The hopscotch board had become enormous, its chalk lines vanishing into the horizon on either side. Bale roiled overhead and Far stood before us, its skin the same pale color as the balesky, its coat as black as dried blood, and its workhouse badge gleaming dully with the same sequence of numbers we’d written on the Grave.
Wherever we were, we weren’t in Blackstone anymore.
“Hello, Far.” Axton had to look up to gaze into its face. “Thank you for responding.”
“Where’s Milka?” Lorencz demanded.
Far regarded us: or, at least, it mimicked regarding us, since its features blurred and shifted in a way that made its actual line of vision difficult to gauge. Its coat moved as though blown by a wind none of us could feel.
“You called me.” Far’s voice was deep and unearthly, but not the inhuman cacophony of Yzyrchye’s.
Axton gave a curious, almost courtly bow.
“Yes, and I appreciate your answering my call, even though I’m not a child. We’d like to help you find the lost children.”
“The children is not lost,” Far said.
“Are not lost.”
“Are?”
“More than one object takes the conjugation are, not is. The word ‘children’ is plural, so it requires a plural verb.”
“Axton, this is no time to teach the thing grammar,” Lorencz objected. Far looked at her and she raised an appeasing hand. “I mean, unless grammar interests you?”
“Where are the children, Far?” Axton asked, calling its attention back. “If they’re not lost, where are they?”
“Children are not here.”
“Do you need assistance bringing them here?”
“I will not bring them here. I will bring them to Cislunar.”
“Do you need assistance bringing the children to Cislunar?”
“No.”
Axton paused, looking around.
“But you don’t have the children yet.”
“No.”
“Do you need assistance releasing the children from wherever they are now?”
“…Yes.”
The alienist looked relieved.
“Then we’d be happy to go there and help you save the children in exchange for being taken back to Cislunar with them.”
“What is there?”
“Here is the area proximate to the speaker is at the moment of speaking,” the alienist clarified. “There is any place outside that proximity. You are here. The children are there.”
“Are is plural. You is one. You is here.”
Axton gave us a confused look and tried again.
“Do you want us to go to the children’s there with you, so that we can release them and you can take them to Cislunar?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Axton said. “We can help you do that.”
“You is not we.”
“I … oh. In this case, I speak for the group.” Axton paused a moment, but none of us objected. I was more than willing to let somebody else do the thinking at the moment. “We’ll all help.”
“Yes. I is make that want,” Far said. “You-is-we will release all children. I will bring you-is-we and children to Cislunar.
“Agreed,” Axton said, and every hair on the back of my neck rose as something unnamable put chains on my will and locked around my mind
“Oh, hell,” Michael murmured.
“What was that?” Jaspin demanded.
I’d felt something like it before.
“I think Axton just sealed us into some kind of adjurical pact,” I said.
Lorencz pulled out her cigarette case, nervously clicking it open and shut.
“Makes sense,” she muttered. “A kid calls Far across the Line and Far has to do what the kid wants. Far brings us across the Line and we have to do what it wants.”
“You mean, we’re the transients?” Michael blinked, then laughed without humor. “Of course we are. Do you have any idea what this implies for sentinel-transient relations?”
“I apologize,” Axton said, rejoining us and slipping his scalpel back into his pocket. “I didn’t think that through well enough. I should have asked your advice first, my liege.”
“You’ve just established a ritual in which we summon Far, but it controls us,” Michael pointed out. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I beg your pardon, but that isn’t entirely accurate, my liege,” Axton said, lowering his eyes. “I believe I have established a ritual of reciprocity, in which an adult may beseech Far for assistance, and Far may demand a service in return. The general will confirm that there is precedent for such an agreement in his dealings with Yzyrchye.”
“And in petitioners’ dealings with Kyrchye,” I agreed. “Negotiations with gods are always quid pro quo.”
“This destabilizes the entire hierarchy of summoning!” Michael exclaimed.
“Follow me,” Far said, ignoring him. We all felt a small psychic tug, and although I considered fighting it, I didn’t. Lorencz met my eyes, and I saw my thoughts reflected in her face. Neither of us liked obeying authority, but defiance is only useful in an environment where one can survive on one’s own.
The horizon reshaped itself into a dark brick wall with a narrow tunnel through it, the kind you’d find in the older quarters of Cislunar, complete with the smell of stale piss. The city again. I wondered if Far had seen any other part of the world. Yzyrchye had; its voices often spoke different languages. But Cislunar seemed to be Far’s only reference point. Was it a local god? Was that possible?
We ducked through the tunnel and emerged in front of Stonepaen Castle, overlooking Cislunar. A wall covered with spiky chitinous material stood before us, pierced by a gate that looked like it was made of interlocking antlers.
“Far,” Lorencz said in a strangled voice, “Droit said this whole thing is Yzyrchye.”
Far ignored him, striding up to the door. Lorencz grabbed its sleeve. Part of the bale broke loose under her fingers. The sleeve reshaped itself, but Far turned.
“Yzyrchye’s down there,” I told it as Lorencz stepped back. “Under the castle. It shaped it. It is it.”
Far waited.
“I think he responds better to questions,” Axton murmured. “His grasp on conversational conventions is similar to that of a child’s.”
“Far, are the children in there?” Michael asked.
“Yes.”
“Are they under Yzyrchye’s control?”
“Yes.”
“Shite.” Lorencz swore. “I don’t suppose Kyrchye wants to join the party?”
We all looked over our shoulders. The brick wall was no longer there, and we had an unobstructed view of the asylum and the cathedral, floating in sickly gray space.
“Far! I wondered what took you so long!” Milka slid from a niche by the carapace-covered palace wall and hurried to the transient. “Are you all right?” She inspected Far first, then, satisfied, turned to us.
“Miss Nevenek, this is Chief Investigator Jaspin,” Axton said, quietly. “Investigator Jaspin, this is the young lady who, as far as we know, first called Far. Miss Nevenek, you may remember Captain Lorencz, General Droit, and Nobilis Aronson.”
Milka cocked her head at us, then gave a quick, awkward curtsey in her plain institutional dress.
“I’m Milka Nevenek,” she said, eyeing Jaspin. “What happened to your face?”
“I was caught in an explosion.”
“Why is only half of you hurt?”
“I was standing in a doorway, and the blast threw me out before the rest of me could get burned.”
“Was it a bomb?”
“Yes.”
“Who set it?”
“A terrorist,” he said, patiently. “He’s dead now.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. He was tried and hanged.”
“Do you still have an eye under that patch?”
“No.”
“If Far lost an eye, he’d make a new one.” She sounded very matter-of-fact about it. “Things are better on this side of the Line. You can make anything you want.”
“I can’t shape bale,” Jaspin said calmly. “And even if I could, a bale eye wouldn’t work like a real one, would it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe if you were a transient it would. Do you want to learn how to be a transient?”
Michael looked alarmed.
“Miss Nevenek … Far may be keeping us safe for now, but it would be extremely risky for any of us to spend an extended period of time here. If he forgot about us, or became distracted —”
“Careful,” I said, amused. “Your pronouns are slipping.”
“Far’s going to teach me how to take care of myself,” she told my cousin. “He likes me, even though he doesn’t want to fuck me.”
Michael choked, then stammered.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Jaspin said, after a moment. “I recommend you wait until you’re married before, um —”
“I don’t want to get married. Everyone says husbands are useless.”
Lorencz, Michael, and Jaspin all drew a breath to argue. I broke in first.
“Since none of us is married,” I reminded them, “perhaps we should leave our opinions about marriage to those who are.”
Lorencz scowled. Michael shoved his hands into his pockets, looking away. Jaspin nodded, his expression suddenly sad. Axton didn’t seem to have heard any of the conversation. He was still gazing up at the palace, deep in thought.
For a moment nobody spoke. Then Jaspin tried again.
“Milka, what can you tell us about the children we’re looking for?”
“I never met them before they were nixed, but the arch-sentinel read me their files. Can I tell them, Mister Axton?” She looked at the alienist, who absently nodded. “Their names are Jack, Holly, Finn, Kate, and Caro.”
My companions suddenly looked grim, as if hearing the children’s names made some sort of difference. I wish she hadn’t named them. Those children weren’t really people, not anymore. They were meat and raw sorcerous ability punching holes through the Line without any guidance, and it would have been easier on the others if they’d been able to keep that in mind.
“… so Magister Carel said the Vigilance would take care of them from now on,” Milka continued.
“What do they look like? How will we recognize them?”
“Besides the fact they’re nixed?” I asked.
Milka ignored me.
“Jack’s kinda thin with blond hair, and Finn’s the one with really bright —”
How many children had I ordered killed over the years? I’m sure it had happened, for one reason or another. But very few of my murders stood out in my memory. Right now, the murder I could recall most clearly involved Might cleaving through my cousin’s neck. And that, I hoped, had never really happened.
An elbow nudged me. I looked up.
“Falling asleep?” Lorencz’s eyes flickered to the bandages, then back to my face.
“Just thinking.” I looked at my hands, expecting to see baleblood, but there was nothing.
“… and Caro’s the pretty one, with black curly hair,” Milka finished. I hadn’t drifted off for long.
“Thank you.” Jaspin turned to Far, his single eye inspecting the transient. “Can you lead us to them?”
“Yes.”
“Can you fight Yzyrchye if it tries to take the children back?”
“Yes.”
“I believe you need to be more specific, Director,” Axton said with deference. He turned to Far. “Far, will you fight Yzyrchye if it tries to take the children back?”
“Yes.”
“In a confrontation between you and Yzyrchye, which is most likely to win?”
“Yzyrchye is stronger is I,” Far said, with no trace of regret or trepidation in its voice. “I cannot defeat her. You cannot defeat her. We cannot defeat her. We can escape her.”
“It,” Michael said firmly. “Yzyrchye is an it. Not a he, not a she, just an it. Like you.”
“I is Far. Far is he.”
“You’re a transient,” Michael argued. “You can take any shape you want and any gender you want. That means you’re an it.”
“I is chosen he-gender.”
“But —”
“Pardon me, my liege,” Axton broke in. “If you will … why did you choose ‘he-gender,’ Far?”
“He-gender is fear-gender.”
Lorencz growled.
“Like hell it is. Milka, did you teach him that?”
“No. Far was a he when I met him.”
“Well, I got something to say to him.” Lorencz stuck out her chin and glared at Far. “She-gender can be just as fucking scary as he-gender, got it?”
Far looked at her, expressionless. Next to him, Axton pulled the crumpled piece of paper from his pocket again, adding notes with a nub of lead.
“Far, why did you choose this particular manifestation of he-gender?” he probed. “I’m referring to the way you look.”
“Doctor,” Jaspin interrupted, “we don’t have time for this.”
“And why did you call Yzyrchye “she”?” I added, just to be contrary. I usually called Yzyrchye “it,” but if I were going to gender it, I’d gender it male … although, come to think of it, Yzyrchye manifested female sexual organs just as often as male ones. I suppose I just pay more attention to phallic appendages. I tried to think of what was quintessentially female. Menstruation? Child-bearing? Wait —
“Far, is Yzyrchye your mother?” I inquired.
“Yes. No. What is yes and no?” It turned to Axton.
“Maybe? Possibly? Probably? You don’t know?” he suggested.
“Possibly,” Far declared.
“Swell. Look, you two can swap stories about transient sex after we’re out of here, but Jaspin’s right,” Lorencz said, briskly. “We gotta get moving.”