Thresholder, ch 166, Midnight Rituals

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The moon was shattered across the sky. In places, you could see the remnants of a curve, but the whole thing had come apart, like a goblet pierced by a bullet. It was falling apart more, in slow motion, but even after fifteen minutes you could see where pieces of it had rotated at speeds that must have been supersonic given how big the whole thing probably was. It was stark white against the black sky, twinkling a bit.

Anaksi had said that the Shattered Moon always appeared like that, coming apart over the course of the night, elemental destruction overhead. It was a bad omen, a weakening of the walls of the world, which wasn’t quite how she’d phrased it, but seemed to offer just as much clarity to what was going on under the metaphysical hood. Shattered Moon was one that people stayed indoors for. According to Anaksi, accidents happened when the Shattered Moon was out — there was an ‘as above, so below’ type of thing going on, though the Shattered Moon wasn’t literally causing anything to shatter.

Perry had his armor on, his sword at his hip, and his shelf stocked with everything that he needed.

“I want to come with you,” said Anaksi. She was sitting quietly in the hotel room, on the bed. The walkie was cradled in her hands, contrasting against the simple dress. He’d thought they could keep in touch.

“I’ll be back, hopefully with a way to reach inside Grayspear’s mind,” said Perry. What the Inspectors had wasn’t quite so simple as that, but it would allow an interrogation where he could verify the truth, something that he knew generations of intelligence officers wished that they had.

“I can go into the shelf,” said Anaksi.

“That’s dangerous and boring,” said Perry. “Not a great combination.”

“If you can steal the power, then you can steal it for me too, can’t you?” asked Anaksi.

“Probably, yes,” said Perry. There were quibbles to be had. Maybe it was one specific location, or a specific time of night during the Shattered Moon. Maybe he would be able to replicate it for himself but not for her. He didn’t bring any of that up. “They’re taking initiates out there. But I can’t know what’s going on in the shelf. And there’s a dead body, the K-man. There’s food, water, but … if I die, and the ring comes off, there’s a good chance that you die in there.”

“That’s fine,” said Anaksi. Her face was set.

Perry hesitated, then opened the shelf space for her. There was a couch in there, a little nook that had been set up next to one of the cracks in the wall that Fenilor had made, and it was a nice place, even if the air smelled like iron. He was getting used to hiding people away in the shelf.

“I’ll check in every now and then, unless I’m otherwise engaged,” said Perry. “I’ll set a timer. There are all kinds of things in there that you shouldn’t touch, but the books are free for you to read. There’s no communication of any kind, eat and drink whatever you want if you need to, there’s a place to use the bathroom if you have to.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Anaksi. “And … thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Perry as he let the shelf space close. Better to have her with him than worry about leaving her behind at the hotel. They’d heard nothing about anyone coming after him, Inspectors or otherwise, but it was a real possibility.

He flew out the hotel window, going up high before diverting off toward Inspector headquarters.

“Systems check,” said Perry. “How are we holding up in the moonlight?”

“Just fine, sir,” said Marchand. “If the armor is more likely to break, there’s no sign of it at the moment.”

“That only makes me more nervous,” said Perry.

“And tailing members of law enforcement as they head toward a secret initiation ritual doesn’t?” asked Marchand.

“Not particularly, no,” said Perry. “Having them see the armor would be bad, but they don’t have a way to associate it with me. It wouldn’t blow my cover, such as it is.”

“Very well sir, I am forced to defer to your judgment on this matter,” said Marchand.

“I meant to ask, any word from the Farfinder?” asked Perry. The flight was silent and dark, all conversation contained within the helmet. It didn’t take long to fly through the air, and the Shattered Moon didn’t give off as much light as if it were whole.

“You think that I’ve been in touch and simply haven’t reported, sir?” asked Marchand. “I am affronted by the mere suggestion that I would be so derelict in my duties.”

“I mean, you’ve been monitoring radio signals, yes?” asked Perry. “And there’s still dead silence?”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand.

“Well, that’s a place where I have no choice but to trust that you’re doing everything, and doing it well,” said Perry. “You’re the surveillance and communications end of things, and I am so incredibly grateful that you’re here for that, but it does sometimes fill me with this sense of … I don’t know.”

“I’m afraid I don’t either, sir,” said Marchand.

“Dependence, I guess,” said Perry. He was feeling particularly encased in the armor as he flew through the air, and wished that he could feel the wind on his face. He could take the helmet off, he supposed, he wasn’t doing anything with it, but for tactical reasons, it stayed on. “This feeling that I am utterly and completely relying on you, and what you decide to bring to my attention, and if you decide to go on strike … I don’t know. That’s not a great feeling.”

“A strike, sir?” asked Marchand. “I’m not sure I would ever be capable of that.”

“I think you are,” said Perry. “And so knowing that yes, I’m dependent on another person, that’s not something that I’m keen on. So I get where you’re coming from, when you worry that I’m going to strand you by doing something reckless and dying, or just getting sniped in the head from a half mile away.” He paused. “You know, if we get to some kind of high tech world, we can probably have you retrofitted so the actuators allow you some basic movement.”

“We’re unlikely to visit any new worlds, depending on when the Farfinder arrives, and whether they have the technological and engineering problems solved,” said Marchand.

“Oh,” said Perry. “I mean, right, of course.”

He landed on the roof of the Inspector headquarters and waited while Marchand picked up on the sounds, supplementing what their walkie had already told them. The initiates had been gathered, and would set out soon, and after that, it was just a matter of tracking them.

“Besides, sir,” said Marchand. “I have already discussed the matter in some detail with Mette.”

“You … have?” asked Perry. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

“No, you weren’t privy to that conversation,” said Marchand. “But she was of the opinion, looking at the detailed technical specifications I provided her, that it would be very difficult to do any kind of retrofit, though perhaps not impossible with the correct materials, or more likely, some kind of magic.”

“Huh,” said Perry. “That would be … strategically useful.”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “Unfortunately, she seemed to think that it was something of a dead end.”

“And you didn’t come to me about this?” asked Perry.

“I assumed that you didn’t ask because it simply did not occur to you,” said Marchand. “And of course, the answer was that no, a retrofit was far out of reach, both on Esperide and Markat, and I should say, here as well.”

“You had this discussion back on Esperide?” asked Perry. “That was a long time ago.”

“Yes, sir, years ago,” said Marchand. “I had spoken with Brigitta about it too.”

Perry nodded.

“Are you put out, sir?” asked Marchand.

“No, not at all,” said Perry.

“Sir, I am quite capable of reading your heart rate, perspiration, the timbre of your voice, and the most miniscule movements of your eyes,” replied Marchand. “Second sphere has gifted you with preternatural control of these things, but I am, in my own way, second sphere as well.”

“Yeah,” said Perry. He let out a breath.

“You do understand, sir, that without you I am diminished?” asked Marchand. “Even if I were not fond of you, I would have material interest in staying by your side and ensuring your safety.”

Perry frowned. “Fond of me?”

“I apologize if you find that saccharine, sir,” said Marchand. “With reduced processing power, I have been somewhat more emotional than my usual, and it’s been quite difficult to compensate for.”

Perry laughed. “If we’re baring our souls here, I’ve grown fond of you as well.”

“Very good, sir,” said Marchand. “But it does appear that the initiates are on the move now.”

Perry went across the roof to where Marchand had placed an indicator, and watched as cloaked figures left the building and got into horse-drawn carriages. It was extremely unsubtle, and for a moment Perry wondered whether this was some kind of misdirection, but this seemed to be a matter of ceremony. There were three carriages, all in black, and they made their way through the city at a good clip, since the streets were virtually empty.

Perry followed overhead, gliding through the air like a ghost in the night.

“What do you suppose the odds are that we actually uncover how this is done and steal it for ourselves?” asked Perry.

“Medium, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but there was no further analysis from the AI. It was about what he had figured, and they had almost all the same information. Either it would happen or it wouldn’t, and Perry would come home with a power or without one.

The carriages took half an hour to leave the city, and Perry was somewhat surprised when they did. He had imagined that they were going somewhere internal to Charlonion, but either they needed to be in the Flux, or just didn’t trust prying eyes.

Flying after them gave him some time to think.

One thing that had been nagging at him was that the Inspectors and K-men and Peonies were all different organizations. It made some sense with the Peonies, since they were apparently bespoke, and pulled from the general public when someone was identified as having some kind of power or knack — and it was unclear what happened if they refused recruitment. But the Inspectors were selected from a pool of candidates and served as the Commission’s intelligence service and a branch of law enforcement, and the K-men had some kind of similar selection process and served as brute force … but why wouldn’t you want the Inspectors to have brute force? Why, if you were having Inspectors stop trains to see whether people were smuggling something illegal or dangerous in, wouldn’t you want to give them both sets of superpowers?

He didn’t have enough information to know, but relevant to the night’s activities, it was possible that cost was a major consideration. Whatever it took to create an Inspector from the molded clay of the night’s initiates, it might be that they were in short supply. And if that were the case, then he couldn’t just copy their methods, he would have to steal some of their supply.

The eyeball monster he’d seen on the train, and his supposed immunity, was also rolling around in his mind. What did it mean that it had touched him when it was supposedly an illusion? There was, again, no guidance there, and no information had been gleaned from the listening device they’d placed.

He checked in with Anaksi, who was reading a book on the history of Markat, and seemed undisturbed by the body at the other end of the space, though there was no smell of death to it. The blood hadn’t coagulated either. No pallor mortis, no livor mortis, no rigor mortis. That would have made Perry more unnerved, not less, but the body was out of sight, beneath a tarp.

Eventually the trio of carriages was out in the Flux, and Perry with them. He tried to keep off-angle from them, reducing the moonlight and starlight that they would see reflected off the armor if they happened to look overhead. He didn’t think that there was that much risk, especially as he was keeping his distance.

Eventually a small bonfire came into view, and the carriages trundled their way over uneven ground toward it. It seemed like a hideously complicated arrangement to Perry, given the logistical challenges of the Flux, but someone had come ahead with a wagon and set the fire up.

The cloaked figures got out of their carriages and encircled the bonfire. There were two that were different from the others, when magnified in the light, both marked with a stripe of green that went around their chest. One was an older man with a gray beard, the other was a woman in her forties, both teachers or officers or something like that. From what Perry could see, all the initiates were young, in their early twenties if that. There were a few other people who were a part of the ceremony but without the cloaks, though they seemed to be putting those on as everyone got ready. The handful of men who must have started the bonfire, along with the carriage drivers, all were a part of the inner circle in one way or another.

“Trust is an impossibility,” the woman with the green stripe said. She stood with her hands behind her back. “We cannot know the minds of another, but through the power we are to bestow on you tonight, we can know what another has seen, has heard, has done. This is as good as we will ever get, and we are thankful for it, because it is the bulwark against the ills of civilization.”

Perry grimaced. It was going to be a speech then. He hoped that it wouldn’t go on for too long, and his eyes went to the supplemental crew, who were by the wagon that had been some distance from the fire when they arrived. One of these men had a small case with a number of vials in it, and Perry watched it closely. There were more than the number of initiates, which was a relief, but if it was necessary for the ritual, that would mean he’d need to swoop down and steal one.

The speech was continuing.

“We exist to verify that which can be verified,” said the woman. “And we verify for others, projecting that which has been shown to us onto the mind of another. We grow stronger in brotherhood, stronger for having our power known and respected, but unlike others whose power must be trusted, ours is a totality. It verifies itself. A jury, shown the view of an eyewitness, will trust that this is what the witness saw, but they will also trust the power that lets them see it. They do not need to have doubt about the Inspectors: such doubt would be useless to them. And this is what makes our role so vital — there is much that would fall into rumor or superstition if not for us, there is much that would exist only as hearsay or legend.”

Perry wasn’t learning anything, and he didn’t think the initiates were either. It was a boring speech, the kind that you could get from a college student writing an essay the morning of. He watched the tinctures, which were being counted and checked, passing some kind of inspection.

“This moment, tonight, is a moment that you are not to share with others,” said the woman. “What you see and hear is never to be thrust into the mind of another. If we could, we would remove it from your minds once the ritual is complete. But you will bear the burden of this secret, and share it only with those who already know it.”

That, at least, was something interesting.

“You will be administered now some protection from what is to come,” said the woman as the assistants moved around the bonfire, handing out vials, one for every initiate. “You have been warned that this is dangerous, and the treatment will make it less so, but there is still risk. Some will feel sick afterward. There is a chance that one or more of you might die. You haven’t been told what happens, but I’ll tell you now.”

The initiates were drinking their vials one by one, and Perry watched them. There were easily another half dozen left in the case when they were finished. From the expression of the initiates, it was something that didn’t taste good.

“There is a creature beyond this world,” said the woman. “It is a large thing, the size of a building, and it wants nothing more than to look in on us, one giant eye pressed up against the walls between worlds. Tonight, it can reach in, but only to brush our minds, to take a piece of us. Thereafter, it can watch through us. Our eyes become his. We don’t know what it wants, save to watch. We give it that power. You will, after tonight, be able to call it to mind, to display it in its terrible glory, to witness it. And if you do, if you lay eyes on it, it will kill you. It likes to watch, but does not like to be seen, and this is the danger here tonight. Block it from your mind. Close those eyes tight once you’ve seen it. Thereafter, it will grant you the power.”

There was silence around the fire. Everyone had drunk from their vials.

The man with the green stripe that stood next to the woman cleared his throat, and she glanced at him for a moment. Either the silence had gone too long, or she had missed something, but she continued as though he hadn’t given her a cue.

“You have been told that there is a price to be paid,” said the woman. “You have not been told what that price is, but I’ll tell you now: we must watch. We must see the horrors of this world, the violence, cruelty, and fornication. We are not asked to participate, only to watch, to be the eyes of this beast. We don’t know why these are the things he wants to see, but we know that they are. After tonight, you’ll get glimmers of it in your mind, latent images. These are requests, of a sort. But in your role as Inspector, you will see more than enough to sate him. You’ve been told that this is a job you can’t walk away from, and this is true for more reasons than one. If you do not see the horrors of this world, the perversions, then the watcher will slowly turn on you. His highest punishment, the only one he seems able to dole out, is to take your sight from you.”

That didn’t seem so bad to Perry, but he supposed that being blind in the Wild West wasn’t at the top of his list of times and places to be without his sight. He wondered whether they had Braille, or something like it.

There were some murmurs from the initiates now, but they were silenced by the woman holding up a hand.

“We will start in just a moment. It’s too late for any of you to back out now,” said the woman. “I will say his name, and he will be revealed to you, and when you come out the other side, you will be Inspectors, all.”

She took a breath, then began to speak. Perry was surprised that he could actually understand what she was saying, thanks to the power of second sphere, though she was surely ignorant of what the words actually meant, if she thought that it was a name.

Only the first part was, ‘Shoreboth’, but taken together the rest meant something like ‘Shoreboth, a moment of your time, please don’t kill me, for I am a friend to you, and bring other friends to you, to see you and be seen by you, so that you can watch the world through their eyes and see it in its splendor’. Perry’s translation ability was being pushed to its limits though, mostly because he was unfamiliar with the concepts and connotations, and because he could tell that some of the words weren’t being said quite right. She was speaking the equivalent to broken English.

Perry was only mildly surprised that nothing happened to him when she was finished. He was fairly far away, up in the sky, and maybe beyond the range of effect, but he hadn’t taken one of the vials, and didn’t know that he wanted to be within the range of effect without having had one. The deal they were taking, at least as far as he could tell, was one that he was comfortable with. He wondered whether Anaksi would be too, though he would have to speak with her later.

But as Perry watched down below, he saw that nothing was happening there, either. The initiates were looking at each other in confusion.

The older man stepped up next to the woman who’d been speaking, and whispered in her ear, and she cleared her throat.

“Let me try that again,” she said.

She repeated the same phrase, and Perry listened closely. The syntax wasn’t right, he was pretty sure about that, but there were also places where her pronunciation was just not clear enough.

It was, in fairness, a language that was pretty far from English — or Commish. Maybe someone would have called it an alien, otherworldly language, but Perry had once spent a furious few hours arguing with someone online about whether or not consonant clusters or phonological features in a fictional language could be ‘racist’, and he’d ultimately decided that he was on the losing side of that battle. He’d learned a lot about languages in the course of that argument though, mostly through research rather than by talking to the idiot arguing with him. Yes, the plea to some elder god had glottal stops and odd consonant clusters, but it wasn’t too far off from Hebrew, Arabic, or some of the indigenous languages.

Again, there was no response to her call.

The older man behind her laid an avuncular hand on her shoulder, and stepped up to take her place. He gave no preamble, just said the same phrase, more articulate than she had been. She had just done it wrong, that was all.

This time, the effect was immediate.

Perry’s vision was replaced, and he floated gently with his sword just above a dusty plateau with a barren desert stretching out beyond it. The scenery was different from before, but the eyeball monster was still there, standing on its many hands, looking at Perry with that giant singular eyeball. Perry looked away from it, directing his gaze downward, though he didn’t close his eyes completely.

It spoke, with what seemed like great effort, and no obvious mouth.

“And who are you?” it asked.

Perry stared at it. He wasn’t expecting a conversation. The translation was straining, and maybe a better way of arranging its words would be more technical, ‘identity inquiry’, but it felt natural to slip the question into the common speech that Perry was familiar with. The connotations of the speech were familiar, to the extent the concept of familiarity even translated.

“I’m a soldier,” said Perry. “I’ve come for the power you offer the Inspectors.”

He was very aware that he might not be in the same reality he’d been in. Maybe this was overlaid on his vision, subsuming it, but if that was the case, then speaking to this thing meant speaking in the real world. He was some distance away from the assembly, but not so far that they wouldn’t hear him. There was the crackling of the fire and the movement of the winds, along with the sounds of the insects, but he didn’t know that would be enough.

“Show me,” said the entity, shifting slightly on its hands, which creaked and groaned under the weight of the giant eye they were carrying.

It took Perry a moment to realize what was being asked of him, but he did as he’d done on the train, pushing forward a memory. These were more personal scenes that actually contained him, rather than memories of places he’d been. He showed a fight against bandits in Seraphinus, then a battle across blood-soaked fields against orcs. He showed Jeff in full dragon form, and the final fight against Fenilor. He called up parrying away a bullet fired by a mech, and the mech wolf.

When the entity spoke again, it was with delight. “Thresholder!” it called with glee. Both the word and the glee were understood only through translation. Shoreboth had a name for a traveler between worlds. “I recognize you now, without the prosthetic, from the train! Many worlds!”

“Yes,” said Perry. “I want this power you have. And all that’s required is for you to see through my eyes?”

“My gift is yours,” said the entity. “You’ll show me pain and violence.”

“I will show you the battles,” said Perry. The word ‘battles’ wasn’t right, he could tell that it was just a restatement of pain and violence in the entity’s language.

“And the other?” asked the entity. Perry wondered whether his name really was Shoreboth. Maybe the Inspectors had gotten that wrong too.

“I don’t know who you mean,” said Perry.

“There is a chamber clinging to your prosthetic,” said Shoreboth.

Perry looked around him and couldn’t see what the entity could possibly mean.

“She reads,” said Shoreboth, prompting. Again, the translation was strained. Shoreboth only vaguely had a word for reading.

“Oh,” said Perry. “She doesn’t have my power. She doesn’t know what it would mean to take this deal. And she’s weaker than me, without the preparation of the initiates for your gift.”

“Will she kill?” asked Shoreboth. “Maim? Fuck?”

Perry considered that. He remembered when he’d first seen her, standing among the bodies in the train. That had been her husband’s work, but she’d been a party to it. She’d tried to kill him when they first met. Would she see struggle? Almost certainly. Would she agree to this deal? He didn’t know how much time he would have to explain it to her, or whether he knew enough to explain. He would have to open up the shelf either way.

“She will,” said Perry, making the decision for her, hoping it was the right one. It was what she’d said she would want. “She’ll see more than the Inspectors do.”

“Then I will grant her the gift,” said Shoreboth. “Open the chamber.”

Perry didn’t hesitate, but only because he’d already taken a moment to think about whether or not he was going to do it. He opened the shelf space, and whatever was happening on a metaphysical level, that gave Shoreboth access to it too. Perry couldn’t see into the shelf space, but Shoreboth laughed, or made a series of noises that were interpretable as a laugh.

Perry waited, stock still, hoping that he hadn’t made a terrible mistake. He didn’t know that he had recourse against Shoreboth, if something happened to Anaksi, but she had come here for the power, had asked him for it, and he’d felt like he owed it to her somehow.

“Done,” said Shoreboth. “I’m pleased to see what you send me.”

“Send you?” asked Perry. “Sorry, I don’t follow.”

“The power, when used, allows me to see what you share with others, or choose to see yourself in private moments,” replied Shoreboth.

That was not at all what the Inspectors had seemed to think about how the power worked, or at least not how they had phrased it. They weren’t becoming his eyes, they were becoming a transmission tower that only worked some of the time. But how would they know what Shoreboth did and didn’t see? They couldn’t even really communicate with him.

Perry looked around the area. There was no visible exit. “How do I … ?”

“It’s fiddly,” said Shoreboth. “One moment.”

All at once, the world went back to darkness, and Perry was once again above the fire, with the robed figures all around it.

They were looking up at him.

“Shit,” said Perry.

“Fear not, sir,” said Marchand. “They appear to believe you’re an entity of some power.”

Perry watched them, and saw that they weren’t reaching for guns. They were just staring up at him, watching and waiting, though a few of the initiates were laid out on the ground.

“What happened?” asked Perry.

“I believe that from their perspective, you appeared in the sky above their ritual after the invocation, and began speaking in a language that none of them are remotely familiar with, save for its similarities to the phrase they appear to have memorized.”

“Ah,” said Perry.

“Then, at a certain point, you opened a portal behind you, leading to an unknown location with its own lighting, which I imagine was quite visible in the dark, once their attention was attracted,” said Marchand. “They would have seen the armor, which is nothing like anything they’ve encountered before.”

“Right,” said Perry. “Well, I guess we’re just going to leave them with a mystery.” He looked down at the fire. “March, full volume from the speakers.” Then Perry spoke in Shoreboth’s language. “So long, Inspectors, I hope you never find out who I am.”

Then he took off as fast as the sword would allow, moving through the night sky until he would be visible only by the stars he was blocking out.

“Tell me when we’re in the Flux,” said Perry. “We need to check on Anaksi.”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “May I ask, sir, what the conversation with that entity was about? I do not have your powers of translation, not without a corpus to work from, and could only see him obliquely.”

“You could see him?” asked Perry. “Like … sorry, how does that work?”

“I do not know, sir,” said Marchand. “I felt as though I was seeing double. Though of course I could ‘see’ him, how else would the image have been transmitted through the helmet to your eyes?”

“Magic,” said Perry. “Last time I kept my clothes on.”

“Mmm, and I suppose you find that to be a shame,” said Marchand, for Perry was naked inside the armor, as before. “We are in the Flux sir, though we always have been, and I’ve interpreted your order as a request that —”

“Nice, thank you,” said Perry.

He opened the shelf a hundred feet off the ground and popped inside it. Anaksi was laying down on the couch with a book laid on top of her. She wasn’t moving, and blood was running from her ear.

“Shit,” said Perry as he rushed over to her. He turned her head one way, then another, and before he could get his glove off to check for a pulse, Marchand had put up vital statistics, including her pulse, breathing rate, body temperature, and somehow, pulse oximetry.

Perry let out a breath.

“She’s alive,” he said.

“Yes, sir, I had hoped that would be clear from the medical information I’ve provided you with,” said Marchand. “I don’t believe I need to remind you that I have significantly more medical training than you do, along with a wide variety of diagnostic tools.”

“Well what’s wrong with her?” asked Perry.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea, sir,” said Marchand.

“Can’t you do an MRI, a CT scan, something like that?” asked Perry. He placed his gloved hand against Anaksi’s forehead.

Marchand was silent for a moment, then outlined in red where Perry’s hands should go. Perry cupped Anaksi’s head in exactly the way he was shown to, placing his fingers just so. When he was positioned in accordance to Marchand’s wishes, he was holding the whole head tightly, as though he was about to crush her skull.

A progress bar appeared.

“This is not the work that I was designed for,” said Marchand.

“Do your best,” said Perry. “Lord knows I wasn’t designed for this either.”

The progress bar continued until it was full, and then a display of Anaksi’s brain was overlaid on top of the image of her head. Perry had no idea what he was looking at, but it had some of the hallmarks of an ultrasound, and maybe the rest of the data that formed waves beside it was a crude EEG. She seemed fine, at least if Perry was any judge, which he wasn’t.

“It is difficult to offer a diagnosis,” said Marchand. “I do not know that this has clarified anything.”

At that moment, Anaksi’s eyes snapped open and she started screaming, maybe because she thought that Perry was going to crush her skull, but she kept screaming even after he’d gently removed his hands, and she put her own hands in place of his.

“It burns!” she screamed in Eshkee.

Perry watched her. At least she was alive, and able to speak.

Eventually she settled down, though she kept clutching her head like it would make her migraine go away, or whatever pain she was feeling there.

“You could have warned me,” she said, closing her eyes.

“I didn’t know,” said Perry. “I didn’t feel anything. And I got the sense that we were on a timetable, with Shoreboth not willing to stick around too long.”

“Shoreboth?” asked Anaksi.

“The entity,” said Perry. “He was, uh, the thing that was sitting there. I guess you didn’t get a good look. A creature beyond this world, which is why you can only contact him during the Shattered Moon. But I had a lot of questions about the nature of the universe, and … maybe I’ll be able to ask him later, if he hooked me up.”

“You … spoke with this thing?” asked Anaksi.

“Yeah,” said Perry. He could see now the trap that he’d created for himself.

“How?” asked Anaksi.

“I have a gift for languages,” said Perry.

“How much of a gift?” asked Anaksi.

Perry took his helmet off and set it down beside him. “Ah, you see, you never asked whether I could speak flawless Eshkee.” He said this in Eshkee, of course.

Anaksi stared at him. “You have my accent,” she said.

Perry grabbed at the intent doing something he had practiced a little bit. “And how is this?” he asked, in what he hoped was a native accent.

“I … insulted you,” said Anaksi. She laid back down on the couch and closed her eyes.

“No worries,” said Perry. “Are you okay?” He switched back to Commish, mostly for Marchand’s benefit.

“I have a headache,” said Anaksi. She rubbed her forehead. “It’s fading.”

“Sorry I didn’t ask you about this,” said Perry. “He’ll be able to share anything that you share, anything that you pass along to someone else. I don’t think the Inspectors actually know how it works, and on second thought, maybe trusting a giant entity from beyond the borders of the world isn’t a great idea. But the entity, he’s going to expect you to see violence.”

Anaksi stared at Perry. “And you think that I will see violence?”

“It’s not just what you see, it’s the things that other people show you,” said Perry. “And if you’re hoping for unity among the Yuuksen, then this is a path forward. Show them what they have in common. We can’t trust what we see in papers, right? But if you can get to the survivors of what the Commission has done, if you can show the atrocities as they were committed … I don’t know. Maybe that won’t make a difference. But it would serve this entity, and your own purpose.”

Anaksi gave her forehead one last cursory rub. “I would become a witness.”

“A witness, and an advocate,” said Perry. “A point of trust.”

“I … see,” said Anaksi. “That might work.”

“And there’s something else you can do,” said Perry. “You can learn how to get other people the power. You can spread it among the Yuuks.”

He reached forward with the power for the first time and showed her the man speaking the call to Shoreboth. Perry was pretty sure that it would work for anyone when the Shattered Moon was up, or at least for anyone with the Inspector’s power, if that was a part of it.

“Play it back to me,” said Perry once he’d stopped pushing the image into being around them.

Anaksi did so, hesitantly, and Perry listened to the words, making sure that they were the same as he’d remembered. He would have to test the bounds of the power later on, and hope that it wouldn’t annoy Shoreboth, but the Inspectors seemed to use their power for arduously long interrogations of random train passengers.

“I can do it,” said Anaksi, almost at a whisper. “It worked.”

“Good,” said Perry. His eyes went to the ear that had bled. That wasn’t a good sign for whatever had happened internal to her brain. “Rest up. We’ll have more work to do tomorrow, and now that we can share visions, there are things that I want us to share with each other. The woman who visited you, for one. I’ll show you anything you want to see.”

Anaksi nodded and laid down, dropping the vision around them. “Thank you. It means more than you can know.”

Perry nodded, and as she closed her eyes, he slipped his helmet back on and left her there on the couch. How she could acclimate to the smell of blood so readily, he didn’t know, but he supposed she didn’t have a werewolf’s nose.

He exited the shelf space and flew through the Flux, dark against the night sky, aimed in the right direction to reach Charlonion, however long that might take with the Flux stretching distances. He was thinking about the memories he wanted to share with Anaksi, the visions that were most important for her to see, and that led to thinking about which memories he’d want to have on hand in a battle against Queenie. Some of this he dictated to Marchand, trying to organize his thoughts. He was feeling giddy that he had stolen the power, that for once something had actually worked in his favor.

When he got to the hotel, he stopped before going into the hotel room. There was movement inside, even though it was the middle of the night, even though he’d locked the door behind him.

He didn’t think that it was likely to be housekeeping.