? It was easy enough to boast about becoming a god, just as she had bragged to the kids about earning the right to princehood, all those hazy years ago. But this was not merely about jumping off the top of a waterfall. How did people become gods? Did the Being know? Does the Being exist?

If the Being exists, all-knowing and all-seeing, then how could it simply watch our world without intervening?

As they lay in their hay sacks that evening, waiting for sleep in the light of embers, Liss thought she heard an unusual rustle.

If it was a creature, it was too cautious. The sound ended at once, and did not recur.

She straightened, and Lacar’s eyes flew wide open, following hers.

In the dim glow, Liss signalled to Lacar with a hand over her lips, and he nodded back. She lay with eyes open, watching the doorway, one hand slipping into her pocket.

Something crept outside, silhouetted by the moonlight. Her muscles went rigid as the humanoid shape glided soundlessly to the door, and it clicked quietly open.

Liss’ hand wrapped around a rusty nail longer than her finger. She rose from her reclining posture. Her hand tightened.

“Che oni?”

At the first echo of that voice from the doorway, a few things happened at once. Liss sprang from her sack, hurling the nail up the corridor. Lacar struck a flame with his sash, throwing a ruddy light across everything. Noma screamed. The intruder bellowed in an incomprehensible tongue.

Then the nail stopped flying.

It hovered in the dark between them, motionless, unfalling. There was a ripple in the air around the doorway.

Liss lifted her hand and clenched a fist, and the screw began to explode, but not all at once. She watched, eyes widening, as it fragmented, slowly, pieces of shrapnel separating in slow motion from the blaze unfolding within.

The stranger stepped to a side, following the wall—and then the projectile left its brief suspension, completing its explosion with a boom that rocked the glass in the room.

The stranger flinched as shrapnel grazed them. “Che oni? Who is there?”

The last words, spoken in Orsandin, shook Liss out of her startlement. “Who are you? How did you do that?”

“I will speak if you swear not to explode more things in my face.”

“I can allow that.” No knot could do what this stranger had. No one had halted an explosion like that before. “Come forward.”

Silence hung over the storehouse as the stranger walked into their firelight. “I mean you no harm, my friends. I simply saw signs of newcomers and came to investigate. I am Korithamai, a priestess of the Undying Ring.”

As the light fell upon Korithamai, Liss saw that she was tall, dark and pale-haired, wearing rat-bitten robes. Her eyes were opalescent, stark against her dark skin.

“You've been raiding our stores,” Lacar muttered. “I thought a few things were missing.”

“Can you blame a woman for trying to survive?” Her eyes did not meet any of theirs.

“How long have you lived here?” Liss’ suspicion was thawing to curiosity.

“I was shipwrecked here three years ago, with the crew that hired me. We were fleeing the Orsand fleet—alas, it took entering a storm to achieve it. But the storm was the crew's demise.”

“Crew? They died during the voyage?” Liss had started to recognise the indistinctness of her gaze, never settling on anything important: she must be blind.

Kori shook her head. “We were forced to abandon ship, and we rowed here while she sank. Then a flock of bats found us one night—and, well, we all fell ill. Lucky I am that I only lost my sight. No one else survived. I have lived off the land since, and lit fires to ward off the bats. I suggest you do the same.”

Lacar mumbled, “Terribly sorry to hear it.”

“Do not be, we weren't friends. They were the only ones to answer my call for travel. I was travelling at the behest of my temple.”

“Temple. To what deity?” Liss interjected.

“The Being Xemself, if I must name one. But more than that, it is a temple to the Nomad, the messiah whose teachings we now safeguard against the ravages of time and thieves.”

Every word she spoke made Liss’ eyes widen further. By now, Noma had been fully shaken from her slumber. She rubbed her eyes and peered over.

“And why were you travelling?”

She spent a few seconds thinking. “I do not know the Orsand word for it. The temple has us travel the world every seven years, like our founder did. Alas, this journey was doomed. I shall have nothing to say to my superior when I return.”

“And your temple has not been captured?”

Kori shook her head. “We have a terse truce with them.”

“How do you know the Orsandin tongue, if your land was never captured?”

“I was a devotee to the largest, oldest library in the world and we always sought more priests. We learned the languages we could.”

“I’ve never heard of any such library.”

“I have,” Lacar replied, and both Liss and Noma glanced at him, but Kori did not. “Not much, but in old tales…they spoke of the temple of the ring. A relic, they called it…of the world before the cataclysm. Locked up there are secrets we can only imagine…perhaps secrets to do with the Being Xemself.”

“Yes, so we are taught,” Kori answered, and her voice took on a chanting tone. “But not all its secrets have been decoded yet. And yet more secrets are not held among its isles. We merely hold the keys to other doors…”

Liss found these words filling her mind with visions of wonder, in a way no tale had done since she had been seven. She stared as they talked of this old, peerless library, last of its time, and its priests who could alter the flow of time, the warp of space—whose power and importance was so known and so abstruse that even Orsand respected it…

“I know they shall return to us eventually, when their conquest has stalled,” said Kori. “But only because they hope to wield our knowledge as military might.”

“Could it be used that way?” asked Liss. She sat attentively and watched the priestess’ face tauten.

“Oh, that is a dangerous question, young woman, but there is one thing to know about knowledge…it can be put to use to any end. Your spellfolding arts were not discovered as a tool of conquest, and yet Orsand refashioned them for it. Decoded, our archives could teach you what spellfolding is…how it is that folded cloth invokes power, and how that power could be bent in other ways…and that knowledge has protectors, because the wrong knower could use it to terrible ends.”

She perked up. “Then it could tell me why I can make things burn and explode at will.”

Kori was silent. Now Liss became aware of the changed demeanour of her companions: Lacar’s fear, Noma’s cautious fascination. Then the priest said, “That was at your will? Without a spell?”

“It was.”

She deliberated for some seconds. “I have rarely heard of such a thing. Power that is not invoked… I cannot tell you for sure, but the temple may be the only place where your answers can be found.”

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Chapter 36: The Recruits - Side II

Content warning (may contain spoilers)
This chapter contains depictions of emotional manipulation.

The wind roared by, bearing the sweetness of rain. Beneath the rumbling sky, Liss pulled Pala and Fen back behind the treeline while she watched the Orsandin camp rustle on the plains.

Her heart boomed at the alien colours of the landscape, the trees whose leaves grew in curling fronds. All at once, lands she could scarcely imagine were within her reach…

Fingers tightening around Pala’s wrist, she reined her voice in and said, “Now, do that again.”

“I don't know how I did that,” she stammered.

“You’re a Traveller, Pala,” Liss repeated. “You can hop from one universe to the next. Memories are the fuel.”

Pala stared back, as if not understanding. But she would understand in good time.

“I know all that is known about Travellers,” Liss went on. “And you will soon be a master of your skill under my guidance, too. Come—you got us here, and you can get us back.”

“O…okay. What do I do?” She would not meet Liss’ eye.

“Think of something you would like to forget.”

Her brow furrowed. “My mother’s name.”

It took Pala only four leaps, back and forth between her world and Liss’, to arrive where she had asked: a temple, taller than it was wide, in the heart of a ring of islands, with a spire that pierced the clouds.

As they landed gently upon its uppermost ring, the last platform beneath its crown, she marvelled down at the coastlines beneath, at the seven verdant islands circling the central one, and at the edgeless sea beyond.

For someone who had never seen the temple nor heard its name before, Liss had expected Pala to take longer.

She could not, however, congratulate the girl while she was sobbing and barely able to stand.

Now, she pulled from her tunic pocket a length of rope, and snatched the girl by the arm.

“You have done well so far,” she said, lashing her wrists together with the care of a weaver, once, twice, thrice. “And as long as you continue to do well, no harm will come to you, understood?”

Pala nodded mutely. Fen glowered, but said nothing.

They skirted the dizzying edge of the deck towards the stairway entrance. Around them, clouds glided close enough to touch. By the time they reached the doorway, Fen was supporting Pala by the shoulder, and her sobs intervened on the silence every few steps.

She sighed. “Fen, comfort your friend.”

When he had begged to come along, Liss had thought him deadweight: another dependent to keep alive, another mouth to feed. But now she saw that bringing a friend for Pala could only make her more agreeable.

“We’ll be fine,” she heard Fen whisper. “We’ll be back home soon.”

Oh, if only you knew, thought Liss, as they descended the towering spiral.

Liss led Pala and Fen to their holding room, where Lacar and Kori already waited.

“Is this the Traveller?” asked the man, stroking his chin. “Why are there two of them?”

“She's not exactly the slippery rogue I feared,” she answered. “Her name is Pala, and her friend Fen is here to keep her company. If you could see to it that they are secured and fed?”

As she handed the rope over to her lieutenants, a cry of her name made her head whip around. Noma barrelled through the commotion, launching herself into Liss’ arms with curls flying.

“I thought you would be back an hour sooner,” she cried.

Liss gasped at the pressure of her embrace, and then relaxed into it, her steely sense of purpose melting away. She smiled, rubbing her back.

“That was a frugal estimate,” she said. “Pala took a while to find the Temple, what with all the crying, but she did it in the end.”

“I bet she’s overwhelmed.” Noma haltingly stepped out of the embrace. “I think we should give her a bit of time to figure things out.”

“You're right. If it’s what must be done to have her cooperate.”

“Is she really…the answer to all this?” Noma waved around her. “The way to end Orsand’s reign?”

Liss glanced to check that the newcomers had been taken away. “Possibly. I can’t speak in absolutes,” Liss replied, voice dropping. “Pala is one in a billion—a person with skills I can't yet fathom the possibilities of. But I already know what we shall do with her. We are closer than we ever have been to turning the world around…”

She smiled, a moment's peace washing over her. All that toil, all that agony, and they were slowly but surely clawing their way towards destiny.

But teaching the girl about her powers meant opening loopholes: to her escape, to her exploiting Liss’ limits, stranding her in the wrong place. No, none of this could be left to chance.

“Then I’m glad, though I don’t know how this fits in with everything else,” said Noma. “Anyway, dinner’s in an hour—I’ll see you there?” She made to leave, but Liss caught her by the hand and she gasped, head turning. “Yes?”

“Just a token of appreciation,” she answered, squeezing her fingers.

Noma squeaked, clasped her cheek with her free hand, and then bolted, fingers slipping from her grip.

From the second their jailers locked the door on them, Pala and Fen did not leave each other’s reach. Tying them with care to the window grille, their escorts removed their bags, but permitted Pala her sketchbook and Fen is medication.

The room was modestly furnished: a large bed stood facing a table, and a crate of unused robes and towels lay beside it. Over the bed, a slatted wooden window let stripes of light fall through, only traces of leaves and a golden sky visible through the gaps.

As the shadows of leaves rustled over them, they began to trawl the room for cutting implements as far as their tethers allowed, but found nothing beyond the hinge of the crate, which was only sufficient to dent their ropes. Then they retired to the bed, and held each other while tears filled their eyes.

Their guardians arrived shortly after to leave the pair with a dinner of dry biscuits and unnameable salad—strange on the tongue, but filling. Pala choked them down, too scared to be hungry.

In the sunset glow, they fitfully slept off their exhaustion in turns, fingertips touching, though it made Pala more aware of the tether that ran from her wrist to the window. When they woke again—at what would be four in the morning, according to Pala’s dying phone—they finally sat up in a corner in the dark, and talked.

“Pala,” whispered Fen. “Do you remember your mother’s name?”

She sat expressionless. “No. I think it starts with a J…but…”

His brow wrinkled. “There has to be something else you can do. Some other source of memories. If she's going to keep making you travel.”

“Maybe I can make memories just to use them?” Pala said, eyes cast down, then breathed a sigh. “I’m sorry you got dragged along. I had no idea…I didn't know I could do this.”

“No, it's Liss who should be sorry, for forcing you into it.” Pala felt Fen's hand wrap around hers. “I couldn't just leave you to get taken away. I’d rather this than that.”

“How much of your meds do you have?”

“Two weeks’ supply, I think. And, at least they're feeding us…I guess.” He shook his head. “I’m guessing you can't just travel away right now?”

“No, I’ve been trying,” she whispered, frowning. “I think the rope is stopping me. Like it won’t let me warp the whole building away, or something. And even if I did, I’m scared she’d just…find us again. I don't know how she got us the first time.”

“Mm.” Eyes fixed on the wall opposite them, he paused. “She must need you, if she came all that way to find you. But, yeah, I’m scared too. Let's be safe for now. Once things start making sense…we can figure out what to do.”

Then they fell back asleep in the tangled sheets, and dreamt of too much at once, flashing skies and unknown seas and home.

Pala and Fen woke in the predawn blue to a knock on the door. When Liss marched into their room, she held a blade, a coddling smile plastered on her face.

“Pala,” she said, and at once the pair leapt apart, the girl shuddering, wide eyes trailing after the knife's curved edge.

Liss yanked on Pala's rope, and her arm was yanked forth with it, tearing a cry from her. “Shush already,” Liss murmured, lifting the knife to saw the bindings at the window frame. “I hope you've eaten and rested well. I'm going to need you for the next hour.”

“What are we doing?”

“It’s a surprise.” Liss’ words were ominous in a way she could not place. “Come with me. You’ll love the morning view.”

On the islands of Doganir, and indeed all across the islands of Makor Kirikiri, marriage was a laborious ritual, perhaps the lengthiest of them all—even more so than the inauguration of a sailing vessel, or a funeral rite.

Typically, a union would involve tying lengths of woven string around a part of each partner’s body, in what was known as a marriage knot. From the spinning of the rope to the binding itself, tying the knot was a singularly elaborate undertaking, taking days or even weeks from start to finish.

The strongest knot in the world, they called it: once tied, the marriage knot could never be cut again. The partners would live the rest of their lives with that loop of rope on their body, holding them fast to each other. The most curious property of the marriage knot was that when one partner tugged on their loop, they could always feel where the other was, through rain and hail and flood, to the opposite ends of the world.

“This is a very ancient magic, one discovered before the Cataclysm. It springs from the Being Xemself, from the very flow of energy through the universe. But, ah, it is not only lovers who take on such a happy binding. Friends do, too, if they would like never to lose each other. Some bind more than one at a time.”

Liss had learned, from many such conversations with the scholar priest Tomay, that the principle of the marriage knot was in how all sections of that same string entangled their wearers’ very being and intentions. Once linked in such a way, the spouses’ souls, like compass needles, would always find each other again.

“So, if a Traveller travels by intent,” said Liss, in her same nonchalant way, “then when they transit universes while wearing such a knot, they would always find their partner. No matter where, and how far away. Is that right?”

“In theory, very likely yes. But I have only read so much on the matters of space and time and universes. And we do not know that any Travellers exist.”

Liss had asked, then, to learn the marriage knot so she may use it, and the old scholar had been startled, but acceding. “Who would you bind, being so young?” Tomay had mused as they had taught the girl: a painstaking layered pattern of stitches in rows that looped upon themselves.

“That is my business alone,” Liss had replied.

A week under the trees weaving with Tomay, and several arms of yarn later, Liss had thought she would never see the end of this labour. Her hands were not delicate; they did not take well to the rote motions of stitching and untangling. But talking with the scholar shortened the days until, at last, stitch by stitch, row by row, four arms of rope hung from the branch, each inch twined with one strand of her hair.

Now, only one thing was missing: the reciprocal material, two strands of hair off the lucky partner’s scalp.

But it was not her partner who would wear the other half of her cord. Liss had much grander plans. When it was complete, she hid the rope away in her room. It would not be several months until it would see the light of day again.

Now, in the blood red dawn, with the two strands of hair she had solicited through Lacar and Kori, she made the finishing stitches upon that singular fateful cord. Red, black, white, yellow, spun into itself—her focus was whetted by the clarity of the answer and the path she saw towards it. It was so simple, if only the rest of the world could see.

It was done, all too soon, the ritual she had begun months ago. She coiled the rope and pushed it into her tunic pocket. Returning to the halls, she went to retrieve the girl herself, and dragged her wide-eyed up the stairs, floor by floor, to the dizzying pinnacle. In the view of those billowing clouds and glistening waves, Pala was all but silent, save for her gasps of fright in the thinning air.

Liss was starting to resent her cowardice. But she was precious, more so than anyone she had ever met in her life, and she would have to be handled with care.

“Be still,” said Liss, and Pala did as told. “And keep silent, you’re doing well in that.”

She stood motionless as Liss strode over, stretching the loops of rope between her hands. It was thinner than a finger, colours woven together in leggy spirals. Pala made no verbal response as her captor began to tie one end of the rope around her wrist, then the other end around her own—one knot on Pala’s loop, one knot on Liss’, twist by twist, shortening the linkage every time.

Half an hour they watched the sun ascend as the knots thickened on their wrists. They stood facing each other in the red blaze of the sun, in the audience of the clouds—two silhouettes, two souls connected.

Then Liss lifted the knife between them, and slit the connecting rope down the middle, like a blade through the heart of a lamb.

“Pala,” she murmured then, as she lifted her gaze to the other. “You are bound now. As long as you do as told, you will be treated as a treasure. You and Fen. I shall feed and harbour you both, and you will do what I ask of you. Am I understood?”

Pala nodded.

“Good. Now, here is your first test. I want you to jump back to your universe. Anywhere at all, anywhere you like, exactly as I taught you. Think of something you would like to forget.”

Pala nodded again, swallowing loud enough to hear. Liss smiled.

“Now, go.”

Pala landed on the roof of a wintry turret. In the howl of the wind, she glanced about, wild-eyed, at the bleak tips of conifer trees.

She had only just begun to feel the cold bite into her fingers and to pull her arms around herself, when she heard a thud behind her—and a hand wrapped around her fingers, dragging her back. She screamed and whirled around, only to find the pink hair and the tattooed face of the girl who had only just bound her and then cut her loose.

“Fantastic!” Liss laughed, glancing at the knot on her wrist. “This will make things so much easier! Come on now, take us back—back to a city called Madan. It is a port city carved into the side of a mountain—the capital of the kingdom of Makor.”

“Okay. I'll—I’ll try.” Pala closed her eyes, clenching her fingers into trembling fists.

The universe flashed away into concentric circles, and they spun through the lights with everything humming past their ears, the way it had every time before.

But when the visions solidified again, they were not in a city.

They were in a room with a bed, a crate, and a table, and the red light streaked the floor in bloody lines. And in that bed lay Fen, stirring from slumber.

“This isn’t Madan,” Liss said.

Pala shrank towards the door. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“Hey, what’s going on here?” Flung from his dreaming, Fen scrambled from the bed.

“Keep out of it!” Liss held up a hand, and he halted in his tracks. Then she cornered Pala and snatched her arm, grimace melting into a smile. “Now, try that again.”

Pala and Liss plummeted into the roar of the sea, foam swallowing them in the burning noon sun. As the first swell of water swept over her head, Pala gasped and kicked, all her reflexes seizing her at once as she thrashed to stay afloat.

“Damn it!” Liss snarled, snatching her about the waist and kicking furiously against the currents. “What’s wrong with you? You were doing fine until—”

Pala and Liss crashed into the ground in front of Fen, and this time, he flew to place himself between Pala and their captor. “Liss! What are you doing to her?”

Pala shook wordlessly. Puddles soaked out onto the granite floor beneath them. “Saving her from drowning,” Liss answered, face unreadable as an overcast sky. She crawled out of the tangle, trailing drops of saltwater, and went to the door.

Pala did not rise from the floor. She lay where she had landed while tears clouded her eyes, arms curling around her legs. “Please,” she sobbed, “I can’t keep doing this. I’m sorry I can’t do it right. I’m just…”

Liss stopped and turned. “Alright, alright. I’m sorry. It probably wasn’t fair to expect you to do so much so soon.” She closed her eyes with her hand on the door handle. Rivulets trailed from her fingers to the floor. “It’s you, Fen. We keep coming back to you.”

“Me?”

Staring up through the dimness, vision frosted by tears, Pala found that every sound and sensation rang too loud, and all she could do was close her mind to it all.

“You might be important to Pala’s sense of direction, or something like that. You should come along the next time we jump.”

“Okay…” She could hear the frown in his voice. “If it helps Pala…I can come along.”

“I guess letting you join us was a good idea after all.”

She felt her friend’s hand squeeze her shoulder, and the pressure remained while the door clattered shut behind Liss. But only once the girl was gone did she reciprocate the touch, clasping her fingers around his arm.

“You okay?” he ventured quietly, as the darkness fell upon the room.

“I’m not injured,” she answered, voice quavering, then coughed the last drops of seawater out of her lungs. She crawled into a seated position, her back against the polished bedframe. “I'm just scared.”

“Do you need anything right now?”

Her face contorted with the sting of new tears. “I need—new clothes.”

“They left us some in the crate.” He sank to the floor beside her, gesturing with his elbow at the box.

Pala glanced at Fen as he lifted her wrist gently in one hand, scattering drops of seawater. Both pairs of eyes were pulled to the drenched multicoloured band wrapped in intricate knots around it, stark and strange against her skin. “Is this…from her?”

Pala nodded, mouth drawn into a line. “She tied that thing on my wrist, and she tied a matching one on hers…then, suddenly, she could jump to me. I think it’s…some kind of magical tracking.”

He stared at it like it was a wound, then turned to her with glistening eyes. “Oh, Pala…I’m sorry.” He wrapped his arms around her, and she briefly thought to warn him about the water, but he didn’t seem to care. The embrace was like a flame, melting her terror at the corners. “I don’t know why all this is happening. But I’ll be there next time. She let me be there.”

“Please… Please…” Her lower lip trembled. “If you’re there…I think I can face her.”

It was over dinner in the temple’s common hall that Noma noticed the band on Liss’ right wrist. It was impossible to miss, especially sitting at close quarters—the rainbow threads, meticulously woven, clinging to the skin of her arm.

When she glimpsed it, it took a few seconds for her confusion to morph to recognition, and then to something else—some bottomless, hungry dread that she had only ever felt about death before.

“Liss,” Noma said, almost against her will. “Is that…” She pointed at the band on her arm.

Liss glanced at the object, then ran her fingers along its stitches. “Yes, it’s a marriage knot,” she said. “But it was not made in marriage. I am simply using it to keep Pala in…”

The flavour drained from her dinner. A storm stirred in her head, drowning out all else that was said thereafter. She did not hear whatever Liss and Lacar were laughing at, nor Kori’s thoughts on the matter—and when she was done with her meal, she stood up wordlessly and left.

She raced, cold as stone, through empty corridors and out into the night, where the dark sea roared invisibly and the wind stirred the branches. The sky was as thick as the foliage, roiling along with it. She strayed off the pathway to the dock, out among the boulders and trees, to where the insects scuttled. She sat down heavily on a rock and let her legs dangle off the edge.

She noticed then, for the first time, the way her heart ached, and that ache rose to her throat, threatening to wring tears from her. “Stop, stop, stop,” she growled. “It doesn't matter. She can do what she wants.”

It wasn’t until ten minutes later that she heard the crunch of footsteps in the grass behind her, with Lacar’s trudging rhythm.

“Hey, Noma,” he called out, just loud enough over the wind. She turned. Windows glowed out of the temple’s lowest floors—the circumference of the island hill was a terrace of lights. “Are you all right? You seemed pretty sour about Liss’ new trinket.”

Noma pouted as Lacar sat down beside her. “It’s not a trinket. It’s a marriage knot.”

“And that’s a happy thing, no? Never mind the bizarre way that it was made.”

“Yeah.” She folded her arms and turned away. “I shouldn’t be upset. And I wish I weren’t. It shouldn't bother me in any way, that Liss is bound to someone else.”

He chuckled. “Someone ‘else’ is one way to see it.”

Indignation reared up, but resignation chased it on its heels. She sighed. “Maybe I did want it for myself.”

“Want…to tie the knot with Liss?”

Noma clutched her face. “Don't say it like that. It’s so embarrassing.”

“Nothing embarrassing about falling for your best friend, especially when she’s so…illustrious.” He folded his arms. “First time?”

She groaned. “Now you're just rubbing it in.”

“Well, if your people do it the same way as ours, she can tie the knot with more than one person.”

Noma turned away. “Yes, but I think…I hoped that our connection was…”

“Special? Unique?”

Noma grumbled her assent.

“Well, I think it is,” he said. “I don't know that you can see it, but she spares you more kindness than everyone else combined. And besides, you’re the only person who could possibly hold her in such a good light, too.”

Her eyes unfocused on the sky. “She could make anything happen. All she has to do is want it.”

“For better or worse.”

“So why should she care about me?”

“Maybe even a ruthless prodigy like Liss doesn’t understand her own feelings.”

“Then…what do I do?”

Lacar turned to Noma, meeting her gaze. “Anything,” he replied. “You could do anything, and she would smile at it.”

“I’m…I’m not sure about that.”

“Well, only one way to find out.” He dusted off his lap and began to rise. “Anyhow, I'm just here to check that you're fine and healthy. I ought to turn in for the night soon. Big things are about to start happening ‘round here, I can just feel it. And before even that, a storm will be upon us.”

“Sure. I'll see you tomorrow.”

Noma continued to sit in the wind while Lacar returned to the temple halls. She toyed at the blades of grass, and watched the stormclouds roll above her, pondering his words.

Standing on the rain-dampened stones of a temple terrace, Pala linked hands with Fen and Liss.

“You remember what I said of Madan, don’t you?” said the latter.

“It’s a port city carved from a mountainside,” Pala repeated. In the last trace of the pink of dawn, she closed her eyes, thinking of something easy—the taste of dinner from the night before—and willed herself home.

It was getting easier, as Liss had said it would. She watched the visions around her blur in radiant technicolor, then sharpen, and this time, the dizziness did not slam her quite so hard.

They stumbled on a pavement in the middle of Kaona Hema, before its famous watchtower, and saw it for merely seconds—then, focusing on the heat of the street, the way it warmed through her soles, she leapt again. Both grips tightened on hers, and she heard Fen cry out as the street began to bend away, along with the rest of the city.

Unnameable seconds of warped skies and placeless colours later, they snapped back onto the ground in a city she had never seen before. An obelisk threw its shadow across the symmetrical square, stolid merchant’s houses raising banners over its streets. By the obelisk, the stump of a statue stood with its fragments at its feet.

None of the trio spoke for a minute. Then, Liss said, “This is Madan. Congratulations!” she laid a hand on Pala’s shoulder. “I believe we have our procedure nailed down.”

Pala felt her heart leap. But from her relief crawled a new horror, like the first inkling of a monster beneath the waves—the planetary silhouette of all she did not know, about herself, and the universe.

Revolving Door: Volume 2

Chapter 37: ĪRA DRACONIS - I

Content warnings (may contain spoilers)

This chapter contains depictions of animal death, alcohol use, and graphic injury. It mentions violent human death and implied sexual activity.

The war drum rolls. Ba-dum, ba-dum, like the pounding of her heart, like the pounding of her feet on sand into the jaws of her fate.

The ground beneath her is a grave. Three days it has been since Cyrus died upon this oval—a friend once, in the same way that all comrades in the barracks are. Blood streaked across sand. Screams streaked across stone. Did his heart pound the way hers does, as the heat burns through her soles?

The beast opposite her could well have sprung full-formed from a myth, glossy eyes and tongue flicking in search of prey. There has never been a legged reptile in the colosseum before—pools of snakes hold no candle to this beast, one they call “dragon”—this creature of claw and scale, brought from far eastern kingdoms aboard so many ships.

Its scales ripple as it sizes up its foe, the shape of its jaw belying great teeth. Marcia watches carefully in kind. Every breathing beast can be read. Pain, rage, fear—as she stands, sweat and blood dripping on the sand, she watches it with narrowed eyes. Then it lurches towards her.

She can usually end fights quicker, but she chooses to draw them out. They like to watch her struggle, and then the beast, in turns; they scream louder when she does. So she lets the creature come almost as close as the toes of her sandals, to spread its jaws wide, and—

The teeth gash her leg, deep enough to draw blood, and she cries out as she shoves her blade between its jaws, wrestling with this beast that stretches longer than she is tall. Its weight is remarkable. From here she can see the wrinkling of its hide with every kick and toss of its head, its pillar of a neck wrenching her arms about as she clings to her sword.

Cyrus flashes in her eyes again: the hippopotamus stampeding over him, pounding his face to pulp. Where did Cyrus go, his smile, his sorrow?

Claws and sandal heels dig into sand, while the crowd surges like the surf. The fresh wound throbs with the heat, but with arms and hands slick with sweat, Marcia grinds her teeth and flexes her arms so the edge cuts in, the dragon’s bloodied maw struggling to dislodge the blade.

Marcia can feel the crescendo of the crowd’s vigour, rising and rising to a peak. As their excitement ripens, she grips the sword tight, and levers it with the strength of her arms. A gasp echoes across the terraces as her gladius cracks its jaw hinge and sends it writhing on its knees. It crumples and hisses, bleeding out on the sand.

And a special treat for you, she thinks. She has been practising this for some weeks now: with an easy flourish, she tosses the sword, spinning, into the air, scattering its blood. She leaps to snatch its handle mid-fall, and punches it straight through a gap in its ribcage.

The creature dies much like a python would die, with twitches and a rattling hiss. It bleeds red, like she does. The calf blood they rubbed on her mingles with the blood of the beast.

The sky darkens as fanfare lights the arena, to rousing rapturous applause. She has the audience in a chokehold, as she always does. The terraces ripple when she waves.

In the waiting hall, Marcia’s leg wound burns, telling her it will fester if she leaves it. Whatever grew on its teeth, it is like nothing she has felt in her blood before. She focuses her attention upon the pain as the serfs wash her, and feels the heat flare, almost unbearably, around its ragged edges.

Her coach Quintus grins as he marches towards her, and she raises her sword hilt in greeting. While serfs towel off the blood, he laughs and claps her forearm.

“Remarkable game,” he says. “That flawless sword toss shall be the talk of the town! A proper prize bull, that's what you are.”

“So you’ll ask them to throw more denarii my way, yes?” she answers with a grin.

“Well, since you ask so nicely,” he sighs with a grin. As she takes a proffered towel and scrubs her face, he points at her leg wound. “Is that going to take care of itself?”

Marcia glances at it. It is livid red, and the foreign contaminants from the beast’s teeth are doing their work, the wound trying to rot even as she fights it. This one is more aggressive than she is used to, but already she can tell it will heal by tomorrow.

“It will,” she says.

“Truly, you must be blessed by the gods, to heal so quickly.” He begins rummaging his waist satchel, and produces a roll of parchment. “By the way, you have been invited to the lord Gaian’ birthday banquet.”

“Surely not the birthday banquet.”

“The very one…”

“There will be a scandal about this. Me, at the feast?”

“There are scandals every year! Yours would be overshadowed. As you might think, most invitees will be senators and landowners.” He winks. “Be on your best behaviour, it could mean better business for us.”

“My best behaviour would be too crass for that lot.” She chuckles. “Where and how do I get in?”

“It will be in his villa on the slopes of Fourth Hill. Gaian has shared one fact about himself with every invitee, and you must speak it at his door to enter.” His voice drops. “Yours is: ‘Gaian would rather pet a horse than ride it.’”

“Some fact that is,” she mutters. “He sounds self-absorbed. But certainly, I can humour him. Odd that he should want the likes of me in his residence.”

“Of course he does! The emperor himself watches your matches, now and then. It is even less surprising that his son does. Besides,” he winks, “perhaps he enjoys ruthless women.”

“Well, I don't do candidates for the throne. If this invitation comes with ulterior motives, then he can kiss my arse.”

“I'm sure he would die for the chance to do so.”

“And he just might if he tries.”

Marcia has been doing well for herself lately. The matches line her pockets, but the customers after dark make her life cushy. It is the gladiator’s lot in life to be adored and desired by their followers, but only the wealthy can afford them for a night.

With those earnings, she has bought herself a flowing tunic as red as the cape she wears, with a dipping neckline and embroidered golden flowers. It is no matron’s stola, but then she is no matron, and she wears it proudly as she climbs Fourth Hill.

As the first roof shingles rises from the rolling swells, Marcia gazes up in wonder. The glowing walls of the villa crown the hill, girt by olive and orange trees in full bloom. In the golden sunset she enters the susurrus of leaves and the fragrance of blossoms, and reaches the portico, sheltered by a carved tympanum on grand red pillars.

As she passes between the columns, a bearded man with a chaplet of olive leaves in his salt-and-pepper hair lifts his head. His eyes flick to the book in his hand.

“May I hear your key phrase?”

She cannot help sighing as she says, “Gaian would rather pet a horse than ride it.”

The gatekeeper looks her in the eye, and then laughs barkingly. “How many of these has he come up with? Each one is better than the last. Welcome, Marcia, to the villa of Isicus Pollius Alexius Gaianus.”

She hears the festivities go before she sees them: chatter, laughter, the clatter of ceramics. The fores, carved with sinuous floral motifs, radiate stateliness older than the emperor’s son himself. As she wanders through between them, all questions and misgivings leave her mind in the face of what she sees. The lamplit atrium is bordered by colonnades of pale pillars, enclosing a lush garden thick with blossoms as with the trees outside, circling a small square pond. Never has she seen such well-kept verdure, nor some of the species on display, hanging in veils like a nymph’s curtain. She wanders up the hallways of woven banners, passing lords and ladies holding each other by the waists.

The strum of strings and the glow of golden firelight from the peristyle draw her. There she finds, lit in burning gold, the heart of the feast. In the middle of this courtyard, the ground descends to a square pool stirred by a fountain, around which senators and generals mingle—ones she knows and ones she doesn’t, some of them in furious lip-lock. Long past are the decades when women could not hold office—this is the modern empire, they say—and all kinds mix here, equal to each other in haughtiness.

Up along the left colonnade of the courtyard stands a banquet table bearing trays of food for twenty diners. A serf in one corner keeps the wine flowing, and plates of olives have already been spilled on the ground. Past the guests, upon a gilded couch by the pool, reclines the man of the house himself, with a golden chaplet, much like the doorman's, perched in his curly brown hair.

Marcia thinks to have a word with him, but the pull of the banquet—and the gnawing of her hunger—take her attention first.

Already a few recline in the couches by the table, and when Marcia leans between them to take some skewers of meats and fruit for herself, she is met with a menagerie of expressions—lascivious smiles, odd stares, a scowl. “Is that who I think it is?” asks one to another, but not to her.

“I thought she was only loved on the streets,” the other answers, popping a grape between his lips. “Not the strangest guest Gaian has had.”

Shrugging, Marcia turns in search of Gaian—but where there was no one before, a blonde woman now looms behind her.

Hers is a face both foreign and familiar, an echo of a hundred carved reliefs before her time. Her golden hair falls like spun silk over her shoulders, the black embroidery of her gem-draped golden dress depicting the swirling figures of scaled beasts—dragons, but in the eastern style.

As their eyes meet, the lady’s widen, gleaming gimlet grey. “The Brazen Bull? Surely not!” she gasps. “Strange to see you here.”

Her tone does not sit right. “Yes, strange even to me,” she replies. “I was invited on a whim of Gaian’s.”

“The man’s a fickle fool, to let you in here and cheapen this gathering.”

Marcia has been expecting an insult, but she is not expecting it undressed. “Do you have more of a claim to being here?” she answers.

Her lip curls. “Of course. I am a proper patrician, heir of an honourable general’s bloodline. You slay a few beasts, and now you dare carry yourself like one of us.”

“Whatever you say, lady…what’s your name?”

Her brow twitches. “My name is Lucia Publia Diana—and you will remember that.”

“I’ll remember you, alright,” Marcia answers with a cool smile. “One would hope an honourable man’s daughter would learn some of his honour.” Then she walks away, leaving her raving and snarling behind.

The one thing Marcia has heard of the lord Gaian’ birthday festivities is that the man has a penchant for a certain kind of guest. Among the people of Constantinople, he is both loved and scorned—a singularly outlandish man, whom Emperor Alexius will someday crown. His annual birthday banquet, however, is only ever derided from without, and already she can see it was not all talk.

She skirts the pool on her way to Gaian’ gilded couch, where a couple have already dived in and the red of wine mingles with its meek tides. As she passes, a man reaches from the poolside and clutches at her ankles, running fingers up her shins. “Beauteous one! Spare Acacius a kiss, won't you?” One crushing step upon his arm halts those efforts.

Gaian does not immediately notice Marcia as she arrives, but once she clears her throat, he turns at once, and a toothy grin spreads on his face. He lifts himself from the cushions to sit on his seat’s velvet edge.

“Oh, if it isn't Marcia, the Brazen Bull herself! I'm thrilled you could make it. How wonderful to have you in my home! How are you enjoying yourself?”

Though grinning and reeking of wine, the man has the stature of nobility about him, like gold dressed in tacky fabrics. He has some of Alexius’ traits: curly black hair, dark tan skin, and a strong nose, his eyes housing a complex mirth mingled with euphoria.

“I am enjoying myself well, thank you,” she answers. “Though I cannot help but wonder why you thought me a worthy guest. I am honoured, of course! Honoured but curious.”

“Oho! Well, that's simple.” He glances across the room, then back at her, grin unceasing. “I enjoy your matches, and admire your command of a crowd. I have beheld your deeds from afar, and have wanted to speak to you in the flesh!”

She chuckles. “Well, you needn't have gone to these lengths to speak to me. Just call on me at the barracks. Or send a messenger to find me, if that place is too lowly for you to set foot there yourself.”

Gaian smirks back, then bites from an olive. “Oh? Then the next time we speak, it can be elsewhere. Anyhow, my friend, come sit down.” Gaian pats the other end of his recliner, and she glances at the cushioning, then back at the crowd, before taking that place. “You fought an impressive match this week. I've never seen one of those creatures! A dragon!”

“I can never understand how the gamemakers keep finding these beasts,” she replied.

“The Colosseum of Constantinople has coffers rivalling mine,” he answers. “And I, too, would buy every manner of exotic beast, if I mixed well with them. Instead, I have a garden.”

By now, the sun has set upon the very gardens Gaian speaks of, and the merry lanterns paint the peristyle in gold and pink. There in the rousing bustle and the capricious tunes of the musicians, a wine goblet spills and guests prance with each other. They look in Marcia’s direction now and then, and the gazes are always furtive or conspiring—nothing like the raucous cheer she commands in the amphitheater.

“A garden won't attack you, that's for sure,” she says.

“You'd be surprised. It has broken my heart plenty a time…”

For a while they converse about nothing important, a casual duel of quips—and she finds he plays with words like game pieces, and she responds in kind, surprise mounting at how little he cares for the astronomic difference in their social standing.

Then as Marcia rises to take her leave, Gaian says, “Thank you for gracing me with your presence, Brazen Bull,” as if in dismissal, but a mirth sparkles in his eye. “This shan’t be the last time we talk.”

“I will allow it,” she answers with a grin of her own.

As Marcia picks up a couple more skewers, she casts an eye about. The dining has squarely turned to drinking. Passing the corner of the pool again, a tap on the arm draws her eye—and there is a woman, rosy-faced and all in blue, with her brown tresses combed into immaculate spirals.

“Marcia, you're more gorgeous up close,” she purrs, beckoning with her painted half-lidded eyes. The woman wears too much gold on her neck and wrists.

“Do you watch my matches?” Marcia answers, gliding towards her.

“All of them,” the woman whispers, running fingers down her waist. “Such power and poise…you are nothing if not mesmerising…”

Marcia allows the woman's beauty to lure her into a kiss, but she knows connecting herself to nobles can promise nothing but danger. So she does as she always does, and comes and goes like a shadow at night, playing her part but learning no more names.

“Lady Diana,” Quintus repeats the name to Marcia, before the next morning’s training bout. “Yes, she is known well among high society. Loved among the senate, hated by the tavern-goers. Her father was a general in China—they say his army slew an entire city, and their family took the likeness of their dragon as their trophy.”

Marcia frowns. “She is a piece of work, that one,” she says. “But of course she comes from a family of conquerors.”

“Be more charitable now,” he answers. “Most wealthy people are some kind of mess or other. Like Gaian himself. How did that go?”

“I was expecting much worse.” she answers.

With Quintus leading, the group jog in circles around the colosseum, spar on the sand, and talk under trees. The camaraderie, their coach often declares, is part of sharpening their minds. But among the cohort, Marcia enjoys talking only to dark-haired Lavinia and towering Canthus, whose banter is always a delight to partake in.

Drills completed, the gladiators gather for a debrief in the shadow of the armoury’s archway. “It must be known,” announces Quintus, “that the colosseum is seeing important changes. With new funding, we have been asked for a fresh roster of matches. You may see stranger foes, and possibly larger numbers of them. I will continue to advocate for your safety to the game makers, but I urge you to sharpen your skills.”

There is some glancing between the gladiators, and Marcia frowns—the words ring like a warning, though Quintus seems unable to phrase them as one.

When Marcia returns to the barracks, she halts at the sigh of a man waiting at her door in the barracks. Her pace slows, and she watches quietly. He wears a poor man’s trousers, and she cannot say for sure if she has ever seen him. But as she approaches, he waves to draw her attention.

“I hope I find you well, Marcia!” he calls as she reaches earshot, raising a sealed scroll. “A delivery for you.”

“Thank you.” She takes the letter with a nod and makes to re-enter her home, but he holds an arm up before her and clears his throat.

“I cannot leave until I hear your answer to the missive,” he declares.

Either it is important, or it wants to be. Frowning, Marcia pries up the seal with her thumb and unrolls the letter.

Junia Paetina Marcia, I seek your audience tomorrow morning in my abode, shortly after dawn. There will be no festivities this time. I simply have an opportunity for your consideration, and hope to see you tomorrow. Let my messenger know your answer.

Gaian

She keeps her face steeled. What kind of job could this be? Marcia does not like mixing with the wealthy. And yet the manner of this invitation reels her in. She can feel his hand in it, and see his smirk, plotting a mystery she cannot turn away.

“Tell him I shall visit tomorrow,” she says then, and the messenger nods. “I’ll find out what it is he wants. But he must know I may refuse.”

Marcia wakes before dawn as promised, and walks for an hour among carriages, through stands of fragrant trees to the portico of the villa on Fourth Hill. There is no gatekeeper today, so she knocks and waits to enter.

Gaian himself opens the door. Without the revelry, the atrium is placid and gleaming, marble and gold, dusted by shadows between palm leaves. “Marcia!” he declares as she appears, all grins. “Thank you for coming, despite my vague directions. You must wonder why I called you here.”

“You always had a penchant for incomprehensible caprices,” she replies. “I did not question it so much as let the intrigue lure me.”

“I would like a champion,” he says.

“What?”

“I would like you to be my champion, and a guard at my right hand. If you are willing. I would have you walk before me in public, and take the spoils that come with it.”

Studying the wall reliefs of flowers and clouds until now, she whips around. “Why so suddenly? Does your endless roster of associates not include a warrior?”

At this, he frowns, folding his hands together. “I suspect ill intent against me. You must know I am intended as Alexius’ heir. But not all in the senate like me as his choice.”

“And I was the first person you considered?”

“Oh, you know,” he answers, “I am not just looking for combat prowess, which you have in plenty. I want someone not already entangled in the houses, too. And you are special, I can sense it. Special in the way you placate, then kill. I think you have something beyond what an ordinary warrior does.”

Marcia shudders under his piercing brown gaze, wondering if he knows of her abilities. Showing magic is showing an allegiance to the gods.

“And do I keep attending my matches? Or do I cut ties with the colosseum?”

“I have no intention of depriving you of your matches. Please attend them, and take your leave when you need.’’

“Well, you must name me a price I can't refuse, then,” she answers in steady measure. “I don't like mixing with politics.”

“Two silver denarii a day.”

“My wealthy customers pay me that much for a night. Surely you can do better than love-making rates.” Two silver denarii could feed and clothe her for a week.

Gaian chuckles. “Oh, so spoiled for choice, are you? Well, I am spoiled, too. I can make that four denarii a day.”

“If you can also guarantee I will be treated twice as well as any old nighttime client treats me…”

“I would have my house feed you, when you are here for mealtimes. It would be no object.”

“Then I am sold.”

They shake hands, clasping wrists, to seal the agreement. “Marcia, you are welcome in my house anytime. I shall see you tomorrow, then?”

“If tomorrow is as soon as you would like me to begin, then certainly.”

It is as she is making her winding way back to the barracks, drenched in the evening light, that Marcia hears a telltale crackle behind her. She whirls to look behind her, but sees no movement. She studies the surrounds—the walls, bushes and pillars—just long enough and with enough care to notice a few curls of hair jutting from behind a tree.

She frowns, but feigns ignorance and carries on homeward, ears pricked.

It is hard to miss the faraway footsteps that never grow softer now that she is seeking them. Though she briefly thinks to frighten the spy away, it piques her curiosity too much.

So she pretends she hears nothing, walking with nonchalant stride until they are headed up a straight stretch of road, where she can tell her tail is behind and to her right.

Then she turns again, and the spy finds herself caught out in the lamplight—a woman of short stature and black curls pulled into a bun. She yelps, hair flyin