Chapter 2: I’m sorry about triggering that cult, but in my defence I was very bored

  Christine was having just the best quest ever.

  No, really.

  Well, there’d been the odd issue. This was a new thing for her, she told herself. There was always going to be a few things to begin with.

  But, y’know – quest! How could that not be awesome?

  Admittedly it hadn’t started, like, amazingly well. Actually getting to the world she could only think of as ‘Planet Crowbar’ had been a bit icky: she didn’t even want to start to begin to consider to think about the ethical issues surrounding what was, if she was being brutally honest with herself, well...human sacrifice. She had 100% killed a guy to get here, and so what if he’d not been the nicest guy in the world? A life was a life, you couldn’t just go trading them in for interplanetary portal privileges, serial killer or not.

  On the other hand, she told herself, he’d been on death row in a literal-actual Russian gulag in Siberia from which there were two ways out – the portal or a coffin. What she’d done hadn’t changed any outcomes for him, and she’d followed the protocol – he knew the deal. If he hadn’t’ve done, then Lemuel’s thrift-shop stargate wouldn’t’ve worked: that whole deal was volunteer only. So: scratch that one up as a no score draw, ethics wise.

  Once she had arrived, well, that had initially been very exciting indeed. A new world! Her first experience of it had been a dingy basement cave, true, but still – wow!

  And then she’d met a wizard!

  So okay, he was from Moscow. Not a local, but still: wizard! Sergei hadn’t fallen over himself trying to be helpful, but after a couple of misunderstandings, a little bit of friendly persuasion and a broken crystal ball that she really did feel bad about and would absolutely totally replace once she figured out how to get one and, y’know, if she was ever in the area again, well: she’d left, anyway, heading in the right direction. Adventure! Excitement!

  And rain. Lots of it.

  It could’ve been a lot worse, Christine often told herself. For starters, imagine if she couldn’t fly? Christine was telekinetic: she could not remember a time when moving something with her mind hadn’t been as automatic a reaction as picking something up, when warding off bullets hadn’t been as intuitive as throwing up an arm to knock a thrown cushion aside, or when flying hadn’t come as naturally to her as walking. So what if she’d spent six days either sopping wet or, she darkly suspected, being absolutely ripped off by various innkeepers who couldn’t understand a word she said, and vice versa, just so she could dry off a bit?

  But she could fly, so she hadn’t had to walk. That was good, right?

  Zipping about New York in the middle of a fight against, ie, death-ray wielding villains was not, she had (unfortunately) learned, even remotely the same deal as slogging through the sodden skies of an alien world trying to hold a straight course, with your waterproof flapping behind you not proofing absolutely any goddamn water whatsoever, your backpack and ex-boyfriend’s chainmail dragging you groundwards and unwelcome thoughts along the lines of ‘have I fucked up?’ seeming to exert an even greater downwards pull than gravity. There had been a few times – well, a few times every day, if she was being honest – when ‘have I fucked up?’ had very much morphed in her mind into ‘I have fucked up’.

  Regrets had started to surface. Family wasn’t something she ever thought of or worried about: but she’d left a note for the Fader and the Slipstress – the only really good friends she had – explaining why she was doing what she was doing. She hadn’t left them in the lurch, exactly: actual superhero stuff was getting increasingly difficult now that Lemuel had thrown a low-grade hissy fit and stopped running official interference for them, and she was aware that an ongoing discussion between Jimmy and Suzie was, and had been for a while, starting a family. They both wanted to, but they both felt they had responsibilities to something greater than themselves. Suzie came from money and Jimmy was super-smart: they’d be fine and (Christine hoped) her leaving to follow her destiny would be the kick required to move the baby plan from fantasy to reality.

  During her journey though she’d started, a few times, to think she’d been more than a little bit precipitous, and kinda selfish too. She was 33% of the world’s only superhero squad and she’d just upped and gone.

  No: they’d be fine – and she wasn’t here just out of wide-eyed breathless desire for adventure. She’d come here to help McKenzie: she owed him, if not for her, he wouldn’t’ve been here at all.

  She was still in a fairly dire mood after five days of rain-soaked travel, though. The final night’s exploitative innkeeper had ended up being suspended in midair over a large pile of horse manure in the corner of his stable yard while she yelled extensively at him about how it was extremely uncool to take advantage of distressed and damp women who couldn’t speak the local lingo. She’d ended up giving him even more of her few scraps of precious metal because she felt really bad about losing her shit with him – which had led to him finding some shit, very abruptly indeed.

  But then she’d got to Vyrinios, finally, and met a talking building (OMG!), and the chief assassin lady, and then one of Crowbar’s friends here, Cally, who was apparently a nun but not really a nun? Like, she could date if she wanted, and Christine could not see how it would be difficult for her to find potential partners, she did not lack for aesthetic appeal. But she didn’t even try – Christine supposed relationships must be a bit tricky if every few months you blipped out of existence and your sister took over.

  Anyway, a few minutes in Cally’s company, and people could understand her again and she could understand them, which was a huge relief. And okay so Crowbar had not been there, had in fact quit being chief assassin, and they apparently had no idea where he was, but still – a huge old city! An assassin’s guild! Magic!

  The rain hadn’t let up, though – all she’d really seen of Vyrinios was a few rainy streets through a carriage window, that, frankly, could have been the old quarter of any normal European city during a day of shitty weather. There had, at one point, been a melted pile of stone that had been cordoned off with signs reading ‘floating statue closed for renovation due to vandalism’ and ‘beware magical contamination’, but that was the only really fantastical thing she’d seen. She’d been hustled onto an airship without really experiencing Vyrinios at all.

  Buuuut...it was a magic flying ship!

  Which went a fair bit slower than she did, unfortunately – but that was cool, because this was like a cruise, she was off to see (if not the Wizard of Oz) then the Archmage of Melindron, who apparently might know where Crowbar was, and anyway sounded awesome and someone well worth meeting. The view out of the window had been, unfortunately, more rain – she was starting to very much suspect that another way her powers were a bit screwy here was that she was a rain goddess. (She was wrong in this: on the third day of the cruise she’d actually seen the sun here for the first time – pretty much the same as the one she was used to, it turned out).

  But she was with Cally, so there was someone to talk to and hang out with, even if the airship they were on was a bit basic, and didn’t have a pool or a bar or a cinema or even really that many portholes, and it had been made clear to her that cracking open a hatch and popping out for a quick flight would just scare people and draw attention, so please could she not?

  But Cally was...well, she was a very nice person, Christine was sure, although she seemed to have a very hard time interacting with the latest arrival from another planet who’d been placed into her care. Cally certainly didn’t avoid her, ‘zactly, but she spent a lot of time not looking Christine in the eyes, and her replies to questions were always polite but they never evolved into an actual conversation. If Christine persisted, then Cally would usually mumble something about needing to pray and would disappear off to her cabin.

  Some people were a bit awkward, or a bit neuro-atypical, and that was fine, of course – maybe Cally was just a little shy, or had some anxiety issues. Christine resolved to give her time.

  It was, for a wonder, a sunny day when they’d arrived in Melindron, and finally things had started to look up. She’d got a good look at other airships as they docked – they really were like wooden goodyear blimps - and Melindron seemed really lovely, there was a good vibe to the place. She’d enquired of Cally if they’d be meeting the Archmage right away? Cally had um-I’m-not-sure’d at her and looked down, and Christine’s patience had finally run out. She’d opened the carriage door, gave the shocked Cally a grin and a ‘I’ll see you at the Tower, okay?’ and taken off. Literally.

  Melindron looked amazing from the air – the streets were wide and paved, the buildings mostly white marble and beautifully built, parks and gardens were scattered around: it was beautiful. Everywhere she’d touched down she was greeted with, okay maybe some people were a little afraid, but after giving rides to a few local kids that had soon devolved into lots of laughter and amazement and crowds had started forming, which was so much better than home, where in recent months she’d usually been more mobbed by people trying to serve her legal papers and/or the authorities telling her to not get involved – there were people for that, didn’t she know?

  Her curiosity about the huge building in the centre of the city had, eventually, won out over amazed onlookers, gleeful kids and quite a lot of free drinks being handed to her, so she’d zipped off and flown round the Tower a few times, admiring the carvings and the sheer amazing size of it: okay so it was nowhere near skyscraper height, but it was built out of proper stone rather than steel and concrete and math, which made it more impressive and at last she was having a proper day in a new world, seeing stuff and meeting people and the sun was out and…

  ...she’d got an enormous dressing down from the Archmage, who could somehow be incredibly polite and at the same time so icily scathing that Christine supposed this must be what high school kids felt like when they annoyed an extremely eloquent english teacher who had previously been a professor of telling-people-off at an Ivy League college. It had started with ‘Would you mind perhaps telling me why you felt the need to put the entire cadre of mages and city guard on high alert and cause a schism in the Temple of Valia?’ and when Christine’s answer of ‘Oh hi, you must be Xixaxa! I was doing some sightseeing, your city is sooo beautiful!’ failed to mollify her, had quickly degenerated into very stern warnings about the Grave Importance of Secrecy, with capital letters that the Archmage somehow managed to pronounce.

  But the woman dispensing what Crowbar would probably call a ‘bollocking’ was the most powerful woman on the entire planet – Christine supposed that was a privilege, in a way.

  And she was in a giant magic tower! She’d been given a really lovely suite, and a selection of truly beautiful clothes to choose from, and then...asked to stay there.

  She felt like a teenager banished to her room while the grown-ups talked. She’d seethed at that – but: these were Crowbar’s friends, she had reminded herself. They were very important people. She could imagine that Crowbar had probably been all Crowbar about it when he’d met them, and made whatever it was they were trying to achieve more difficult by...being himself. He was a great guy, but dear God he could be difficult sometimes. She wasn’t going to be like that. She was going to display patience and understanding. So, she’d put on one of the dresses and resolved to stay put.

  She’d kept it up for two whole hours, until the sun set, during which time she learned something about life on her new planet: options for whiling away downtime on your own were very limited. Her phone was dead and waterlogged: unlike Crowbar, she apparently didn’t get the internet here. There was a shelf of books in her suite, and she’d tried to read one but while the words were perfectly clear to her, it was seriously heavy going, some kind of history of Melindron.

  She’d gone to stand on her balcony. The city was spread out below her – she could smell a thousand different scents: some of them very appetising. She could hear the sounds of laughter and singing drifting up. Magical orbs, regularly spaced, acted as streetlights – like the stars often beckoned her upwards for a night-flight, the orbs called her down to the city’s network of streets.

  “Fuck it, it’s fine,” she muttered to herself, and stepped up onto the balcony railing.

  “I think the traditional warning at this point is: ‘please, it’s not worth it’ – but in your particular case it’s hardly needed,” a female voice told her.

  Christine looked around, frowning. The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. There were balconies to the left and the right, all round the curve of the tower, but nobody was stood on them, and she was alone in her room.

  “Um...are you the spirit of the tower?” She hazarded, theorising that if the assassin’s guild hall could talk, then an Archmage’s magic castle maybe could too.

  “No, that I am not,” the woman’s voice replied – again, from all around, as if the balcony had been fitted with surround sound.

  “Um, okay,” Christine said. “Then could you maybe expand on what and who you actually are then? Also where?”

  “Indulge me in an experiment,” the woman’s voice asked. “I would like you to close your eyes, and point to me.”

  “Is this like a normal guest room thing? Does everyone here get pop quizzes?” Christine enquired, slightly sarcastically.

  “Most certainly not – you are a very special guest,” the woman’s voice replied – again, it was almost like Christine was hearing her through headphones.

  “You’re doing something to your voice,” Christine said.

  “Correct,” the voice replied.

  Fine, Christine thought. I’ll play along.

  She closed her eyes. Listening only brought the faint noises of the people below, the slight sussuration of the night breeze, and the traces of some footsteps going past her suite door.

  But there was something. Almost like a warmth, as if someone had lit a big fire - like, a really big one, one that deserved a 911 call and a five-minute segment on the evening news - on the next balcony. Christine raised her arm and extended a finger towards it.

  There was a rustle of fabric from the balcony to Christine’s left. A woman suddenly became visible: her face first, then the rest of her. Christine was pointing directly at her.

  Even so, she was so surprised she forgot she was halfway to stepping into mid-air and actually fell off the balcony – but like the until-just-now-unseen woman had said, that wasn’t an issue for her. She floated back up onto the balcony proper.

  The sense of roaring warmth was still there, as if it was the woman herself creating it – but with her eyes opened, the awareness faded somewhat into the background. She folded something up and laid it on a chair behind her – it too had it’s own fake-warm feeling, albeit a lesser one - then stood up to face Christine. She was tall, slender, pale, coldly beautiful and had a wealth of glossy dark hair which she wore arranged in some kind of complicated twisty style, up around the top of her head.

  “Holy shit!” Christine’s jaw nearly dropped. “Is that a for-reals cloak of invisibility?” Then she shot a hard look at the woman. “And how did I know where you were? And wait, are you stalking me?”

  “Stalking, no – I have been ordered by the Archmage to discreetly keep an eye on you. You knew where I was in the same way a mutual friend of ours would – I will be delighted to tell you more. As to the cloak, yes it is but please don’t touch it, it’s quite old, very rare and the curator of the Archmagisterial Museum takes a very dim view of any harm coming to his collection,” the woman said – this time without any surround-sound extras, just a normal speaking voice.

  “Yeah, I won’t,” Christine said, a little sadly. “I’ve already broken a crystal ball that way, and Cally – I mean Lady Callena – told me like eight times not to go poking round the airship in case I crashed it. So no, I don’t go touching magic stuff: apparently I break it.”

  The woman smiled, which lightened her ice-queen looks somewhat. “You may be pleased to hear that you have learned that lesson considerably quicker than your friend Lord McKenzie,” she said.

  “Shut the front door,” Christine said, amazed. “Crowbar is a lord, here? Does he have a castle?”

  “No – or at least not the last time we spoke,” the woman replied.

  “Oh, shit – are you a lady too? Should I like be bowing or something? I have no idea how to curtsy. Wait, do you have a castle?” Christine asked.

  “Alas, mine burned down,” the woman told her.

  Christine frowned. “Wait a minute...are you the scary wolf lady?”

  The woman gave her a slightly rueful smile. “Yes, although I like to think I’m working on the scary part,” she said. “Lady Heska, at your service.”

  Heska did know how to curtsy, and did so with considerable grace.

  “If you try to turn me into one of your wolf slaves, lady, you are going to regret it. Are we clear?” Christine asked her – unconsciously hovering as she often did when she felt threatened, ready to lash out with her mind or put up a shield.

  “Fascinating,” Heska said, observing her. “Please, you are quite safe: I am, if you will forgive the pun, a changed person. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Then as long as you keep that in mind, you’re quite safe too,” Christine told her, with a pleasant but threat-tinged smile.

  If Heska was intimidated, she didn’t show it. “You may be surprised to hear that the ability to fly, here, is vanishingly rare,” she told Christine.

  “I literally came here on an airship, Lady Heska,” Christine replied.

  “Contrivances that require extensive magical equipment, which is difficult and expensive to produce and needs constant maintenance,” Lady Heska told her, looking at her admiringly. “A skilled mage may levitate an object, hover for a few moments or slow a dangerous fall, but the outlay of thaumatic power is considerable. What you are doing now is generally accounted a thing out of legend. You are a marvel, Lady Psyonara.”

  She seemed genuinely impressed, and scary wolf lady or not, Christine was hardly immune to flattery – especially after several days of being sidelined and ignored. And also-

  “Wait, what, I’m a lady now too?” She asked.

  “So the Archmage has named you,” Heska told her. “Believe me, nobody’s going to argue with her. There’s no castle, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s cool, I’ve got like five at home,” Christine joked.

  “I can only imagine the staffing costs,” Heska replied with a smile, which, Christine supposed, showed that scary wolf lady had a sense of humour. “I serve as Her Wisdom’s right-hand woman, here in Melindron – it is an honour, and I hope I am doing some good in the world,” she went on. “My particular task this evening is to make sure you don’t get into any mischief.”

  Christine twisted her mouth uncertainly. “I wouldn’t say I had mischief in mind in particular, Lady H, but I was absolutely going to fly down into the city and have a look around, maybe get something to eat.”

  “Please don’t. Quite apart from any other concerns, most of the local worshippers of Valia are currently camped out below hoping to see you,” Heska said.

  “I’m only giving rides to kids,” Christine told her.

  “Oh, you misunderstand: some of them think you’re the reincarnation of their goddess – she was known for flying around, rescuing people and, in something of an unfortunate coincidence, being blonde,” Heska supplied.

  “Oh!” Christine put her hand to her mouth. “I won’t lie, Heska, that is kinda my whole thing too, I can see why they’re confused. Should I maybe swoosh down there quickly and explain that I’m not a goddess, I just came here from another world?”

  She started to rise up and over the balcony railings. Heska held a hand up.

  “Unfortunately, Lady Psyonara, I don’t think that ‘swooshing’ down on them from on high and announcing that you came here from another plane of existence is going to do much to convince them of a lack of divinity on your part,” Heska replied.

  “Yeah, s’pose not,” Christine agreed, sinking back down to set her feet on the floor again.

  “Also only some of them think that. Most of them think you should be burned as a heretic. They’ve got bonfires all ready, look,” Heska inclined her head towards the square below.

  Christine looked down and frowned. “I thought that was just some people having a cookout – there are some really nice smells coming up from down there.”

  “I’m afraid not – the only thing the Valians intend on roasting, tonight, is you,” Heska answered.

  “Rude,” Christine noted, then leaned over the balcony and raised her voice. “FYI, valley people, just because someone can fly doesn’t make them a witch! That’s…probably sexist! And definitely religious intolerance!”

  “Not something most religions have any particular shortage of, I’m afraid,” Heska told her. “I’m sure they’ll calm down in a few days, but in the meantime, perhaps don’t shout at them?”

  Christine sighed and turned round again, resting her butt against the railings and crossing her arms huffily. “Fine,” she allowed. “Mostly I’m just pissed because I’m hungry and I thought I smelled food.”

  Heska gave her own sigh, and nodded. “Oh, you did. As a hyperwere I am blessed with an incredibly acute sense of smell. When the wind blows from the direction of the food stalls in the market square below, though, it can be somewhat of a curse. There’s an old lady down there who makes rusaka skewers that are simply to die for.”

  The wolf lady cast a longing glance towards the lights below.

  Christine pursed her lips speculatively.

  “You’ve been told to keep me out of trouble?” she asked Heska.

  “Indeed,” Heska confirmed.

  “So...if I was to maybe put on a dark wig and walk down and go look for the old lady’s stall...you’d almost have to come with me, wouldn’t you?” Christine ventured, attempting a conspiratorial wink.

  Heska looked, for a moment, as if she was very much considering it: then she sighed again. “Her Wisdom was most clear that you should really remain here, Lady Psyonara,” she said.

  “Okay, it was not cool to just zip around and I’m sorry about triggering that cult, but in my defence I was very bored. I’ve been cooped up inside airships or carriages since forever and it was finally sunny, I’ve been here an entire week and seen almost nothing,” Christine said, letting her arms fall to her sides.

  “One such as you is not destined for a quiet existence, Lady Psyonara,” Heska told her. “Have patience.”

  Christine tilted her head from one side to the other and took her lower lip between her teeth before answering: “Yeah, Heska, thing is I’m not so good with the patience,” she said. “I used to go off at Crowbar for losing his shit and just brute-forcing stuff, but truth is if he hadn’t been there it would’ve been me instead.”

  “Impetuousness is a common trait of young immortals,” Heska said. “Self-knowledge less so: that you are honest with yourself puts you a cut above Lord McKenzie.”

  Christine blinked. “I’m sorry young what again now?”

  Heska just looked at her, then: “You asked earlier how you knew where I was standing: I think perhaps it’s time for me to give you a proper answer to that question - and several others that Lord McKenzie never asked me.”

  “You’re an expert on Crowbar?” Christine asked.

  “Although we’re certainly on better terms than when we first met, I wouldn’t call myself an expert on him. What I do lay claim to is a great deal of knowledge concerning quintessents – which is what both you and McKenzie have in common. Another thing all quintessents have in common, Lady Pysonara, is immortality,” Heska told her.

  “Lady Heska, I’m not immortal,” Christine replied. “I’m not even thirty.”

  Heska raised an eyebrow. “Then tell me – when was the last time you were sick?”

  “I-” Christine opened her mouth. “Um...in school, I suppose.”

  “Ah, of course – the usual childhood illnesses we all must endure. I had a terrible case of fowlpox as a young girl – nearly scratched my own skin off, it itched so badly. Which school did you attend?” Heska asked.

  “I went to-” Christine started to answer, then stopped. “I went to...Sunnydale High.”

  “Interesting. Who was the dancing master there?” Heska said.

  “Okay I made that one up, but ‘dancing master’ is not a thing where I’m from,” Christine admitted. “Why are you interrogating me all of a sudden?”

  “Because I want you to think about your past,” Heska replied. “I want to help you, Lady Psyonara, by telling you what you are - in the way I should have told Lord McKenzie.”

  “I wouldn’t beat yourself up over that, Heska, chances are he wouldn’t’ve listened anyway,” Christine replied. “I am, though, and cards on the table: you’re worrying me.”

  “For that I apologise, but since I suspect that you will soon be leaving here, I do not have the leisure to break anything to you gently. There are things you need to know, Lady Psyonara. A rogue quintessent abroad in the world with little or no knowledge of her power is dangerous,” Heska said.

  “I was already dangerous on my last world, Lady Heska,” Christine said.

  “Were you dangerous to the point of rending the very fabric of existence asunder, letting everything that has ever been or will be spiral out into the chaos of the formless void that encircles this fragile illusion we call reality?” Heska asked her, raising a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

  Christine bit her bottom lip. “Um...can I take notes?”

  “Yes,” Heska replied.

  “Do you have something to drink in your room?”

  “Another yes,” Heska replied.

  Christine nodded and looked down to the market once more. “And does the roose arka lady maybe deliver?”

  Heska smiled. “An advantage of being the third most powerful being currently residing in Melindron, Lady Psyonara, is that sending out for something to eat is not a problem: I’ll summon a servant. Please, do come in.” She indicated the door to her suite.

  Christine floated across. “If you’re at number three on the local overpowered podium, Lady Heska, and your boss the Archmage is presumably number one, then who gets silver?”

  “You misunderstand,” Heska said, as they walked into her room. “Her Wisdom is not the most powerful.”

  Christine stopped on her way into the room, her shoulders falling. “It’s me, isn’t it?” She sighed.

  “You really are quicker than Lord McKenzie, Lady Psyonara,” Heska replied, with another smile.

  “Love the guy to bits, but that’s not a high bar,” Christine replied. “Please call me Christine, Heska, and please ask that servant to bring a pen and some paper, because I really meant it about taking notes.”

  What emerged from that evening was a fondness for Melindronian rosé and rusaka sauce, the beginnings of a friendship with the not-actually-that-scary wolf lady (Hessie really did mean well, Christine thought, and she really was concerned for her - and also kinda lonely, which was sad, someone shouldn’t be defined by their mistakes and had anyone actually died from being wolfified? No, they had not), a few unresolved questions about her past which, in the absence of McKenzie’s phone, she had no way of resolving and a small piece of parchment featuring a great many ink blots (seriously, how were you supposed to write with a feather?), a Venn diagram and a few notes beneath in, according to Hessie, ancient Paraverian, although to Christine it was just her usual handwriting.

  The Venn diagram was two circles, labelled ‘Me’ and ‘Crowbar’. The ‘me’ circle had ‘flying, pushing/hitting stuff (by thinking about it)’ and the ‘Crowbar’ circle listed ‘infinitely punchable’ (true on many levels, Christine thought) and ‘pushing/hitting stuff really hard (without thinking about it)’, which, well, also several meanings there, but since she no longer had access to a therapist she’d have to address her unconscious choice of wording at a later date.

  The crossover between the circles listed the following:

  Infinitely magicable (for sure: Sergei tried weird bondage thing, nothing happened except it tickles)

  Magic radar (for sure, it worked on Hessie, helps to close eyes)

  Might literally explode (one to watch)

  Copy magic stuff (maybe? Because after meeting Cally do not need to speak in oldy-worldy any more even though that wasn’t a thing anyway but I’m not 100% on that personally but OK maybe)

  Immortal

  She’d drawn a line through the last one: her personal internal jury was out, and she felt very uncomfortable thinking about it. For now, she’d moved it into the ‘Crowbar’ circle.

  The notes underneath read as follows:

  1) don’t explode

  2) next time someone magics me, try and copy it

  3) although maybe not the first few times because this is scary

  4) seriously, don’t explode

  There were some addenda that she’d made on her own, later.

  5) have a quiet word with Nighrwing the english lady

  ...because she and Crowbar weren’t the only two earth people who’d ended up on this planet and could do weird stuff, and whether or not Crowbar knew more about Nightwing than he’d said on the phone, Christine wasn’t an idiot and could put two and two together. If she knew, fine. If she didn’t and McKenzie hadn’t made the same mental connection (not unlikely, Chrstine thought), then Nightwing deserved to know that she might be a potentially world-ending magical warhead – but she also deserved privacy, so Christine hadn’t just put a line through her name but thoroughly scribbled it out.

  More recently: 6) ‘add ‘release a little magic’ to morning mindfulness routine’.

  Which she’d since ticked off, because she had done. Christine knew very well what she was like as a person, but unlike a certain ex of hers, she also knew that personality traits didn’t have to be set in stone – you could work on yourself. One thing she intended to very much keep a clean sheet on, if she could, was not exploding.

  Heska had been right that she wouldn’t be staying long in Melindron. After what Christine thought was a very cursory request from the Archmage, she’d been despatched with Cally to ‘unify the east’.

  But what about Crowbar? Location unknown at present, we’ll keep you posted, in the meantime Cally could really use your help.

  Christine didn’t like it, but what could she do? Haring off on her own to try and find Crowbar didn’t seem like an option, and it seemed that even on magic planets you didn’t get something for nothing. The Archmage was a head of state – she had a big network of people out there and had alluded to the fact that ‘were he to be spotted anywhere, Lady Callena and I would know about it within a matter of hours’. The implication was clear: stay with Cally and get some east-unification done if you want us to share that with you too, rookie.

  Okay, fine. Not a quest to find Crowbar, but still a quest. Fate of nations level stuff. There’d better be a goddamned unicorn at some point, though.

  What ‘unifying the east’ largely seemed to consist of for Christine was - surprise surprise! - more travelling from place to place, keeping a low profile, in the company of a woman who seemed to be socially awkward to the point of needing an official diagnosis, except when talking to anyone other than Christine.

  When interacting with the world at large, Callena magically (hah! That word again) developed highly impressive powers of eloquence, a brand of personal charm that was somehow both reserved but earnest at the same time, and a very easy manner with everyone from the lowliest serving boy to various kings, queens, ladies and lords that Christine would have found extremely impressive under any other circumstances. Hammering out NATOesque defence treaties seemed as easy for her as placing an order for takeout.

  But the circumstances weren’t ‘other’, they were, well, fairly awful, actually. Not line-of-fire awful, but Christine had just about had enough of keeping herself to herself while Callena the Selectively Shy hobnobbed with royalty and rulers.

  Their current assignment was the Southern Isles, which were pretty much as advertised: islands to the south. What they looked like (out of an airship window) was a big archipelago dotted with what must be amazing beaches, palms and surrounded by twin-hulled fishing boats with graceful golden sails – on this world, you only saw ships of any particular size where fishing happened.

  There were many ships of the airgoing variety here too – most of the islands sported at least one or two tied up examples, and many also came with huge wooden frameworks, within which coud be made out the skeletal beginnings of what had to be airships under construction. The island most distant from the largest of the chain was the only one without one of these: it instead came with a thin column of smoke rising into the air from what looked like a volcano. The others were all travel-agent grade beach paradises.

  An idyllic vacation spot, in other words – Christine itched to get out of her admittedly very pleasant room in the ‘Highcaptain’s Palace’ and go for a dip, or at least walk along a beach, but no: she’d been asked to keep her head down, and the consequences of causing a religious disturbance or some other ruckus had so far kept her compliant. All she’d seen of the Southern Isles was a short walk from the largest island’s single airship tower to the palace, and the only person she’d spoken to was a maid who’d brought her water and a bowl of fruit and nuts, which she’d immediately scoffed.

  The maid returned again with more of the same, performed a quick little bob, and made to leave.

  Keeping your head down didn’t mean you couldn’t do anything, though, right?

  “Um...sorry, what’s your name?” Christine asked the girl.

  She was in her late teens or early twenties, Christine thought, and although the majority of people Christine had seen so far here seemed to be ethnically similar to one of the pacific peoples, that was by no means a hard and fast rule. The girl herself was an example: she had hair nearly as blonde as Christine’s own.

  “I am called Kelistra, my lady,” the girl answered. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, of course – thanks for the snacks! And you don’t have to ‘my lady’, me, just Psyonara is fine. Is, um, Lady Callena still talking with your boss?”

  “Your guardian is still in talks with the Highcaptain, Psyonara,” Kelistra responded.

  “My guardian?” Christine said, in disbelief.

  “Is this not the correct term? Mom, um, I mean the Highcaptain’s Lady said that you were Lady Callena’s ward and pupil, and required seclusion and quiet for your studies,” Kelistra said.

  Oh my God that woman, Christine thought, with an internal scowl – to Kelistra, she just showed a pleasant smile.

  “Well, this warden pupil has decided to take a break,” Christine told her. “So...don’t wanna make any assumptions about your family, Kelistra, but does that little slip mean the Highcaptain’s your dad and you’re not really a maid?”

  Kelistra’s eyes went wide. “Um...yes. Sorry!”

  “It’s cool, Your Highess, don’t worry,” Christine smiled.

  “Yeah, um, I’m not a princess any more than I’m a maid,” Kelistra said. “We don’t do either of those things here. The palace is just for visitors, really – if it needs cleaning or people are staying then we just ask for volunteers to help out.”

  “Sooooooo – if a newcomer here wanted to maybe see a bit of your island, you’d be free to maybe hang out with them?” Christine asked, with her best hopeful look.

  Kelistra merely looked confused. “Haven’t you been here before?”

  “No, I absolutely haven’t, trust me on this,” Christine confirmed.

  “Oh! It’s just that, okay, you have a bit of an accent, but you’re speaking perfect Jarag,” Kelistra said. “I assumed you’d learnt it here.”

  Christine froze for a moment, then held up her left hand to show Kelistra a ring that she’d bought last month in a vintage clothes shop. “No, I can understand you because this is the magical Ring of, um, shit, erm, Duolingo,” she extemporised.

  Kelistra leaned forward to peer at the ring – it was a little twist of silver, which was engraved with the words that had resonated with Christine to the point where fifty dollars had seemed a reasonable price for something that was clearly not vintage in the slightest: ‘I am enough’.

  “Shidderm-duolingeau,” Kelistra said. “Is that your god or protector spirit?”

  “Yes, he’s a very wise...um...owl,” Christine said, and let her hand drop again. “Seriously, Kelistra, please – I am desperate to get out and do something, but I don’t want to wander around and end up getting in trouble.”

  Kelistra smiled. “Is Lady Callena a strict mistress? Would she discipline you?”

  “Okay, gonna assume that didn’t translate totally accurately and just breeze on past it,” Christine said, and did exactly that. “If the Lady Callena decides to take issue with my stepping out for a bit I will have more than a few things to say to her in return regarding misrepresentation of my exact role on this quest, and unreasonable behavioural expectations, too, which I do not feel have been properly addressed even slightly. However even if it’s not an attitude that is reciprocated – like, at all – I have made the decision to be a supportive travel companion and not make her work harder for her. She asked me to not draw any attention – if I’m with someone who knows this place, then I’m less likely to do that.”

  “Say no more,” Kelistra said. “A bunch of us are meeting at the Mermaid this evening, you want to come with?”

  Christine nodded readily. “Absolutely, and thank you – I really appreciate it,” she said, then frowned. “For the record this is the name of a bar and not an actual mythical woman with a fish tail, yes?”

  - o O o -

  “So the answer is, in fact, both,” Christine said a little later, to an actual-literal mermaid.

  “Yuh-huh,” the mermaid confirmed, as she dropped a couple of little yellow fruits into a glass, and pushed the finished cocktail across the (hah!) wet bar to Christine. “Not the most imaginative name, I grant you, but if the shoe fits...well, not that I need shoes, but you know the expression, right?”

  “This is so awesome!” Christine squealed, and she would have done a little dance if she hadn’t’ve been actually swimming right then.

  The mermaid looked confused. “You haven’t tasted it yet,” she said. “Seriously, this is a new recipe we’re trying out, I need feedback.”

  “Um, sorry, of course,” Christine said. “I’m just a little over-excited, you’re my first mermaid.”

  “Psyonara’s from the mainland, Liz,” Keli supplied, sipping her own cocktail and then pursing her lips. “Hmm – it’s good. Needs, like, maybe a little sharpness? Also, why am I suddenly seized by the compulsion to examine my life choices?”

  “I mixed in an enchantment of honesty with oneself,” Liz replied. “It’s supposed to make the person who drinks it think about what they really want out of life.”

  “Oh!” Keli frowned, then smiled and took another drink before announcing: “I think I’m actually okay with where I am right now.”

  “Good for you,” Liz nodded. “I was thinking about adding a dash of lime, but I wasn’t sure,” she added, raising her hand out of the water to rock it back and forth. She made no splash whatsoever when she did so: her arm wasn’t even wet, the water just didn’t stick to her skin at all.

  Christine paused with her own cocktail halfway to her lips, but then shrugged and had some anyway: she’d never shied away from introspection, it was healthy. The cocktail tasted sweet, and maybe a little smoky, like there was some mezcal in the mix. It tingled on her lips but she didn’t feel any more reflective than usual.

  “Yeah, I agree. Needs something citrussy,” she opined, and because she didn’t want to upset Liz, added: “I’m generally happy with the course of my life, but who doesn’t have a few regrets? The important thing is to learn from your experiences and pass those lessons on to people you think might need them, but in a sympathetic way.”

  “Well, good for you too, Psyonara,” she said. She turned around to survey the contents of her bar, frowned, then turned to address a member of her staff, who was, in fact, a dolphin. “Dek, could you go grab me a crate of limes from the boat?”

  “I’m on a break,” the dolphin replied, rolling it’s eyes.

  “You’re always on a break,” Liz responded dourly.

  “Well, I work hard,” Dek replied, with a side-to-side wiggle in the water that, to Christine, somehow conveyed a shrug.

  “You really don’t,” Liz told the dolphin.

  “Maybe I do and you just don’t notice,” the dolphin replied, with a soft tail-flip that clearly denoted sarcasm.

  Christine cast a few quick glances around. The Mermaid was a bar that you had to swim out to from the harbour – it was actually a half-sunk ship, which the actual mermaid – Liz – had clearly done some work on to turn into a comfy, albeit sunken, bar – there were lights hanging from artfully draped fishing nets, a lack of sharp jagged shattered wood and the like. Christine had actually thought to pack a swimsuit when she decided to go planet-hopping – nothing special, just a standard two-piece – but she was glad it had occurred to her.

  Sunken bars weren’t a new concept for Christine: she’d been on vacation a few places where there’d been poolside or beachside places along the same lines. Liz herself was, obviously, the surprise. From the waist up she was a pretty woman with green eyes (and hair), from the waist down she had a tail of shimmering blue-green fish scales. Christine spotted a small boat tied up to the sunken bar’s stern, upon which, amongst other supplies, was unmistakeably a small crate of limes.

  “Don’t worry Dek, you can chill. I got it,” Christine said, and reached out with her mind – for her, as unremarkable an occurrence as reaching up to a high shelf. The limes floated off the boat, swooshed across the intervening distance, and Christine set them down on the bar.

  Everyone – Liz, Dek, Keli and the half-dozen or so of her friends they’d swum out here with – was staring at Christine.

  “Um...I did an, er, levitation spell?” Christine ventured uncertainly, vaguely recalling Revlius’ floating wine bottle and Heska’s lecture on the balcony in Melindron.

  “Yuh-huh, we assumed,” Liz said. “It’s more the speaking in fluent dolphin that surprised us.”

  “Um, I did? Oh! Of course I did,” Christine gabbled quickly. “I have a magic ring, look, it translates for me.”

  She held up her hand again for everyone to see.

  “Your ring lets you communicate using the secret language between merfolk and their spiritually-bonded dolphin companions?” Dek asked.

  Christine opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again and said: “Apparently yes? There wasn’t a manual with this thing, sorry. Have I done a bad thing?”

  Liz quickly spoke up. “No, no, not at all, it’s not like that,” she said reassuringly. “It’s not a sacred bond: if it was he might actually do some actual work when I asked him to.”

  “Ugh, again with this?” Dek squeaked wearily. “I contribute by providing ambiance and a bit of local colour – and I do all the deliveries, don’t I?”

  Liz snorted, unconvinced. “We have one client, Dek. Just the one. It’s not exactly a punishing schedule, is it?”

  “It’s a long swim,” Dek objected.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Could I try the ring?” Keli asked. “I’ve always wanted to speak to dolphins: not being able to commune with marine life like merfolk can has always been a source of sadness to me.”

  “That’s just the cocktail talking, Keli. Believe me, you’re not missing much,” Liz told her. Dek gave an indignant click in response.

  “I’d love to let you try, Keli, but I’m told it only works for me,” Christine extemporised. Keli looked disappointed, but the awkward moment appeared to have been smoothed over. Liz deployed lime juice to the research cocktails, and they were pronounced to now be extremely good – she began making a large batch of it which she sealed in a green bottle wrapped up in golden wire: “Dek, this is for tomorrow morning’s delivery, okay? If you can be bothered, that is.”

  Christine leaned back against the wooden bar, enjoying the cocktail, the flow of non-stilted conversation, the pleasantly warm water, the sunset and the sight of one of Keli’s male friends, who was interestingly lithe and muscled and had definitely checked her out a couple of times.

  “I hope I get to stay here for a few days at least,” she said to Keli. The previous east-unification visits had all been reasonably quick stops of only a day or two at most: Callena was a diplomatic whiz, it seemed.

  “Oh, you definitely will,” Keli responded. “I don’t think I’m giving away any state secrets if I tell you Dad thinks that the Ascendancy is a definite problem, but he’s going to have to get all the captains to agree, and without the other pearl that takes ages.”

  Something went ding-ding at the back of Christine’s mind. “What’s the ‘other’ pearl?” she asked, aiming for a tone of innocent conversation-making.

  “One of our two holiest objects – we all learn about them in school,” Keli supplied. “The Pearl of Lore and the Pearl of Wisdom. The Pearl of Lore is in the palace where it’s always been – apparently it used to talk, these days not so much. The Pearl of Wisdom is lost somewhere on the Forbidden Island – the spirit of the Pearl of Lore apparently went off with the spirit of the Sea Winds, and the Pearl of Wisdom hid on the island in grief. They can unite the captains of the families in times of need, and they’re supposed to consult with both pearls on any big decision, but like I said, the one we have won’t say anything and the other one is just plain gone.”

  She took another drink before adopting a portentous tone: “Whomsoever possesseth the Pearls shall be granted dominion over the waves and the water, and all the creatures of the sea shall do their bidding, etcetera etcetera. Having both pearls would be a potent symbol of unity, although the dominion and bidding parts are probably apocryphal.”

  “Apocryphal?” Christine asked, with a frown.

  “Means it’s total fish-shit,” Liz supplied. “Which is a pity,” she added, eyeing the apparently-still-on-a-break Dek who appeared to be making no effort to collect the large collection of empty glasses Christine, Keli and her friends had created, but was instead just doing lazy circles of the bar area. “Getting a certain creature of the sea to do his actual job for a change might be handy.”

  Dek dismissively blew some air out of his blowhole, but did head (unhurriedly) towards the nearest glass.

  “Aaaand do we know, maybe, where the Forbidden Island is? Christine asked.

  “Hard to miss,” Keli said, and confirmed Christine’s suspicion by pointing vaguely towards the volcanic island she’d seen earlier from the air. “Nobody can get there, though.”

  Dek gave a sudden dolphin laugh, a drawn-out series of clicks – unhampered by the glass he was carefully carrying back to the bar, held gently between his jaws.

  “You: shush,” Liz told him.

  Side mission time! Christine thought, with an internal whoop. Get the wisdom pearl, give it to Callena, Callena hands it on to Keli’s dad and seals the deal with the locals, then maybe she’ll chill, pull the stick out of her ass and actually engage with me.

  Crowbar would probably steal a boat and head straight for the line of smoke: Christine liked to think she was at least 5% less impulsive.

  “So I would presume there’s a steady stream of adventurers heading there to look for the pearl?” She asked.

  This question caught the attention of interesting-muscles, who swished over with a smile.

  “Certainly many have tried,” he said.

  “They tried and died?” Christine asked, getting the vibe.

  “So far no lives have been lost,” Interesting-muscles replied.

  Okay, so not getting the vibe. “Wow, colour me surprised. Placenames don’t usually get pronounced with Portentous Capital Letters-” Christine waved her hands from side to side in a gesture intended to convey said portentousness “-because they have non-deadly reviews on Yelp.”

  “It is, however, most certainly a cursed place,” Interesting-muscles informed her. “It is said that the pearl was lost during a storm so severe that the wind howled with the screams of drowned sailors, and their tormented spirits guard it to this very day.”

  “That’d do it, I suppose,” Christine allowed. “Do you know a lot about the scary haunted isle of doom?”

  Interesting-muscles waggled his eyebrows and swam closer. He had the same blond hair as Keli, dark brown eyes and a few tattoos on his arms and across his cheekbones. “I am the acknowledged expert on the Forbidden Island,” he said. “Kelistra will vouch for me on that.”

  “I can vouch that most people have a high opinion of your knowledge on the matter, but nowhere near as high opinion as you have of yourself,” Kelistra said. “Psyonara, this is my brother Rovandro, but you can call him idiot.”

  “Hi idiot,” Christine said, but with a winning smile and a cheery wave.

  Rovandro didn’t appear to be put off, and came closer still – a little bit too close, in Christine’s opinion.

  “My wisdom is not imparted for free,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “Perhaps we might discuss an appropriate fee for my very valuable consulting services, in private.”

  Keli rolled her eyes. “See what I mean about the idiot part?” She remarked to Christine.

  “Yep,” Christine replied, and held up a finger – Rovandro was stopped dead in the water and then, blinking in surprise, pushed back a metre.

  “Do you normally get anywhere with lines like that, Rovandro?” She asked him.

  “Um, well, yes, actually,” he answered, still trying to swim forward. He moved not an inch, succeeding only in pushing water backwards. Dek swam circles around him, giving vent to a high-pitched dolphin cackle of amusement.

  “We live on a small island, dating choices are limited,” his sister informed Christine, in a dry tone.

  “It’s a good job you’re pretty, Rovandro,” Christine said, “because you’re definitely not subtle. Hold your breath.”

  “What? Why?” Rovandro looked confused. It was, Christine had to admit, a little endearing.

  She flicked her finger gently upwards, propelling the surprised Rovandro up and out of the water at the same time, until his feet were dangling just above the surface, then let him fall back in. The spray thus generated spattered against an invisible barrier so as not to ruin anyone’s cocktails: Christine was nothing if not considerate. Rovandro came back up sputtering, to much hilarity from everyone: most of all his sister.

  “I knew I was going to like you as soon as I knocked on your door, Psyonara,” Keli told her, still laughing.

  “I suppose I deserved that,” Rovandro admitted, rubbing at his eyes.

  “Little bit, yeah,” Christine told him, nodding. “Such a cute reaction just before I dunked you, though: like a little puppy! I forgive you for not respecting my personal space, and although I get you were just doing a cheesy line – like, a very cheesy one, it’s a good job I’m not lactose intolerant, man, I would’ve needed an epipen for that, it was a whole dairy’s worth of cheese – it indicates that you might subconsciously feel that relationships are transactional in nature. That’s not a healthy attitude, dude, you should examine that.”

  “I have to admit, I don’t understand most of what you just said,” Rovandro admitted.

  “Well, my wisdom is imparted for free, so I will totally explain it to you later,” Christine promised.

  “You may have to use shorter words with fewer syllables,” Keli advised, still looking entirely delighted by her brother’s discomfiture.

  “If my friend Crowbar can develop a better attitude to gender dynamics then believe me, your brother can too,” Christine told Keli, then turned back to Rovandro – with a inwards flick of her finger, she drew him back through the water so that he was close – but not too close.

  “Okay, I’ll make some notes later, but right now: tell me about this island,” she said.

  Problem number one, Christine’s retrospective notes read. The island is surrounded by deadly shoals.

  She’d initially thought this meant piranhas or something, but, it turned out, ‘shoals’ could also mean ‘sharp pointy rocks hidden beneath sand’ – which meant that sailing to the Forbidden Island was a no-go. These had all been mapped in the days before the island gained the ‘Forbidden’ part and the mandatory capital letters, back when it was apparently just a normal island with a normal town, though, so it should be possible to approach in a small boat, when the seas were calm, which led to:

  Problem number two – suspiciously unpredictable seas.

  Rogue waves and a general lack of anything resembling normal maritime conditions was a feature of the Forbidden Island. Anyone approaching always turned back pretty smartly when their boat started to get into trouble.

  Not an issue, for Christine – she needn’t get wet at all.

  Then again, it shouldn’t’ve been an issue for the locals, either: ships flew, here. Which brought up:

  Problem number three - suspiciously well-targeted volcanic ejecta.

  Any airship approaching the Forbidden Island usually ran into volcanic ash once they got within a mile or so. If they persisted, the ash was replaced by gravelly basaltic hailstones rattling off the hull. If they really, really persisted, then the volcanic hail would start to be interspersed with bigger rocks: some of which were still molten. When one burned through an airship’s hull and all the way out the other side, leaving a smoking hole dangerously close to the core, the captain chose to turn back. Nobody had made a second attempt by air.

  Christine was willing to bet she could tank a few lava bombs – and this was based on some actual data, because she wasn’t a lava bomb virgin: there’d been that ‘Captain Hephaestus’ guy that one time who’d flung a whole bunch of them at her until Jimmy had got close enough to his volcano hideout to fade through the rock and switch off the power supply, and Crowbar had then done what he usually did, bashed his way in and punched the guy out. Good times – she remembered taking a great amount of delight in telling old Captain H that he ‘wasn’t too hot to handle after all’. One of her early attempts at pithy one-liners, but she’d been proud of it.

  Which left:

  Problem number four – the vicious demon.

  One thing the eventually-just-cautious-enough airship captain had been able to report was that the shoreline was defended by ‘a demon with a vicious toothed maw, heralded by sound of drums’. That was the extent of the description and apparently nobody had thought to ask any follow-up questions regarding either the demon’s appearance or it’s rhythm section, though, so that whole thing was a bit hazy.

  Still: she was a superhero, and this was clearly superhero shit. She got out of bed early the next morning, put on the sensible black top, jacket, close-fitting leggings and boots she’d chosen in Melindron as travelling wear, and strapped a dagger to her waist (she’d given up on the chainmail: it stained everything with rust marks and it wasn’t like she needed armour).

  “Uh, good morning,” Rovandro said, from the bed. He looked a little groggy – endearingly so.

  “Good morning to you too,” she said back to him, with a smile.

  Okay, yes, he’d been a bit of a douche to begin with, but once she’d dunked some politeness into him (and got Liz to make him one of the special cocktails) he’d confessed that he didn’t think people (especially women) would like him for who he was, hence the Casanova impression. That served to make Christine sympathetic rather than supercilious, he was still attractive and Christine was still bored, so after another drink or two she’d just figured why the hell not?

  “Leaving so soon?” He asked, noting her dress.

  “Got an errand to run,” she said. “I shouldn’t be too long. Please stay if you want: when I’m done, if you would also like to, we could get some breakfast together, then maybe go for some more of Liz’s cocktails – I had fun last night and am very open to the idea of spending more time with you. There’s no pressure on that, though: if you feel that this was a one-night thing, then I am happy to respect that decision.”

  Rovandro blinked, then smiled lazily. “Well of course you had fun, I’m well known for-” he stopped and thought for a moment. “Sorry. Last night was fun, yes. I’m happy that we both enjoyed each other’s company and I would like to spend some more time with you.”

  “That’s great!” Christine smiled. “See how much better things are when there’s respectful honesty and healthy boundaries, even in short-term relationships?”

  “Again, not sure I understand, but okay,” Rovandro answered. “Where are you off to?”

  “Just popping out to go grab that missing pearl,” Christine told him, and then flew out the window, leaving the woven blinds flapping behind her and Rovandro looking flabbergasted.

  It took seven minutes thirty eight seconds to get to the island: Christine had anticipated a lack of batteries for her trip, and had therefore invested in a mechanical watch which was totally fugly and clearly marketed towards insecure alpha male types who’d happily part with an extra hundred dollars if something was described as ‘tactical’, but was guaranteed to survive all sorts of extreme conditions. She stayed low and slow to begin with, so as not to alarm too many people: but it was early, and the streets were largely deserted.

  Once she was flying over the surf she climbed up to about a football pitch above sea level, which was what she usually thought of as ‘polite height’. At a hundred metres’ distance, a human being was only about as tall as the width of your pinky: what this meant in practical terms was that most people would only notice her as a small object flying somewhere up above and assume she was a bird.

  Since there was absolutely nobody around, though, she opened up her personal throttles a bit. Christine had once flown from New York to Montreal in a tearing hurry (she’d had tickets for the comedy festival and was very late) and it had cost her a great deal of effort, a number of complaints from both the Canadian and American militaries and absolutely destroyed her hairstyle, but she’d got to her seat before the gig started with enough time to borrow a hairband from the lady in the seat next to her and pull it into an emergency ponytail.

  She hadn’t thought to time it, but thanks to the official telling-off she had to endure a few days later from a gathering of very angry American and Canadian generals, she knew it had taken her just a hair over 8 minutes, which she hadn’t thought particularly noteworthy until Jimmy had told her that averaging mach 3.4 and topping out at mach 4.7 was a pretty big deal if you weren’t a cruise missile (which was what the generals had assumed she was), and it had even ended up in the Guinness Book of Records, although personally she thought that was cheating on her part.

  It had turned out to otherwise be a total waste of time and effort, though: the comedian had been one of those edgelordy types who thought offensive automatically equated to funny. Christine hadn’t agreed.

  So, like she had done on the way back from the disappointing show, she kept up a relatively sedate three hundred miles an hour or so, and enjoyed the feeling of the morning sun on her face as she flew eastwards towards the forbidden island, then hovered a mile or so offshore for a few moments to get a good look at it.

  It was long and thin – shaped like an elongated link in a bicycle chain or a legbone: thick at each end but narrow in the middle. The eastwards end was the one with the volcano: it looked mostly dormant, although the column of smoke still rose from it. The centre part was all forest, as was the western nub, save for the ruins of a town with a little deserted harbour – one of the walls had collapsed about halfway along it’s length.

  “May aswell start there,” Christine said to herself, and descended towards it.

  The ash started up almost right away, and out of nowhere – the volcano didn’t belch it out and it didn’t sweep in from the horizon, it just appeared.

  Christine held an arm up in an unconscious gesture as she willed it away. It didn’t do her any good, though: her shields, which had been known to stave off surface-to-air missiles (including while innocently flying over the US/Canadian border for a comedy gig, and those assholes in the military had even had the gall to invoice her for it – seriously, she was going away from America, at that point, who the hell fires on someone very obviously wearing evening wear and heels?) had no effect on the ash.

  And the ash likewise had no effect on her: well, almost. As it touched her skin it fizzled out of existence and felt pleasantly warm and tingly – under other circumstances she would have paid good money for ten minutes of that at a spa. She laughed and carried on.

  On cue, the ash transformed (again, very suddenly) into grit. It passed right through her shield, which she gave up on as pointless and relaxed, and the warm and tingly sensation kicked itself up several notches to something approaching what Rovandro had been able to manage last night when he, well, there were times and places to think of that sort of thing and while you were descending upon a cursed forbidden island was definitely not one of them. Christine suppressed a pleased giggle, set her face in a mask of professional side-quest concentration, and held her course.

  The lava bomb took her almost by surprise, coming as it did out of an impenetrable cloud of ash and grit while she was concentrating on behaving appropriately for a noble adventurer. She seldom had to consciously think to ward things off, though (as any number of villains, super or otherwise, had discovered when trying to sneak up on her from behind). The lava bomb appeared to be an actual physical object in the exact same way the ash and grit wasn’t – it didn’t explode against Christine’s shield, but it did push up hard against it, attempting to force her backwards like a huge, molten-glowing cattle prod. After a few seconds it appeared to expend all it’s fury and heat, though, and flaked away to fall harmlessly to the ground.

  The ash and grit cloud abruptly flickered out of existence – Christine gave a yelp of surprise as she saw she was literally a second away from dunking herself in the harbour – she’d gone off course. She brought herself to a sudden stop, floated across to the stones of the partially-collapsed harbour wall, and set down.

  “Well then,” she said, and raised her voice. “Uh...hello? Anyone home?”

  She was answered only by the sea breeze – and then a sudden series of loud but almost subsonic booming noises. She whirled round in surprise.

  Heralded by drums, she thought.

  There was no demon – but there was a seal in the harbour behind her – large and silvery-speckled grey, with liquid dark eyes - and it appeared to be smiling, the edges of it’s mouth curled up next to adorable little whiskers.

  “Awwww look at you!” Christine announced with a delighted smile, crouching down by the stones near the edge of the water. “I wish I had a fish for you. Aren’t you just the cutest?”

  The seal opened it’s mouth impossibly wide – almost like a bear trap. The very pink inside was lined with lots of extremely sharp and pointy teeth, and it gave vent to a chilling noise almost like a scream. ‘Demon’ suddenly didn’t seem like a bad description at all.

  Christine shot up ten metres into the air with a squeak and a ‘holy fucking shit!’

  “Naughty! Bad seal!” She berated it. “I was thinking about maybe trying to catch a fish for you but you are getting nothing with that attitude, buddy.”

  The seal closed it’s mouth and fixed her with a baleful glare, then:

  “Go away!” It said, in a woman’s voice. A lady seal, then.

  Christine descended once again – but to a safe distance up the tumbled harbour wall. “You can talk?” She asked, amazed.

  “Nothing gets past you, does it?” The seal remarked dryly.

  “Okay that was rude,” Christine told it, with a glare of her own.

  “Leave me in peace,” the seal said. “You have no business here.”

  “Sorry, I kinda do. I’m looking for the Pearl of Wisdom,” Christine told her.

  “Well I didn’t think you’d come all the way out here looking for fashion tips, human girl,” the seal answered. “Of course you’re looking for the Pearl of Wisdom, there’s literally no other reason to be here, is there?”

  “Oh I don’t know, I read on TripAdvisor that the seals in the harbour were really sweet and welcoming, but that turned out to be bullshit,” Christine shot back.

  “The Pearl is here for a good reason, and it wants to stay here,” the seal said.

  “Well now it needs to be somewhere else for a good reason, so it can’t,” Christine said. “Could you maybe cut the attitude and help me?”

  “Do us both a favour and fly back off to wherever you came from,” was the seal’s answer to that.

  Christine looked upwards, slapped a frown of concentration onto her face, and said: “Hmmm, let me think, umm – no,” she told the seal. “Have fun terrorising penguins or harassing wildlife film crews or whatever it is you do for shits and giggles, I’ll go and look for myself.”

  She floated up and away from the broken wall and the seal, and set herself down on the intact harbour wall where she could walk to the ruined town – only to find the seal was already in front of her, blocking her way. She was a huge animal – easily six metres long and pure sleek muscle – and reared up on her flippers she was very intimidating.

  “That was quick for someone who’s made entirely of blubber and bitchiness,” Christine told her acidly.

  “Oh, getting personal are we? I’m not the only one on this harbour wall with blubber issues, as those britches make painfully clear,” the seal informed her, with a raised eyebrow.

  “Hey!” Christine objected. “Not cool, seal!”

  “You started it,” the seal told her, tilting it’s body from side to side on each flipper for a moment, which was, presumably, a seal-shrug.

  “Okay I may not have been my best self for a moment there, but you are being unnecessarily difficult,” Christine said defensively.

  “Whatever,” the seal told her. “Turn around, or I’ll take a few pounds off that ass with my teeth. I’ve always wondered what stupid tastes like.”

  “Not a clue, but it can be very bad for your health,” Christine warned the seal, then with a dismissive gesture gave it a good hard mental shove off the wall and into the harbour.

  Nothing happened, but Christine was far from surprised.

  “Thought as much,” she said – and carried on walking.

  Fake ash, fake grit, fake seal: only the lava had been real, and it had been employed more like a bargepole than a bomb, used to try and keep her away. A warning, just like the hole through the airship.

  The seal actually sighed as Christine walked through it, then it evaporated into mist – Christine felt it as a tingle of power.

  “Why can’t people take a hint?” The seal’s voice lamented.

  “I can occasionally miss social cues and it’s something I’m working on, but in this case it’s because I’m on a quest,” Christine told the empty air around her.

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t you be,” the seal-voice sighed.

  “Listen, as fun as sniping at each other is, maybe instead we could have a normal conversation like rational human beings – or seal beings or whatever your whole deal is – and arrive at a compromise that works for both of us?” Christine appealed.

  “Could you not just leave me alone?” The seal-voice asked, somewhat plaintively.

  “Sorry, as much as I want to respect the preference for privacy that you have clearly, albeit rudely, expressed, I have a duty to retrieve the pearl, so I’m going to have to insist,” Christine replied, in a tone that she hoped struck the right balance between reasonableness and determination.

  “Whatever,” seal-voice said. “You’ll never find the pearl anyway.”

  Christine closed her eyes, tried to ignore the sound of breeze and seabirds, and let her other sense open up. It didn’t take long – there was a powerful magical signal somewhere up ahead, and not far, too. Somewhere in the ruined buildings of the town.

  Christine pointed at it. “A hundred bucks says it’s in that direction,” she said.

  “Fuck,” the seal-voice stated heavily. “You’re a mage, then, are you?”

  “Doubt it,” Christine replied. “Maybe we could have that chat, though?”

  “I’m in the temple in the middle of town you just pointed at,” seal-voice said. “You get five minutes, then I start considering other options to make you go away. I’m not all about illusions and restraint, doubt-you’re-a-mage-girl.”

  “Wouldn’t have assumed otherwise, doubt-you’re-a-seal-girl,” Christine answered, setting off towards the temple.

  It wasn’t a large town, and it wasn’t so ruined that it was difficult to find a path between the collapsed houses to a large, relatively intact building in the centre. The double doors were hanging off their hinges – Christine shuffled sideways through the gap between them and found herself in a circular room – it was very well-lit, on account of not having a roof, or at least not one that was still above the floor: bits of dry, rotten timber and broken tiles were scattered all over the place.

  At the centre of the room was an altar that looked as if it had been constructed of lots of coral, stacked up and wired together with strands of gold. The altar had two hemispherical recesses in it: one was empty but the other contained a large, softly glowing pearl that positively hummed with magical va-va-voom.

  “No guesses for prizing what that is,” Christine quipped to herself.

  “There’ll be no prising of any kind at all, young lady,” the seal-voice admonished her.

  A woman stepped out from behind the altar – at precisely the same moment, the pearl flashed out of existence.

  She looked a lot like the locals here: long, glossy-black hair, honey-coloured skin and dark eyes – but the skin tone was overlaid with a slight glow and – big surprise, Christine thought, given what she’d just seen – a multicoloured nacreous sheen. She was also broadcasting magical power, and Christine couldn’t put an age to her: her face was unlined, but she equally didn’t seem young. She was wearing a spotless robe that shimmered as she walked – or, well, lurched, actually, she wasn’t particularly steady on her feet. A probable reason for this was the green bottle she was holding, bound with golden wire, from which she took a drink.

  A somewhat familiar bottle. Christine riffled back through her memory.

  I do all the deliveries, don’t I?

  We have one client, Dek. Just the one.

  “Like it?” Christine asked. “The lime juice makes all the difference.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You followed the dolphin,” she said. “Damn it, that lazy-ass creature hasn’t got the smarts of a sea cucumber.”

  “Don’t be rude about Dek, he works very hard,” Christine reprimanded her firmly.

  The woman gave vent to a grim cackle. “No he most certainly does not,” she said. “If fish didn’t swim, he wouldn’t bother either.”

  “I didn’t follow him anyway,” Christine said. “You live on a place called ‘Forbidden Island’ with a live volcano and magical defences, lady – seriously you may as well have put up a sign.”

  “I admit it, I’m not subtle,” the woman admitted, and then attempted to lean against the altar. Unfortunately she’d misjudged how far away she was standing from it, and nearly fell over. “Who the fuck moved that?”

  Christine couldn’t help but smile. “You’d get along well with a friend of mine,” she said.

  “No I wouldn’t,” the woman said, sinking to the floor with her back against the altar. She peered blearily at Christine through half-closed eyes, as if squinting. “In case you hadn’t noticed, human...ish...girl...thing, I’m not particularly approachable.”

  “You’re a beautiful woman with a bottle of strong booze – believe me, you wouldn’t have to be,” Christine answered. “Anyway, what do I call you? Pearl?”

  “Hah, listen to the funny girl-thing, ‘Pearl’,” the woman said. “My name is Istra. I don’t care what yours is – now go away.”

  “Not gonna happen, Istra,” Christine told her. “I can’t help but notice that you don’t seem to be in a very good place.”

  “Wisdom of the fuckin’ ages right there,” Istra snorted out a laugh.

  Christine cleared the debris and assorted crap from a patch of floor with a wave of her hand, and then sat down cross-legged, so she was on the same level as the inebriated pearl-being. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Istra set the bottle down on the floor and looked at her. “I’m curious what it is about the clouds of ash, stinging volcanic grit, exploding rocks and terrifying illusions of ocean predators that made you think I in any way want to talk to anyone about anything?” She asked, with a wide-eyed expression of feigned curiosity.

  “I think you’re pushing people away, it’s not healthy, and I’m not the only one who thinks so,” Christine said.

  Istra looked suspicious. “Who else thinks that? Who have you been talking to?”

  Mixologist mermaids, Christine did not answer.

  “Recently? Not a lot of people, to be honest,” she said instead. “I’m on this quest, you see, and I’m sure it’s important and all, but it’s come with a certain amount of social isolation that I haven’t liked in the slightest. I don’t think it’s your thing either, Istra.”

  “Ah,” Istra said. “A talker. Great.”

  “I’m also a listener,” Christine said – she eyed the bottle: it looked to be about half-finished. That was quite a hit of magical introspection juice Istra had very recently necked. Thanks, Liz, Christine thought, with an inward smile.

  “Why are you here, Istra?”

  Istra took a breath and expelled it. “I fucked up,” she admitted. “Ever come up against something and your best is just not good enough?”

  “We all have those days,” Christine answered, with an encouraging smile. “Tell me what happened. I’ve got nowhere else to be, so we’ve got all the time you need.”

  “I’ll tell you if you stop being so nauseatingly nice,” Istra informed her, making a face – this immediately turned from fake-disgust to genuine mischievousness, and she indicated the bottle with a nod. “And you have to finish this. That fucking mermaid dosed it with something and if you’re going to force your company on me, then you can damn well be as drunk as I am.”

  “It’s a little early for me, Istra,” Christine told her, eyeing the bottle a little fearfully.

  “Are you a demon or a pussy?” Istra asked her, with a snort.

  “I’d like to think I’m neither,” Christine replied.

  “You’re something,” Istra told her. “Not sure what.”

  “I identify as a superheroine,” Christine told her defensively. “Superhero is fine if you don’t like gendered terms, but I have my personal preferences.”

  “Never heard of it,” Istra replied. “Drink up, superheroine, or I’m going back to pearl mode where it’s easier to ignore you until you get bored and fuck off.”

  “Fine,” Christine glowered at the pearl, floated the bottle into her hand and upended it into her mouth. Istra’s eyes widened.

  “I didn’t mean you had to finish it all in one g-” Istra stared to say.

  Christine held a finger up. Istra fell silent. Christine finished the bottle and tossed it over her shoulder, where it smashed with a tinkle of glass, joining the rest of the detritus on the floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Don’t want me to be nice?” Christine asked her, with a glare. “I’ll respect your request, even though I spend a lot of time trying to be nice. Do you know why that is, Istra? In case you’re not getting the vibe, that was one of those rhetorical questions, I’m pretty much gonna tell you anyway, so you just need to say ‘why is that, Psyonara?’ without any bitchy addenda. That’s my name, by the way, which you said you don’t care about but what the fuck ever.”

  Istra had gone wide-eyed. “Um...why is that, Psyonara?” She asked Christine: politely.

  “It’s because I am staggeringly powerful, Istra,” Christine answered her. “I can move shit with my mind that a truck can’t shift, then I move the truck too. I can fly faster than a goddamn fighter jet and the major drawback to that is finding a salon afterwards to sort my hair out. People can shoot missiles at me and I just find it a teensy bit annoying. Apparently on this world I can do all sorts of other shit that I don’t even want to think about. I came here to fetch you – you are leaving here with me, one way or another. I’d rather do it the nice way, but that’s not my only option.”

  She gave Istra a level look. Istra nodded in response.

  Christine sighed. “But you’re not just a magic pearl in a little presentation box or some shit like that,” she went on. “You’re a person – a drunk rude person, maybe, and a magic person who is sometimes a big magic pearl and sometimes a-, what kind of seal was that exactly?”

  “Leopard seal,” Istra replied, readily.

  “It was scary,” Christine told her, absently shoving a few more bits of debris away from where she was seated. “Something else that’s scary is ‘staggeringly powerful’. In some circumstances, people need a flying telekinetic superheroine to get between them and the bad shit of the world, and in those circumstances ‘staggeringly powerful’ is great. They want to see it. Most of the time, though, the bad shit is happening to someone else somewhere else – and then I’m just scary.”

  “I can confirm that I am definitely now scared,” Istra told her.

  Christine looked up at her with a wan smile. “I don’t want you to be,” she said. “That’s why I spend so much effort being nice, as you put it. Nobody wants to hang around with someone who could obliterate them with a thought, so I try to listen, and smile, and say encouraging things and be there for people. I go to therapy and listen to what my therapist says and try and follow her advice, because that’s what a normal person would do. Above all I try to help. So, could we do this as nice Psyonara helping out Istra who is clearly not in a good place, and not the other way?”

  “Is this about me or about you now?” Istra asked, with a confused frown.

  “I think I needed to offload that, so thank you, but I promise it’s back to being about you now,” Christine told her. “Please – tell me what happened.”

  Istra opened her mouth to start speaking, but Christine gave a slight burp and then added: “Sorry. I swear I absolutely meant it about taking your time, but I think I’m going to be very, very drunk once the alcohol content catches up with the magical payload, and quite possibly sick, so if you want me to be actively listening you may have a limited window for that.”

  - o O o -

  Cally prided herself on patience, kindness and honesty. So far on her diplomatic mission, the last one had gone out of the window, taking the second one with it: now patience was very much threatening to join them.

  She cannot know where he is. For as long as possible, keep her in the dark. She must not go to him.

  These had been the Archmage’s words - reinforcing what Nightwing had told her when Lady Psyonara had first made herself known, back in Vyrinios. Nightwing’s admonition had been operational in nature: knowledge of McKenzie’s whereabouts was need-to-know, and until they trusted her enough to recruit her, Psyonara did not need to know. Nothing personal – just good procedure.

  The Archmage had more esoteric reasons, and on paper Cally agreed with them. She was a cleric rather than a mage, but you didn’t need any great amount of magical learning to know that quintessence was dangerous and unpredictable: the very epitome of ancient wild magic. Cally had seen what McKenzie could do with it: almost always without thinking, but then again that was McKenzie, he seemed to look upon ‘almost always without thinking’ as a personal philosophy rather than a character flaw. There was, in a way, something heraldic about his lack of processing between impulse and action – it was certainly a form of absolute honesty, and despite herself Cally had found something to admire in it.

  McKenzie hadn’t been unprecedented, though: quintessents popped up now and again throughout history, and almost always popped back out of it again pretty quickly – or rather exploded out of it, usually taking a significant chunk of the landscape with them. They were all rumoured to be immortals or one kind or another, but it seemed immortality was, apparently, no defence against unbridled magical destructive power.

  True to quintessent form, McKenzie had indeed exploded not just once but several times since Lord Lemuel had exiled him to this plane of existence, but either by the workings of fate or just pure dumb luck these incidents had (so far) not resulted in his death or the tremendous loss of life that legend spoke of,

  Well, unless you’d had the bad luck to be an animal living in that forest he’d levelled.

  Or a troll, but as Cally understood it that had been indirect. Danna, Len-Ellie and McKenzie had fought a great many trolls that day, true, but the majority of fatalities had occurred afterwards, when – thanks to the Archmage’s intercession - everyone realised what they were and how their newly-reduced physical size facilitated a bit of payback.

  And of course there’d been that thing with the theatre in Vyrinios that was now just a magically radioactive hole with a giant sphere at the bottom of it.

  And come to think of it, Mahrak’s staff had made a pretty big boom when McKenzie poured pure magical energy into it.

  What was unprecedented was a second quintessent popping up at the same time. One quintessent was rare, two quintessents was unheard of – that the second quintessent was not only from the same distant world as the first but a very close acquaintance of his who had come here with the express intention of finding him was so vanishingly unlikely that the Archmage and Lady Heska (a learned student of quintessent lore) had decided that caution was very much the order of the day.

  So Cally hadn’t told Lady Psyonara that not only did they all know exactly where McKenzie was but exactly why he was there, what he was doing, and furthermore they were in regular contact with him. This was neither kind or honest, though, so Cally had taken to avoiding the girl as much as possible so she didn’t have to confront this – in itself unkind, which wasn’t helping matters.

  She could still be patient, though: this wasn’t just someone engineering some distance between two friends for the sake of spite, these were important matters. The fate of the world was in the balance right now, but a meeting between McKenzie and Psyonara could, for all anyone knew, render that a completely moot point because there wouldn’t be a world any more. An adverse reaction between the magic-draining McKenzie and a thaumatonet – a magical item crafted to drain magic – had once nearly destroyed a magical college. Nobody wanted to find out what would happen if two magic-draining quintessents reacted to each other in the same way.

  Patience could be hard to hold on to in the middle of a negotiation where every single decision had to be ratified by not just one dignitary but a whole host of them, most of whom were not physically present, but all of whom wanted something different from the eastern alliance in general or Melindron in particular. The Highcaptain wanted to be accommodating, but he had little real political power: the Southern Isles were geographically small, but their airship fleet was large, their shipwrights the best known, and their political unity...almost non-existent. The Highcaptain was little more than a mayor: yes, he ruled the Isles, but their real power was their fleet, and apart from his own ships he had no say over where they went or what they did.

  It was a good job this was an island paradise, because Cally expected to be here for a good long while.

  “I’m very sorry, Lady Callena,” the Highcaptain – a huge, rope-muscled man called Pelandro – told her. “I can’t commit us to any treaty without the unanimous approval of the captains of all the families, and it simply takes time to arrange all that.”

  Time the east might not have.

  Cally looked around the palace’s council chamber: it was essentially a room built to contain a very large circular table, with seventeen seats: one each for the captain of each of the major families, and one for her – only five were occupied, Cally herself, the Highcaptain, and the three captains who’d happened to be in port when Cally arrived: two women and another man, all of middle or advanced years. The walls were lined with windows, their soft linen curtains waving gently in a fresh sea breeze, and between each window was a painting, tapestry or other example of Southern Isles art. There was a small gap in the table through which one might walk to gain access to a low altar (you could see over the top of it from each seat) made of beautifully crafted and polished coral. There were two identical receptacles atop it – within one nestled an enormous, fist-sized pearl: a Southern Isles holy object, the counterpart of which was lost to history.

  Pelandro’s message was already a familiar refrain. She hadn’t been able to nail down any sort of agreement, save that any islander airships would not charter themselves out to the Ascendancy...in principle.

  “How much time, Highcaptain?” Callena asked.

  “Three of the captains currently out upon the wind have speaking-mirrors, and we’ve asked their families here to summon them back and, should they cross courses with of any of the other ten, to pass that message on. We all know the gravity of the Ascendancy threat, Lady Callena – we’ve had reports that they’ve already seized some of our airships. Not a one of us will ignore that message. We’ve sent out summons in the usual manner, too – word will be left with our factors at all major ports. Islanders always check in with our factors when they tie up anywhere...but as to when that could be, I cannot say,” Pelandro answered.

  “I see,” Cally replied, then, remembering to be diplomatic, added: “Once again, I thank you for your efforts.”

  “I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, Lady Callena,” Pelandro told her, then smiled. “In the meantime, you and your acolyte are our honoured guests, and will want for nothing. I hope I don’t seem overly proud of our home when I say that there are far worse places to spend a few weeks.”

  Callena arranged a smile. “Of course, Highcaptain. I am grateful for your hospitality.”

  “You must visit the Mermaid,” Pelandro went on. “In fact, let us do that this very evening. My daughter tells me that the Lady Psyonara had a wonderful time there last night – no doubt she has spoken to you of it.”

  “Wait, Psyonara has been...visiting mermaids?” Cally asked, surprised...but also unsurprised. The girl was a handful.

  “Oh, you misunderstand: she hasn’t, no. The Mermaid is a local inn, and a very fine one. Lizzippa-kreeeAkh-skreeet that runs the place actually is a mermaid, but that’s just a coincidence,” Pelandro explained, as if this was all just perfectly obvious.

  “So...that would still be a yes?” Cally pointed out, confused.

  “I suppose so,” Pelandro admitted. “She makes the most exquisite cocktails, when I returned to the Isles with my wife Veldra - well, wife-to-be at that point, we’d freed her from from Bazuli raiders we tangled with, and one thing led to another - the very first place I went with her was the Mermaid. Admittedly I had to teach her to swim first, but she agreed it was absolutely worth it.”

  “So Psyonara has been out with your daughter?” Cally asked, frowning.

  One of the three captains spoke up with a chuckle. “Oh yes – and in with his son, I hear,” she reported, and then the chuckle became a cackle.

  Cally sighed. “Oh dear,” she said.

  “Boys will be boys and girls will be girls,” Pelandro said, but then went wide-eyed as he realised what he was saying. “Sorry. Um. Was she...not supposed to leave the palace?”

  “Ideally not, no,” Cally replied. “I take it there was drinking involved?”

  “Um, I-” Pelandro started to reply, looking somewhat like a naughty schoolboy rather than the nominal leader of a small country.

  He was interrupted by four things:

  1) some surprised shouting from outside

  2) a loud ripping noise as something came through one of the windows very quickly indeed, tearing the curtains off their hangings

  3) the same something saying ‘shit, fuck, oops’ as it hit the floor

  4) and then Psyonara got to her feet, pulled the curtains away from her face and said: “That’s my bad, I will totally pay for those drapes.”

  “Never mind,” Cally said, with another sigh. “Evidently drinking was very much involved last night, and is still involved now. Highcaptain, I can only apologise for my acolyte, she is unschooled in the ways of-”

  “Oh for real, Callena, shut the hell up already,” Psyonara told her, with a roll of her eyes. “I’m not your goddamn acolyte, whatever the hell that means, or your warden pupil, and you for damn sure don’t have to apologise for my shit, it is my shit and if it needs apologising for, then I will do it.”

  Although Pelandro and the three captains all looked extremely surprised, to their credit none of them came out with an angry demand to know the meaning of any insolent interruptions or ordered Psyonara out of the room. The only vocalisation was from the older of the two lady captains, who simply asked: “Are you quite alright, dear?”

  Psyonara gave her an extremely drunken but genuine smile. “That is so nice of you to ask. Yes, thank you, I am fine. I just misjudged my descent a little. I won’t lie, nice island grandma-looking lady, I am very drunk right now.”

  “Yes,” Cally told her tightly. “We noticed.”

  Psyonara ignored her. “I’m just going to sit down for a bit,” she said, sliding onto the nearest chair and putting an ancient-looking leather bag on the table. “Okay, um...hands up if you’re Keli and Rovandro’s dad?”

  Pelandro raised his hand.

  “They are both extremely lovely people and you should be a proud dad,” Psyonara told him.

  “Um...thank you?” Pelandro responded. “Is that why you crashed through the window?”

  “Nope,” Psyonara announced. “I got you something. Or rather someone. Shit.”

  Psyonara then addressed the rumpled old bag on the table. “Sorry, Istra, that was not cool. You are not a thing. You are a woman who deserves better than that asshole in the middle of the room.”

  “Psyonara, what on earth is going on?” Cally asked her.

  “We had a talk and decided it might be a bad idea for me to touch her, and this was the least fucked-up bag we could find on the island,” Psyonara replied – to Cally’s mind, very obtusely and unhelpfully. She pushed the bag round the table to the nearest of the captains, who passed it on to Pelandro. “Merry Christmas, Keli and Rovandro’s dad.”

  Pelandro looked at the bag as if it contained a live snake, reached towards it with one hesitant hand, and then stopped.

  “Um, so when Rova told me this morning ‘she flew off to the Forbidden Island’, he was being completely literal about that?” He asked Psyonara.

  “Yes, I can fly,” Psyonara told him. “I get it’s a big deal here, but can we move past that and you open the bag?”

  “Would I be right in thinking, then, that in this bag is…?” Pelandro asked.

  “Yep,” Psyonara told him, with a grin. “Open it up already! I admit we didn’t have the best of starts but Istra’s awesome. Bear in mind though she has legitimate grievances to air, things to work through with Andro, and we’ve both been drinking all morning.”

  “Lady Psyonara, you agreed to not-” Cally started.

  “Drink in the morning? I did not,” Psyonara told her, with a snort, then frowned. “Okay clearly I have been, what I didn’t do is say I wouldn’t not day drink. Or didn’t say I would not’nt day drink. Or something. Point is the subject was never raised, and anyway this was totally mission-critical drinking that allowed me to make a breakthrough with Istra, who was not happy and needed to open up, and oh...my...God but you will not believe the story she had to tell. Just wow.”

  “I meant that you agreed not to talk about your powers, and especially not to use them,” Cally corrected her, with a look.

  “You are done tone policing Psyonara, lady!” A new voice announced.

  “I’m sorry, who are you?” Cally asked the newcomer, who had appeared, seated cross-legged on the table in front of Pelandro: he had opened the bag. She appeared to be a Southern Islander, but her skin gave off a noticeable pearlescent glow.

  “I’m Istra,” she replied. “The Pearl of Wisdom. I’m gonna hang over the edge of the pier and guess that you must be Callena the Selectively Shy.”

  “Sorry, Callena the what?” Callena the Selectively Shy asked her.

  “Oh, did I say that out loud?” Psyonara said. “Oops.”

  “The Pearl of Wisdom!” Pelandro and the three captains were gobsmacked.

  “Yes,” Istra replied.

  “Oh shit!” another new voice – this time male – said.

  A man had appeared in the centre of the room, with the now-pearl-less altar between him and the newly-returned, apparently extremely angry Pearl of Wisdom. He looked a lot like her, with the same skin, glow and white robe. This, presumably, was the long-dormant Pearl of Lore – Andro.

  “You’re storm-damned right ‘oh shit’, Andro, you two-timing piece of marine mucilage!” Istra snarled.

  “What’s marine moosy ledge?” Psyonara asked, looking up to her left as she riffled through her memory.

  “Sea snot,” Istra said. “That was me being generous.”

  Psyonara barked out a whoop. “Hah! Good one.”

  “Izzy,” Andro said. “I can explain.”

  Istra got down – a little unsteadily – from the table. “I’m done listening to you,” she said, advancing on him. “All this time I’ve been on that island, I thought it was because I’d let the Southern Isles down. The worst typhoon we’d ever seen. I did my best, I tried to save everyone, but I couldn’t save the Isle of Fire. You told me that you’d been fighting the storm, too, but you hadn’t been, now had you?”

  “Iz, I was fighting the storm, I was just...fighting on a different front. I was reasoning with the Spirit of the Sea Winds,” Andro said, placatingly. “I hoped that Senecia would intercede on our behalf with her husband. He’s the storm guy, after all.”

  “Andro, you went to fuck the Spirit of the Sea Winds while her husband was busy at work, riding the storm that I was the only one keeping away from our home,” Istra snapped back.

  Gasps all round.

  “Hah!” Psyonara barked out a laugh: slightly bitter, but bitter at one remove. “We haven’t even got to the bad bit yet. Just fuckin’ wait.”

  Andro was silent for a moment, and then: “Look, okay, things got a little bit out of hand but it was a one night thing, Izzy, I swear.”

  “You told me I’d let the islands down!” Istra raged at him. Outside, through the windows, Cally could see that the sky had gone from a sunshine-soaked blue to a steely grey, and the previously calm seas around the island were starting to swell. “That’s...what did you call it again Psy?”

  “Gaslighting,” Psyonara supplied.

  “That’s gaslighting,” Istra accused Andro, jabbing a finger at him across their altar. “You were off with a breezy airheaded wind-spirit when you should have been here, and you let me believe it was my fault!”

  More gasps.

  “Still not the bad bit,” Psyonara supplied. “Grab onto something, everyone. Believe it or not Andro could still go lower.”

  “You told me to go into exile!” Istra nearly shrieked at Andro. “You told me I wasn’t worthy to be a protector spirit!”

  “Not cool, Andro,” Psyonara told him. “That is seriously toxic behaviour.”

  “Psyonara, please don’t insult the Southern Isle’s sacred protector spirit,” Cally asked her.

  “Why not? He’s a lying sack of shit,” Psyonara shrugged. “Kinda wanna know what he’s been doing all this time, too, while he’s been sat there in pearl form.”

  “Or who,” Istra said, glaring at Andro.

  “Look, okay, it might have been maybe more than one night,” Andro said, backing away.

  “Andro, it’s been a hundred and seventeen years!” Istra snapped.

  “Really? Seems like only yesterday when we were happy together,” Andro attempted. “Can’t we just put this behind us? We’re reunited again! This should be a time of celebration!”

  “Nope!” Psyonara told him definitively.

  “Yeah don’t worry Psy, I’m not bucketing that bilge,” Istra assured her. She turned back to Andro. “You manipulated my unwarranted feelings of guilt which were caused by you abandoning your duty in order to avoid confronting our issues and instead leaving you free to pursue a relationship that you saw as inherently less emotionally expensive.”

  She looked at Psyonara. “Is that right?”

  “Spot on, Istra,” Psyonara nodded empathically.

  “Are you still seeing her? Does she know? Does her husband know?” Istra demanded.

  “Um, we have kind of an on-off thing and I didn’t want to rock the boa-” Andro babbled.

  “Ugh!” Istra shook her head. “I would so like you to just disappear, Andro, but since the islands need us, here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to damn well step up to your responsibilities. You are not going to continue risking the wrath of a storm deity by seeing his wife on the side. We are through – but we are going to have a long talk about respect, honesty, and the behaviour I expect from you from now on.”

  Psyonara coughed. “Summoning,” she said, then coughed again.

  “We are going to invoke the ancient ritual to summon the captains of all the families back here for a very important and urgent meeting, and then we are going to have a long talk about respect, honesty, and the behaviour I expect from you from now on,” Istra corrected herself.

  “And then cocktails later?” Psyonara asked hopefully.

  “Absolutely, and I really need to say thank you to Liz, too,” Istra told her. “All this time she’s been trying to get through to me.”

  “Yeah, Liz is cool AF,” Psyonara agreed. “Love Liz.”

  Istra turned back to the terrified Andro. “And then I will be having cocktails with Psy, while you think about what kind of person you want to be from now on, and how you’re going to atone for your...Psy? Little help?” Istra asked.

  “Entitled behaviour and moral cowardice,” Psyonara supplied helpfully.

  “Yeah. That,” Istra said. “Pearl. Now.”

  “Um...okay,” Andro submitted weakly. He flickered out of existence, and his pearl reappeared in the altar.

  “Oh my God what a douche!” Psyonara exclaimed.

  “I know right?” Istra turned back to her. “I cannot believe I believed him!”

  “Lady Psyonara, please stop insulting powerful spirit beings who could destroy the island,” Cally said.

  “Oh he won’t do shit,” Istra said dismissively. “He was always a pathetic little creep.”

  “Lady Istra,” Pelandro said. “On behalf of the Southern Isles, um, welcome back?”

  Istra turned to him with a smile. “Thank you, Highcaptain,” she said. “I’m sorry you had to see that. The captains will be summoned hence – we’ll do the ritual as soon as I get back to my home plane, so I’d say maybe an hour? For the record, your protector spirits are very much in favour of eastern unity in the face of the Ascendancy threat.”

  “Will Lord Andro also agree that-?”

  “Andro will do as he’s fucking told,” Istra promised darkly.

  Psyonara laughed. “You’re goddamned right he will! Whoo!”

  “Psyonara, please,” Cally told her. Psyonara just snorted.

  “See you later Psy?” Istra asked Psyonara.

  “Totally,” Psyonara promised. “Go give him hell.”

  Istra’s reply was a portentous laugh, and then she too disappeared. Once again there were two pearls on the altar, and the waves and weather outside returned to a picture of calm sunshine.

  Pelandro blinked. “I...do not know what to say,” he said. “Lady Psyonara, you have performed a singular service for our people. To re-unite the spirits after so long...I do not have the words.”

  “Wouldn’t necessarily say reunited, but let’s not split hairs. Anyway, all in a day’s work, Highcaptain sir,” Psyonara said, standing up and attempting to salute. She poked herself in the eye and swore. “So I’m going to go and...is there a bathroom nearby?”

  Pelandro pointed. “Just out there, Lady Psyonara.”

  “Good,” Psyonara said, then turned to Cally. “You’ve got your meeting – you’re welcome,” she said, with unsubtle sarcasm, and headed towards the door.

  “Psyonara, we need to talk,” Cally told her.

  The girl fixed her with a glare. “No, Callena,” she said. “I needed to talk. You, apparently, didn’t. Have a good meeting.”

  She strode out. Her dramatic exit was ruined slightly when she bounced off the door frame, and then she spent a few moments looking for a door that was not, in fact, there.

  “Slam,” she muttered, instead, and hurriedly headed into the bathroom.

  https://archiveofourown.org/users/permanentlyExhaustedPidge (The Edge Cases (5 books) is based *very* loosely on Star Trek, and concerns (and this is a surprising premise for me, I know) a guy from our time who ends up in that future (with a few newly-discovered advantages) having to make his way in a dodgy area of the galaxy any way he can. The Recruit and The Only Game in Town are somewhat less-loosely based on Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer trilogy (2 books)).