Tembi was fairly certain she was going to throw up.
Her arms were buried within the downy feather-fur of the Deep, her face pressed against its broad back. The rainbow space around them was touched in gray: the Deep knew she was upset, but it didn’t understand why.
“Tembi?” Bayle was rubbing one of Tembi’s shoulders with a single hand, a calm down gesture if ever there was one. “You’re worrying the Deep. It’s going to start bringing you cats to cheer you up, and this is no place for a cat.”
“Scheisse,” Tembi whispered, then nodded and took a breath. “Deep, I’m okay,” she promised it. “I don’t know how to explain to you why I’m hurt. It’s…it’s nothing you can fix. It’s just an emotion I have to carry around until I know what to do with it.”
She set her face against the Deep’s soft pelt as the first tears began to fall.
It hadn’t been Carroll’s dismissiveness of the Deep that had stabbed Tembi straight through her soul. No, the belief that Witches was running a galaxy-wide grift was fairly common. While it seemed impossible to deny the very reality of the Deep itself—The human race had been reshaped around it! The Deep was what made things go!—people convinced themselves of impossible things every day.
The part that had cut her? That was the part where some people at Lancaster probably wished it were true.
Not Bayle. She loved the Deep as much as Tembi: Bayle had been on the path of most Witches when she had first come to Lancaster, attending classes which trained her to think of the Deep as a fallible, fragile component of the shipping industry that Witches-in-training had to master. Now, she was rubbing Tembi’s shoulder with one hand, and the Deep’s back with the other, trying to soothe both before a deluge of kittens appeared.
Bayle could no more easily deny the Deep than Tembi could.
But Kalais? Oh, Kalais! If he had a say in it, the Deep would be little more than a power source with a penchant for face painting.
Maybe that’s all that the Deep was to him, anyhow.
Maybe that’s all the Deep was to most of its Witches.
Tembi realized she was shaking. Not from the cold, although Bayle had opened the way so the Rails were as crisp as a plunge into an autumn pond. Anger—a slow-building furious anger, the kind that gave Adhamantians their reputation for violence—was beginning to chew its way out.
“I’m going back,” she announced.
“What?”
She sat up, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. “Camp Divested. I’m going back. It was the last place Moto visited while he was still in his own mind.”
“Are you well?” asked Bayle cautiously. “You have that look you get when you want to smash someone’s nose all bloody.”
Tembi nodded, and then she turned and screamed into the Rails.
It was catharsis, a technique she had found to help her maintain her Adhamantian composure even when she wanted to crack. Her voice was swallowed by the space, lost within the vastness of it. The Deep joined in, a slow lion’s roar which grew and took on shades of red and black, shaking the Rails until color and sound blurred. She stood and let the vibrations scrub against her, arms outstretched as she joined her voice to the Deep’s.
How long did this last? She couldn’t say. It ended when her knees gave way and she crashed against the Deep’s back, her throat raw from screaming.
Bayle had fallen into a tight ball, her hands pressed against her ears and her face hidden in her skirts. As the sound and lights faded, she uncurled and stared up at Tembi. “I hate it when you do that. It gives me such a deadly headache.”
Tembi held out her hand, and the bottle of mini-meds she kept for her ulcers appeared. She let one of the capsules dissolve on her tongue so the tiny army of medical nanobots could patch up her throat, and then handed the bottle to Bayle. “I hate these things,” her friend said, as she shook one out, tapped it against her forehead to direct the ’bots, and then swallowed it. “I swear I can feel them crawling around.”
“All in your mind,” replied Tembi, as she rolled over to lie on her back. “Deep?” she asked, as she held up the bottle. “Want one?”
A chuckle shook the Deep’s body, and the Rails settled into the colors of a warm summer night.
Bayle lay down beside Tembi. “Feel better?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Sorry for your headache.”
“It’s smaller than the one I’d get if you dug up some back-alley parichone to give him a beating.” Bayle paused. “Or if you went back to Camp Divested without thinking it through.”
“Carroll is a parichone in need of a beating if I’ve ever seen one,” muttered Tembi. “But you’re right.”
“To Lancaster, then?” asked Bayle.
“No,” Tembi replied slowly, thinking more clearly than she had all day. Primal screams were an excellent way to jumpstart the brain. “Not Camp Divested. We need to learn more about what brought Moto to Camp Divested at the end before we run up against Carroll again.”
With that, they knew where they needed to go.
They came out of the Deep in the small kitchenette above the warehouse in Adhama, with Cendo staring at them over a datascreen filled with bills of lading. Behind him, the walls were decked in star maps and narrow charts full of sums. He glared at the two of them, unease and anger wrestling on his face. Then, he looked past them and nodded.
Tembi turned. Behind her, Gallimore was slipping a popstick into their robes. They gave her a slow grin. “Might have worked,” they said.
Tembi lifted an eyebrow. Gallimore looked decidedly different from the previous evening, with high flash in silver along the folds of their tunic and skirts, and a dozen earrings carved from stone dotting the ridges of their pointed ears. “The Deep would have dropped you somewhere cold,” she warned them.
“Maybe.” Their grin widened. “Maybe not.”
“Gallimore,” Cendo said, resigned.
Gallimore retreated, and sank into the old couch, still smiling.
Cendo flicked his fingers to dismiss the datascreens. The room dropped into its dull-painted self, with views of the room outside. The small warehouse was busy: it was afternoon on this part of Adhama, and people in work clothes were zipping along, carried by the speed of their tasks. “To what do we owe this honor, esteemed Witches?”
“Did Moto leave anything else for me?” Tembi asked. “A message about a Blackwing camp, perhaps?
“Or…” she added, as the thought leapt up, unannounced, “or information about Domino?”
Cendo drummed his fingers on the old tabletop, a tapping-scraping noise which caused Bayle to grimace. He shifted to prop up his chin on his hand. “Apologies, Witch-nim,” he said to Bayle. To Tembi: “Strange request, that.”
“He’s Domino’s spy,” Tembi replied, as she pulled out a chair to sit across from Moto’s brother. Her anger was still riding high; she grabbed it by its hilt and willed it to behave, a sword with its point aimed somewhere between Camp Divested and Lancaster. “She trusts him, but I know he’s never trusted her. She’s a telepath; she must know that. So—”
“—why does she keep him around?” Cendo shook his head. “Are you detectives instead of Witches now, sleuthing through the underworld?”
“Moto gave us several mysteries,” she replied, as she watched the workers in the warehouse stack boxes on an anti-grav lift cart. “We need to solve them. He’s…he’s not well.”
Cendo relented. “I’ve noticed. What do you need?”
“To hit someone,” Tembi muttered.
“You can have Gallimore for that,” Cendo replied. “What else?”
“Information, as we said. Those were shipping documents,” Bayle said, pointing towards the bare walls where the datascreens had been. “Lancaster’s seal wasn’t on them.”
“The Deep isn’t the only mode of transportation in the galaxy, Witch-nim,” he replied. “Lancaster charges a heavy price which not everyone can pay. I work here, on Adhama, making sure goods get to where they need to go.”
“Except that shipping map runs through the Stross cluster.” Bayle settled into the chair beside Tembi. “There’s a moon missing, now. Does that make smuggling harder or easier?”
Tembi started to laugh: the answer to one of her mysteries was right there on the warehouse floor, and it rekindled her anger into full-bore fire. “Domino trusts Moto because of you.”
Cendo inspected her face, and then nodded. “Yes, Witch-nim. Lancaster won’t help certain people. Doing so would invite…complexities. Instead, they choose to ignore smugglers, and allow us to supply those people ourselves.”
“Aren’t you worried Lancaster’ll call down the law?” asked Bayle.
Behind her, Gallimore chuckled. “The law loves us.”
“The law doesn’t love us; they love worlds with little trouble,” Cendo clarified. “We fill a niche. We get items to people who can’t—or won’t—pay what Lancaster asks. If those people get what they need to survive, they don’t cause much trouble. Since Domino needs people like me to service people like them, she needs people like Moto who can move information between us.”
“And since you’re his family, she knows he’ll do right by both you and Lancaster.” Tembi chuckled. It was horrible. Purely horrible. Domino owned Moto.
Cendo flicked his fingers and loaded his datascreens again. They covered the wall, orderly rows of facts and figures, with dates labeled in red. “Yes, and it’s been a month since the last time I’ve seen him. That’s an eternity in logistics. Any idea when he’s coming back to work?”
“That’s part of the mystery,” Tembi said. “As I said, he’s not well.”
“Is he safe?” For a moment, the years fell away from his face, and Moto’s little brother sat before her, small and scared.
“He is,” she assured him.
Cendo nodded. His age shrouded him again as he began to page through his invoices. “What else do you need from me?”
Tembi was about to answer that she needed nothing, that she would now head off to Earth and shout at Domino until she felt better, but Bayle was faster. “Does Moto have contacts within the Sabenta?”
The smuggler’s shoulders went back. “Why would you go chasing them?”
“Moto’s last stop was at a Blackwing camp,” replied Bayle. “He was gathering information.”
“Lancaster’s working with the Sabenta,” Cendo said. “No reason for him to have his own contacts.”
Bayle tilted her head to the side. “That’s not what I asked.”
“You’re making my life difficult, Witch-nim.”
“I am a Witch. Such is my prerogative,” Bayle replied, as serene as a summer stream.
Cendo sighed. “Gallimore, go introduce them around.” When Gallimore chuckled, he added: “If you leave those Witches alone for as much as ten seconds, I will drop the weight of a thousand suns on your shoulders.”
“Please,” Gallimore said, as they stood and smoothed out their robes. “They shall be as safe as houses.”
“Go,” Cendo said, pointing towards the doors. “And send my brother home sooner than later: I’ve got twelve colonies that’re about to run out of food.” When Tembi’s ears drooped, he asked, “What, you thought all I moved were entertainment sets?”
“No,” she replied, then: “…maybe.”
“I’d ask for your help, but then Domino would have a lock on you, too. Hard thing, to be a Witch with a heart.” He gestured towards the doors again. “Go, go.”
Tembi and Bayle followed Gallimore to a small washroom, where they told the Witches to wipe the paint from their faces and change into casual robes. When they emerged, Gallimore inspected them.
“Good, good, you’ll do,” they said to Tembi. Bayle, however…
“I wore these robes yesterday,” she said. “What’s wrong with them now?”
Gallimore shook their head. “Not the robes, but the carriage. Here,” they said, as they removed their scarf and used it to sweep Bayle’s hair up and away. “This long, lovely hair means money. And try to slump a little, yes? You walk as if you own the world.”
Tembi snorted. “Not this world.”
Bayle nudged Tembi in the ribs with her elbow. “C’mon, I want to meet the Sabenta.”
“Hush,” Gallimore said. “None of that now, and not even when we’re there. You’ll scare them.”
They gave Tembi an address half the city away. Tembi opened the Deep and led the way to the rear room of a small shop, the space around them cluttered in boxes of fabric. Gallimore led them, unnoticed, into an alley, and then another alley, and then another…
“Do you think we’re being followed?” asked Bayle.
“No,” Gallimore replied, as they looped an arm through hers. “I think we’re having a glorious time!”
One arm around Bayle, another around Tembi, and Gallimore took them into the streets. Up and down, across busy markets and into quiet lanes. It was a middling part of town, close enough to the shipping ports so that the streets were filled with offworlders. Gone were the crowds of hungry children and towers banged together from old shipping containers. This neighborhood wasn’t wealthy, but the buildings were planned and the food was plentiful. There was music drifting out of stores, and spacers walking by in their heavy boots, small bags swinging from their hands.
Somehow, Tembi had never considered that Adhama would have tourist districts.
Gallimore was laughing, telling jokes, escorting them from store to store, and getting more than a little liquor into them. Bayle was enchanted. Even with anger still wrapped around her heart like a hard knot of pain, Tembi couldn’t deny Gallimore’s charms. They even paused to braid a couple of flowers into Bayle’s headscarf, a gesture so smooth that Tembi nearly missed how they were checking to be sure that Bayle’s long hair stayed safely tucked away.
And then, the three of them were in a sniff store.
Bayle’s nose flared at the boutique smells, and she moved towards a section which was painted in a dozen different shades of blue, with plass displays shaped into waves. She began opening vials and sighing happily at the aromas.
Tembi didn’t notice much of a difference. To her, the shop smelled of spices, and more than a little soap. “Is this for offworlders?” she asked.
Gallimore nodded. “Surprising—shocking—how the scent of your own homeworld can put you at ease.” They pointed towards an alcove with a motif of sand, with hanging mobiles suggesting twisting windstorms. “That’s Adhama, there. A nice souvenir to take back to the lovers and kidlings, to let them know what your trip was like.”
Tembi couldn’t resist: she started to explore the alcove. Most of it smelled of nothing special, except for one small jar which maybe, if she tried extremely hard, maybe smelled of a coming storm.
Gallimore swept it out of her hand. “On me,” they said, smiling. They added it to a pile on the counter of Bayle’s own selections.
“Can I help you find anything else?” the clerk asked.
“I have a friend coming in from the Batcho Nebula,” Gallimore said. “Got anything to help them feel at home?”
The clerk flicked data back and forth, and Gallimore negotiated a price for a custom order. Credits exchanged hands, and the helpful clerk promised to have the package delivered to a restaurant across the street in thirty minutes. Then, the three of them were at a table, ordering offworld dishes at robbery prices.
“This seems…excessive,” Tembi said, a finger tapping against the order display while she let her expression shout that she was not talking about food.
“It’s how it’s done here,” replied Gallimore, as they pulled Bayle against themself.
“Is it, now?” Bayle asked, an eyebrow raised in mock suspicion as she snuggled closer, her curves aligning with Gallimore’s own.
During their overpriced main course, a delivery ’bot zoomed in, dropped a package in front of Gallimore, and zoomed out.
“So fast!” they exclaimed, as they opened the package and held a small ruby-colored bottle against the light. “Bayle-nim, could you test this for me?”
As they spoke, they laid the bottle against Bayle’s data bracelet.
“Yes…of course,” said Bayle, as she watched information that only she could see. She went through the motions of sniffing and dabbing, pulling back her scarf to run a dab of oil along the pulse points of her neck.
“Show me what you smell like, lady,” Gallimore said, smiling.
Bayle leaned back, allowing Gallimore to come in close, nearly touching. Tembi saw Bayle’s lips moving, Gallimore’s near ear twitching at what she said. Even the most ribald of bystanders would have flushed and turned away at seeing something so intimate spun out before them.
Within the span of time needed to pay the bill, the three of them were out the door and gone, with Bayle giggling and a high flush to her color.
Down one alley, and another, and finally, when all was quiet, Gallimore said, “Now.”
Bayle opened the way through the Deep.