Journey called after him, cursing, but she kept her voice low... so she wouldn’t wake Fenimore? Chet didn’t stop. He could feel the cord to the Raptus grow taut, but he could also feel Knife up ahead. Such a bizarre sensation to be tied by the belly to another person, let alone a near stranger.
Stairs, lobby, street. Chet was vividly reminded he wasn’t wearing either shoes or a shirt. He shivered but jogged along, little pieces of gravel making him hiss and swear, yet Knife was just ahead.
Chet slowed. Now that he was out here, he wasn’t sure he wanted to interrupt Knife and Rory. He’d been pretty stupid to leave the room, but the anger inside of him still simmered, and he didn’t want to go back. Chet approached slowly and stopped just within earshot, standing under the awning of a nearby building.
“... Pelin can’t do it. You know that,” Rory was saying. “The historic records are very clear. Abyss, apparently you were there, Knife.”
“Indeed. Which means you’re going to have to take all necessary steps to call Aiena, little as I envy you the task. It was your Cluster—and ancestors—who originally lost the Raptus, it’s only fitting you fix this. We’ll go slow, drag our feet. Shouldn’t be too hard; the other Flame Council members are scattered across Uos, so we can ramble about and take our time. Just don’t lose us.”
“Well, don’t disappear off the map.”
Knife looked over his shoulder and glanced at Chet, then turned back to Rory. “We’ll do our best.” Knife dropped his cigarette and ground it under his foot.
Rory, too, looked at Chet. A plethora of expressions crossed her face—concern, anger, regret—within an instant. Chet surged forward, her name on his lips, but she turned away. Rory strode to the black hole and dove—dove—inside.
The black hole winked out.
Chet realized he was shaking. Hard as he looked, he couldn’t see it anymore. Would he ever get another chance to see Rory again?
Knife sighed and sauntered back toward the hotel. He wasn’t going fast enough to lose Chet, yet there was something about his body language that was chilling. Repellent. Chet followed him, rubbing his arms, cold from the inside out. He knew only one thing: Knife had lied, earlier. Rory had said Pelin couldn’t do something, and Chet assumed that meant she couldn’t destroy the Raptus. Why had Knife lied?
“I don't suppose you want to tell me what that was all about.” Chet’s tone sounded whiny even in his own ears.
“Not particularly, no,” Knife said pleasantly. He opened the hotel doors for Chet, ushering him inside. “You ran out of the room without your key, didn’t you?"
Chet had. He scowled, feeling like a child caught sneaking after bedtime. “I still don’t see what my girlfriend has to do with any of this.”
“You mean your ex?” Knife still appeared calm, but a slight sharpness had crept into his voice.
Chet hadn’t told him or Journey about their relationship. Had Rory said something? Abyss, his whole life had turned upside down. He had no control over where they went next... where were they going, anyway? Knife had spoken of Flame Council members scattered across the world.
“So, where do we go now?” Chet said as they started up the stairs. “At a leisurely pace, no less.”
Knife turned and, without warning, slammed Chet into the wall. Chet yelped—then his air was cut off. Knife held him by the throat in a secure manner. It felt like a practiced move. Chet’s body was supported, his weight distributed evenly, yet he was unable to defend himself or breathe.
“You will say nothing of what you just heard. Do you understand?”
Chet nodded frantically as best he could. He was held a moment longer—long enough to understand he wasn’t in control—then released. Chet crumpled over, coughing and gasping, tears running down his face.
“You may have been sheltered all your life, but this isn’t a game. Time to grow up, Chet Baikson.”
“Abyss! Why on Uos...” Chet looked up with watering eyes as he felt for bruises on his neck.
Knife turned and started up the stairs; Chet realized he had to follow. The Raptus made it so. It had changed everything. Still, Chet couldn’t help bucking at the enforced order of silence. “What if I do say something?”
Knife paused and Chet tensed. He turned slowly and Chet scrambled away, but not too far. He couldn’t go far on the invisible leash. Knife finally smiled. “I was under the impression you’re a smart guy, Chet.”
There was a long pause. Very long. Chet could feel his face growing hot. “Um. I like to think so.”
Knife nodded. “Just so.” He turned away again.
This time Chet followed without the backtalk. But he couldn’t help asking while Knife was keying their way into the hotel room, “So where are we going?”
“We need to find Oak, the first Flame Council member on our list.” Knife kept his voice down, but he was by no means whispering.
Chet glanced around the hotel room. The lights were off, but the curtains were pulled back from the glass doors, letting in the glow of streetlights. Alas, it was too cloudy for Elderbeth—the enormous gas giant which Uos followed doggedly in her orbit around the sun—to lend more light. Nevertheless, he could see Journey was awake, sitting cross legged on the bed. Fenimore still seemed to be asleep. Or at least he was snoring.
“Where would we find Oak, then? Maansterdam? Plainsdaugheau? Some Pantheon forsaken island? The arctic circle?”
“We go to Semaphore University. Your university.”
Chet shot him an incredulous look. “There are no Flame at Semaphore.”
Journey smiled at Chet and extended a hand. “Come to bed, sweetie. Tomorrow may be a long day.”
Chet stared at her, his stomach sinking. The Flame wouldn’t explain—they were definitely in on this together—and he had to go along anyway. Whether he wanted to or not.
Chet was in a dour mood as he drove everyone up the winding road to the university. His own vehicle had died eight weeks ago of a broken timing belt, and as his father had yet to replace it, they’d needed a means of transportation. Thus, Chet had rented a car with cash supplied by the Flame. It had been surprisingly easy, especially as their group was far less conspicuous today.
For one thing, Knife wore a long, messy wig bound in a ponytail. He’d changed his skin color to fallow once again; he and Fenimore looked like brothers. Fenimore’s own long hair helped Knife blend in, Chet realized upon seeing them together. They wore argyle vests and penny loafers in the style of undergraduate college students everywhere, though Knife also wore a leather bomber jacket over his sweater. He hadn’t carried that in his thin suitcase. Chet was shocked when he realized the outfits had come from Journey’s extensive luggage, though he didn’t know why he was so surprised that she owned male clothing. Some part of his brain had yet to catch up with events, he supposed.
Making his confusion worse, Journey was back in heavy makeup, cat’s eye sunglasses and the modern-cut wig. She looked much as she had the day she visited the dig site. Chet realized with a jolt that it wasn’t real makeup—she must have colored her face by shifting. It was hard to remember that she’d been a guy last night. With a penis and everything. When she was female, it was like that part of herself didn’t exist and never had.
Despite their preparations, Chet felt sourness eat away at his stomach. No one would tell him who the Flame on campus was, only that her name was Oak and that she’d been initiated last summer. Maybe she was a measly undergraduate in sociology or the arts. Something benign and unassuming. After last night, he hated the idea that this, this drama had somehow seeped into the normalcy—the sacredness?—of his studies. Journey and Knife fascinated him, despite the fact that they were doing things in an underhanded fashion, yet Chet bristled at the idea of a Flame on campus. A Flame sharing bathrooms and eating in the cafeteria along with normal people. It seemed... indecent. Though he knew he was being irrational, his shoulders ached with tension.
Journey, too, was in a foul mood. “The director said that he’d never work with me again. He literally screamed over the phone line," she said to Knife in the backseat. “It’s not as if I don’t have an understudy. The director’s vindictive, too. I might even get blacklisted from the Eich Che theater scene if he’s in an especially bad mood.”
“Shouldn’t have slept with him, then, should you,” Knife murmured. There was the sound of something—or someone—being hit, and Knife chuckled.
Chet glanced in the rearview mirror. “Do I need to come back there and separate you two? And you need to stop that, Fenimore.”
Fenimore drew his head back through the window to grin naughtily, then stuck his head back out, hair whipping in the wind. Chet wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d stuck his tongue out like a cynodict. Chet kept the car centered in the lane, hoping passing trucks barreling down the corkscrew mountain road wouldn’t cut off Fenimore’s head. Though... he supposed he should be grateful Fenimore wasn’t nauseous and complaining. The three-hundred year old man had taken to automobile trips like a doedicu to water.
The university was quiet today. Well, it was summer term. Chet parked in the economy lot near the archaeology department, and they walked up the winding roads of campus. A campus security car passed them, and Chet held his breath. The vehicle didn’t even slow down. Good, the disguises are working.
To Chet’s astonishment, the two Flame headed directly toward the law library.
“Okay, I know there aren’t any Flame in the law school,” he said as they climbed the outer stairs. “I attended this graduate school for a year until I switched to archaeology. They’re the most stodgy, conservative group on campus.”
They were about to enter the library when, of all people, Professor Clementina emerged from inside with Professor Espies, head of the law department. Espies kept rambling on about something, though Clementina stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of them.
Espies blinked. “Is there a problem, Clementina?”
Chet didn’t doubt Clementina was fully capable of making a scene. He winced as she opened her mouth... except she shut it. “Not at all," she said, linking her arm through his and leading him away. “Now, what were you saying about the censure of the Jantrael Straight Parliament?”
Espies prattled on as they strode away, arm in arm. Clementina glazed back over her shoulder, her expression hard to read.
Chet stared, shocked. “I thought for certain she’d call security.”
“There’re always interpersonal politics on a campus like this one. She may call them as soon as she can get away from the fellow,” Knife said. “We’d best hurry.”
The library was hushed, serene. Chet sometimes missed this place, though he didn’t miss the law itself. His father had insisted on his becoming a lawyer to help with the family business. Chet hadn’t exactly done well.
He glanced around the library and spotted a friend, his former roommate Steve. Steve had seen Chet, too. He rose from the wooden table where he’d been studying enormous reference texts and walked over.
“Steve, how’ve you been?” Chet began.
“Hi, Chet.” Steve nodded at him before turning to Journey and Knife. “Come on, let’s go somewhere more private. My dorm room is close. I’ll lead you there.”
“Why’d you want us meet you here, then?” Journey grumbled.
“I’m studying for my final in maritime trade with Professor Espies. I can’t have you disrupt my whole day, you know,” Steve said evenly.
Chet blinked. He blinked again. He gazed at Steve’s head as he led them out the backdoor and across the quad to the graduate-student dorms. Steve had the same unfashionable, longish mop of messy curls he’d always had.
Steve said, “By the way, Knife, thank you for the gift last autumn. The miniature propane torch really comes in handy, since my plan to use the furnace in the basement fell through.”
“You’re very welcome. I know what it’s like to live without a fireplace.”
“Was there no privacy in the basement?” Journey asked. “Too drafty?”
“Custodians protested. Fortunately, they don’t know which student I am; the administration simply calls me ‘the Flame’ when talking to people outside the loop. The gossip around here is something fierce among the faculty. Most think ‘the Flame’ is Bradrick from engineering.”
Chet could see why. Bradrick was that kind of guy: a loose partier who dressed in drag while drunk and slept with a different woman every night. Last spring, he’d shaved his head on a bet, too.
Steve, on the other hand, was a young genius who’d studied his way to a secondary-school degree at fourteen. The gravely serious student who flossed his teeth and clipped his toenails when everyone else was out drinking. Abyss, he still was that guy. Chet had gotten along with Steve as a roommate because they both preferred reading over talking.
“The administration seems to be taking your initiation calmly enough,” Journey said.
“Don’t you believe it. I’ve had to attend a number of closed-door meetings regarding my status, even though I fully warned my department heads—well in advance, no less—that I was going to initiate. They can’t accuse me of not preparing them. It’s humiliating what they put me through, at times. Even the propane torch needed to be approved by the fire marshal before I could cleanse myself, but it’s worth it for the degree.”
He unlocked the door of a single-occupancy dorm room. It was tidy and swept, the bunk raised in a loft-like manner above the desk. In fact, it looked exactly like Steve’s side of the room when he and Chet had been roommates. Steve hadn’t even changed his classical-music conductor poster on the wall.
“At least they let you have your own room.”
“Hah. They put me here so I won’t seduce any potential roommate, and I get to pay for it, too. Full price,” Oak sighed.
Knife snorted. “They didn’t believe you on the monogamy thing, eh?”
Oak shrugged as he settled at his desk. “I don’t need to tell you stereotypes are pervasive near the defunct Slave Trade Route.” He dug through a drawer and came up with a folding pen knife. “Which one of you has the Raptus? Much as I enjoy seeing you, Journey, Knife, I’d like to get this over with.”
Journey withdrew the relic from her roomy purse. Steve—or rather, Oak—bled a few drops on the relic. He gave them an embarrassed look and said, “I’m afraid this is going to sound a bit silly.
“There was a woman
Who ate an indricoth
As a baby she started on the tail
That took her ten years
As a girl she ate the haunches
That took her ten years
As a maiden she ate the offal
That took her ten years
As a mother she ate the forelegs
That took her ten years
As a granddam she ate the neck
That took her ten years
As an old woman she started gnawing on the
skull
And realized she had no teeth
left at all!”
Chet, listening to the old nursery rhyme, blinked when the Raptus flashed bright green in Oak’s hands. Chet stared at it, wondering whether it would do something else. The Raptus remained silent. Oak handed it to Journey, who put it back in her purse.
“Thank you,” Journey said.
“You’re welcome. I want to know what happens, you hear? Don’t just fall off the face of Uos as usual, Journey. You need to write, and write often.”
“Yes, Oak.” They kissed. It was a dry kiss on the mouth, not like the friendly, flirting kiss Journey and Knife had shared only—two days ago? It seemed to be a ritual and not from passion. Knife’s kiss was no less chaste.
The others began leaving, but Chet didn’t move. “I want to talk to, um, Oak. Can you please go on without me?”