It took days of planning. We had to balance urgency and being thorough. When I suggested an infiltration a week from the day, I managed to argue my point.

  “The morning of the 18th, as Izak suggests,” Yuen finally agreed. She was one of a handful of representatives and helpers from the Underground. We met at a tucked away backroom at the Wolf Ears Inn, part of Yuen’s permanent residence. The owner of the inn was a tall and large red faced man, who gregariously and loudly chatted with most of the patrons. Yet he simply nodded and smiled at Yuen, and us as we trailed her.

  “He doesn’t want to know the specifics of what we do, it’s easier for him and safer for us that way,” Yuen explained when I asked about it once we were in the privacy of her own mainroom. It was larger than Sarai’s, the space dominated by a table coated in maps and documents and old drinks.

  “Oh, are you talking about old Yackov?” A man at the table asked. He was only a bit taller than me, but his thinness made him seem oddly larger. “We couldn’t do this without him. He’s an institution.”

  Two amber-skinned men with similar faces but incredibly different builds, one lith and the other huge, and one light skinned person with auburn hair and androgynous features stood around the table. Only one of them had enough magic curled within him to be a Mage, the large-set man, though all seemed well-trained in what magic they had. I glanced around at them warily, as Adaline looked to Sarai for reassurance. Sarai herself was smiling, but next to her Yuen had a long-suffering expression.

  “He lends us his institution!” The other man said. “And that’s enough. We don’t have big fancy donors, so we rely on the kindness of ordinary people like him.” The two men spoke with a similar accent, a slight tilt to their words and syllables that was just enough to be noticeable.

  “Well,” the red-haired person began, “occasionally a wealthy person will give us a tidy sum, but not often. We don’t have steady wealthy patrons or governments backing us.”

  “Not like the Hands or the Cult,” Sarai agreed. I noticed that when Sarai called it a cult, Adaline didn’t flinch. Maybe she was used to it. Maybe she thought Sarai had a right to.

  Yuen quirked a smile. “It’s because we’re not nearly so promising a bet at destabilizing another country. But maybe before we jump right into money and politics you could all introduce yourselves, and learn the names of my companions?”

  “I’m Ambada, this is my brother Maipon, and this genderless menace here is Red, they’re our boldest member,” the larger-set man, Ambada, announced with a gesture and mild emphasis on the pronoun. “And you must be Izak and Adaline, like we’ve heard about. We all discussed your predicament with the other Underground leaders last night.”

  I nodded and tried to be casual, tried not to stare at Red. Adain had told me about people he’d learned of in his studies, and from his scholarly penpals, who rejected labels like “man” or “woman”. It hadn’t made sense to me at first, but after many late night discussions with Adain about gender and years of living in a gender never meant for me, I felt like I could understand better. I’d never actually met anyone who openly rejected gender, though.

  Adaline started, opening her mouth to say something that would probably be rude, but I saw Sarai put a hand on her shoulder and mouth something to her. Adaline’s mouth shut and tightened into a polite smile.

  “Ah, yes, the prestigious Underground leaders,” Red said, ignoring our reactions. “That makes us sound important and not like we’re just the people who show up the most.”

  “Who show up the most and have been vetted, and proved trustworthy,” Yuen corrected. She came up to the table and took a seat, gesturing for the rest of us to join. “We are a secret and sensitive organization. Secret and sensitive. You do not have to discuss our leadership or funding in front of outsiders.”

  Maipon shrugged. “You’ve vetted them enough to let them into this room. Isn’t that enough?”

  Yuen put her hands in front of herself, steepling them. “I will have to lecture all of you, again, on layers of trust and information. But first, we need to begin our plan on how to infiltrate the Hands of Humanity.”

  I stepped forward. The conversation had been light, the familiar pace of friends, but we needed to get serious. I needed to get serious. I couldn’t stop the involvement of the Underground at this point, for all that it worried me, but I could try to take charge of the planning.

  “I think we should try an infiltration mission a week from today,” I said. “That will give my magic time to heal. We need a small team, maybe just Adaline and Sarai and I. We need to be in and out as quickly as possible.”

  “Three Mages, trying to infiltrate the Hands of Humanity?” Red asked, scrunching their nose. “I know Mages are as human as anyone, but they don’t see it that way. How do you plan to get past their magic detection? They won’t let any Mages in there, and getting captured would be foolish, considering how they treat their prisoners.”

  I had been thinking about this on the journey here. “Maggie, Adaline’s mentor, could draw a temporary charm on us to restrict magic. I have one designed to last for two weeks that is only now fading. Not only are none of the Hands magically talented, but they’re not trained either. They rely on their detection devices. If our magic is restricted, we shouldn’t read as Mages.”

  “I think I could do something like that,” Sarai said. She had a finger on her lower lip and was looking at me, but her gaze was distant with thought. “The magic of the charm to suppress magic could still be detected, though.”

  “Or you could drop the complicated bullshit and have actual low-magic infiltrators,” Red pointed out. “Maipon and I could just go and pretend to be recruits. The Hands are always recruiting.”

  “They might be suspicious of us if they’ve seen us around the city though,” Maipon pointed out doubtfully, “and you know I’m not the best with direct infiltration. I’m backstage support, not a headliner.”

  “Then I could go in alone,” Red suggested.

  I was appalled at all of these suggestions, but before I could cut in, Yuen spoke.

  “No, Red,” Yuen said in a firm, tired tone. “We’ve been through this.”

  “Actually,” Adaline said, stepping over to put a hand on my shoulder, “I think Izak’s plan could work. The magic needed to disguise a charm is much less than the magic needed to restrict a Mage’s power. Sarai could put another charm to disguise the first charm, and this charm would be less powerful. If this new charm were still detectable, it would still take another less powerful charm to disguise it. We can just put on a series of magic restriction and disguise charms until the power level is low enough not to be caught!”

  Adaline’s words came faster as she spoke, leaving part of the room nodding along while the other half frowned in doubt. My heart beat so hard Adaline might be able to feel it in my shoulder. It was a room full of friendly people trying to work with me, but the tension of almost being there was impossible to put down. The stress of the entire situation, my hope and fear and secrets, was physically manifesting in my throat and chest.

  There was a moment of silence after Adaline’s words as they were processed by the room.

  “I don’t think that I can do magic like that,” Sarai said. “I can do charms restricting the magic in people, that’s directly related to the principles of medical and mental magic, and it’s how I removed Maggie’s seal on my magic. But doing a charm to cover a charm is more like Spacetime or specialized Alteration magic.”

  Adaline glanced briefly at me in the mention of Spacetime magic, but I shook my head slightly back at her. Spells that manipulated magic itself were more abstract and metaphysical than my own practical Spacetime magic. It would be something closer to Adain’s studies.

  “Ah,” Ambada said, “this is where I come in. My brother and I are experts at certain kinds of deceptions. My brother does practical effects, and I do magical effects. We actually work in theaters when we’re not helping here.”

  “I don’t think the kinds of mental magic that illusions rely on would work for magic detecting machines,” I said with a frown. It explained why they were picked for this infiltration mission, but I didn’t see how it would help.

  “I do magical effects, not just mental effects,” Ambada said. “People don’t actually want you to reach into their minds for a night out at the opera. My magic focuses on manipulating the world itself into paradoxical states to allow for true illusions.”

  Oh. That sounded like something Adain would be studying.

  “And you use that kind of high-level metaphysical magic on the theater?” I asked. My voice wasn’t angry, but it was loud with my shock.

  Ambada frowned, his friendly expression closing for the first time in the conversation. He crossed his arms and his brother leaned in near him.

  “It’s where I want to use it,” he said. “I’ve met plenty of people who wanted to use it for other things, and would have forced me to oblige. That’s how I ended up running away to work in the Underground on another continent.”

  I flinched back at his cold look, the sudden and stark change in his expression. I felt the flush cross my face. Adaline spoke before I could stammer out something embarrassing about how I hadn’t meant to say that in the way it had come out.

  “The Underground spans entire continents?” Adaline asked, blinking down at the maps on the table. They looked mostly like maps of the continent of Westrion to me, with layers of inscrutable markings.

  “Not this Underground,” Maipon said, “but there are other organizations like us that we often partner with. We can trade refugees with them, sending out people to new continents where they’ll be safer and taking in others from those continents. It’s easier that way.”

  “And we keep their secrets and they aren’t relevant, so that’s all you need to know,” Yuen added in. She hadn’t exactly interrupted him, but she’d cut in very quickly as soon as he paused in speaking.

  Adaline and I exchanged dubious looks, but neither of us pushed the matter. Frankly I didn’t want to know more.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s none of my business. But it sounds like it would be possible to disguise Mages using cascading charms.”

  “They still know you,” Red said with a nod to me.

  “Yes, and Nalei knows me, too,” I said irritably. I needed to be on that mission. “I’ll be the only person she’d recognize.”

  “I could disguise him using good, old-fashioned physical make-up,” Maipon offered. “Make-up can be as good as magic for that.”

  “Yes, but how will we even get in, even disguised?” Red asked. “The Hands don’t get nearly as many recruits from Amdriel as Schorstal. Everyone knows enough magic not to be so scared and angry over here.”

  Their tone was sharp, but thoughtful. I got the sense that maybe this was how they always sounded when they spoke, rather than actual disagreement.

  “We almost have the basic outline of the plan,” Yuen noted. “Red, do you think you could go undercover for a week or so, and then offer to recruit more of your own friends? Would that be enough time?”

  Red chewed on their nails. “Not enough time to earn real trust, but maybe enough to get a couple more recruits in on a provisional basis. And I could still scope out the base. It’s possible I’d be able to find a gap in the security somewhere. It’s a mountain fortress, they must be bringing in supplies.”

  “What do we already know about them?” Sarai asked.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  We spent hours in that room over the next two days, pouring over what information the Underground had on the Hands and bickering. Sometimes the room was needed for other reasons, and we crowded into Maipon and Ambada’s apartment down the street instead. It was bigger than Sarai’s place, at least, but Adaline and I continued to stay with her. I still couldn’t shake off my wariness and memory of imprisonment completely. Sarai’s place was the only place I felt safe enough to sleep, so I declined when Yuen offered to move me elsewhere.

  In those hours and hours we put together a plan of infiltration. Red was the initial scout, going in almost a full week before the rest of us. They’d go in disguised as a young male recruit and spend days there on their own without any ability to contact us. I was dubious, worried about them giving away our plans before we could even get there, but Yuen assured me that Red was actually the Underground’s best agent for this kind of work.

  “I know they seem loud and abrupt,” Yuen said, “but that’s just how they like to be. They value honesty when they’re not in disguise. I think it helps them draw the line between them and their masks. Because of how real their masks seem and how much they can let the performance take them over, I can see why they’d need the separation.”

  Red was another one who worked in the theater as their day job, as the director for a minor local place. The Underground couldn’t pay most of its members and so many of them had day jobs. Apparently it was lucky that we caught them in the off-season, or we’d have had to work with a less talented spy. I tried to let Yuen’s words soothe me. I certainly thought she was the most competent member of the whole operation, I trusted her evaluation of her team. But I couldn’t let go of anxiety.

  That night, I listened to Sarai explain the complex voting and leadership process of the Underground, and its procedures that tried to balance fairness, justice, and secrecy as I set up the couch for bed. It was very complicated. Adaline listened raptly to a power structure that wasn't hereditary and purely power-based like the Cult.

  Even exhausted I caught myself paying attention, which confused me until I realized it was a habit. This was the kind of information that helped me climb the ranks in Mage Headquarters.

  But there was no point in climbing the hierarchy of the Underground for power or prestige. It was just for the people who wanted to dedicate their lives to helping other people while living off a meager stipend, from what Sarai was saying. People trying to organize to help other people. Was that what Mage Headquarters had been in the beginning? The Republic of Westrion as a whole? If it was, when did we lose that?

  Sarai had moved on to describe the complicated relationship between the Underground and the Amdriel government. Basically, many members of the government were sympathetic and would help quietly, but as a whole the government was terrified of drawing the attention of its powerful Northern neighbor.

  The description didn't match the idea of the Amdriel spy I'd been sold on for the Mage Division. The spy I'd taken the life of. I shifted uncomfortably in my place on the couch. I turned over, and started tuning it out. There was nothing I could do about it. I decided to ignore it.

  Every day we got closer I got more tense. I put everything I had into the plan, practicing my acting and my magic. Maggie’s binding soon faded completely, thankfully. It looked like she was right about the binding. I felt back to my full strength, for the first time since the day I’d been captured.

  I was still having nightmares, but I tried not to think about that. I brushed off personal questions and tried to forget my captivity. I tried not to think of my envy of Sarai and Adaline. I tried not to think of how much better the lives of Mages were in Amdriel and all the lies I’d swallowed about this place over the years. I especially tried not to think of what would come after this mission. Right now rescuing Nalei was the only important thing. The only thing I could actually do something about.

  I was trying to ignore everything, but Adaline wasn’t. She seemed more open to the world than ever.

  When Adaline asked, Maipon explained that he and his brother were from the Continent of Salma, where the Empire of Horasta was an open Mage hierarchy, one of few remaining. There, unless you were lucky enough to be born a Mage, you were a peasant or servant for a Mage. Things were easier for Maipon, because he was from a minor Mage family even if he didn't have enough magic to qualify as a full Mage. Being from a Mage family was enough to qualify for a comfortable administrative or trade position. That sounded close to the propaganda of the Mage Division, even as Amdriel was so different. It reminded me uncomfortably of the Cult and their plans for the world.

  I started trying to ignore Adaline’s conversations. I still heard them, still unwillingly learned more about my team and the world every day, but I tried my best to tune it all out. I couldn’t face it right now.

  Instead I practiced. I went through lines and swapped expressions with the other members of the team, working on my mask and persona as a zealot. I remembered Theo’s eyes and tried to channel his shining, crazed zeal and intense optimism.

  “You’re good at this,” Maipon noted. “Do you have acting experience?”

  I looked away. “No. Not the fun kind of acting.”

  “Ah,” he said sadly. I deliberately didn’t look at his expression. “The kind of acting you do to survive.”

  I flinched. “Not exactly survive. Not just survive.”

  My acting in the Mage Division had been more self-serving than that. Building another mask of myself was familiar work, but it was more uncomfortable than it had been before. I had told myself the lies of the Mage Division, told myself that it had the approval, pride, family, and love that I wanted. If I was just smart, ambitious, and capable enough I could get everything.

  But it was a lie. I knew it was. I had seen the way my kidnapping had broken my family, walked freely through the world, seen an entirely different country where Mages were just people, and I had lost Adain. I couldn’t lie to myself so completely anymore.

  So this new mask of myself, the boy who wanted to join the Hands of Humanity, was made out of partial truths knowing it was a lie. I remembered the breezy superiority of the Cult, the treatment of every non-Mage there. The way Adaline talked about her generosity to Theo. The way Sarai talked about how they’d kill anyone who wasn’t useful enough, and only Mages were always safely considered useful. I thought of how Drianthenes had killed my own father when he tried to run away with Theo.

  I dug through myself to find anger, anger for a kind father I barely remembered. It somehow seemed to connect to every grief I’d felt in my life. The childhood I should have had. The parents I never saw again. The siblings I didn’t recognize. My team murdered one by one by Theo’s Machine. Milo. Adain. The anger ran deep and hot, and I could put out an intense performance of a sincere zealot.

  “Sometimes you scare me with that,” Adaline said once as we practiced. “It looks so real in your eyes.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to explain. I wanted to dip into the emotions without thinking too much about them.

  It was easier and simpler for me to practice my magic. I practiced every ritual I could that could safely be done in Sarai’s apartment, chalking symbols on the floor. I summoned things from the meeting room. I teleported myself along with Adaline and Sarai to and from the apartment and the meeting rooms. I turned my ritual circle and everything within invisible to the rest of the world.

  And I practiced my ingrained magic too, the spells I could do on command just with my tattoos. I teleported everywhere, as much as I had in the Mage Division. I threw my voice to speak to every member of our team, for my own practice and to get them used to hearing my voice in their ear. Eventually they all stopped flinching when they heard me, at least.

  I also practiced my stasis spell, freezing objects in mid-air and then allowing them to release. No one could move any objects that I had frozen until I released it, and every member of the team tried. I could even freeze smaller items that were part of a larger object- though if the larger object moved, it left its frozen piece behind. Yuen asked me to stop doing that the second time I broke a chair.

  For better or for worse, the days moved very quickly. Adaline and I went down to the bridge in the main square of the town the night before the mission. We sat on the edge of the same bridge where Adaline had found Sarai and stared up at the mountains. We both had too much nervous energy to sleep.

  “I have no idea what I’ll do when I see Theo,” Adaline said.

  “Please don’t kill him,” I said, half-joking. “We need his information.”

  Adaline looked away, down from the mountains to the water below. The water of the river moved too quickly to reflect the street or sky clearly, but highlights from the moon and street lights flashed in the water.

  “I don’t want to kill him anymore,” she said. “Not that he deserves it any less. He’s done even worse things since he left- since he left that group. But I’m different now.”

  “I know,” I said. She looked over at me questioningly. “I can see it. You’re taking the whole city in, with the Underground and all, and I can see it. But you’ve been different ever since we escaped. Less tense, but more… Intent. You’ve been asking more questions and listening more.”

  “The world is so much bigger than I expected,” she said. “We always moved around, so I felt like I had an idea of the different parts of the world. But I had no idea. I feel like it’s all opening up.”

  I looked away from her, back to the mountains. The world was bigger than ever, but I still felt small and closed in.

  “It is opening up for you,” I said, trying to let the words flow through me without bitterness. “You could have a life here with Sarai. A good life.”

  “Don’t you plan to stay here, too?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I looked down at my hands. The night air was cold on any of my exposed skin. “I still feel lost.”

  She reached out and took my hand. Our eyes met.

  “You’re not alone.”

  I pulled my hands out of her grip. “Have you forgiven Theo?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Maybe not ever. But I understand, now, how small and miserable the world of the cult was for him.”

  “Maybe you never will,” I said, watching reflections on the river again. “Maybe some things are unforgivable.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but I also do know our mother’s death wasn’t his fault. He didn’t kill her, you know.”

  It was the first time I had ever heard Adaline say that. “What?”

  “She had a bad reaction to the sleeping drug he dosed the camp with.” She gazed out over the water. “She had a stroke. It was bad, she didn’t know how to walk and half of what she said didn’t make sense, but she wasn’t dead. Maggie said she might heal, in time. Given months or years to recover.”

  I blinked at Adaline. She was turned away from me, but I could see the shine of a tear making its way down her cheek.

  “What happened?” I asked softly.

  “She was never a very good Mage,” she said softly. She was almost whispering to the night air more than me. I could barely hear her. “She never had much talent. It’s how she stayed undetected for so long. And the great Heirs of Raxolas never tolerated weakness well.”

  “They killed her.”

  I didn’t know what to feel.

  “Drianthenes had Maggie euthanize her,” Adaline said. “I refused to help, but I sat with her at the end. As she finally… It was painless.”

  I didn’t want to hear this. “That cult killed both our parents.”

  Adaline flinched. She squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment, breathing hard, before opening them again. More tears spilled out.

  “I could have helped her,” she said. “Maybe I’m just as unforgivable as Theo. I want him to know that he didn’t actually kill her. I don’t want him to die.”

  I stared at her. I wanted to reach out, to take her hand, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t feel like I had any comfort in my heart.

  “What if he blames you?” I asked, knowing it was a stupid, hurtful thing to say. Knowing it was about my own fear and guilt as much as hers.

  “Maybe I deserve it,” she said. “It would still be worth it.” She fell silent a moment, and then looked over at me with glistening eyes. “The cult always taught that magic would redeem us from this broken world, but dad used to tell us that apologizing and doing better was more important than some theoretical redemption. Maybe I’ve done some unforgivable things. I was a part of horrible things. Maybe if I can find a way to move on and do something good, then so can Theo.”

  My memory jumped back to Adaline’s solemn face as we talked about the human sacrifices in the cult. I had left before that ever happened, but she’d been there for every person they’d killed. She’d been part of the ritual.

  I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. It was the only thing I could manage to do.

  “I don’t remember dad saying that,” I said. There were so many things I didn’t remember.

  “I suppose you were too young,” she said. There were still tears on her face, running down her cheeks, but there was also hope in her eyes. “But I remember. We’ll find a way to keep going, Izak, and to do better. We already have.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Come on, it’s getting cold and we should sleep. Let’s go back.”

  As we walked back I didn’t say anything, and Adaline didn’t either. She didn’t speak until we got to the doorway of the apartment. Then she touched my shoulder lightly. I jumped, and she stepped back a pace, her hands raised.

  “I just have one more thing to say before tomorrow,” she said, “because I don’t know what will happen.”

  “What?” I asked, my stress making it more brusque than I intended. She seemed to understand, because she didn’t seem offended as she answered.

  “I wanted to thank you,” she said. “To thank you for everything. If it hadn’t been for you, I never would have left that place. I would think that Sarai was dead.”

  “You knew Sarai wasn’t dead,” I said softly. She looked me in the eyes as she spoke and I couldn’t look away, even though my insides squirmed with some awkward, guilty reluctance.

  “I would have believed she was eventually,” she said. “My conviction was already fading until I found you and became convinced it was the Hands. I would have no idea what Maggie had done or that I could have a life outside of that place. Now that I’m free I see how small the cult was, how small the world they kept us trapped in was. The real world is so much larger, stranger, and better.”

  “I don’t know about better.” My world in the Mage Division had been small, limited, maybe in some ways not much better than Adaline’s world in the cult. But since leaving I’d seen plenty of other darkness.

  “Maybe not all of it is better,” Adaline said, “but enough of it is. And I had no idea how much better the good parts of the world would be.”

  I pushed my face into a smile. Maybe she was right in some ways, Amdriel was a place that I didn’t fully realize was possible. But I still couldn’t help the bitter thought that the reason she thought it was so much better was because Sarai was alive and they could be together.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Now let's get some sleep.”

  I was glad I helped them. I was. But my gladness still couldn’t compete with the weight of my grief and guilt.