[CH III]

"Alan," Law said. He still looked surprised to see me, but there was suspiciousness under that, too. "Why?"

"Because I need to talk to you," I said. "You have to know what it's about."

"No," Law said. "I don't. Why don't you tell me?"

"Jesus Christ," I said, loosing what little patience I had for him. "Why don't you let me in first?"

"Ahieel isn't here anymore," he said, shortly. His eyes shifted down and to the right, then snapped back up to me. "If that's why you're here."

"Only partly," I said. "I am going to kick your ass if you don't let me in. I'm serious." I paused, and took a slow breath. "I need your help."

That humbling statement was probably the only thing that made Law back away from the door, and allow me to get through. His apartment was painted sterile white all over, with a crisp white carpet, and all the furniture was either equally just as white, or deep red, and it all matched. I knew his family was pretty well-off; they'd probably paid for his entire rent and every stick of this pretentious modern shit. It didn't look like a college student lived here.

Law himself was wearing a charcoal-grey shirt that hugged every muscle in his torso and had a faded print of goddamn Big Bird, of all things, on it. And he'd always ragged on me for wearing gay shirts. He had stepped back to the middle of the living room, his arms crossed over his chest, one eyebrow hiked at me.

"So," he said. "What? What can I help you with?" Then his gaze went up to the top of my head. "Nice hair."

If there was ever a time when I really couldn't stand his bullshit, it was right now. I ignored his sarcasm and everything else, instead just ploughing ahead with what I'd come here for. "You said Ahieel isn't here anymore," I said. "Do you know where he went; can you contact him?"

Law lifted one shoulder lazily, and let it drop.

"You are such a goddamn douchebag," I said. "You fit right in with those guys. What the hell is your problem?"

"I tried to help you before," Law said. "You didn't want it. And now I don't really feel like helping you. Why don't you ask your boyfriend if he knows where Ahieel went?"

"Get over it," I said. I still didn't know how Law even knew about that whole thing. He must have got it from Ahieel—and I didn't know how he knew, either. "He's none of your goddamn business. If I could ask him, don't you think I would? You're the only one who might know where these people are—I came to you, all right?"

"Not me," Law said. "Just what I might know."

"What's the fucking difference?" I wanted to punch him right in his stupid, difficult face. But that wouldn't have helped me get any answers. The problem was that he probably wanted something from me in return. And I didn't know him well enough to know what to offer.

Law just shook his head, and sat down on the immaculate red couch. In front of it was a coffee table made of a sheet of glass, with an open textbook and a running laptop sitting on it. Unimportantly, I wondered what the fuck was he studying for, since the intersession hadn't even started yet. A light pair of frameless glasses was resting on the textbook, which he picked up and slid back on his face. I didn't even know him well enough to know he wore reading glasses.

"Go away, Alan," he said, as a further dismissal, leaning forward to type something on the laptop.

Well, yeah right. As if that would get rid of me, that fast or that easily. I took two strides across the room and slammed the top of the laptop closed—Law barely pulled his fingers out in time. I bent in so I was right in his face, leaning forward over the table, looming over him.

"This isn't a joke," I said. "This is not about some stupid—problem you have with me, all right? I know you don't like me, it's pretty fucking obvious. This is more important."

"You're wrong," Law said, his eyes hard and dark behind the glasses. At first I didn't know what he was responding to. And then I wasn't sure if I was correctly interpreting what he meant. It threw me off track for a second, but I didn't have the time or patience to decipher what he was talking about.

"Okay, whatever," I said, trying to gain some of my purpose back. "Point, it's not about whatever you feel about me, if you hate me or not. Stop making this personal."

"Like you haven't made this personal?" Law said, a little snappishly and with a huge streak of bitterness thrown in. Dealing with Law was not at all like dealing with Keyd, or any of the oenclar—his emotions hit me hard and fast and obvious. I almost wasn't used to it. And I wasn't sure why he was acting like this.

"God dammit," I said. "Yes, okay. If this is what you want to hear out of me, fine. One of them was my goddamn boyfriend, all right? So maybe I'm not entirely fucking straight and it's really not any of your business if I am or not. I don't see how it makes a fucking difference about you giving me the fucking information that I fucking want!"

Law had taken the glasses off again during my minor rant, and was rubbing his fingertips against his eyelids. "You really are an idiot," he said.

If I hadn't already gotten to a boiling point, I would have hit it now. "Where the fuck do you get off telling me—"

"Shut up," Law said, severely enough that I snapped my mouth shut before I could really think about it. He got to his feet suddenly, tossing his glasses down to the table, where they landed with a glassy, clinking sound. "Just, shut up. Listen to me for a minute."

"Yeah, fine, okay," I said viciously, still a little taken aback. "What?"

"You really don't see how stupid you've been," Law said, furiously. "I mean, really. You followed some people you barely knew or understood to another world, Alan, you don't see something idiotic about that?"

"Not really," I said, because I wasn't going to let Law one-up me. "How'd you know that, anyway? Were you checking up on me or something? Why?" I didn't fucking understand this guy, not at all. He was totally worked up, way more emotional than I'd ever seen him get, and I had no idea why.

He'd clenched his hands into hard fists against his sides, working so hard to contain this weird, angry mania that his arms were shaking. "I was worried," he bit out, not looking at me. "You—what you're involved in—

"And why the fuck would you care?" This was totally a throwing-up-hands moment. I was about to just give up because Law was either clinically insane or had been body-snatched. "You don't even—"

"You've never taken me seriously," Law said, suddenly, furiously, spitting out each word like a bad taste. "Never. Since we met you always dismissed me, like I was just another one of Slayton's stupid pothead friends. I could never even get enough of your attention to prove I wasn't. You always just ignored me, everything I said and did, even with something as fucking as important as this, you wouldn't even listen to me then!"

His eyes had gone a little wide and wild, and I took an unconscious step back from him, a weird hot numbness burning in the front of my brain. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to completely grasp what he was saying, underneath this egotism and the weird borderline obsession.

"You've always been such an asshole to me, why would I have listened?" I said, eyeing the door, wondering how fast I could get there if Law suddenly cracked and tried something crazy. "You just always—constantly on my fucking case about everything, everything I did or said was stupid or idiotic or gay, according to you, and—"

I trailed off, staring at him. Because, suddenly, I was figuring it out.

He'd wanted my attention. He'd wanted my attention and done anything he could to get it, positive or negative. Like were in goddamn grade school. And I'd always tried to ignore him, passing him off as just a natural jerk—and that had always made it worse. I'd always tried to ignore him because I figured, eventually, he'd get bored and go away if I didn't react to him. But…apparently he hadn't been just bullying me for the sake of it.

Law had gone suddenly still, breathing hard through bared teeth and looking horrified. His hands lifted at his sides and then fell back, rubbing compulsively at the sides of his jeans. He swallowed hard, took a step back, ran into the couch, nearly lost his balance, recovered, and stared at me with something like furious panic.

"What," I said, dumbly. "Wait. No way." This wasn't anything close to anything I'd ever thought. "Law—"

"Leave. Get out." Law was shaking all over now, his hands balled into fists at his sides. "Get the fuck out, I'm not even kidding."

"Shit, no, wait, I think we should—"

"We're not talking about it," Law nearly snarled, and gave me an abrupt, hard shove in the chest over the glass table. I staggered back a few steps, too surprised to even catch my balance. "Get the hell out. I don't want you here."

Don't push me, you fucker, is probably what would have been my normal reaction to that. But I was still completely stunned. I just gaped, stupidly, at him. "I don't—"

"Just fucking go!" Law spat, and now the panic had reached his voice, too. He probably hadn't meant for me to figure this out. Ever. And he'd done an immensely good job of masking it, this whole damn time. However long this had been.

I took unconscious steps back, towards the door. Law was just standing there, breathing hard and glaring at me, with this odd panicking anger still radiating from him. I made it to the door, fumbled it open and got out through it, which was about when Law broke out of his paralysis and started moving again. He stalked around the glass table and across the room, grabbed the edge of the door and wedged his body across the opening again.

"Cemetery," he said shortly, just before the door slammed in my face.

I stood there for a long minute, reeling. That was not—not expected. None of it had been. At all. I wasn't sure I could even handle it, or think about it. When it came to Law, I apparently was always completely blind and stupid. I'd missed his involvement with this whole clarbach vesus oenclar mess, and I'd missed when he'd developed this obsessive thing for me, long before that.

I guess he'd been right. I'd never taken him seriously. He was mostly just a jerk friend of Slayton's whom I'd had to put up with. So he'd been a douchebaggy asshole extraordinaire and constantly ragged and picked on me because he'd liked me? What was he, twelve years old? Goddammit.

I turned away from Law's door, made my way to the flight of stairs, and sat down at the top. Half of me wanted to go back and bang on the door until Law let me in and we could talk this out, because I was completely staggered by the amount of emotion he had funneled towards me. I wasn't even sure if Keyd felt that strongly about me. The other half of me was afraid Law would actually kill me if I tried to talk to him again.

What would I have done if he had ever approached me like a normal person? Well, obviously he'd thought I was completely straight, so he never would have—but hypothetically. What would I have done? Even before I'd met Keyd and totally flipped my perceived sexuality, I'd known Law was pretty damn good-looking. His asshattery had always overpowered it. But without that part of him—

—without that part of him, I had no idea who Law really was. To me, he was just a raging douchebag, who I knew because he hung around with two of my friends. I had no idea what he was actually like, what kind of person he was, if he was even worth this fucking confusion right now. So there was absolutely no point in thinking about this.

And the last half of me (I always said I was bad at math, come on) was focused on the very last thing Law had said, anyway. The most important thing, way more than any of this fucked up relationship shit. He had said cemetery. I could only assume that was a hint, a lead to where to find Ahieel, or something else. And his was the only lead I had. The fact that he'd mentioned the cemetery at all was just a giant ironic slap in the face. All of this had started there.

#

I drove directly there from Law's apartment. Didn't stop off at mine and didn't go anywhere else. I thought I'd probably lose my nerve entirely if I didn't just get this done. I'd also start thinking about how bad of an idea this was and how I had no idea how it was going to work, if it did at all, or that they might just kill me on the spot. Also, I was completely thrown off my groove (whatever groove I actually had, in the first place) by what had happened with Law.

I tried not to think very much as all as I rolled up the gritty road to the parking area of the cemetery. That was made a lot easier by what I saw, as soon as I got close enough for something extremely worrying to waver into view, like a holograph suddenly unveiling itself.

"Oh, fuck," I said, slamming the brakes and feeling the car shudder to a stop over the gritty ground. There wasn't much else to say.

The air above the graveyard was hazy with strange, white-gold light. Like some giant alien ship was hovering over it and sending down its goddamn tractor beam or something. It lit up all the trees with this bizarre, unnatural glow, the way that Ahieel's tree-grove had been. But Ahieel had wanted to make his somewhere public—right in the middle of my school—because it had meant that Keyd and Rysa had had to be careful about when and how they fought him. But it wasn't like the cemetery was a bustling community area—and probably no one but me and a few random unfortunate others (like Law) would be able to see it, anyway.

I already felt the immense power and energy of all it, thrumming under my skin and vibrating down into my chest, as I got out of my car. It almost felt like something was pressing me down, like gravity had gotten ramped way up, and my body thought it was taking a ride on a roller coaster with some serious g-force. Everything wanted to pull down towards my feet. I had to lean against the side of my car, trying to adjust to it. It also felt like I was in some place with the world's biggest woofer, big vibrating blasts pulsing through me. It was all so severely goddamn unpleasant that I almost turned tail and got out right then.

But I couldn't do that, not now. I rested my forehead against the back passenger window and just kept breathing, still acclimating myself. In a minute, or maybe ten, I'd be better. I stared kind of blankly down through the window, tracing my eyes over the stripes on my duffle bag in the backseat over and over, which was kind of helping. At least I didn't feel so sick, staring at just one thing.

A few minutes later, I could finally straighten up and feel more normal and breathe and move. I pushed myself off the car, glancing again down through the window at my bag. On some random whim, I opened the door and dug into it, and pulled out the little leather-bound book Rysa had given me. I stuffed that in my back pocket. I wasn't even sure why. Only that it felt like a good idea to have it with me.

I was all right now. I still got that excessive gravity feel and the woofer pulse, but I didn't feel like I was going to go to my knees and die. I could walk. And that's what I did. Across the parking lot and into the grass, through the nice arranged headstones like rows and rows of grey toast. The whole air was hazy here, glowy and golden and dusty, but the worst part was in the hillier, older part of the cemetery. The overgrown trees and bushes there were lit up like neon was running through them and phosphorescent paint tossed over that.

I headed up into the trees. Even though they were glowing and almost painfully bright to look at, they were just normal trees, the trees that had always been here. Not like the crazy insubstantial trees Ahieel had grown on my campus. I could put my hand on them and touch them and feel bark and dirt under my fingers. I had no idea what this meant, but in no way did any of this seem good.

I kept on, ploughing my way through underbrush and heaps of dead leaves. I didn't see anyone, no clarbach, and no other people. I was actually getting pretty near the exact area where my friends and I had been dicking around on Halloween—goddamn, that night felt like ten years ago. It had just been two months, almost exactly. I could see the big squarish shadow of the crypt up and to the left of me through the trees, and I cut across towards it.

It came into clearer view—same crumbling white stone and engraved name—PLOTINVS—over the door. And it didn't take me long to see the clarbach that were there. Two of them—both on the roof of the crypt. One male and one female, the former sitting down on the edge over the doorway, his chin propped on his elbow and actually looking kind of bored. The woman was standing and facing away from me, staring off into the trees. But as I got closer, both of them started shifting, glancing around. I probably reeked of oen, they must have been sensing it

They saw me. I was only about twenty feet away, of course they saw me. And both of them leapt off of the crypt, landing easily on the ground and coming towards me with nothing but offensive intent. The man's hand flashed down to a sword buckled at his side, and the woman had lifted her own hand up to about chest level, curving her fingers inward. None of that looked like a good sign.

"Whoa, hey!" I said, throwing up my arms in a—hopefully universal—gesture of surrender. "White flag here! I just—I want to talk to somebody, all right?"

"Who are you?" said the guy, stopping short just feet from me. He had a big white spiky, swoopy mark right over his throat, creeping down into his armor and up the sides of his face. The woman, who had stopped right next to him, had no visible marks on her, but she was just as buzzy with energy as he was. Hers were probably all under her armor and clothes.

"I'm—my name's Alan," I said. "I—uh, I know all about you guys. I know that sounds weird, but—I know what's been going on, with you. With this." I gestured, broadly.

The two clarbach looked at each other like they thought I might be crazy, or dangerous, or both.

"What do you want?" the man asked me, finally.

Take me to your leader sounded a little bit too Klaatu, or something, so I settled for, "I want to talk to someone who's in charge."

Another exchanged look between them, that oh-boy-think-he's-nuts look.

"Ehamehad Asaed," the woman said to the man. He raised his eyebrows, but she nodded, sort of gesturing beyond the crypt with her head. After another moment, he turned, and crashed into the trees, disappearing into them. Leaving me alone with the tall, pale woman.

I fidgeted a little, cleared my throat, and tried not to stare at her. I had no idea what was going on. For all I knew she had just sent him to go fetch someone who would come back and kill me. Although, both of these guys probably didn't need any help with doing that. I knew a hell of lot less about the clarbach than I did about the oenclar, but they'd originally come from the same race, and I couldn't imagine that the their policy for dealing with foreigners was much different. It had been seriously difficult to be a foreigner over with the oenclar, although I'd also been sexually corrupting their prince or whatever. That hadn't helped, but at least it wouldn't be a problem here.

"Could you stop that?" the woman said suddenly to me.

"Stop…what?" I said, since I hadn't been doing anything.

"That energy," the woman said. "It's very unpleasant."

She had to be feeling all the oen energy in me still. All of this goddamn light energy around, pushing down on us and buzzing through the air, and she was feeling me? But it was probably better to come across as cooperative, right now. I tried—as best as I knew how—to sort of focus all of inside of me, dragging all the oen energy in me into a center little core and trying to tuck it all away. I was still shit at most of this stuff; the best I'd ever done was under life-threatening conditions.

"That's better," the woman said, with obvious relief. She gave me an interesting look. "What, exactly, are you?"

I shrugged. "An alter?" I offered, since that was closest. My abilities didn't really work like they should, not since Ahieel had totally messed me up.

The woman's expression hardly changed, but I had the feeling she was surprised. She looked harder at me, like she was trying to stare right through my head. Her eyes were incredibly pale, where I couldn't tell what color they actually were. Maybe a green, or a blue. But they were so washed out that I almost only saw her pupils. Kind of creepy, honestly.

"What's your name?" I asked, for a distraction, and she looked a little bemused that I had asked.

"Eiphi," she said, which sounded a little like a name someone might give a poodle or other small yappy dog.

"Okay," I said, and held out my hand. "I'm Alan."

The woman regarded me from under her pale eyebrows—eyelashes, too, they were kind of whitey-blond—and said nothing. Didn't offer me a hand back, or any other sort of friendly greeting. I jammed my hands into my pockets and bit on my tongue. My fingers collided with a thin slip of metal and a rough cord. Keyd's necklace. I was still carrying it around. I pressed my thumb against the surface, feeling the engraved symbols there dent against my skin.

We stood there, in the most awkward silence ever, the weight and power of the energy of the trees bearing down around us, for several minutes.

"All right," Eiphi said abruptly, and hooked a strong hand at the bend of my elbow. "Let's go."

I was going to assume she and that other dude had some sort of bond, like antshil, that allowed them to communicate a little since absolutely nothing had happened or changed to alert her. She pulled me past the crypt and into the trees where the other guy had gone. He was actually waiting for us some dozen yards ahead, and fell into step on my other side, flanking me.

The hill steepened ahead, and up we went. I've never been the world's most in shape guy, and with all the throw-off from these goddamn trees, I could barely hold a breath long enough to get any good out of bothering to breathe at all. All my muscles started burning, and it was all I could do to even match pace with Eiphi and the other guy. I had the feeling they were slowing down purposefully, so that my dumb ass could keep up with them.

Finally the ground leveled out, and I could breathe again and look around. We'd come into a small little area free of trees, with a few ancient headstones poking out of the piles of dead leaves on the ground, the words and dates on them worn away to unreadable dimples in the stone.

And there were other clarbach here. I didn't know how many, but at least half a dozen, all in armor. But just standing around like they were on break at the office, or something. I saw two more women, and the rest were men. I would have bet that this wasn't even all of them that were here. This was a huge cemetery. The amount of these guys, and the entire state of the bright, hazy cemetery, told me that this was getting big. Way bigger than Ahieel and his one stupid grove had been. This was seriously happening, and nobody knew it but me.

My resolve sprang back to serious life. I had a goal and something of a plan, and I was going to go through with it, dammit. I had to. All of the clarbach in this little area had turned to stare at us when we had come up the hill, but I ignored them. Because one of them was walking towards me, and I was guessing that he was the one that mattered, the one I was going to have to deal with.

He was tall, freakishly tall, even for these people—he had to be pushing seven feet. Full armor, all of it silver and shades of rain-cloud grey leather and darker greens. His hair wasn't even pretending to be blond. It was just flat out white, short and raked back from his forehead. But he didn't look any older than about his mid thirties. He also had no visible marks on him, but his left eye was clouded over, indistinct and grayish-blue, and there was a huge, knotted scar across his neck that like looked like he'd been garroted with a chainsaw, and survived it. It was hard to look at, and harder to look away from.

Some part of me told me that I should probably be scared of him, but I wasn't. Being here—around these guys and all this energy—was twisting things up inside me, agitated and tense as a pulled wire. But by now all actual fear had been burned right out of me. I didn't have time to be afraid. I was just angry, and determined, and if standing up to this guy was what I needed to do, then I was going to damn well do it.

"I am kalach Asaed," the clarbach said, in kind of an average voice—not the deep, booming sound I'd kind of expected from a guy that looked like this. The word kalach came across the frequency a little weirdly. I heard the word, but I also heard another word, in English, laid over it. Like getting two radio stations at once, overlapping. Commander Asaed, is what had come across. "And you are."

It wasn't even a question. "Alan," I said. "My name's Alan, I'm—"

"You are a native of this world," Asaed said. He sounded just a little intrigued by that. His eyes kept flicking to my hair, and back down again, like he couldn't stop staring.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, I am. But I know all about what's going on—you, the oenclar, the war, everything. And, uhm, I—"

"What is it that you want?" Asaed asked. Apparently he wasn't a fan of long bumbling answers, and I didn't blame him. I sounded like an idiot. I needed to get it the hell together if I wanted him to even start thinking about taking me seriously.

"I want to talk to someone who's in charge," I said, more decisively, and even though I had no idea if the clarbach had a similar position in their society, I added, "the agistar."

"You want to speak to the agistar," Asaed said, the eyebrow above his blind eye arcing way up.

"Yeah," I said, pulling more resolve out of somewhere, and looking this guy right in his eyes. Even the clouded one. "That's what I want."

Asaed considered me for another long moment. As he did, he moved his thumb along the scar on his neck. Not purposefully; like an unconscious habit.

"The agistar,"he said, finally, "will not often meet personally with natives."

"I'm a little different," I said. And to prove it, I let a little energy stir up in me, pushing outward, enough so this guy could feel it. And I could tell he did, because this time, both of his eyebrows went up. I also saw the other clarbach around the area start to shift and mutter a little, glancing at each other.

"There's energy in you," Asaed said, that eyebrow going up again. "Both light and dark."

"I'm an alter," I said. "Why do you think I can see all this stuff," I gestured around to the glowing trees, "and understand your language?"

"I had wondered," Asaed said, lifting the one eyebrow again. "However, that fact doesn't increase my trust in you. It only tells me that you have been in contact with the oenclar."

"Yeah," I said. No point in denying it. "I have. But I don't have anything to do with them anymore, and I'm not your enemy." Or necessarily your ally, but saying that would have been beyond moronic. "I'm here to negotiate, not fight."

"Negotiate," Asaed repeated, slowly. "Negotiate…what?"

"That's why I want to see your agistar," I said. I wasn't telling this guy anything. I wasn't opening my mouth until I was in front of someone who could actually make shit happen or change.

"Forgive me if we seem mistrusting," Asaed said, without an inch of actual remorse, "But you, and your request, are both quite unusual. We do not often deal with natives in this way. You will need someone to speak for you."

That staggered me a little. Speak for me? What the hell did that mean?

"Like someone to vouch for me?" I guessed, and Asaed nodded, once, eyebrows lifting like saying 'bingo'. Fuck. Someone that they trusted to vouch for me. I knew all of two clarbach, one was a fucking psychopath who had wanted to kill me, and one had once been partially shunned by this society for saving his oenclar sister. I had awesome choices.

"Ociir," I said, picking the slightly better of the two. "He knows who I am. "

"Ociir," Asaed said, "is a common name. I would need to know a family name, to know who you're speaking of."

Well, double fuck. I had no idea what Ociir's family name was. It hadn't even occurred to me that these people wouldn't all know who each other were. I also wouldn't have thought Ociir was a common name. Especially since the oenclar all seemed to have singularly unique names. Apparently, the clarbach didn't.

"I don't know his family name," I told Asaed. I didn't even know what Ociir's occupation was, except that he wasn't a soldier. "Uh, but—he's Ahieel's brother," I said, reluctantly calling on the last card I was holding. "Ahieel's one of your guys, I know that. He was sent over here a while ago, to scout this world."

"Ah. Ahieel," Asaed said, and it sounded like he wanted to laugh. Two of the other clarbach nearby actually did, kind of chuckling under their breath and exchanging significant looks. "Yes, I know him. Then you are speaking of the Soodun family."

"Sure," I said. "Yes. Them."

"You are acquainted with Soodun Ociir," Asaed said. Again, not really a question. But he seemed intrigued—or impressed. It was hard to tell.

"Yes," I said. And maybe I was blowing Ociir's cover, about his continued fraternizing with the enemy, but I honestly didn't care at this point. If I had to name-drop to get someone to listen to me, I'd do it. And I only had these two names.

"Perhaps," Asaed said, and gave me another hard, assessing stare, "perhaps that will be enough."

"Really?" I said, and then wished I hadn't, because I was trying to be more suave and cool about this. Or at least sound like I knew what I was doing. Not like I was winging this and grasping at every small stroke of luck I had.

"Perhaps," Asaed said again, with more emphasis. "We will see. Eiphi, Atoen, ochho aidahhetta."

He directed this last part towards Eiphi and the other man who I'd first spoken to—Atoen, apparently. Right away they stepped up to face each other, put their hands flat together. They closed their eyes, and there was a pause that seemed heavy with intent, and the silence in the clearing seemed to deepen, even ambient noises of wind and rustling leaves dying out.

A thinness grew up between their hands, a weird wavering insubstantiality in the air. I knew what they were doing instantly, even if I'd never seen it done before. They were making a rift. I could feel its energy vibrating deep in my chest and low in my stomach, and I wish I couldn't, because it was making me feel like I was about to hurl. I took an automatic step back, and Asaed grabbed my shoulder. Not hard, but firmly. Don't move, that hand said. And I didn't, not again.

Eiphi and Atoen stepped away from the rift, both looking a little off-balance and shaken. It probably took a lot out of them to tear holes between worlds. Hell, it took a lot out of me, and I was only feeling it. They reached out and took each other's hands, which seemed to help them a little. They moved off a little to the side, while Asaed stepped up in front of the new rift.

"Eraim, oa iphio saosahe hyo," he said to a nearby clarbach with short tufty hair. The man stepped forward and gave Asaed a brisk single nod. He had a small bach mark over his nose, like one of those snoring strips, and half of his right ear was missing. A lot of these guys were really battle-scarred, more than I'd really seen with the oenclar. Although, Asaed and this guy Eraim looked older. They'd probably seen way more fighting than Keyd or Rysa, or even Darban and Kir. But even Maedajon had been pretty scar-free. I hadn't thought about Maedajon in a while, and something in my stomach twisted a little.

Then Asaed looked at me. "I assume you're ready," he said. I nodded. But then remembered something else.

"Um, look," I said. "This rift isn't gonna like—hurt me, or anything, is it?" Because I remembered Keyd and Rysa telling me that the one we'd gone through to Edo might try to take me apart if I didn't have enough of their energy in me. And right now I had mostly oen energy in me, and this was a rift made with bach energy. That couldn't be good.

It was Eiphi who answered. "You will be fine," she said.

"Right," I said. I really had no other choice but to believe her, and if this rift tore me apart, then—well, at least I wouldn't have to worry about what happened to earth, because I'd be dead. "All right."

Asaed said something else to the guy with the nose strip mark, who nodded again and said something back. It didn't sound much like the oenclar language, but I couldn't be sure. They spoke it fast and fluidly, so sounds melded into one another and it was hard to even tell words apart.

Then Asaed made a gesture at Eiphi and Atoen, and looked at me.

"Let's go," he said, making a very pointed 'come here' signal with one hand.

Christ, you're coming? I almost said, but held back on that. I guess he wanted to take me personally to…well. Wherever the hell we were going. Probably to make sure I wasn't any real sort of threat.

I moved forward towards the rift, which actually didn't feel much different from the ones that the oenclar made. Maybe they weren't kept open by any specific energy at all—and were just holes across worlds. Who the fuck knew. It didn't really matter. Where it was going to take me was what did.

"Go," Asaed said to me, and I went, with the other three right behind me.

#

We popped through into a wide field—dark and dull and with an unpleasantly familiar look. The same way Clarylon looked. A dingy grey-blue dusk had fallen here too, the field we were in stretching off into an interminable, matte-grey distance. And it was cold. And it was raining. Pretty damn hard. Within a few seconds I was soaked, all my clothes sopping and clinging to me, and my glasses entirely streaked with water. Rain was pounding the dirt to mud beneath our feet, pinging off the metal armor plates of the three clarbach around me.

Asaed muttered something, passed his arm in a circle in the air. I felt a bubble of energy—the strange, not as familiar feeling of the clarbach energy—grow out from him, forming a largish shielding dome around us. I could hear the rain pattering off it, a loud roaring sound, but it wasn't coming through. I took off my glasses and rubbed them uselessly in the hem of my wet shirt, only managing to smear the water around a little before sliding them back on my face.

Eiphi took me by the shoulder—Christ, she was really grabby—and half-turned me around. And I startled, because there was a city like right the fuck there. I felt stupid I hadn't even noticed it before. It couldn't have been more than two or three city blocks away, just abruptly rising up out of the field. It glowed with hazy lights in the dim gloom around us, a big blurry jumble of lines and angles, all the details smeared out by the rain and the dimness and my still-wet glasses.

A sort of mildly paved, stone path faded out of the grass, stretching wide and long towards the city. Asaed and the others started to move along it, marching me with them. Eiphi had me by the shoulder, and her buddy Atoen was very close to my other side, probably ready to grab me too if I tried anything. I don't know what they thought I would even try to do. Asaed was ahead of us, leading.

"So," I said as we walked, without much hope any of these tall-pale-and-silents would answer me. "Where…are we?"

"Clarylon," Eiphi said, and I stumbled a little bit.

"We are?"

"Yes," Eiphi said, and gestured to the city ahead. "This is Uillad."

Uillad—that name was familiar. I didn't remember who I'd heard it from, but I knew it was the main clarbach city in Clarylon. And obviously still being inhabited. Keyd had said nothing could live here in this world—but apparently they'd found a way of doing it. Maybe Keyd didn't even know they were still here. Then again, it wasn't like Keyd readily shared information with me. I had no idea what the truth was really, anymore.

There was a wall around Uillad. Probably at least twenty-five feet tall, made of huge rough bricks. The path we were following ended in a huge gatehouse, small turrets on both sides at the top and an enormous metal door across the entrance, closing off the city. Asaed pulled us to a halt up in front of it, and stuck his hand against a large metal plate that was embedded at about chest height in the gate. A brief surge of light glowed up around his fingers, then faded away just as quickly.

There was someone at the top of the guard gate, because a few moments later a voice yelled down to us, nearly incomprehensible over the bellowing rain. In return, Asaed yelled up a long fluid couple of sentences in the language that I was getting surer and surer wasn't the same language that the oenclar spoke. It was either that, or they had seriously different regional accents. There was some shouting on the turrets above, and then the gate started to crank up, the thick iron façade sliding up into the top of the gatehouse wall with a loud grinding sound of gears. Water sluiced off the bottom and spattered to the cobbled ground beneath.

Eiphi gave me a nudge, and we moved forward again, into the covered area under the gate tower. Rain poured down on both sides but at least under here, we were protected. There were two men in armor here, one of whom stepped forward to intercept us. Asaed had a fast and muttered conversation with him, which involved a lot of glancing over at me. Finally, the gate-guy seemed appeased and moved back to his post, and the four of us moved out of the gatehouse and into the city of Uillad.

#

While Lojt had been a wide-spread city of mostly fairly low buildings, Uillad had been stacked up on top of itself and built in layers. Bridges ran over walkways and passageways ran under entire buildings, which were built on all sorts of levels, stairways running all over the damn place. The style of the buildings were sort of similar to what I'd seen in Lojt, but mostly the two places looked nothing alike. Barely, through the dimness, I could see something like a tall white spire, towering far over everything else around it. It looked like it was maybe in the very center of this place.

Because the whole city—the whole world—was dark, all of the light was coming from artificial sources. Which appeared to be mostly large, basketball-sized glowing globes. They were everywhere. Absolutely everywhere; spaced only a few feet apart on the buildings, set up on tall poles like streetlamps, hanging down from roof eves like lanterns. Most of them were a sort of warm gold color, but some were colored—pink was common, as was a kind of darker orangey-yellow. The majority of them were round, but a few of them were square. It made the whole place look like some sort of crazy lantern festival. It was almost pretty, but in a way that didn't entirely mask why it looked like this in the first place.

The streets themselves were mostly empty, although a few shadowy forms of people were hurrying along under eves, skirting from building to building. The rain was still pouring down like crazy, like bathtubs full of water were just being overturned on us. I'd never seen rain this hard in my life. Then again, I was from Southern California. Asaed's shield had stayed up around us, but it didn't keep the puddles out. I was just wearing canvas sneakers, and they squelched with every step I took.

Wherever we were headed was a good way into the city, and apparently the only mode of travel was by foot. We'd been walking for at least ten minutes before we crossed over a narrow bridge that spanned over a wide, slow-moving river. There were dozens of other bridges that ran across it to both sides of us, the river stretching down and fading into darkness. Lanterns reflected off the water, which looked black and inky and pock-marked by the rain still torrenting down around us.

On the other side of the bridge was a large flight of wide white steps, which Asaed led us up. The huge steps took us up to an equally huge building that looked….kind of Greek, or something. Lots of round, towering pillars spaced evenly around the whole perimeter of the rectangular building. There weren't really walls inside, it was just a big open space, the whole thing done in pale, slightly greenish stone. The ceiling was jam-packed with the glowing globes, which cast really odd lighting around the place. It was very quiet inside, still and echoing with soft footsteps and movements of the very few men and women inside, the roar of the rain outside the loudest thing I could hear.

The four of us stood, dripping a little, in the area just inside the large pillars. I wasn't sure what exactly we were waiting for, but Asaed wasn't having us go any further. There were some people in here, and all of them glanced over at us when we had come inside. Not that many—I saw three from where we were standing. All of them were dressed in the same type of clothes, so I was guessing they worked here. Whatever this place was. And then I saw the reason we had obviously come here for. Ociir.

He was standing in front of something that looked like a low podium, arranging stuff on it. He was wearing the same thing the other people in here were wearing, most of it in a sandy-beige color. He was dressed in very loose pants that had the crotch down around his knees, and the bottom hems wrapped up tight against his ankles and into his shoes. There was a shirt or tunic-thing over that, the seams splitting at his waist and the front and back flaps falling to mid-thigh. Over both his shoulders were two pieces of long, square fabric, in dull green. They were squiggled all over with dark symbols.

Like most of the other clarbach inside this place, Ociir had glanced up when the four of us had come inside. And he saw me almost right away. His eyebrows went way the hell up and his mouth nearly dropped open. I actually saw him check himself, schooling his expression back to something less stunned looking as he came around the front of the podium thing and headed towards us.

"Ulich maessana Asaed, halimea," he said, in that same language that really sounded nothing like what the oenclar spoke. Then Ociir's eyes darted back to me. "Alan," he said, with a really bad poker face. He was stunned as hell, and it was obvious.

"So you know this man," Asaed said, and Ociir dropped his eyes towards the ground. I think my heart stopped completely—if Ociir didn't back me up, I had absolutely nothing.

But then he said, "I do." He lifted his head, and even though he was still addressing Asaed, he looked right at me. "He is a friend." I could have fucking kissed him.

"A friend." It almost might have been disbelief, but Asaed's voice was so neutral it was hard to tell. "Your friend," he continued, "wishes to speak to haemasach Aleif. Would you condone this?"

Honestly, it sounded like the guy was just being sarcastic at this point. And making fun of me, or of Ociir. Or both of us. But Ociir reacted like it was an honest question.

"I would," he said. "Whatever he requests should be listened to seriously."

Asaed regarded Ociir for a long moment, brushing his thumb along the scar on his neck again. Then he turned to address Eiphi and Atoen, dropping out of frequency again so I couldn't understand any of it. My stomach was still churning with a bitter sort of nausea and I actually thought I might throw up. The thing that kept me in control of myself was the thought of how fucking embarrassing it would be to blow chunks in this quiet, reverent place.

And also, because Ociir was edging a little closer, obviously planning on talking to me.

"Alan, what are you doing here?" he whispered, keeping his eyes on Asaed's back.

"It's a—long story," I muttered back. "A really damn long story."

"Does—" he started, and then shut himself up very sharply. I had the feeling he'd been going to ask something about Keyd. And that was hardly appropriate here, especially for him.

"Are these guys seriously going to listen to what you tell them?" I asked, since that was way more important. Ociir looked…slightly uncomfortable, if I was reading him well at all.

"I—do have some sway, with them. Not much, but enough that if I say you should have an audience, they might give you one."

"But you told me you weren't a soldier," I said. And he definitely wasn't dressed for it.

"I'm not," Ociir said, with a half-smile. "I'm a priest."

Oh. Well. Okay. That was…different. So they had religion here. Or at least, this half of the race did. Another thing I had never really thought about. And apparently it was a big enough deal that someone like Asaed would defer to a member of it. There definitely hadn't been anything like that over in oenclar land…nothing that I had really seen, anyway.

Asaed picked that moment to turn back to us.

"We will take you to speak with someone of the council," he said to me. "You may negotiate your own audience there."

"I—thank you," I said, honestly surprised. Although, I didn't really like the idea of having to speak with a council. The experiences I'd had with the oenclar councils had been pretty, well. Unpleasant.

Asaed gave me a brisk nod, and did that 'come here' gesture again with his hand. I started moving forward, until Ociir suddenly spoke up.

"I will come with you," he said, and I turned to kind of gape at him.

"If you wish," Asaed said. He'd raised that one eyebrow above his blind eye again. He'd probably expected that just as much as I had. Ociir stepped forward and touched his hand to my shoulder, nodding slightly at me.

Stop touching me! I wanted to say. Him and Eiphi and just everyone—I didn't want any of them to touch me. I wasn't even supposed to like these people. I was just here to try and make them to get the hell out of my world, not to win friends and influence people. Even if Ociir was Keyd's friend, it was already weirding me out how supportive of me he was being.

We went back into the rain and the dark, now with Ociir as an added party member. Atoen and Eiphi seemed a little reverent of him—they made sure to walk behind him and any time he looked at one of them, they gave him a little head-bow. Asaed was still leading us—we went back across the river and turned right, heading deeper into the city. Actually, it looked like we were headed right towards that tall spire thing I'd seen before.

No one spoke as we walked. Ociir kept his hand on my shoulder. I was really starting to hate it. I still didn't really…like Ociir very much. Even if my reasons for it had come from a complete misunderstanding that was entirely Keyd's fault. It was still Ociir's presence that had set it off. But it didn't matter anyway, since Keyd and I were over. I should probably just suck it up and try and start over with Ociir. After all, he was seriously helping me right now. And he didn't seem to dislike me at all.

The spire thing was looming closer and closer to us, directly in our path, and as we crossed over an extremely steep bridge (over the river again) and came down on the other side, I saw exactly where we were headed.

It was definitely some sort of city center or government palace, arranged in sort of a circle shape. The courtyard was huge and round, and the buildings themselves were formed in a half-circle around it. The whole place was huge, completely enormous, and the white spire was built right in the middle of the courtyard. I couldn't tell how tall it was—the top actually disappeared into the gloom above. The tiling in the courtyard was arranged almost like a bullseye, with rings spiraling outwards from the spire. There was no one in the courtyard, but all the windows of the buildings were lit up, glowing through the rain.

"I will take him inside," Ociir said to Asaed, who seemed strangely complacent with the offer. He just nodded, and he and Eiphi and Atoen stepped under the nearby eves of one of the buildings. Ociir and I kept moving, towards a large set of double doors that seemed to be the main front entrance to this place.

"It is easier for a priest to be allowed inside than a soldier, even one of Asaed's rank," Ociir explained to me. "Especially with a guest, and even more so with one who is a foreigner. Asaed knows that."

"Right," I said. "Okay."

The front double doors lead us into a long, arched hallway of beige-red brick, with a shined marble floor that threw our footsteps and even the sound of our breathing back to us. The rubber soles of my sneakers squeaked loudly with every step I took. Ociir made no noise at all. What he had said about priests having an easier time gaining entrance got tested about halfway along, where two pale blond men—not in armor like at the gatehouse, but definitely looking like serious business—stepped into our path.

"Your business here?" said one of them, staring straight at the top of my head. The other one was doing the same.

"To arrange an audience with the agistar," Ociir said. He pressed two fingers to his collarbone, but didn't bow. "I am Soodun Ociir, echlim aouhadora. I speak for the virtue of this man."

The two clarbach glanced at each other.

"Soodun?" one of them asked, like he couldn't quite believe it. "Ociir?"

"Yes," Ociir said, and tapped his fingers lightly in place against his chest. "I promise you our visit will be brief, but lucrative. May we be allowed in?"

Again, the two clarbach looked at each other. Then, the one who had spoke first inclined his head a little.

"Yaihmennu," he said, and the other man stepped back too. Ociir replied to them with his own head-bow, and then gestured me to start moving again. I did, although Ociir lagged behind, saying something quietly to both of the men. He reached into a fold of the shirt he was wearing, took something out, and pressed it into the hand of the man on the right. I was watching this from over my shoulder, but I pretended I hadn't as soon as Ociir started down the hall after me.

"Don't worry," he said, falling into step beside me. "Nothing is hurt by a little insurance."

If had seriously just paid off those men to let me through, I didn't even know what to think of that. I was starting to realize I had no idea what kind of person Ociir was. Seriously different from my first impressions of him, which had been of sort of a chivalrous idiot. Although I had no idea what his motives were now, he seemed far from being an idiot.

The hallway ended in a domed rotunda, with five or six doors set around its perimeter. One of them, to the immediate left, was open. Ociir took us through that. Inside was a small room, windowless and made of the same reddish-beige stone as the hallway. There was just one man in here, an older one with sparse, pale hair. He was sitting behind a tall circular desk with a top that slanted inwards towards him, so I couldn't see anything that was on it. There was obviously a book back there, because he was holding a quill and writing with it. He glanced up when Ociir and I came in.

"Soodun," the man said, lying down the quill. Apparently he was already acquainted with Ociir. If that was good or bad, I had no idea. His reaction to Ociir seemed more like surprise than anything else.

"Lomm," Ociir said in return. He touched my shoulder, digging his fingers in fast to tell me wordlessly to stay in place, and walked forward to the desk. The whole thing was elevated, so that Ociir's chin barely came up over the edge of it. The man behind it, Lomm, leaned forward to talk with him. He was the first person I'd seen, oenclar or clarbach, who actually looked old. Maybe in his sixties or seventies. His hair was receding and there were deep lines around his eyes and mouth.

Ociir and this guy Lomm had a pretty long and rapid conversation in their own language. I stood off to the side with my hands in my pockets and feeling super out of place. Ociir was apparently negotiating for me, which he was probably way more qualified to do, but it was still weirding me out. Why he was helping me so much in the first place. He obviously knew this guy, and maybe it was really easy for him to do this for me. It was still completely unexpected.

Finally, Ociir stepped back. Lomm picked up his quill again and scribbled a bunch of stuff in the book I couldn't see, and after a minute or two, looked up again.

"Five days," he said, directly to me.

"Five days what?" I said, being rude and not caring.

"You may have an audience with the agistar in five days," Lomm repeated, hoisting a pale eyebrow at me like I was a complete moron.

Five days—five fucking days?

"Wh—" I started, but Ociir's hand suddenly came down on my shoulder and gripped, hard. I shut up, obligingly. Ociir said something very long and rushed together in his language, and Lomm nodded and made some dismissive gesture. Ociir just about yanked my arm out of its socket pulling me out of the room.

"Hey," I said to him, pulling my arm away once we were out of that room and out of earshot. "What was that all abou—"

"Alan, it's unusual for the agistar to even personally see anyone below a certain rank, never mind a foreigner," Ociir said, interrupting me. "Five days is nothing."

So shut your fat mouth and be glad of what you got, was what he was saying. Fine, fine, I could do that. I wasn't thrilled about it, but it was something. I'd been so used to being close to the upper echelon with Keyd and the oenclar that I had assumed I could do the same here. Just walk on in and assume they'd listen to me right away. Of course, of course it made sense that they wouldn't really care much about what I had to say, even if it was goddamn important.

And maybe…having a little bit of time to think about this would be good. I had to figure out exactly how I was going to talk to their agistar and get him to listen and take me seriously. More than Asaed and these others guys had, since it still felt like they considered me just on the edge of being a complete joke.

Ociir and I left the building, past the two guards in the hall who bowed pretty deep this time to Ociir, and going back out into the courtyard and joining Asaed, Eiphi, and Atoen outside. Asaed was looking a little impatient, like he really wanted to get back to what he'd been doing before I'd interrupted his nice day of sucking up light on Earth.

"He's been granted an audience," Ociir told them, and they looked nothing short of surprised.

"Then we will take him to the laemenna," Eiphi said, catching hold of my arm again. I nearly shook her off just in reflex.

"What's that?" I asked, quickly, because I didn't want to be taken anywhere that didn't have an English equivalent.

"A public lodging," Ociir said, with something like distaste. He glanced at Asaed. "Kalach, with your permission, I would ask that he be allowed to stay with my family. I assure you that I will take full responsibility for his presence here."

What the fuck, I wanted to say, but literally bit down on my tongue. Ociir had no reason to be doing any of this for me. Speaking for me had been a stretch, but then coming along with us to this place and getting the audience for me, and now offering me a place to stay? I was almost starting to think it was a trap, or something.

Eiphi and Atoen had glanced at each other at Ociir's offer, but Asaed didn't even blink.

"Then he is of your liability from now on," he said.

Ociir nodded. "I understand," he said. Asaed gave him, and me, one last hard look, and then heel-turned and strode right into the rain, Eiphi and Atoen falling into step behind him. Ociir and I were left standing under the eves of the government building while the rain kept pounding down around us. After a moment, I turned to him.

"Thanks," I said. "For, you know. Doing all this for me."

"Of course," Ociir said, and nothing more on the subject. Instead, he changed it to one that I really didn't want to think about. "You must not be here with Keydestas's knowledge."

"I'm—not," I admitted. "I'm not exactly—with him, anymore."

"Oh," Ociir said, his eyebrows drawing in a little.

"Look, I'm serious—it's a long story," I said. "And you'd only get half of it—my half. His half is—well, it's fucked up, that's what. But I'll tell you that I'm here because I can't just sit back and watch you people destroy my home. Sorry, and everything, but I just can't."

Ociir just looked at me for a moment. Then he gave a soft sigh. "I understand, Alan," he said.

"You do," I said, pretty skeptical of that.

"Look around you," Ociir said, gesturing to the dark, murky rain-slicked courtyard, the buildings lit only by dozens of the odd hazy globes.

"I'm looking," I said.

"This is what my home has become," Ociir said. "I understand how you would not want the same for yours. We here, we've become used to it. Not happy with it, but it is the way we live. And have, for years."

"You don't want to change it?" I asked, and Ociir made a noncommittal noise and didn't meet my eyes.

"Come with me," he said instead. "I'll take you to my home."

I really had no choice but to follow him.

#

Ociir's house, or whatever it was, was on a long street of other buildings that were all meshed into each other, no spaces between them. Row housing, although they looked nice enough. Like San Francisco houses, actually, although I'd only ever seen pictures of those. They were all sort of a sand-stone brown color, and Occiir brought us up to one that had a grayish green door.

"Most of my time is spent at the temple with my auloun," Ociir said, hesitating on the doorstep. "I still have a room here, however—you may stay in it, as long as you need."

"Thanks," I said. "I think. What's an auloun?"

"Well, my—" Ociir glanced upwards, like he was trying to summon another word to use, "my intended."

"You're engaged?" I said, trying not to let my jaw drop. What.

"I am," Ociir said. He hesitated, then said, "to a woman." As if that was fucking necessary to add.

"Does Keyd know?" I said, thinking that somehow all of that drama and angst from before could have been avoided if Ociir had let us know that he was going to marry somebody else. Or maybe it wouldn't have made a damn difference. Keyd was so emotionally retarded that it probably wouldn't have.

Ociir shook his head. "The engagement is very recent," he said. "It was not official the last time I saw Keyd. However it had been planned for…some time."

"How nice for you," I said, kind of flatly. I honestly didn't know what else to say.

"Ishan is also a priest," Ociir said. "I have known her for a very long time, almost as long as I have known Key—"

"Okay, just stop, all right? I don't want your life story. Fuck," I said. Yeah, admittedly that was seriously rude to a guy who was helping me out, for almost no reason, but I just couldn't handle all of this right at the moment. Too much, too fast, and all on top of serious moral complications and being in this awful goddamn place.

Ociir gave me this sad little look, although it was pretty brief, and then opened the front door. It wasn't even locked.

The front door opened to a little foyer. The floors were wood and the walls were brick, and it looked enough like a normal house that the ordinariness of it was almost unsettling itself. I felt like I'd stepped into somebody's fairly nice townhouse. Light came from smaller versions of the outdoor globes, most of these ones mounted in little fixtures or dangling from the ceiling. It filled the atrium with yellowy light. Ociir shut the door behind us.

"I imagine my family is around somewhere," he said. "You should meet them."

It didn't take long to find somebody, because they were right in the next room—which was a kind of dinning room, I guess. It had a long table and chairs in it, and two women were sitting at it. They were both, expectedly, very white-blond. They were chatting together, smiling and looking generally casual and not like they wanted to go out destroying worlds at all. With the oenclar, I'd been in the middle of a military camp. Everyone there had been a soldier or part of the war effort. Here—this was just a city. Sure, a city full of the I-used-to-think-they-were-bad-guys-but-now-everything's-relative, but there were people here who probably had nothing to do with the fight at all. They were just trying to…live their lives, I guess.

When Ociir and I came into the room, the two women stopped talking instantly, turning to us and going very even-faced. Not surprising—I was a stranger in their house, after all.

"Alan," Ociir said, "this is Ohean—" he gestured to the woman on the right, with pale grey eyes, "—and Ieta." The woman on the left with light green eyes. "My sisters."

"Ah," I said, feeling so far out of place that I barely knew how to respond. "Well. Hi."

Just like everyone else I'd encountered so far here, both of the women's eyes had gone straight up to my hair.

"Ociir," said one of them, the grey-eyed one. "What is this."

She didn't even pitch it as a question. Her voice was flat and full of warning, like Ociir had brought a wild animal into the house and was asking to keep it.

"Eiblin hie, Ohean," Ociir said to her. "He's a friend. Don't worry," he added, more quietly, to me. "You will be welcome here."

"Look, I'm sorry," I said, addressing Ociir's sisters. "I don't want to intrude or make you uncomfortable or anything. I'm not here for—I know your sister, Rysa. Ineah, I mean."

The green-eyed woman put down her utensil thing, hard. "She's not our sister," she said, her voice flat.

"Oh," I said, blinking. "Uh. Sorry." Shit, that was right—her family had essentially turned on her when she'd basically become one of their enemies. Ahieel had actually tried to kill her. Ociir was the only one who even still cared about her, and had been halfway shunned for that himself, at least for a little while.

There was an uncomfortable pause in the little room. The one woman was glaring down at the utensil she had slammed down, and the other was blinking rapidly at the ceiling. Ociir was just standing next to me, mouth set, not doing or saying anything. The air felt thick with charged anger. I felt so damn awkward. I wasn't even sure where to look, so I stared at the door that was on the far end of the room.

But right about then, that door opened and someone came through it. I started, because I hadn't expected it, and because the person who had come through wasn't a clarbach. At least, I didn't think so. It was a guy, a little taller than me, with brown hair. Just an average, normal ash-brown color. He came to a dead stop when he noticed me and Ociir standing there, and his mouth gaped open a little.

"This is my brother, Eleon," Ociir said to me, quickly, obviously glad for the distraction. Eleon looked about my age, like the rest of them did, but there was something weird about him. Something that felt younger. I wondered if this was the last of Rysa's siblings or if she had more. Already she was actually beating my family in sheer numbers.

"Who's he?" Eleon said to Ociir, his eyes raking up to my hair, as was turning into the standard procedure here for introductions.

"A guest," Ociir said, with a sort of edge to his voice. Maybe Eleon was like the problem child around here, or maybe even Ahieel version two. He eyed me again as he moved over to the table and took a chair, sitting down.

"How nice of you to finally come down," one of the women, the one who had said Rysa wasn't her sister, said to him. I saw what she meant—everything on the table was practically eaten already. The other woman still had a whole small tart-like thing on her plate, and she pushed it at her brother with a little smile. Eleon gave her a sort of smile of his own.

Ociir suddenly grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the room, into a larger one that looked like a living room, full of couches and other relative furniture. The back wall was entirely windows, and opened up to a little sectioned off garden. I wondered how the hell plants could even grow here, if there wasn't any real sunlight. All the trees in Lojt had been dead.

"I'm sorry for them," Ociir said to me. "But don't be concerned over their behavior. Their issue isn't with you."

"Sure it isn't," I said. "That's why they acted like I'm a goddamn leper or something."

Ociir gave me a puzzled look, but didn't say anything. Instead he took a step towards the door that went back to the dining room, pushed it open a little bit and looked through. Inside, his sisters were arguing about something. More correctly, the angrier sister was raining down a verbal tirade on the calmer one, who was just listening to her, tight-faced and very very still. Eleon was slumped so low in his chair that he was only visible from his chin upwards, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but right there.

Ociir glanced back at me, and shook his head a little. "Let me go talk to them," he said. "But don't worry. Why don't you look around a little? You are welcome to go anywhere within the house."

I definitely didn't want to go into the same room with three people who seemed to barely tolerate the idea of my existence. Exploring the house sounded really, really good. I let Ociir go back into the dining room to face off with them.

I was most interested in the garden, and how the hell it was even working without real light. I wasn't exactly sure how to even get out there until I noticed one of the windows had a small metal knob sticking out of the frame. I turned that, and the glass panel swung outwards.

The garden was small and long, but only as wide as the house, and fenced in on both sides. There was sort of a patio thing made of big slabs of stone, and beyond that was just a tangle of greenery. Not really flowers, but definitely a lot of plants. Some of them were like climbing ivy, winding up the slats of the fence and also the back wall of the house. On the far right side of the patio was a glass table and a few chairs, which had been hidden from view until I'd actually stepped out of the door.

And someone was sitting in one of the chairs, bent over and hunched up, pale blond hair falling over his face. It took me a moment to realize that I knew him. It was Ahieel.

He was wearing a long white shirt and greyish pants, made of thin, wrinkled fabric, and no shoes. It made him look like some sort of mental patient. His blond hair had gotten longer since the last time I'd seen him, and had gone a little stringy. He looked thinner, and definitely unhealthier.

"Ahieel," I said, startled into it, and he jumped badly and looked around. There were grayish shadows under his eyes, which made him look utterly exhausted.

"Alan," he said when he saw me, in a sort of flat, hard voice. "You're—here. Why?"

"I—long story," I said. I didn't like the vibe I was getting off of him. Even the last time I'd run into him, he hadn't looked so beaten down, so worn out. But like last time, I couldn't even feel his energy well. It phased in and out and felt somehow sickly, overall more faint that I'd ever felt it.

And he was staring at me like he wanted me to drop dead, or at least get out of his garden. I wasn't going to argue much with that idea, since the last time I'd seen this guy he'd actively tried to kill me, but I also needed to know what the hell was up with him. And that need won out.

"What happened to you?"

"What happened?" Ahieel repeated, like he couldn't believe I had the balls to ask. "What happened? You of all people should know—you did this to me."

"I—what?" I said. He hadn't been like this the last time. And I hadn't done anything then but take his wing. Keyd had been physically fine without his. Thinking about Keyd made my stomach roll over and clench up.

"You did something," Ahieel said. He was starting to sound angry, which I'd never really heard from him before. "You did something to my bach; they don't regenerate, they don't work properly. I can't do—anything at all. I'm useless," he finished, more quietly.

"I'm sorry," I said, and I actually kind of meant it. Ahieel didn't seem to think so; he snorted and shook his head.

"Why are you here?" he said, his voice hard.

"I—" didn't want to explain why to Ahieel, that was for sure. "Maybe someone else will tell you."

Ahieel look unsurprised and unimpressed, both. "So you're on our side now," he said, lifting one eyebrow in a very disbelieving way.

"I'm not on a side," I said. "I just want my goddamn world to be left alone! That's all I want."

Ahieel snorted and turned away, staring back down at the clear surface of the table. "Good luck," he said. "We don't leave places once we've chosen them. Your world is lost, first to war, and then to light or dark. It won't be the same again."

"Just—shut the fuck up," I said, seething. "Shut up, I don't want to hear that."

Ahieel shrugged, and I couldn't stay out there another second with him or I was going to punch him in the face. I stormed back through the glass doors and into the living room, where I bumped into Ociir almost right away.

"You know, if this is gonna be a problem with your family, I can totally go stay at that layman place, or wherever," I said to him. "I really don't want to screw shit up between you and your family." And I'm not sure I want to stay where Ahieel is living.

"No," Ociir said. He sounded dead serious. "It's truly not about you."

"It's about Rysa," I said, and he nodded.

"It's time they stopped ignoring what happened," he said. "Our family has never truly recovered from the disgrace of it, or what was considered disgrace by our people. They have never truly wanted to face it."

"And you think that time is now?" I said. Don't put me in the goddamn middle of your issues, I didn't say.

"A good time as any other," Ociir said, with a kind of finality that I didn't want to argue again.

"What happened to Ahieel?" I asked instead, jerking my thumb over my shoulder in his general direction.

Ociir looked startled. "Did he speak to you?"

"Sort of. He's a little angry."

Ociir made a noise almost like a laugh. "Yes, he would be," he said, sobering again right away. "Whatever happened during your last confrontation did something to him. His entities don't regenerate; he can't use his abilities well and he can't use spells. He was discharged from the forces because of it—he would be of no use."

"Oh," I said. "Oh, shit, that's—I don't even know what I did."

"No, I didn't expect you would," Ociir said. He was looking at me kind of hard. "This is very new to you, isn't it?"

"Well, fuck, yeah," I said. "What do you think, I was born knowing how to fuck people up?" I winced after I said it. Hardly tactful, especially since this was his brother we were talking about. "Look, he was trying to seriously kill me at the time. I didn't have a real good handle on working this stuff—I still don't, actually. Whatever I did to him…it was an accident."

"I believe you," Ociir said.

Why, I almost asked, but didn't. Ociir had no reason to do the things he'd already done for me, really. He barely knew me. I was in an antshil bond with his estranged sister and a guy he really cared about but didn't love, and that was the extent of my association with him. I didn't know why he was helping me, why he believed me, why he was being so goddamn nice. I knew he was a pretty chivalrous guy, but I wasn't a chick, here. I didn't need the gallantry.

#

Ociir showed me to his room after that, where I was going to be allowed to stay. It was on the second floor, medium-sized but practically empty. If he nearly lived at the temple with his fiancée, I guess it would make sense. There was a bed—large for just one person, a sort of long low table opposite it. Sort of an armchair was in one corner, and there was a fancy little nightstand next to the bed. There was a door that probably lead to a closet, and the wide rectangular window on the far wall looked out into the rainy street below.

"You can keep anything you have in here," Ociir said, gesturing to the door that was probably the closet, and then kind of gave me a once-over. I was pretty obviously carrying absolutely nothing. I had two possessions with me other than the clothes I was wearing. Rysa's book and Keyd's necklace.

"I don't really have anything," I said.

"You came here with nothing?" Ociir asked, and I had to nod.

"Honestly," I said, "I didn't expect to have to wait here a week."

"I'll try to find you some other things to wear, at least," Ociir said, glancing me up and down. "You are—a littler smaller, than usual."

"Thanks," I said, ignoring the unintentional poke at my height. I was short, around these people. That was just a fact. Ociir gave me a nod, like it was totally no problem.

"Hey—why are you doing all this for me?" I said. "It's not like you know me, or we're friends, or anything."

"Anyone who helps my family, any part of it, I hold unconditional respect for," Ociir said. "I'm only showing you the same courtesy you have shown to us."

"I also hurt your family," I reminded him. "I hurt your brother—really bad."

Ociir shook his head. "He hurt himself. His behavior has always been…self-damaging. If I begrudged anyone who had ever hurt him in some way—there would be few people I didn't resent."

If this was Ociir's way of apologizing for his brother, then I was going to accept that. Readily.

"Okay," I said. "I—still, thanks. Really. I really couldn't have done any of this without your help. I don't think they'd even have let me come here if I hadn't mentioned your name."

Ociir pressed two fingers to his collarbone as a reply, and swept his head down in a little bow. "You can consider us even, if you wish," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "I will."

I glanced around the room again, with not much else to do. It was being lit by one of those same globe things, centered on the ceiling. There were two more of them right outside the window, one on either size, which gave the view a hazy gold filter to look through. The window just looked down on the street outside, the houses across the road. Rain was still pouring down out there, the streets shiny and wet with a layer of water.

"Is it like this all the time?" I asked, and Ociir looked puzzled.

"Like what?"

"These—light things," I said, gesturing at the glowing globes. "Do they stay like this all the time?" Because there was no way I was going to be able to sleep in this place if it was bright like this, always. If I could even sleep at all.

"We generally dim them at nighttime," Ociir said. "I can teach you how—you should be able to, with your ability."

"Good to know." I turned away from the window. "This place would be entirely dark without them, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," Ociir said, glancing away. "You—must know how our energy, and the energy of the oenclar, works. How we affect light and dark."

"Yeah," I said. "A little." Keyd had never really explained the oenclar half with any real coherency, but I sort of had it figured out on my own."It's supposed to be a balance. You're supposed to equal each other. Not like this."

Ociir looked out of the window, streams of water rolling down. He looked oddly sad for a moment, touching his fingers to the pane of glass

"No," he agreed. "Not like this."

#

Ociir went back to the temple soon after that. I felt as uncomfortable as all fuck in the house without him there. I definitely didn't feel like leaving the room. So I didn't. I sat on the edge of the pristine white bed and fiddled my hands together. I had dirt under my nails and somewhere along the line I'd acquired a long scratch on the back of my left hand. My clothes were all still damp and muddy from the rain and I discovered my hair had dried into odd kinks when I ran my hand through it, and there were water spots all over my glasses. I felt like a fucking mess.

I was cleaning my glasses off in the hem of my shirt when somebody knocked on the door. I froze, having a tiny internal panic attack. I was just hoping this wasn't Ahieel. Maybe it had been stupid to stay in the same house with a guy who really seriously disliked me—and now for a legitimate reason. Although I doubted Ahieel would have bothered to knock if he really wanted to come in here and mess me over.

I got up, jammed my glasses back on, and opened the door. It wasn't Ahieel—it was one of Rysa's sisters. Honestly, I couldn't remember her name. She was the one with grey eyes, but that didn't help me much. Her pale white-blond hair was swooped up and piled messily on top of her head, and loose wavy strands trailed down in places. She was exactly my height, and she looked a little nervous.

"Uh," I said, fairly baffled. And a little scared. "Hi?"

"I'm sorry," she blurted out. Her voice had an interesting sound to it, soft and higher pitched, but slightly husky. A little like Rysa's voice, only milder. "I don't mean to bother you."

"I—you're not," I said. Christ, it was her house. I wasn't sure if I should invite her in or something, if she actually wanted in or just wanted to stand out in the hallway. I had no idea why she was even here at all. When I'd spoken to her and the other one before, I'd kind of offended them both by talking about Rysa.

"I'd like to speak with you, if that's all right," this one said. She still looked anxious, but more determined now. I wished I could remember her damned name. It might have started with an O. Or maybe that was the other one. I was pretty sure this was the nicer one, though, the one who hadn't slammed down her hand and said Rysa wasn't her sister.

"Uh, yeah, all right," I said. Did 'want to speak with me' also mean 'want to come in'? I moved a step back from the door, in case it did. Which was apparently the right move, as she followed me into the room. She was wearing a lot of swishy skirts in layers, mostly tan and pale green, and a long grey tunic thing over that with a collar and long sleeves.

"I'm sorry," I said, before she could say anything, "but—what was your name, again?"

"Ohean," she said, without a trace of being insulted. I ran it over in my head a few times, trying to imprint it to my memory. Ohean. Like ocean with an 'h'. "And you're Alan."

"Yeah, me, Alan," I said, kind of stupidly.

"I wanted to ask you about Ineah….Rysa," she said. I goggled a little bit.

"Sure, okay," I said. Was this a trap? Would she ask me and then skewer me when I started talking about her excommunicated oenclar sister? "Sure, I—yeah. What do you want to ask about?"

Ohean drew in a little breath, and pinched his fingers into the fabric of her skirt. Her eyes darted around the floor, not getting anywhere near my face. "She's doing all right? She's—is she happy, where she is?"

I goggled a little more. "I—guess so," I said, scratching at my hair. "Uh, I thought you didn't really care—"

Ohean's face knitted up, both hurt and determined. She still didn't look at me, instead staring at the floor by my feet. "Of course I care," she said. "How could I not?"

Jesus, had I apparently gotten the wrong impression. "Sorry," I said. "I just—you know. You didn't seem too happy to talk about her before. You all kind of seemed to be upset—"

Ohean turned her face away away, now clutching her hands fully into her skirt. She looked both embarrassed and ashamed, and it took me a moment to understand why.

"Oh," I said. It was a cover. All of that, what I'd seen downstairs. The angry and distant act was just that—an act. They had had a member of their family become something very embarrassing and unspeakable, and of course none of them could publicly admit that they all still cared about her. Or at least Ociir and Ohean did, which was a good two out of five. "Shit. I get it. I understand."

"She's truly all right, then?" Ohean said, glancing back at me. Her hands relaxed a little, smoothing along her skirt. "It's been so long…since I've seen her."

"She's fine," I said. "I—she…misses all of you." I didn't know this for sure, but the way she'd glommed on to Ociir when he'd shown up was a pretty good indicator of her caring about a part of her family. And I needed to say something to this poor girl. I felt really bad for her.

"We miss her," Ohean said, very softly. "We—I hope she knows that not all of us…think like Ahieel."

"She must," I said. Rysa had never spoken about her family, not to me. Hardly even about Ahieel. I hadn't even known he was her twin until way deep into this whole thing. I certainly hadn't known that she had four other siblings beyond that. It was probably a painful subject, and Rysa disliked messy emotional stuff just as much as Keyd did.

"Ociir has told us a little about you," Ohean said. She reached out and took my hand, holding it between hers. "I must thank you for it."

Great, what the hell had Ociir told her about me? Probably that I'd…helped Rysa, or something. That made the most sense.

"No problem," I said, a little uncomfortably. "I really hope that you can see her again, someday."

"So do I," Ohean said, quietly.

#

Ohean didn't hang around after that. I guess she'd gotten what she'd come to talk to me about and didn't want much more than that. I was left alone again in Ociir's room, with nothing to do and still slightly afraid to leave it. I wasn't going to lie—even sick and useless, Ahieel still unnerved me a little. He had some serious moral issues going on and I'd gotten caught in the middle of them.

About an hour after Ohean left, there was another knock on the door. I got up to answer it, and was a little less surprised this time to see Ociir's other sister standing in the hallway. She didn't even ask to come in—she just did, pushing past me a little and striding to the center of the room. She turned around with a swish, the layers of skirts she was wearing floating out a bit in the air.

"Ah," I said, not wanting to assume anything about her visit because, shit, she was a little scary. "Can I help you?"

She—I think her name had been something like Ieta, and that's what I was going to go with, because I wasn't going to ask—stared down at me through really, really thick eyelashes. She was about a head taller than me. That alone was intimidating.

"So," she said, like she hadn't heard my question at all. "You've been in contact with her," she said. I didn't need clarification on who her was.

"Yeah," I said. "I have."

"Well," Ieta said, a little impatiently. I was forming an opinion of her pretty fast, and that opinion was do not like. She was nothing like Ohean, and a little bit more like Rysa, except without the likeability or politeness.

"Well what?" I shot back. I was not going to allow myself to be bullied by a girl, even one a whole head taller than me.

Ieta glared at me. "Must I elaborate?" she said,

"You want to know how Rysa is," I said, a little stupidly.

"Of course I want to know how she is," Ieta said, sharply She set her jaw in a very tell-me-what-I-want-or-I'll-never-go-away kind of manner, and I decided I'd better play along with her.

"She's…fine," I said. "She's doing fine."

"Married? Children?" Ieta pressed, and I seriously had to stop myself from laughing.

"No, neither," I said. I wondered how much Ociir told them about Rysa, what kind of person she was now. Or maybe they didn't even know that he had been sneaking away every odd year or so to get in touch with her. Except for the last twelve years.

"Well," Ieta said, sounding not surprised. "That was never her way. And she would be better off, not to have any at all."

"Ah," I said, curious despite myself. "Uh. Why?"

"Any children of hers would probably be oenclar themselves," Ieta said, with serious contempt.

"Right," I said, reeling a little from that. "Well. She doesn't have any. And she's doing fine."

"Good," Ieta said, and that appeared to be the end of that. She whirled back out, the door shutting hard behind her. I rubbed at my temple, trying to massage away the little headache that had been trying to start up there ever since she'd shown up. Well. I didn't like Ahieel and I didn't like Ieta, and they didn't seem to like me much, either. This was an awesome start to head off the next five days.

#

It took another few hours, but Rysa's youngest brother, Eleon, also showed up at my door.

"Hello," I said, unsurprised, when I opened the door to find him, fidgeting in the hallway. He blinked and glanced up at me. He had pale grey eyes, just like Ociir and Ohean. His hair still completely threw me off. Brown. Why the hell did he have brown hair? It made no fucking sense.

"You're—not surprised," he said, when I stepped back to let him in.

"Not really," I said. "Your sisters were already here earlier."

Eleon froze in the middle of stepping through the doorframe. "What?"

"Look," I said, taking his shoulder and pulling him the rest of the way in. I shut the door behind him. "I get that it's a front. I'm not going to tell anyone else that you came around."

Eleon looked vaguely terrified, and cast a desperate glance at the door, as though he was seriously reconsidering this whole thing. "What?"

Maybe this guy was just stupid—or I wasn't being clear. But I had no idea what else we might be talking about.

"I understand that you don't all really hate your sister," I said, enunciating like I might to a slightly special person. "You know, Rysa? The one that's an oenclar?"

Eleon's eyes shot wide open. "You're talking about Ineah," he said, with a long breath out. "Oh."

"What the hell did you think I was talking about?" I said.

Eleon shook his head. "I—didn't really come to here to ask about her. I never even knew her. I wasn't born yet when she left us. I suppose I do care what happens to her, but—it's not why I'm here."

"All right," I said, slowly. "Then…what for?"

He abruptly went very still and very tense, his mouth clamping together into such a hard line that his lips disappeared.

"You—" he started, softly, and then cleared his throat and fixed his face into something much more determined looking. "I've heard things. About you, and—the oenclar artaln. Are they…true?"

It was my turn to ask, "what?"

Eleon was turning splotchy pink, and he pushed his bangs nervously out of his face. "That…you're…" he said, with a lot of difficulty, "lovers."

"Oh," I said, feeling suddenly deflated. He wanted to talk about this? Jesus. "Yeah, we were, yeah. Why?"

Eleon went even pinker. "I'm—so sorry," he stuttered out, taking a step back. "This was rude, and I—I shouldn't be asking this, I—"

"It's fine. Who'd you hear that from, anyway?" I asked, and Eleon somehow got even more red.

"Ociir," he said, his voice so low and embarrassed I barely heard him. Shit, right, I'd practically forgotten Ociir knew all about that whole thing. Although I didn't know why he was telling people—that wasn't very cool.

"Well, it's true," I said. "If you're going to get all weird about it, I really don't need—"

"No!" Eleon interrupted, grabbing at my hand. Then he dropped it right away, like he'd touched a heated iron. "I've just never met anyone who—

"You want to—talk about it?" I asked, feeling like it was the stupidest thing in the world to ask but still asking it anyway. But Eleon nodded, staring at the floor in front of his feet and looking like he wished he wasn't here at all.

"Okay," I said, sinking down to the edge of the bed, and gesturing him to the chair against the opposite wall. "Let's talk."

#

Unlike my talk with Ohean, which had been brief, and the talk with Ieta, which had been briefer, Eleon stayed in the room with me for a couple of hours. I even started to notice the glowy globe things in houses across the street start to dim out. Apparently it was nighttime, or getting somewhere near to it.

I learned a lot of things about Eleon during our talk. For one thing, he was literally almost my age. He didn't just look it, like the way Keyd was fifty-nine and looked my age. Eleon was twenty one. And by clar standards, he really was just a kid, not considered mature or competent or independent. He also had no bach marks on him yet, because he hadn't hit that uwilat thing Ociir had once told me about. That was why his hair was brown; it was his natural hair color. Once he hit energy puberty, it would change into white-blond like the rest of them. Unless, of course, he was one of the rare occurrences, like Rysa had been.

I guess I just hadn't thought about the fact that the entities and energy would change their hair color, even though it had changed my own. I wondered what color Rysa's hair had been originally. Or Keyd's. It was hard to imagine them looking any other way than they did right now. I also kind of realized why Keyd had had an interesting reaction back when I'd told him my age. From what I gleaned out of Eleon, he had all the privileges and advantages of about an eight year old kid, because that's about what he was considered as. I probably seemed just as young and immature to Keyd. But I suppose it made sense, if the clar lifespans were significantly longer than humans, for even someone my age to be thought of as almost a child. They had a lot more time to spend mentally maturing—although physical maturity seemed to be right on task.

Because the biggest thing, the thing he'd originally come to talk to me about, was the topic that just wouldn't fucking leave me alone recently, was the fact that he was probably most likely gay. But since, just like the oenclar, they didn't actually have a word for it, he was "that way." When I dug at him a little harder, he finally admitted that he was attracted to men.

"I've known that I am for—over a year," he said, his face turned down and staring at the floor. Even that way, I could tell he was still awesomely pink in the face. "I've been so scared. I didn't know what to do. I can't talk to anyone about it. It's just this horrible…horrible thing—" his hand crept up and gripped at his shirt, above his heart. "This secret. I—I don't know how to fix it."

"Fix it?" I said. Christ. Apparently it was just as bad on this side of things as it was on the oenclar side. And how did someone even go about fixing that, anyway? It wasn't something broken, and there was nothing about it to fix.

"There are these things, these places," Eleon said. "That you can go to if you want to be—cured. They're—well, we call them onnatalla, and I think the oenclar word for them is dronjyet. I was, I mean, I've been thinking about going."

"Cured?" I said, because that sounded a lot like brainwashing.

Eleon nodded, still staring at his entangled fingers. "I don't know what they do there. I've only heard about them, and not—I mean, they're fairly hidden. Hard to find. I've heard they're horrible, but sometimes—people get better. Normal, again."

"Look," I said, abruptly and startling angry. "Don't think you need to be cured, all right? There's not a goddamned thing wrong with you. Anyone who thinks there is has got something wrong with them, okay? Jesus Christ, all you people and your—fucking complexes."

When I looked back at Eleon, he was staring at me in a bizarre sort of awe.

"You think so?" he said, faintly.

"I'm the same as you, remember?" I said. "And I'm fine."

"You are," Eleon said, in a kind of questioning wonder, and then, with more resolve, "you are."

"Yeah," I said. Apparently I was just the awesome poster child for gay rights in every place I went to. I really didn't need that. I wasn't even goddamn gay. I just—yeah. There was just that thing, where I happened to be in love with someone who was male. Keyd was a person whom I loved, not a body. Okay, well, yeah, I'd liked his body too, but I don't think it would have mattered what the hell he was. I think I would have felt like this, no matter what.

"Thank you," Eleon said, which was a little unexpected. "Alan…thank you."

"Sure, no problem," I said, still residually angry, and not exactly sure what he was even thanking me for. Talking with him? Telling him he was okay? Being gay (maybe) myself? Who knew. As long as it was helping him somehow.

"I hope it would be all right if I—came by to talk to you again," he said.

"Sure," I said. "Any time." At least in the next five days.

"It's late," Eleon said, standing up suddenly. "I should….probably go."

"Okay," I said, standing up myself. I caught his shoulder, and he startled a little. "Hey, look. You really can come and talk to me anytime, all right? I'm serious. Don't think I was just saying that. I mean it."

Eleon swallowed hard, and his lower lip trembled a little. But he bit down on it, hard, and nodded. "Thank you," he said again, with a carefully controlled voice that told me he was definitely trying not to cry. Obviously he hadn't had as much time to practice shutting away his emotions as the rest of all these people, but he was giving it a good shot.

I gave his shoulder a little squeeze, just for comfort, or something. "No problem."

"I'm—I'm going to go," Eleon said, and I let go of him. He went halfway through the door, paused, looked back at me, and gave me a timid sort of smile. Before I could do anything else, he slipped out the door and it shut behind him.

I sat back down on the bed, exhaling and running a hand through my hair, knocking my glass a little askew with my palm. If there was one good thing coming out of my being here, it was that conversation I'd just had. I actually felt like I had helped Eleon, just by listening to him, talking to him. And that was a bizarrely nice feeling.

#

I woke up sometime in the middle of the night. Abruptly, jerking into consciousness; sweating, my head pounding, feeling nauseated. I rolled up to a sit in Ociir's stupidly big bed, sliding my face into my hands and trying to breathe, my heart thumping away in my chest while sweat cooled uncomfortably everywhere on my body. I knew why, too—it wasn't like it was hard to guess.

"What am I doing?" I muttered, aware I was talking to myself and not even caring at this point. I didn't have anyone else to talk to. I stared at the window, the few still lit globes I could see out of it, and the rain pouring down outside. "What am I doing here?"

I was in another world, in the middle of the clarbach's city, with an appointment to talk to their agistar five days from now. How the hell had I gotten myself into this? What was I doing? I must have gone fucking insane. This was not smart, or sensible, or even vaguely logical.

I took another couple of long breaths, drawing in air from between my fingers. I was trying to save my fucking planet; that's what I was trying to do. This was the only way I knew how. The only chance I had. It might not have made sense and it might not be smart, but it was the only thing I could do.

I stared out at the rain still slapping and sliding down the window, glinting in the limited pale light.

I'm doing the right thing.

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CHARACTER ONSLAUGHT SORRY SORRY SORRY. This and last chapter both.

Also sorry about the over two months thing. I seriously had no focus.