They were in the office of Jason’s captain’s suite on the cloud ship. In defereo his iions to handle his time of Earth responsibly, it was more like an expeel suite than a maniacal vilin’s ir. Jason was expining his unproductive meeting with Anna and Boris.

  “The problem, Jason,” Danielle said, “is you. You’ve always said that you prefer friends to allies.”

  “I have, and I stand by that.”

  “That’s nice, and if we were still at the point of hosting barbecues in the park ba Greenstohat would be fine. But we’re a little past that, Jason. You’re mixing friends and allies on this trip, and the stakes are too high to leave things as disanised as they are. Before we reach Earth, we o develop an anisational structure. Authority, responsibilities. Who gets what information. From what you’re describing, a rge part of the problem was a disect between you and Mrs Tilden over your respective roles.”

  “You’re talking about a of and.”

  “In part. I’m also talking about definiionships with those who don’t fall under your influence, like Boris Ket Lundi. If everyone knows what is expected of them, and how they are meant to meet those expectations, you avoid problems like these before they arise.”

  He groaned and ran his hands over his face.

  “Treating friends like allies is exactly what I want to avoid.”

  “Jason, whether in friendship or an allia works better when everyone knows where they stand. Clear unication.”

  He thought that over for a moment, then nodded his aowledgement of the point.

  “That does sound reasonable. A perspective I get my head around, in any case. Okay, we o put together an chart. How do I go about doing that?”

  “We start by categorising everyone. Who is part of the formal structure you’re putting together? Myself, Mrs Tilden, the structure of your . That’s the easy part. Who are allies, like Boris? What you expect from them, and what do they expect from you? Then there’s all the people ing with us. You might be treating them as tourists, but you’ve put yourself in charge of an adventurer expedition to another world. One of the most powerful expeditions ever staged, I’ll add. Multiple teams, a royal diplomatic delegation. What level of authority do you have over them? What do you expect from each other?”

  Jaso out anroan.

  “I’m about to have an incredibly tedious day, aren’t I?”

  ***

  Lenora an has been w at the dimensional artefact site for almost her entire adult life. Recruited right out of uy, her excitement had been well and truly killed off by two years in a monit station. Back then, the site was little more than some pre-fab buildings in the ruins of a town whose name she’d never learned.

  Things were different now, both for the site and for Lenora. Her formal title was now Director of Operations for Dimensional Artefact Site One. She wasn’t aware of any Dimensional Artefact Site Two, but she hadn’t gotten to pick the hat had been the inal person to hold her position, and current Australian Prime Minister, Gordon Truffett.

  Lenora and her predecessors had overseen a massive transformation of the site. Following the arrival of an angelic host and one guy from New Zeand, the entire area had been remade into one of the most secure sites o Earth. A coalition of nations had spent the st fifteen years preparing it as a defensive point should anyone or anything hostile try and use the site as an invasion point.

  The coalition was ostensibly led by Australia, as it was their territory, with Lenora as their representative. The reality was more plicated. Australia was rgely depe owork for their magical assets, or whatever the work was calling themselves in any given year. They had hemselves the True work, the Grawork, the inal work and just the work, cyg through those and a few others on a roughly annual schedule. The joke was that the work was secretly led by a shape-shifter who couldn’t tolerate maintaining a stable identity.

  Aside from relian the work, the other major fas demanded access to the site. The Australian gover had granted access in various ways, depending on the influend pensation involved. The Uates and a both had sute-level privileges for their areas around the site.

  There was no longer any sign of the town that had oood in the area. A small city now occupied the space, tred oe itself. A ring of monit and research stations surrouhe half-kilometre of open grouween them and the outermost standing stones of the artefact itself. That open space was unadorned crete. With trigs of metal panels. Each panel was a on bunker tainiractable ons, magically enhanced howitzers and rocket batteries. The most potent mix of magid teology the Earth could produce, they would emerge to attay invader.

  In addition to the oors, a multinational force of essence users and other supernaturals was maintained on site. This included a rotating roster of gold rankers who were the reason Lenora did not have the aitle suggested. Most of the world’s gold rankers beloo the Uates and a, including almost all of the ones who had reached that rank without using cores. As a bureaucrat and not a fighter, Lenora was a core user herself and had never been clear on why that mattered. She was assured that it did when it came to bat ability.

  Oddly enough, there was one Australian gold ranker, and one who had never used cores, at that. When the Australian gover had turned against what became the GDN during the work schism, he had quietly vanished. No one really knew or cared until he resurfaced a decade ter as a self-made gold ranker. With no affiliation, he was heavily courted by every major power on the p. He resoundingly rejected overtures from his home nation, along with every roup.

  “Your head looks heavy,” Barry told her. “A burden shared is a burden halved.”

  Her deputy, Barry, was what amouo mayor of the artefact city. She wrahe magical representatives and he kept the city that served their needs humming along. Her oime supervisor, they shared her obnoxiously rge office. The first director had done his best to create a throne room for himself, which subsequent directors had stripped down to a more sensible, if indulgently oversized space. The ohing she did like about the room was one wall being a massive window, looking out at the ring of standing stones. She often stood and stared at it when she was gaming out a problem in her head.

  “It’s nothing,” she told him. “I was thinking about hornton. Whatever happeo him?”

  “He was close with Ailden, ba the day. Rumour has it that he’s joined her at the Asano . Or she joined him.”

  “Asano,” she grumbled.

  They had been preparing for Jason Asano’s impendiurn to Earth for weeks. Her tasks involved b denials to the press and regur video ferences with Tilden, the Asano’s ’s unofficial new ambassador to the world. Most of her job, however, had been trying to prevent anyone onsite from doing something incredibly stupid. That had not worked out.

  The ese adamantly dehat the man who tried to blow up the standing stones was one of theirs. The bomb had been powerful enough to scorch magically reinforced crete, shaking the walls of the research buildings half a kilometre away. If not for their also being reinforced, the bst would have taken out some windows at the very least. The standing stones had been utterly unharmed, although the bomber was thinly smeared across several of them.

  “Do we have a revised estimate on Asano’s arrival date?” Lenora asked.

  “Nope,” Barry said. He got up and walked to the minifridge to grab a of soft drink.

  “Nora, you want one?” he offered, waving the in her dire.

  “Do we have anything other than TaB?”

  “Nope.”

  “Fine, I’ll take one. I’ve got to stop letting you stock the fridge.”

  They crashed on the couch together, both running on a week of too-little sleep. They cracked open their s, each took a sip and slumped back.

  “Did you know that Terry in the media office is Anna Tilden’s brother?” Barry asked.

  “Yeah, although I didn’t know he was still in the media office. I thought they fired him after that thing with the K-pop band and the animated gloves.”

  “No, they just made him do a bunch of seminars.”

  “How did he get away with that?”

  “Old work family. They were some of the first white essence users in Australia, apparently. Nice for some. Actually, now that I think about it, what happeo all the bck essence users? Someone was dealing with proto-spaces before the British turned up and decided they owned everything, right?”

  “The work founder set up an indigenous work anisation, but it wasn’t anything like the modern branches. As far as I know, most of them joihe Cabal.”

  “The Cabal has had essence users this whole time?”

  “Not anymore. The ining British work people attacked them on sight, so the indigenous people left the proto spaces to them. Without the resources to make new essence users, those in the Cabal eventually died of old age. The same story pyed out everywhere the Europeans decided the locals he light of civilisation.”

  “Civilisation meaning disease, exploitation, pilge and svery.”

  “Yep. But that was where the Cabal got most of their information on essence users. The messengers secretly amongst them probably told them things as well, but my uanding is that they were avoiding being too all-knowing.”

  “So that people didn’t figure out they were aliens for another dimension, and not angels? Aren’t angels meant to be all-knowing?”

  “No oside the Cabal really be sure how it worked. Even now, they’re a house full of secrets. Most of what we know is iion and guesswork.”

  “Where did you learn all this stuff, Nora?”

  “It’s my job to deal with an eclectic mix of magical and political forces from across the globe. How did you get this far without learning all this stuff?”

  “I mostly stood o you and took care of the easy bits, so you’d do all the hard ones.”

  She snorted a ugh and tapped her to his.

  “Here’s to the easy bits,” she toasted.

  ***

  Jason’s legs dangled off the edge of the ship, swinging absently as he munched on a sandwich.

  “Aren’t you afraid that ys will be torn off and reduced to ence?” Zara asked.

  She sat cross-legged o him.

  “I’m not stig any limbs out there.”

  “It’s fine,” Jason told her. “Teically, this is the same magic Boris and his messengers used to go to Earth. My specifiature shields me.”

  He spped the deck with his hand.

  “The tainer I’ve put you all in is just a nicer version of the one Rufus and Taika travelled in.”

  “A lot nicer,” she agreed.

  “I don’t think theirs had a bar.”

  He put his sandwich down oe sittio him.

  “You were traio be a princess from birth, right?”

  “I was.”

  “In the expectation that you would bee Hurrie Princess, then Storm Queen.”

  “That was the idea. Not that it worked out that way.”

  “A lifetime of training, and you still mao moally blow the whole shebang, making things worse for everyone around you.”

  “I remember, yes, but thank you for reminding me of the worst sequenistakes I’ve even made in my life.”

  A grin fshed briefly on his face before it became sain.

  “My political training sists of whatever Danielle cram into my thick skull. How am I meant to get this right when you have all the training in the world a wrong? I’m at a point where very few sequences harm me directly. They’ll all fall on the people around me, whether that’s my panions or just i people in general. Was it wrong to set up this fight oh?”

  She leaned her shoulder into his.

  “There is nht, Jason. That’s what I’ve learned from all my mistakes. There’s nht and there’s n, not from a practical perspective. There’s only what happened, and what happe. It’s the only thing you ge, so that’s where you put your energy.”

  “You do the best you with what you have?”

  “Exactly. Sometimes your best isn’t good enough. But, good or bad, all you do is keep going. Try to make your best a little better each time.”

  He sat with that for a long while.

  “Thank you,” he said finally. “I thought you wouldn’t be any help, because of what a huge political disaster you are, but there was a of wisdom in there.”

  She turo give him a dagger-sharp gre as he did a poor job of masking a grin.

  “My advice isn’t free,” she told him. “Give me the rest of your sandwich.”

  “There are plenty more up in the lounge.”

  “I’m not up in the lounge. Hand it over, Asano.”

  He mock-grumbled as he reached for the pte.

  ***

  After their break, Lenora and Barry returo work. Lenora fired off emails in a futile attempt to head off diplomatic bushfires. Barry was going through tingencies for the artefact city’s popuce, for when Jason’s arrival iably caused a massive problem. Responses ranged from public warnings to lockdowns to a citywide evacuation.

  “Why did they never he town?” he wondered aloud. “Everyone just calls it the artefact city.”

  “Teically speaking, it’s Dimensional Artefact Site One.”

  “Who something that b?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Oh,” Barry groaned. “Our illustrious Prime Minister. I have this vague recolle of someorying to get it ged. Am I misremembering?”

  “No, but none of the ied parties could ever agree on a more ordinary he ese wa to be meaningful and the Ameris didn’t want it to sound fher wahe other to get what they wanted, and Australian names were roundly rejected. I was actually in a meeting where someoold the Ameris that Woolloomooloo was a town name and they went pletely spare. The French tried to sneak a name in while everyone else was fighting, but that didn’t work. In the end, it got left the way it is.”

  “Dimensional Artefact Site One.”

  “Yep.”

  “One.”

  “Yep.”

  “So, site two is some secret spot out in the desert?”

  “Barry, we’re out in the desert.”

  “Yeah, but we’re not secret. We have a media retioment.”

  “So do they. Their media department just has mae guns.”

  “There’s really a secret base out there?”

  “You don’t have clearane to tell you that.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Director?” the voice came of their shared assistant came through the door.

  “e in, Cassie.”

  Cassie was new, petent but still frazzled as she adjusted to the current schedule. Her curly hair had clearly been rebuop her head following a couap.

  “Mrs Tilden, Mr Remore and Mr Williams are looking to have a meeting, Director.”

  “They want to set up a ference call?”

  “No, Director. They’re downstairs.”