“Do you think Wallis had them killed?” Bayle was wide-eyed, properly horrified.
Even after hearing the story of the beheading, Kalais was not. He made a sour sound at Bayle, who returned it by lobbing a bottle of beer at his head. The bottle vanished before it hit him, reappearing in Bayle’s hand.
The Deep wouldn’t allow harm to come to its Witches even in its dream? Ah, well.
The tavern where they had left Moto’s stasis pod was untouched, likely abandoned save for Tembi’s brief examinations of the pod. She and Bayle were sitting as near as they could to Moto, while Kalais sat across from them, leaning against the bar with his own cold bottle of beer balanced on his knee. “Of course not. Carroll didn’t expect Tembi to come ask her for help, either. I’ll bet her morning briefing contained a mention of the incident in Downriver, and when Tembs showed up, she saw an opportunity.”
Tembi leaned back to rest her head against Moto’s stasis pod. The sharp electrified feeling of a real object shoved into a dream had dissipated, but the pod had remained too cold to touch until she had realized that it would never come up to room temperature if it wasn’t in an actual room. After she had told the Deep to warm it to a comfortable 26 degrees, it now gave off enough heat to feel welcoming. She was drowsy, rolling on the very edge of unconsciousness, but if she fell asleep here in the Deep’s endless dream—or fell into…more sleep? A Deeper sleep? a ha ha ha ha oh gods—she wondered if she’d wake rested, or if she’d have to spend twice the energy to pull herself out of the dream.
“Carroll doesn’t know I tipped to her,” she said, talking mainly to stay awake. (Alert? Aware?) “I played wide-eyed child the entire time.” After their visit to the tomb, the general had suggested a friendly meal. Tembi had brought them back to Camp Divested, and they had dined in the officers’ mess. The food had been wonderful, until Carroll let her know the produce was farmed on worlds that had been recolonized by Earth-normal populations once the Sabenta had been… Carroll had paused, waved a hand, and allowed Tembi to change the topic.
It had been a feint. If Tembi returned to meet with Carroll again, it would likely become the first of many, as the general attempted to tap away at Tembi’s opinions on the Blackwings’ ideology, or perhaps her faith in the Deep.
“I can’t go back.” She shivered, remembering how the complex flavors and textures of the meal had turned to sand in her mouth. “Politics is not my strength.”
From her perch on top of Moto’s pod, Bayle snorted. “That’s sossing nonsense, Tembs. You’re a born diplomat. Paisano was all but dancing to your tune.”
“You have to go back,” Kalais said. “My contacts analyzed Moto’s data. The Blackwings weren’t testing a bomb when they cracked the moon.”
“What?” Tembi’s ears twitched at that. “No, they’re wrong. I’ve seen shear bombs before. That was a shear bomb swiped up for scale.”
“It was turned into a shear bomb, maybe.” He was staring into his bottle, eyes white and vulnerable. “But it began as a test to see if they could open a way to the Rails.”
Tembi and Bayle swore, and then couldn’t help but laugh. Around them, the dream shivered in color.
“Oh, that’s rich!” said Bayle. “You can’t get into the Deep without…you know…”
“…the Deep!” Tembi finished, chuckling. She reached over her shoulder and rapped on Moto’s pod. “No human can do what the Deep can. Like any old sossing three-dimensional mammal could ever find a way to shove reality into a dream.”
“Probably not—probably never—but they do want access to the Rails,” Kalais said. “If they can find a way onto the Rails without the Deep, they can cut out Lancaster."
“Unlikely,” Bayle said with a sniff.
“Plausible, though,” admitted Tembi. After she had returned from Camp Divested, she had skimmed the books Wallis had brought. One was an old treatise on the practical physics of the Rails. The author had written at length about its so-called “gatekeepers,” with scorn trimming each sentence, word, syllable, and letter. “They’ve tried before.”
Bayle’s bare feet dropped to rest on Tembi’s shoulders. “Who’s ‘they’?”
“Soldiers. Opportunists. Scientists.” Kalais went behind the bar to find three fresh bottles. He opened these, paused, and then opened a fourth bottle and left it out on the bar. “Anybody who wants to use the Rails without Lancaster’s involvement.”
“Didn’t end well,” Tembi mused aloud. “Next to impossible to open a hole into another dimension. Lots of accidents. Lots of explosions.”
“Bet some of ’em looked like shear bombs,” Kalais said, as he handed Tembi her beer. She took the bottle but didn’t reply. “Want to know the scary part?” he added.
“Definitely not,” Bayle muttered.
Tembi shushed her. “What’s the scary part?”
“That this was a large-scale test.”
The significance took a moment to circle and land. When it finally did, Bayle shuddered. “Then they must have gotten smaller tests to work.”
“Maybe,” Kalais replied. “Logic says yes, that you wouldn’t set anything up on such a large scale if you hadn’t gotten it to work on a smaller one. Moto thought Camp Divested was a test site for the smaller portal. That’s why he was sniffing around, trying to make inroads with Carroll.”
“No.” The logic was sound, but the story didn’t make sense to Tembi. “The Deep would have told us if someone else was using the Rails. Right, Deep?”
The mirrors over the bar opened five sets of midnight blue eyes and said, :: MOTHER FATHER ::
“Oh no,” Kalais sighed. “Here we go.”
“Quiet,” Bayle told him. “Deep, whose mother and father?”
The fourth bottle of beer disappeared.
There was a pause. When nothing else happened, Kalais said, “Should I start looking for a parent company, then?”
“Don’t be an ass,” Tembi told him. “I’ll ask Matindi to talk to it. She knows how to get it to open up.”
“You should take it singing,” Bayle said. “It likes to talk with you while you sing. I think that’s when the two of you share the same bandwidth.”
“Then you need to come along.” Tembi patted the floor of the dream. “The Deep may be talking, but it’s hard to hear when I’m singing.”
Above the bar, the blue eyes shut and sealed themselves into the mirror with a single multi-octave musical note.
“Everything’s gone sossing weird again,” Kalais sighed. “I’m off.”
“Wait,” Bayle said. She tapped her toes against Moto’s pod. “What about the mindfuck?”
“Could be anything. Could be nothing.” He shook his head. “Moto’s tests came back negative, but that might mean there’s a new drug out there and nobody’s caught it yet.”
“I don’t like leaving him in the dream,” Bayle said, as she scrubbed a little more soot from the pod’s faceplate.
“Same,” Tembi said. “But now that we know he hadn’t discovered a bomb but a portal, we can see where that leads us.”
“Straight back here,” Kalais muttered darkly. “Stuck in one place and talking in riddles.”
“Didn’t you just say that I need to go back to Camp Divested?” snapped Tembi. “Now, why would you tell me that, I wonder?”
“Right, right.” He sighed. “Tembs, Carroll is going to try and recruit you. She’s already started. If you let her, she’ll give you more access to the camp.”
“Why?” Tembi was close to laughing. The idea of going back and spending more time in that mass grave shaped like a fortress with a woman who lit herself in gold? Absurd. “If they’ve already gotten a portal to work, then why would they care about an actual Witch?”
“You’re not just a Witch, Tembs. You’re famous. If Carroll manages to befriend you, it’ll be a sign of their strength.”
“Besides, they still need the Deep,” Bayle said. “They didn’t get the large portal to work, did they? They tore up a perfectly good moon in the attempt, too.”
“Which is probably why they tested it where they did,” Kalais said, nodding. “We thought it was a bomb. The Council did, too, for the same reasons. Bombs are used to make statements; hiding a giant explosion would make us suspicious.”
“Let me think about it,” Tembi said, eyes closed. “I’ve got to meet with Domino tomorrow.” Her friends groaned in sympathy. Beneath her, the floor buckled and honked like a large bird. “Stop that,” she said, patting the floor. “We’re allowed to think Domino is scary.”
The floor twitched, rumbled, smoothed itself back into tiles.
“How do you always know what that thing is saying?” muttered Kalais.
“We start by not thinking of it as a thing, and we proceed from there,” Bayle said, scratching the side of her beer bottle as if scratching a cat behind the ears. The bottle giggled and began to purr.
Kalais hastily set down his own bottle and held up his hands in defeat. “I’m out. Message me with the next time you want to meet.”
“May you have wide and wild dreaming, broad as the sea, glad as the tides, soft as the shore,” Bayle said.
Tembi pointed over her shoulder at Bayle. “What she said.”
Kalais rolled his eyes and vanished.
“He would have made the perfect general,” Bayle sighed. “But he makes a terrible Witch.”
“He’s a wholly average Witch. That’s the problem.” Tembi shook her head. “And I don’t know if he’ll ever get over…you know.”
“Mmhmm…” Her friend nodded at the unspoken reference to a certain Solstice party three years ago. The Deep had used appalling judgement by hopping into an incredibly drunk Kalais, danced around the room once, twice, and then cracked his foot so hard against a coffee table so hard that everyone in the room had heard the bones snap. Worst of all, when the Deep had fled in embarrassment, it had purged the alcohol from Kalais’ body as it went, leaving a suddenly sober man with five broken toes roaring in pain and anger on the carpet.
Tembi patted Bayle’s knee. “We should go, too.”
Bayle sighed dramatically and draped herself across Moto’s pod. “Now must I to the monument alone, and within three hours will fair Juliet wake.”
“Do I want to know?”
“Not unless it’s set to song.” Bayle rolled off of the pod and landed beside Tembi. “Want me to come with you when you meet with Domino?”
“All gods large and small, yes,” Tembi moaned. “But.”
“But.” Bayle dropped her hair over Tembi’s lap. “That woman reads me like a book.”
“Yeah.” She smiled at her friend and pushed Bayle’s hair away from her eyes. Blue as the sea, naturally, and always. “Get some sleep. Happy ocean water…stuff.”
“Such a poet,” Bayle said, grinning. She stretched, yawned, and disappeared.
Tembi stood and leaned on Moto’s pod. Bayle had brushed off enough of the soot to show all of Moto’s face through the plass. He looked silent, still, not even breathing.
“We can’t leave you here,” she whispered. “It’s safe but it’s not… It’s not right.”
Morality is the privilege of the comfortable.
She had been turning that message over and over again in her mind. Everybody had an opinion, but none of the answers truly grabbed her.
None save Gallimore’s, where, with all due courtesy, she needed for her to pull her own head out of her ass and go help those in need.
Tembi swore and punched Moto’s stasis pod.
The pod rocked and tilted sideways before the stabilizers righted it. She checked to see if Moto’s eyes had opened like the pivotal moment in a drama on the channels: no, he was still perfectly preserved. If humanity ended at this very moment and the Deep persevered, it would be just Moto, here in the eternal dream, forever.
“This isn’t right,” she muttered, and set about purging Moto and the pod of all possible incriminating evidence.
The next morning, she arrived at Domino’s office. Lancaster’s Earth Assembly member was actually there this time, and her mouth dropped open in something very near surprise when Tembi announced that she had found Moto and she needed help bringing him home.
Domino, regal as always in her costume of whites and rainbows, gestured to the nearest chair. She locked eyes with Tembi; the feeling of Domino climbing into her head was unmistakable. “Tell me everything.”
Tembi did. She was utterly straightforward and truthful, beginning with her tour of Adhama and the Crisp, to Moto’s brother, to Camp Divested, to Gallimore and Downriver, and finally to the final resting place of the severed head. The lies were in omissions: the second tour of Adhama went unmentioned, allowing her to skip over the Chameleons. She couldn’t forget them completely, and when she thought of how Lancaster had helped to vanish them, she allowed the bloody image of the soldier’s severed head to fill her. Domino flinched on Tembi’s behalf whenever she allowed herself to remember the moment when she had opened the box.
She ended by plunking Moto’s data on Domino’s desk. “Kalais says this proves the Blackwings are trying to find a way to use the Rails without the Deep. They’re doing an end run around Lancaster, and they split that moon in the Stross cluster with their last attempt.”
Domino couldn’t seem to close her mouth. Finally, she said, “Goodness.”
Tembi was working very hard to not delight in how Domino was so off-balance. She kept her thoughts fixed on the goal: “Moto is safe in the dream, but we can’t leave him there. He needs medical attention to purge the mindfuck or whatever it is that’s caused him to misfire. How can we tell the Deep that he needs to be in a hospital, and stay there?”
“Let me manage that,” replied Domino. “It’s not the first time a Witch has suffered this nature of trauma. The Deep can be convinced.”
Good enough. Tembi sent a silent request to the Deep; Moto’s stasis pod appeared in the middle of Domino’s office. “Ah,” Domino said. “We’re doing this now?”
“It’s wrong to keep him in there longer than we have to.” She paused, and forced herself to move. “And I want to go back to Camp Divested. Carroll thinks I’m a useful idiot. If she has information about the machine they’re using to open a way to the Rails—”
Domino’s head snapped up. “No.”
Tembi had expected some resistance. “I know I don’t have much experience, but this needs to be done.”
“I agree,” Domino said, standing. She came around the desk, her dress a cloud lined in color. “I agree on both counts, which is why you should not be the one to do it.” She laid her hands upon the stasis pod and peered through the plass to see within. “You’ve accomplished so much in such a short time—three days since the moon was split!—and if I had no other options, you would be my choice to pursue this.
“But I do,” she said, looking up. “I have others I can call with more experience, who can slip in and out of a Blackwing camp without being noticed.” Domino moved towards the windows and stared at the wide expanse of the Plaza below. “And I’m beginning to think your skills might be wasted on spycraft,” she muttered, as if to herself.
“Come,” Domino said, as if she had decided something critical. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Tembi reached out and tapped the pod. “Moto first.”
“He will keep—”
“Yes, he will!” Tembi couldn’t keep herself from snapping. “That’s not the point.”
Domino, her eyes half-hooded in the way of an Adhamantian preparing for a coming storm, stared at her before nodding. “As you wish.”
Frugal, Domino’s assistant, was summoned. Instructions were given: Moto would be moved to a quiet medical suite in a hospital on Found, and brought out of stasis, a Witch posted with him at all times to make sure he was kept from jumping. This hadn’t seemed sufficient to Tembi, so she had moved inside the Rails with Domino, the two of them speaking quietly and sternly to the Deep that Moto needed care and must not be moved.
“He will be fine,” Domino assured her. “The Deep listens.”
“I know, but the Deep doesn’t remember,” she said, and wrinkled her nose as her bobcat synth appeared and chirped angrily at her.
“Be satisfied,” Domino said, her tone suggesting that she was at the end of her patience.
Tembi nodded respectfully to the bobcat. The automaton flipped its tail at her and turned into a sour smell which hung heavy around their heads.
“Now it will pout for the rest of the day,” Domino murmured.
“Take it singing. That’s its favorite thing,” said Tembi, as she scratched the Deep’s feather-fur. “Isn’t it, beautiful beast?”
The smell dissipated with an irritated huff.
Domino watched, silent.
“I figured out your message, you know,” Tembi said, surprising herself. If she hadn’t been here, safe within the Deep itself, she probably wouldn’t have mentioned it, ever. But she was never alone with the Deep. “You know? ‘Morality is the privilege of the comfortable.’”
“Oh?” The other Witch raised an eyebrow.
“If you put in the work—real work—you’ll never be comfortable, because then you’re forced to face how there’s no such thing as a purely moral action.”
The other eyebrow went up. “Let’s take that walk now.”
They came out of the Deep in a quiet section of the Plaza, that vast open plain in the center of the Earth Assembly’s pavilion. It was an amphitheater, an ancient design to channel sound from the speaker to the far corners of the crowd. The stone was older than any Witch; tiny plaques positioned all about the place made note of its origins on a distant island, and how it had been disassembled, moved, and reassembled here after Earth’s last big war for its own good. No one came here unless events were scheduled, as it was too much effort to reach without a reason and there was too little around it to hold interest. If you wanted to sit on a pile of old rocks, there were more pleasing piles with better views down by the beach.
“I come here to think,” Domino said, as the two of them walked around the amphitheater, bare feet hard upon the old stone. “I appreciate the perspective.”
Tembi silently wondered if that meant perspective on age, or space, or the significance of such vast silence in a place designed for sound.
Domino replied, smiling, “All of it.”
Into the Plaza. Enormous, artful in places, brutal and sterile in others, the result of competing visions across millennia. They said a city could fit within the cradle between the buildings. The waking world’s version of the glasshouse she had visited in the Deep’s dream was here, about a kilometer to the west. Nearby was a garden, plants from throughout the galaxy chosen for the same colors and forced to find ways to live together. (Or not. Matindi always had a ready lecture on how plants enjoyed murdering each other when they toured the Plaza, and the gardeners were always busy.)
They paused and bought crushed ice to ward off the heat of the day. Domino waited until Tembi had taken a nice soothing swallow before she said, “Tell me about the Chameleons you’ve found,” and waited patiently, sipping her own drink, until Tembi’s coughing fit was under control.
She thought she had been doing so well, with every thought of Paisano and his people tucked carefully away. A reminder that she should always be on her guard? Certainly. “I’m not fond of telepaths,” Tembi told her, allowing an Adhamantian’s honest anger to fill her thoughts.
“Nor should you be. We’re insufferable,” replied Domino. “Would you like to hear the story?” When Tembi nodded, Domino tapped her databand to wrap them in silence, and then asked, “First, how many are in the group you found?”
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “I think it’s somewhere around a hundred.”
Domino slumped, eyes closed and fingertips against her forehead. “So few?”
“There could be more in hiding.”
“There are,” the older Witch replied. “I myself have moved several thousand others into different cities across the galaxy.”
Rather than endure endless coughing fits, Tembi dumped out her drink into a planter and threw the cup into a nearby bin. “Start talking. Please.”
“Not much to tell,” Domino said, “save that it is easier to preach that Lancaster is impartial than practice that lesson. If it eases your conscience,” she added, “I did not break the blockade. I paid smugglers to find and move those Chameleons caught off-planet, and to pay for surgery to help them pass for Earth-normal.”
“Does that ease your conscience?”
Domino stared at her until Tembi had to look away.
They resumed walking, with Tembi trailing after her because she had no idea what else to do. After a long uncomfortable silence, Domino said, “I’d like to formally offer you that job on my staff.”
Tembi tipped her ears to attention.
“We’ll be at odds for some time, I believe,” Domino said. “Possibly forever. But, unlike Matindi, I believe the two of us can work with each other for the greater good of both Lancaster and the Deep. Am I correct?”
“Yes.” Not a lie. She most certainly would work with Domino, even if the two of them developed a permanent limp from subtly kicking each other at every opportunity.
“You are…” the Witch paused, certainly searching for favorable phrases, “…ill-suited for espionage. Too driven by conscience, I fear. You would be better suited for a job where I can weaponize your moral compass. Lancaster has invested in many charities throughout the galaxy. I want you to oversee these, improve their efficiency, and recommend new venues and opportunities.”
Charity work? Tembi let the idea wash through her. It wouldn’t be nothing. Lancaster was so rich and so influential, and managing its investments would be life-changing for so many people! Except that meant—
Domino stopped and placed a hand on Tembi’s shoulder. “I know your true goal is to change Lancaster itself,” she said. “Spending some time in this work will give you experience and perspective, and you are lacking in both. Better to learn now and plan for the future, than to rush into problems, no? Humanity’s fatal flaw is how we can only imagine new versions of what we already know, and we both want more for Lancaster than to be caught up in endless retellings of our past failings. Do you agree?”
Yes, of course she agreed! That was the problem! And Domino would send her on one merry chase after another, each of them wholly worthy of Tembi’s time and attention, and the rot at the core of it all would never be addressed.
The telepath plucked all of this from her thoughts: “Fifteen years,” she promised Tembi. “That’s all I ask. Barely a blink in the life of a Witch. Enough time for you to learn what you must, to learn what is right and what is possible, and how to blend these.
“We’ll start with more training for you.” Domino began to make notes on her databand. “Finances, protocol…and infiltration and espionage, of course, as you’ll be meeting with some rough people and I don’t want you to stumble into another dangerous situation by accident. When Moto wakes, I’ll have you shadow him.
“But while you’re being trained,” she added, “I want you to find a safe home for those Chameleons on Adhama.” Domino glanced in the direction of the distant sea. “Somewhere safe. A place no one knows about, including myself. Somewhere that will eventually form a home for those Chameleons I’ve moved into hiding. I wish this to be secret and deniable, as this is more than moving Sabenta refugees. If the Earth Assembly learns of this, we risk our neutrality. This is a duty, and I’m putting it on you because you are young, and I can blame youthful transgressions if you are caught.
“Do you understand?” Domino said, resting a hand upon Tembi’s shoulder.
For a moment, Tembi’s heart leapt within her.
For a moment.
Then came the memory of Cendo, reminding her that it was a hard thing to be a Witch with a heart, and she knew that if she did this, Domino would own a piece of her as much as she owned a piece of Moto.
She looked up at the tall Witch clad in rainbows, and said yes.