[ CH V ]

That night, I was so nervous and anxious about my impending meeting with the agistar that I worked myself into being nearly physically sick, and consequently couldn't sleep. Again. I spent half the night pacing around in circles in the dark, too stressed out and scattered to even manage to turn on the lights, and the other half of the night trying out every sleeping position imaginable, praying one would work. I was eventually so exhausted from trying to sleep that I must have dropped off sometime in the very early morning. Because I woke up with a start and an uncomfortable jolt of adrenaline when someone shook my shoulder hard.

"Sorry," Ociir said, drawing back from me when I shot up in bed, flailing and panting.

"Jesus, dude, don't do that," I said, falling back to the pillow with my hands over my face. "God damn."

"I just thought you might want to wake up," Ociir said, unbothered by my outburst. "As your meeting with the agistar is in just over an hour."

I lurched upwards again, and Ociir had to duck out of the way.

"A fucking hour?" I said, scrambling to get out of the bed and groping for my glasses. "Christ, Ociir."

It really wasn't his fault, it wasn't his responsibility to do this stuff for me, he'd already done way too much, but telling me I had just an hour until this goddamn meeting had ratcheted up my nerves to an instant snapping point. I was going to be overreacting to everything, probably, until this whole thing was done. I hadn't even known specifically when this meeting was—nobody had ever told me a time.

I sat on the edge of the bed and scrubbed hard at my face. I had a good five days worth of stubble going, and I didn't like that. I didn't want to look like a scruffy, unkempt loser in front of the agistar, especially in a city full of people who didn't grow beards at all. I hadn't shaved for over five days, and even though my hair grew in pretty light, it was noticeable by now.

"Is there any kind of razor or blade around here I could use?" I asked Ociir, rubbing my hand over my jaw. "I gotta get rid of this."

.

Obligingly, Ociir found me some sort of flat blade with a handle from somewhere. I wasn't sure of its original purpose, but it worked well enough for mine. I shaved, and got dressed in my own jeans and shirt, bypassing Eleon's clothes. I was representing Earth now, and I was going to do so in relevant clothes. Who cared if it was jeans and a shirt from Target. The agistar would never know.

I didn't even know how this was going to work. Would the agistar be alone? Would he be with some sort of court, or council, like Maedajon had usually been? Would I be expected to have this talk in front of a couple dozen other important people? Would it really just be me, by myself, against the politics and government of another world? Shit, if I kept thinking about this too much, I was really going to have a panic attack.

I tried to blank out my mind as best I could. Ociir left the house with me, and seemed determined to accompany me along the whole way there. I didn't mind. Any company was good, I'd take anything I could get. It was only when the central city spire was halfway to being full size in front of us that I thought of something else.

"How much time do I have?" I asked Ociir, who seemed to be able to keep track of it better than I could.

"About a half of an hour. Alan—"

"I want to go talk to Law," I said. "Just—quickly. I should have time."

Ociir looked at me like I was crazy, or stupid, or both. Which I probably was. "Alan," he said again.

"No, I'm serious. Just, I know it sounds nuts but I have to. "

And, because Ociir was such an accommodating guy, he finally just shrugged and agreed. We changed course, heading through the dim and grey-blue city until I started recognizing the things around us from the couple of times Id' already coming through here, going to visit Law. We stopped at the foot of the bridge that led across to the laemenna, and I stilled Ociir by catching his arm.

"I won't take long," I said, and dashed off across the bridge and into the building by myself.

"You know who I am," I yelled at the guy who manned that stupid record room, as I passed it. "We're not going through it again!"

I ran down to the third door on the right and threw it open. I scared the shit out of Law, who was sitting on the bed again, because he yelped and flailed and nearly fell off of it.

"Jesus Christ!" he spat, catching his balance on the metal frame of the cot and glaring at me. "What the fuck's your problem, Alan?"

"Sorry," I said. "I'm in a hurry."

"I thought you had your big important goddamn thing today," Law said furiously. He was probably still embarrassed I'd scared him so bad. He was seriously red in the face.

"I do," I said. And then, on impulse, "but I want you to come with me."

Law's hands were gripping so hard at the bed frame that his knuckles had gone yellow-white. "What?"

"Come with me. Moral support or—that kind of shit. I know we haven't exactly been on the same side before, but—you don't want to see our planet get turned into a fucking nightmare place like this is, do you?"

His jaw set, his expression got a little more confident. "I don't," he said.

"Then we're on the same side now," I said. "And I'm just about the last hope it has."

"What the hell do you think you could do?" Law said. "What could you possibly tell them that would make them stop?"

"Why don't you come along and see," I said.

Law threw his head around on his shoulders, and I heard a few things pop in there. Then he looked at me again. "Is that even allowed?"

"I don't think they'll care."

#

And I was right about that. Ociir lifted his eyebrows but said nothing when Law came out of the laemenna with me, and when we got the central government-whatever building with the big spire in the center of the courtyard, nobody there said anything either. Not one word about Law being with me. Maybe they figured we were so insignificant that it didn't matter if there were one or two of us. We just tagged along at Ociir's side, quiet and mild as he took us past the same two hallway guards with a nod.

We went back to that same rotunda thing at the end of the hall, but instead of the door to the left, this time we went to the door to the right. Which was a set of double doors, tall, arched, and done in carved wood. They were locked, or otherwise not openable, and Ociir lifted a large metal ring set on the front of them and knocked it against the wood a few times.

A few moments passed. The only thing I heard was the ridiculously loud beating of my own heart in my ears, thudding in my neck. While we were waiting there in suffocating silence, Law peered closer at my face, squinting a little.

"You look like shit," he muttered, which was real comforting.

"I didn't sleep," I answered, shortly. A brief look—just a flash, so quick that I almost thought I imagined it—of concern went over Law's face, before he just rolled his eyes and turned away.

I was shaking, and I jammed my hands into my pockets to hide it. I was also having a little bit of a problem breathing regularly. I actually had to concentrate on doing it, or I'd forget. Any of the things I'd prepared to say in a logical, diplomatic, and reasonable manner were completely gone from my head. I wasn't even sure what was left up there other than a half-formed, confused jumble of words and thoughts, none of which would make me sound very confident or intelligent in front of the agistar, or anyone else who was going to be in there.

This wait was getting fucking maddening. With every extra second that passed I was getting closer and closer to an anxiety attack. I kept focusing on breathing because, honestly, it was helping. And the fact that Law was here, and I really didn't want to flip out in front of him because that would have been humiliating. That might even have been one of the reasons I'd suddenly needed to have him along—we'd always been in this weird competition with each other, and there was no way I was going to let myself panic or break down if Law was in the same room.

Then, one of the double doors cracked open with a deep, low noise. A tall woman in a bunch of green clothing with extremely long braided hair slipped out, moving soundlessly over the floor. She left the door open just a little bit, not enough to see what was inside, and turned to us. She gave Ociir something of a respectful nod, then zeroed in on me.

"He will see you now," she said, and I had a scary moment where my heart seemed to stutter over one or two beats. I clenched my hands in the pockets of my jeans, took a deep breath, and nodded. The woman kept standing there, like she was in charge of manning the doors. Before I could do anything, Ociir turned to me.

"Good luck, Alan," he said, putting both his hands on my shoulders and squeezing a little. He was being very serious business about this, and I wasn't even sure if he knew what I was doing.

"Thanks," I said, exhaling. "I—yeah. Thank you, seriously."

Ociir gave me a nod, let go, and stepped back. I glanced over at Law, who looked like he was really regretting agreeing to come along with me. But he was already here, and nobody had said anything against it, and he was gonna come in with me because I just needed that. He was another person from my world and he cared about what happened to it, and he and I were the only two people in this world that did.

I grabbed the edge of his jacket, and pulled him forward with me. The clarbach woman standing in front of the doors stepped to the side, unblocking the slightly open one. I dragged Law through with me, into the room inside.

It was an incredibly huge room. Just one single one, but probably as big as about twenty rooms. Long, high ceilinged; practically cavernous. The whole thing was made of some sort of reflective shiny marble in light green, pale columns lining it all the way down to a large decorative throne thing at the end—also pale green, and empty. Mine and Law's reflections were squished and wriggly on the polished floor, and every movement we made and breath we took echoed back to us. When the door shut behind us, it did so with a huge resounding boom that rolled several times through the room.

"Oz the fucking great and powerful," Law muttered at my side. He was staring at the empty throne at the end of the room. I almost laughed. I was suddenly really glad he was here. He might have been the last person on earth I would have ever picked, but he was someone from my world and that was good enough. I just wasn't alone this time.

Law and I stood in the empty entryway of the huge place for about thirty seconds before anything actually happened. Then, a small doorway to the right of the ridiculously oversized throne opened, and a man came out. He was also wearing green, a loose shirt and pants with a long vest thrown over that, belted with a long bit of grey fabric at the waist. It was all trimmed in brown and tan, and the man himself was lanky and tall, with neatly slicked back blond hair. He made a direct line towards us, making almost no noise as he walked. Just a little rustle of fabric and a slight echo of shoes on the floor.

Was this guy the agistar? He felt powerful—a lot of energy was humming around him—but he wasn't giving me the same feeling that Maedajon ever had. Of course, Maedajon had had the double scary bonus of being a king and my boyfriend's dad, but this guy in front of us just didn't feel…that impressive. I didn't have a single urge to be intimidated by him, despite this situation and how damn important it was. That this guy didn't scare me actually gave me more confidence. The tightness in my chest lifted, and the claustrophobic heat under my skin faded. I could breathe, relax, and even felt slightly capable. I could do this. I could definitely do this.

Law seemed to be getting the exact opposite feeling. As the guy came closer to us at a fairly casual stride, Law inhaled and grabbed at my hand. I think it was just a reflex, but it still startled me. I didn't grip back or anything, and after a few seconds Law let go again. But he stayed close to my side, breathing hard through his nose. I didn't know why I didn't feel scared anymore, or even anxious. I still should have been—if I was smart, I should have been—but I kind of felt….nothing. Like I'd just packed everything I was feeling into some deep section of my brain and labeled it as temporarily irrelevant.

Apparently I was turning into Keyd. But right here, now; that was a good thing. I needed that, that separation of emotion and action. I felt very…level. I watched the guy come to a stop a good several feet from us, planting his feet apart and his hands behind his back, and felt damn confident about talking to him. Especially because I was almost convinced he wasn't the agistar. I really didn't know how I knew that, but I was pretty sure I was right.

"You are Alan," the man said. His voice echoed a little around the room, throwing back to us from the corners. He didn't even look at Law.

"You aren't the agistar," I said in reply. No reason to drag it out.

"No," the man said, looking somewhat pleased that I had deduced that all on my own. "I am Aeidek, advisor to haemasach Alief. You will speak with me today."

"I will not speak with you today," I said. "I was told I would get an audience with the agistar. That's who I want to talk to."

"The decision has been changed, to not allow you to have the audience," Douchebag O'Slickhair McGee said. "So you will speak with me, or no one else."

Anger flared up. But very quiet, vague, screened behind a muted wall, where I could see it, recognize it, but not really feel it. "And when were you going to inform me?"

"You are being informed," Aeidek said, with something of a smug smile. "Right now."

"This is bullshit," I said, calmly, and took a step forward.

"Alan," Law hissed, and grabbed for me, but I shook him off.

"I was promised this, and I deserve to get that much," I said, taking another step forward and leaving Law behind me. While I'd been here in this city, I'd kept all of the oen energy packed away in that little central, hidden core from when Eiphi had asked me to—but now I let it go, curling out through my body. I could tell Aeidek felt it from the way he flinched.

"I told you I didn't come here to fight, and I didn't," I said. I took another step forward. I didn't want to intimidate this guy, and I didn't think I even could, but I wanted to startle him—throw him off the fucking high horse he was riding on. Getting closer to him seemed like a good way to do that. "I just want the talk I was promised. That's all."

In response to the energy I was throwing off, Aeidek was buzzing out some of his own, a shield to repel what I was doing. I wasn't trying very hard and he wasn't trying very hard, and I was pretty sure both of us knew that. This was like a little power dance, a warning to each other. That we both could do better. Unfortunately, I was 90% bluffing. I wasn't sure if I could do better, since my abilities were hard to use and unpredictable and I used them best when my life was being threatened.

"Jesus, Alan, stop!" Law said from behind me, his voice up so high it was practically a teakettle pitch.

I ignored him. I knew he could feel everything going on, but not much more. He probably couldn't screen it from himself or shut it off. Aeidek was holding in place, but now we were only a few steps or so from each other. He was taller than me, not unexpectedly, but only by a few inches.

"I just want what I was told I could have," I said, again. "If anything, you all should honor your promises. Even to people like me."

Aeidek looked a little annoyed by that, and was about to say something in reply, when we got interrupted. A small person in a tan hooded robe suddenly dashed out of nowhere—just suddenly flitting out from between two nearby pillars. They nearly made no noise on the smooth marble floor, and I noticed the person's feet were bare. I couldn't even tell what gender the person was as it ran up to Aeidek. He snapped his mouth shut and focused all his attention to it, as it leant up and whispered something into his ear. It had to be some sort of kid, because there weren't any adult clar around that were that short. Not that I'd ever seen.

And Aeidek was listening closely to whatever the kid was saying, his eyebrows pulled in a little and his mouth set. Finally the kid stepped back, and put its robed hands together. Aiedek stooped his head down in a bow, which the kid returned before dashing off back through the pillars, disappearing in a flicker of brown.

I'd been holding my breath the entire time during this bizarre interruption, and I let it out as slowly and steadily as I could as Aeidek turned back to face me. He stared at me, hard, for a moment, then made an unhappy grunting sound.

"You will be allowed the audience," he said, with a serious grudging attitude. I goggled a little bit, but managed to at least look like I wasn't entirely stunned. I'd been prepared to argue, but I hadn't been prepared to win. "Return here tomorrow, at the same time."

"Thank you," I said, confused beyond belief, inclining my head in a little bow at him. I didn't know what else would be the best move here, but it seemed to be enough. Aiedek returned it, slightly, then about-faced on his heel and strode back across the room, towards that door next to the improbable throne. He disappeared through it and it closed behind him, with a slam that echoed back through the entire cavernous room.

"That's it, then?" I said to the empty room. "We can go?"

Of course, no reply. My voice just threw back to me off the pale marble walls and columns. I exhaled, feeling immediate tension run out of my shoulders and back. This wasn't over, far from it, but it looked like I'd survived phase one. Beaten the level boss. Advanced to the next stage. My hands were still shaking a little from leftover nerves as I turned around to look at Law. He was still standing a little bit away from me, looking pale and jittery and even worse than I felt.

"Christ, Alan," he said. He was staring at me like he'd never seen me before in his life. "Fuck, when did you get so goddamn ballsy?"

"I don't know," I said, overwhelming relief still coursing through me. "Just having to deal with so much of this kind of shit, I gu—"

Before I could even finish the sentence, Law was on me. He grabbed me, spun me, pushed me up against a nearby pillar and slammed his mouth to mine, his hands digging into my face. It was about the roughest, most violent and least affectionate kiss I'd ever had, and it felt amazingly fucking good.

At least, until I came back to my senses and pushed him off me, hard. Law backed away, his hands in his hair.

"Fuck," he said. "Goddamn it, I'm sorry."

I lifted my head off the pillar, rubbing at the back of it in a daze. He'd shoved me pretty hard; it already felt kind of tender. Law was still staring at me, looking halfway to horrified. Could he just not control his fucking self now or something? Why the hell did he keep throwing himself at me?

"Let's just get out of here," I said. Law, tight-mouthed, just nodded.

#

Ociir was waiting for us outside the throne room, or whatever it was. I told him what had happened, while Law lurked silently off to the side. Ociir seemed unsurprised that I hadn't gotten a real audience—but definitely surprised that I would get one. I told him about the kid in the robe that had interrupted us, and Ociir said it was one of the houla, who were young assistants directly to the agistar. Which meant that Alief had sent that one in personally to deliver the message.

I wasn't exactly sure of the significance of that, but it felt big. But right now I felt too exhausted and wound-up and shaky at the same time to really concentrate on it. I just fell into step behind Ociir as he lead me and Law back out into the courtyard of this whole governmental complex, into the bleak day outside. The central city spire rose upwards into the gloom, and a damp wind pushed around us like maybe it was about to rain again.

We crossed over a bridge to get out of the courtyard, and Ociir excused himself from us to go back to the temple. Someday I was going to ask what the hell he did there, since he seemed to be there so damn much. But I wasn't going to ask today. Ociir left me and Law standing alone at the end of the bridge, disappearing down a dim street lit by square red lanterns.

Law hadn't said a single word since we'd left that throne room, and he didn't now. He turned away, and took a sharp and immediate left. The direction of the laemenna. On some sort of insane impulse, I followed him, jogging after him to fall into step next to him. Law almost tripped over himself when he noticed me, and gave me a look somewhere in between utter horror and complete disbelief. But he didn't say anything. He just kept walking.

There was utter silence between us all the way back to the laemenna, through Law signing back in to the record room and us going back to his room, third door on the right. Law didn't stop me from coming in—he waited until I was in and then shut the door behind us. Then he turned, pressing his back against it and staring at me, his eyes bright and odd. He looked a little scared, and also a little bit defiant. Prepared to defend himself, I guess, since he probably thought I was going to tell him off.

Something hot and uncomfortable and desperate was rolling deep in my stomach, and had been ever since Law had kissed me in the throne room—this weird anxious need and lonely ache that was setting me on a jittery, unbalanced edge. I felt displaced in my own body and extremely unanchored. When I looked at my hands, they didn't really feel like they were connected to me. Like maybe I was just riding shotgun in some stranger's body, looking out of his eyes and watching all this insanity play out with mild intrigue.

"What was that, back there," I said, hardly pitching it as a question. Law's hands clenched closed at his sides, and a dull spotty pink color rose in his face. "Why do you keep doing that."

"I'm sorry," Law said, with a hard edge in his voice. "I just wasn't thinking, I was so fucking terrified in there and you just weren't, at all, and the way you acted with that guy, it was so—fuck, look, just forget it. Forget it."

The hot, churning pit in my stomach just got worse. I didn't know what I was doing, really, only that it had to be stupid, but—I was just as shaken up and lost and overwhelmed as Law was. And he was the only familiar thing here. I just needed—something. I didn't even know what. And I couldn't forget it.

I took a step closer to him. Law's hands came up, and I thought he was going to shove me away, but he twisted them into my shirt instead. I caught his wrists—they were thin, and I could feel all the bones rolling under his skin.

"Don't," Law started, and his throat rolled once. "If you d—"

I shut him up by kissing him. Rough, slamming our faces together so hard that I tasted something metallic in my mouth and the clink of our teeth together rattled in my head. Law grabbed at the back of my neck, gnarling fingers in my hair and yanking, hard. He was a little shorter than me, so this was—totally different. I had more control, I could push him around if I wanted to.

So I did. I grabbed his hips and swung him off the door and stumbled with him backwards to the bed and shoved him down on it. He bounced onto his back, the cot frame squeaking under him, reached up and grabbed my shoulders and pulled me down on top of him. He grunted when I landed, wrapped an arm around my back, and flipped us over.

"Don't fuck with me, Alan," he said, pressing the heels of his hands into my wrists, trapping me beneath him, his face close and intense. He smelled like sweat and fabric softener. "This is happening, or it isn't."

"It's happening," I said. "I can't tell you why, but it is."

Law held my gaze for about another half second. Then, "fine," he said. "That's good enough." He swung down and kissed me this time, hard and blazing, dragging his teeth across my lips and his nose mashing into mine. His hands gripped my shoulders and then slid down, over my chest and down my sides, and I yanked at his hair and clawed at the back of his neck. He hissed, jerking back from me, his teeth pulled back from reddened lips and his eyes wild and bright.

He kept glaring down at me as his hands fumbled at my jeans and whipped my belt out through the loops, and tossed it away somewhere. The buckle clattered loudly across the wood flooring, but Law was already popping open the button on my jeans and yanking the zipper down. But he didn't take them off, or even try. Instead, he tipped forward until he had his face pressed against my stomach, his hands gripping my hips. Then he just stopped, went completely still. I had no idea what he was doing, and I could feel his damp breath against my skin through the fabric of my shirt.

"I want to suck you off," he said, muffled against my stomach.

"Yeah," I said, because I was stupid and completely carried away. I touched his hair. It was thinner than Keyd's, softer, shorter, and lighter. "Yeah, okay."

"Shit," Law laughed roughly. "Have you always been this easy?"

"Shut up," I said, some of my old residual contempt for him surfacing again. "Shut up, just—if you're going to do it, then just do it."

Law lifted his face away from my stomach, looking up at me with hard, cool eyes. They were a faded bluish grey, but I could barely even tell that because his pupils were hugely black and the color was just a thin ring around the outside of them. Nothing like Keyd's eyes. He wasn't Keyd. And I knew that.

"Did he ever do this to you?" Law said. His fingers were curling into the loops of my jeans, nails scratching across the denim.

"Yeah," I said, dry-mouthed. I didn't want to think about Keyd anymore. Not now, not when—I was doing something like this. I'd rejected Eleon because I was still hung up on Keyd. But I was also not anywhere slightly interested in Eleon. Law and I had a history, even though it was not a history of this—I knew him a little better. And I understood him a little more since recently.

"Then I'll do it better," Law said. "So you forget."

I almost wished he could.

#

Law was better at it then Keyd. I didn't even want to admit that, but it was true. He'd done this with other people, obviously. Maybe a lot of other people. I didn't want to think about who, or where, or why. He'd hinted at it, before, and I didn't need to think about it. I only had to think about that Law was sucking me off and that was something I had never in my life anticipated to happen. I almost didn't even know what to do during, except put my hand in his hair and keep it out of his eyes for him.

It was like a train wreck—I couldn't look and I couldn't not look, either, watching him bobbing around down there. When Keyd had done this to me it had been in a pitch black prison underground and I couldn't see him, and I had no idea what he looked like when he did this. But now I wanted to know. I wanted to know so badly that I did have to shut my eyes then, because I couldn't have the image of Law like this pressed into my mind, because I might see him forever when I tried to think of Keyd.

I tilted my head back against frame at the end of the cot and just tried to think of nothing. That this wasn't a specific anybody. It wasn't Keyd and it wasn't Law and it was just something that felt good and I might as well goddamn enjoy it. Because the nonspecific somebody was pretty damn good at this. He went slow and firm and purposeful, and I had to twist my fingers into the sheets of the cot and bite down on my jaw to not make noise. I didn't want to make noise, because that would mean, somehow, that this was real.

When I came, it was with a grunt and a jerk and a vicious tug at Law's hair. Law made a noise like a stepped-on cat and pulled back, but not before he actually swallowed. And that was kind of—fuck. Weird. Keyd and I had both spit. I didn't know if that made us assholes or what, but that's what we'd done. I really hadn't expected Law to—dammit. As if this had needed to get even more awkward than it already was, he had go and do that.

I really felt like I should reciprocate a little somehow. But I barely had to put my hand down his jeans before he was done. Then we just sat on the cot, backs up against the wall, staring ahead and not at each other. I felt weird and kind of disconnected, like my body and what it had just done weren't really mine anymore. I couldn't even remember making the decision to do what we'd just done. It had just kind of happened.

"So," Law said, finally. It had to have been at least ten minutes later.

"Well," I said back. I glanced at him; he wasn't looking at me. He didn't look upset, or happy. He looked like he did every single time I had come here to get him—absolutely flat. Like he was watching the world's most boring TV show. It was an even harder expression to read than any of Keyd's, because I knew so little about Law. I had no idea if this was an act or if he was really this unimpressed.

"I should go," I said.

Law's expression didn't change. "Yeah," he said. "Okay."

I guess I'd expected that. I got up, did up my jeans and found my belt again. The whole time Law stared at the window, not looking at me. The room smelled like sweat and sex and heat. My body felt pretty happy about all of this, but I felt slightly sick inside. What the fuck was I even doing? I didn't do shit like this. I didn't let guys I'd really intensely disliked until a week ago suck my cock. Let alone guys I knew had really intense feelings about me. That I didn't return.

But I was so goddamn lonely.

My hands were shaking as I buckled my belt, a hot heavy pressure on my chest. I felt like shit. My head was pounding and my mouth was hideously dry and I just kept seeing Law over and over in my head and I couldn't get him out of there, the feel of his hands and his mouth and how much I had been desperately pretending it wasn't him. As soon as I was dressed again I headed for the door. I had to get out of here or I was going to go crazy.

"Alan," Law said suddenly, and I lurched to a stop in the doorway. When I turned, he was finally looking at me. So blankly, it was a little unnerving. My skin crawled a little and I held my breath.

"Good luck, tomorrow," he said. He didn't sound very energetic, but it wasn't sarcastic, either. "I still don't know what you're planning, but—good luck."

"Thanks," I said, guilt hitting me even harder in the stomach. Whatever I did feel about him, it wasn't what he wanted out of me. I couldn't ever give that to him. As long as he knew that, maybe this wasn't the stupid mistake it was already definitely feeling like. I hoped he knew it.

Because I didn't have the time to worry about Law's unstable psyche that I was probably helping to make worse. I had the most important meeting of my entire goddamn life tomorrow, again, and the fate of my home probably depended on it. I had to concentrate on not fucking that up.

#

That night, I had the same dream that I'd had once before, the last time Keyd and I had been together in Lojt. I saw him dying again, surrounded by tall stretching figures of glowing golden light, black blood running from his eyes and mouth and between his hands, pooling under his body like a puddle of tar, dripping to the ground and coating my own hands and arms anywhere I touched him. My scream was locked inside my own head because I was frozen in a body that couldn't do anything, couldn't help, couldn't save him.

And this time, the dream had been preceded by a somehow even worse one, one that mainly consisted of Keyd standing over me and telling me he could never forgive me for what I'd done. I was on my knees and my hands were bound somehow behind my back and I couldn't move at all, and I couldn't look away from Keyd as he condemned me for being a traitor and a coward. I couldn't even open my mouth to defend myself; I was frozen again, a prisoner in my own head, trapped and suffocated.

I woke up after both dreams with my face wet and breathing in desperate, rough gulps. I had to sit up and breathe slowly into my hands in the darkness, telling myself over and over that neither of them were real. Yet. Keyd was fine (still a jerk, but fine), and not anywhere close to dying. The first dream though—that one had definite possibilities of coming true.

It's not too late, a part of my head told me. You haven't done anything yet. You could leave. Go back to him. Forget all this and just go back to him.

And by doing that, sacrificing my entire planet. Some six billion people. Just so I could have my boyfriend back in a relationship that might have been doomed anyway because his society was a bunch of homophobic bastards.

No. No way. I was selfish, but not that selfish. I wasn't going to trade regular sex and a guy who'd really cared about me for six billion people. I might not be able to save any of them here, doing this, either—but at least I would have tried. I wouldn't have given in, lain down and just taken it. There was no way I could live with myself if I didn't even try. The same way I couldn't live with myself if I gave up now. I'd come this far and I just wasn't going to cave in because of nightmares and anxiety and more stress than I'd ever been under in my life.

I still didn't sleep the rest of the night. I was afraid to.

#

Ociir came along with me again to my second, and hopefully real, meeting with the agistar the next day. I didn't know if he wanted to be doing this, or needed to, or felt like he had to, but I did appreciate it. He at least felt a little more like a friend, now. I still didn't really understand his motives or mindset, but I trusted it. He was a good person, I was sure of that much.

I'd had very little time to re-stress myself out about this second impending meeting, and I felt oddly blank and calm as Ociir and I walked through the city. He'd shown up again at the house to pick me up just like the day before, only this time I had no urge to go and get Law involved. I still wasn't prepared to really think about what had happened, and I had much more important things to worry about, and even just thinking about him was massively distracting. I made myself stop.

It was the same thing all over again, once we got to that building in the center of the city. Down that one long corridor, past the same two guards, to the door on the left that Ociir knocked on. There was a several minute waiting period, and then that same tall woman came out. But this time instead of just moving aside to let me in, she closed her hand on my shoulder and guided me into the room herself. I threw a slightly panicked look back at Ociir, but he didn't look like anything was weird about it.

The woman steered me all the way across the giant, still empty room, her hand firm on my shoulder the entire time. We were heading back towards that same door that Aeidek had come out of and disappeared back into the day before. This giant room was still entirely empty of anybody, and I started wondering if maybe nothing ever really went on in here. Maybe it was just for show. I couldn't honestly imagine anybody sitting up in that ridiculously stupid throne and expect to be taken seriously. The woman and I reached the door that was behind it, and she opened it and prodded me inside.

The room beyond was much smaller than the throne room. Maybe about the entire size of a small apartment. One entire wall was made up of windows; very tall windows, framed by molded white iron with all sorts of designs in it. Pale light streamed in—I knew it had to be artificial, but it still looked nice—in hazy streams over the reddish wood of the floor. Any wall that wasn't windows was full of dark wood shelves, which were all crammed with books. The main focus of the room was an intricate wooden desk in the middle, facing the windows, which was ridiculously taller than any desk should really be, with the top of it being higher than my head.

The only person in the room was another blond woman. She was behind the desk on a comparably tall, spindly chair, wearing a lot of layers of grey and grayish-blue. She was writing in a big open book, with a feather quill that had been almost entirely stripped of veins except for a white tuft at the end. She didn't glance up when we came in, but I had the feeling she definitely knew we were there. But it took a while for anything to happen—for at least a minute, all that went on in the room was the soft scratching of her quill in the book.

"Thank you, Oyeln," the woman said, at last. Her voice was calm, and surprisingly deep and rich. Oyeln bowed low—even though the woman behind the desk wasn't looking at her—and went back out of the door. She shut it behind her, and left me and the other woman alone together in the room.

The woman kept writing in the book for another few seconds, and then seemed to finish up. She carefully laid the quill in a little metal holder sitting next to the book, and turned, very gracefully, towards me.

"So," she said, in that same deeply ethereal voice. "You are Alan."

And I realized what was going on.

Alief, the clarbach agistar, was a woman. And she was this woman. Goddamn, but I had seriously not expected that. I had assumed the clarbach had another giant royal patriarchy going on like the oenclar did. I probably should have learned by now to stop assuming things when it came to either of these races. I was never right.

She looked a little bit older. Kind of the way Maedajon had looked like he was in his forties, Alief looked like she was maybe in her fifties. She had fine lines in the pale skin around her eyes and mouth. Her white-blond hair was pulled back into a single long braid that fell down her back to her waist, and her eyes were amazingly blue. Not pale ice-blue like Keyd and his father, but a rich Caribbean water blue. She was tall, thin, with a long neck and extremely defined profile—definitely a good-looking woman.

I didn't really know how to respond to her, since she hadn't really asked me a question. But it didn't matter, because only a few seconds later, she spoke again.

"How have you found our city? To your liking?"

What kind of a question was that? Was she testing me?Christ, talking to that jerk Aiedek had been less stressful than this.

"It's a—very different place than where I come from, ma'am," I finally said, trying to hold my hands steady. Sticking my thumbs through my beltloops seemed to do the job.

"Ma'am," Alief repeated, a tiny smile pulling at her mouth. "This is an interesting word, ma'am."

Maybe it wasn't translating. "It's respectful, where I come from," I said, and had to stop myself from automatically adding ma'am again. I didn't know any other way to be polite.

"Then you may address me as that," Alief said, sounding…almost amused. "And what shall I call you?"

"Alan," I said. "Just Alan, ma'am." I was starting to feel a little bit less like someone was gripping both my lungs, my anxiety fading just a little. I couldn't forget that this woman was ultimately behind the entire war, but she didn't feel immediately dangerous. Not like she'd kill me if I slipped up in my manners, or something.

"Well, just Alan," Alief said, this time smiling for real. "Come with me, and we will talk."

Come—come where? There was nowhere in this room to go. But Alief slid smoothly down from her spindly little chair and moved away, and I pretty much had to follow her. One of the tall windows at the edge of the room wasn't actually a window at all—it was a door. A very tall and narrow set of double doors, which Alief opened and gestured me through. Apparently it wasn't ladies first around here. I went through.

The door lead outside, into a kind of a garden. But more like a Zen type one. Not a lot of plants or flowers around. The ground that wasn't on the path was formed into these ridged spiral shapes, almost like those old seashell fossils you see all the time in National Geographic. They were faintly different colors—one a little bluer, one pinker, but mostly they were brownish tan. Ivory colored arches—just simple, smooth sculptures—crossed over the path at equidistant points from each other, making it look a little like we were walking through a giant winding spine.

It was actually kinda of calming. All the soft pastel sort of colors and smooth lines just made it feel very relaxing. More fake light—that I couldn't see the source of—beamed down around us, like a very late summer afternoon. It even felt warm out here. I was starting to think maybe we weren't outside at all, but in some sort of artificial greenhouse.

Alief started walking, at a casual strolling pace, down the path. And I just tagged along, keeping slightly in back of her just in case walking at her side was rude. Alief was actually one of the shorter clar I'd met. She was maybe just an inch or so taller than me. That still made her about six feet tall, but it wasn't like talking with Maedajon, who'd had an extra half foot at least on me.

"You have a bond, with two others," Alief said suddenly, and I couldn't help jerking a little.

"I—how did you know that?"

"I can feel it, iyechee," Alief said, using some word that didn't translate. "Even though it is very weak, I can sense it. The others within your bond are very far away."

For a fast second, the amount I missed Keyd and Rysa was almost crippling. I couldn't take a breath and my head spun like I'd been punched.

"They are," I managed to say through a screen of numbness. Something in me wailed out for them, groping helplessly down the severed bond, feeling through the dark for something no longer there. They were too far away. I missed them so much.

"To have such a bond, you must have been very deeply involved with the oenclar," Alief said..

"Yes, ma'am, I was," I said, still a little dazedly. There was really no point in lying to her.

"Hmm," Alief said. And that was all she said. She kept on walking along the winding path, and I kept on at her heels, a little confused and a little lost and a lot lonely.

We'd reached a point in the garden where trees had started. Leafless, bone-white trees that looked more like experiments in geometry than living things—they were angular and oddly symmetrical. I wasn't sure if they were actually alive, or just sculptures, or…something else, even. This was the weirdest damn garden I'd ever been in. Probably garden was the wrong word. I just didn't have a better one.

"What is your reason for being here?" Alief said suddenly, pegging me hard with the question. She stopped walking, swept herself into the middle of the path, making me draw up short. I sucked in a breath, twisted my fingers harder into the loops of my jeans.

"I want my world to be left alone. I don't want your war there," I said, just spilling it all out there and getting right to the point.

Alief's expression didn't change, like I hadn't just made a ridiculously huge demand of her. She lifted her chin slightly, regarding me with those bright-water-blue eyes. "A request of this magnitude, you must have something of your own to offer in return," she said, calmly.

I took a breath. This was basically my trump card. It was this or nothing. "I do," I said. "If you do this, if you leave Earth alone…I can tell you what the oenclar army is planning to do. What their next move is."

Alief was looking at me with real interest. Definitely like she hadn't expected me to actually have something worthwhile to offer. And it seemed like she thought it was worth something.

"And you know these things for sure," she said.

I nodded, my throat tightening up a little. "I was—close, with their agistar."

"Maedajon," Alief said. I shook my head. If there was any person to tell about the power switch over in Camp Oenclar, it would be this woman. At least it would show her that I really was willing to give them information.

"No," I said. "Maedajon isn't the agistar anymore. It's his son, now."

"Did he step down?" Alief asked, sounding intrigued. "Maedajon's son must be barely older than a child. Odd, that he would resign his position to someone so young, while he himself is still perfectly able."

"He didn't really have a choice," I said. "Maedajon is—he's dead." As always, when I thought about it, horrible images—memories—flashed through my head, of that night and what I'd witnessed. Coupled with the nightmare I'd just had last night, I had a rough couple of seconds before I pulled myself back together.

Real surprise had morphed across Alief's face. She looked honestly startled, and—if I was reading her right—almost a little regretful. She obviously knew who Maedajon was; I didn't know if they had ever met personally, but maybe she had respected him. Just because they were fighting each other didn't mean they couldn't have regard for each other, I guess.

"Not in battle," she said.

"No," I said. "Something else."

She didn't ask what that something else was. I was glad, because if she had asked, I might have like—thrown up, or something. I couldn't really think about it.

"His son," Alief said, thoughtfully. "I don't believe I remember his name."

"Keydestas," I said. My throat tried to close up on the last syllable.

"And you were close with him."

"I knew him," I said. What I really didn't want her to know was that he was one of the people I had the bond with. I didn't want her to think we were that close. At that point, I'd probably end up more valuable myself than any information I could give them. "Enough that I know what his plans are."

"Interesting. And how did someone like yourself gain so much trust with him?" Alief asked, which threw me for a second. How the hell did I explain that?

"I…I helped him," I said. "I have—an ability—that was useful to him and some others." I didn't want to specify it had been useful against someone from her army, but it was probably already obvious.

"Yes," Alief said. "Aeidek mentioned that you are not quite like the others of your world. That is also very interesting."

I nodded a little, and bit on my tongue. Yeah. Sure. This whole experience had been interesting. We'd keep it at that.

Alief folded her hands together in front of her and glanced around the garden, with a slow sweeping gaze. I didn't know what she was looking for, and I just held still and watched her. She looked around for at least a minute, sometimes closing her eyes, but still moving her head.

"Well," she said, finally, fixing her eyes back on me. I jumped a little. "We have already made quite a good foundation in your world. Not all places are good for what we need. It is not as easy as simply picking a world and going there. Even though we have only begun in your world, it has taken us quite a lot of effort."

I stayed quiet. I didn't know where she was going with this, but if this was a refusal, it was a seriously roundabout one.

"By the way you speak," she continued, "I assume that the oenclar have plans other than entirely meeting us at war in your world. We have seen them there already, but in fewer numbers than usual. We had begun to assume that your world was not quite their priority."

Fuck, she'd already guessed half of this. I swallowed, feeling hot and dizzy and a little sick. I stared at one of the weird white symmetrical trees behind her head and tried to stay calm. Calmish. Calmish was about all I could manage.

"But then," Alief said. "It is also true that I am unfamiliar with Keydestas, how he thinks and how he might act differently than his father. I wouldn't know how to go about predicting what he might do, where he might take this conflict. That he is not fully investing himself in your world is…not the path his father would have taken."

I still didn't want to say anything. I didn't know if I could influence her decision one way or another, or if she was just telling me all this for kicks, and already knew what she was going to do. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack right here. Blood pressure through the goddamn roof.

"No one has ever come before me to make a plea for their world," Alief told me. "Not in all the time I have held this position. This is a very—interesting situation."

"I know, ma'am," I said. She really liked the word interesting. I had no idea if it was good interesting or bad interesting.

"The population of your world," Alief said suddenly, "is quite large."

It wasn't even a question, but I answered. "Uh, yuh—yes, ma'am."

"I had my own doubts, about involving ourselves with a world so inhabited," she said. "Others had the same thoughts. We still chose it, due to the promise of its…lucrative nature. However, perhaps there are more reasons that we originally thought, to not pursue a course there. A trade of information could be one of them."

"Does that mean, you're—agreeing?" I said, hesitantly. I still needed things spelled out for me. I really could be kind of stupid sometimes.

"It means that I believe we can make an arrangement," Alief said. "Your request—perhaps does not equal out to your offer. But, there are other variables that I must consider, along with what you might tell me. Your world was not always our best choice, and perhaps there are better ones we could make."

She was really good at not saying yes or no. "How do we turn maybe into yes?" I said. If she wanted something else out of me, there was really nothing I had. I hadn't come to the table with much.

"We are," Alief said. "We are making an arrangement between us. It is not a simple yes or no, Alan. It is a cooperation of action."

A cooperation of action, I wasn't even sure if I understood what the hell that meant. But she'd also said that we were doing this, that she was actually taking my badly thought out and pretty weak deal. At least, I thought so. It seemed like it.

"But I want proof," I said, startling myself. I wasn't sure I'd meant to say that, but it had just come out. "I need to know that you'll really leave. That you'll leave Earth alone. I'm sorry if that seemed mistrusting, but honestly I don't have much reason to trust any of you. You or the oenclar."

Alief regarded me coolly for a moment, and I thought that I'd seriously fucked up by saying that. I bit on my tongue.

"You are an intelligent man, Alan," Alief said. She paused, then smiled just a little. "And, a surprisingly brave one. I was watching you and Aiedek yesterday in the grand room. I agreed to see you today because of the way you spoke with him then."

The way I was totally rude to him and practically threatened him? Alief was impressed by odd things. Then again, she was the leader of a race of people at war. Maybe that was the kind of thing that was notable to her. She looked at me, assessing, and then nodded.

"Yes," she said. "I believe that can also be arranged."

We went back into Alief's…study…room thing after that, and she pulled on a rope that was hung in a little niche in one of the bookshelf walls. Within a minute, one of those short, tan-robed kids darted into the room, from a seriously tiny door that I hadn't even noticed before. Probably because it was only about three feet tall. The kid wasn't even that short, and it had to duck way over when it slipped into the room. It ran up to Alief and bowed, and then stood quietly to the side, just waiting.

"Where did you cross from your world?" Alief asked me. "Who was kalach there?"

"Asaed," I said, glad I had enough presence of mind left to remember that.

That was apparently all the little hooded helper needed to hear, because it zipped out of the room again, through the tiny door. I stared after it, then turned back to Alief, who had gotten up on her tall thin chair behind the desk again.

"So, I—who are those kids?" I said, too nervous to let it stay silent in here.

"Those who would some day hope to stand in my place," Alief said, with a hint of a smile down at me. "I was one myself, once. The woman who brought you to me today was also one, as was Aiedek."

"Then it's not—lineage," I said, wondering if it was rude to even ask that. "You weren't born into this."

"My father was a mason worker," Alief said, and she really was smiling now. "And my mother a keeper. I was not born for this, but pursued it of my own choice. The oenclar have kept the more…traditional way of appointing their leaders. But we have found that this works better for us."

They were probably right, too. I thought of Keyd, who had been groomed and molded all his life for a role he hadn't even really wanted, that had been forced on him as just a random result of his birth. We had really only ever had a pretty short conversation about his real feelings about being the agistar, but I was pretty sure that if he'd had a choice, that wouldn't have been what he'd wanted. Maybe the clarbach had one thing right, at least.

Alief went back to writing in her giant book again, and I stayed silent and let her. She hadn't told me to go away and I guessed that we were waiting for that hooded kid to come back. There weren't any other chairs in the room, and it would have felt rude to sit, anyway. I just stood with my hands locked together behind my back, worrying at the skin on my lower lip and only stopping when I started tasting something metallic.

Long, long minutes passed. I would have guessed maybe half an hour, or more. Until, finally, the main door to the room opened. The hooded kid came in, and a tall blond guy in armor with a giant neck scar and a blind eye followed. Asaed. Not looking very pleased to be there, but obviously respectful of Alief. He went down to one knee by the side of the desk, with his right arm slung across his body and gripping his left shoulder.

"Haemasach," he said, dipping his head.

"Yes, Asaed," Alief said, with a brisk sort of impatience, like she didn't have the time for all this bowing and scraping. Asaed got to his feet away, his armor clanking a little bit, and stood very straight with his chin lowered a little.

"There had been a change in our situation," Alief said to him smoothly. "As a result, I would like you to begin removing your forces from your assigned area."

Asaed's face didn't change for about ten seconds. And when it did, it was very, very slow disbelief.

"Excuse me, but you would like me to do what?" he asked, like he was waiting for the punchline. I felt just about the same way. Was she serious? I hadn't expected—this wasn't supposed to be this easy. She'd said that we had an agreement, but I hadn't actually expected it to work.

"I've found this world is not good for our purposes, after all. Due to recent information, and older doubts, I find it more efficient if we do not involve ourselves there," she said, and Asaed's expression just got more and more dumbstruck.

He cleared his throat a little. "But I believed that you and the komai had already decided that even though population of this world—"

"Our own numbers have been small for so long that we forget the intricacies of a truly thriving world," Alief said, interrupting him so smoothly that it hardly even seemed rude. "I believe that this is a place we should not disrupt. Our progress there is not so great that it cannot be reversed."

Asaed dipped his head a little. "I understand," he said, looking like he didn't at all. He glanced at me, like he had no idea what to even think, and possibly like he wanted to blame me for it. I was pretty sure this guy didn't like me very much. I kept messing up his normal routine.

"Good," Alief said. "That is all—you may go. Further orders will come later."

Asaed opened his mouth once, then shut it, and bowed low again towards her. When he turned to leave, he nearly tripped over the hooded kid who had been standing behind him, and he practically batted it out of the way. He probably would have managed it, if the kid hadn't been smaller and faster, and ducked. Asaed stalked out of the room, but shut the door very politely behind him.

I swallowed a little, and turned back to look at Alief. She was sitting very composedly in her tall chair, hands crossed over her lap, looking at me in a sort of self-satisfied way.

"Have I shown faith good enough for you?" she asked me, with a little smile that showed she knew she had.

"Yeah," I said, dumbly. "Yeah, I—think that's fine."

"Now," she said, leaning forward a little bit. "There is your end of our agreement to address."

#

About half an hour later I was standing in the courtyard in front of the city spire, staring dazedly up at it as a light rain pelted against my face.

I felt dazed and weird and hollowed out and just a little bit sick. I'd pretty much told her everything. Everything I knew and that could possibly be helpful. I'd done it and it was done. I couldn't take it back now. She'd assured me that her end of our agreement would hold—that their forces would start withdrawing from Earth. And, if I still had doubts, she had basically told me I could stick around for a while and wait until there'd be actual visible proof of them withdrawing. Either way, she hadn't told me to get out now that I was done being useful.

Ociir had been waiting for me again, and had seemed pretty eager to know what had happened, but I hadn't been up to it. I'd just told him that I was fine by myself for a while and that if he wanted to know, I'd tell him later. So he'd left, and here I was, standing in the rain like a dork and accomplishing nothing. So I started walking, not really paying attention to where I was heading. I just had to walk. The last hour of my life seemed like such a surreal and far-away event that I barely believed it had even happened. Maybe I really had just imagined the whole thing. It kind of felt like a dream.

I'd thought of the clarbach as being the bad guys for so long that it had seriously surprised me that they had apparently considered not coming to my world just because we had a lot of people there, and they didn't want to mess us up. I thought that might have been more of the deciding factor than any information I had given Alief—maybe I'd just tipped the scale. But it still struck me as weirdly…considerate. It seemed like Alief really wanted to do right by more than just people of her own race, which made me wonder why they'd even started a war in the first place. From what I'd seen of her, Alief didn't seem like the type of person to get all gung-ho about something like that.

Unless everything in there had been an act, which just meant I was totally fucked. But she'd seemed sincere. I hoped she was sincere. She seemed like a pretty good person, and all of this was fucking with my 'which side is good or bad' perception again. But maybe Law was really the one who'd been right—neither of them were. They were at war with each other, and they took what they needed and did what they could to come out on top. I'd met good people on both sides, I'd met complete assholes on both sides. There really wasn't such a thing as all good or all bad. It was all just…grey, and relative.

When I eventually stopped walking and looked around at where I was, I was standing in front of the bridge that lead across to the laemenna. It had started to rain harder, and water poured down all around me, soaking me through. I hadn't even been aware of deciding to come here. Maybe it was just from habit—this was the only place I'd consistently been going to. I hadn't wanted to think about Law before, but now that the whole terrible agistar business was over, I couldn't think of anyone else I wanted to see. Someone from my own world who understood.

I went inside, bypassed the guy in the little front room, and went back to Law's. And I actually knocked this time. The response from inside was a kind of, "mm-hmm," noise, and I pushed the door open.

Law was leaning against the wall by the window, staring out at the rain pattering against the glass. He glanced up when I came in, and looked a little surprised that it was me. I wasn't sure who else he'd thought it would be. I closed the door behind me, pressing it shut with my shoulders, and leaning back against it. Law blinked at me for a second, and then lifted his eyebrows in realization.

"That thing today, what—how'd it—" he started, pushing off the wall and coming towards me, anxiously. "Is anything going to—"

"I think it went okay," I said, the first words that had come out of my mouth for a while, and they sounded weirdly hoarse. "I think it's—gonna be okay."

Law stared at me for a moment, and then moved forward. He took my shoulders and pressed me fully back up against the door, pushing his body up against mine—but that was it. His face was close and his hands fell to my waist and held onto my belt loops. I could see his eyelashes flicking, and the remnants of old faded freckles across the bridge of his nose. His chest pushed against mine with every breath he took, expectant heat curling between us. My mouth was suddenly dry and breathing was harder to do, my blood rushing to unexpected places.

"What are you waiting for?" I said, my voice coming out oddly low.

"That," Law said, and kissed me. His fingertips pressed into my jaw and it was all very slow and careful and a little unnerving in how gentle it was. Law inhaled slightly and pressed closer to me, one hand going to the wall behind my head and bracing himself there. His other hand curled at my hair. He felt warm and solid and real and very, very nice. I shivered a little against him and put my hands on his waist, feeling his hot skin under his shirt.

Christ, this was stupid. It had been stupid before and it was stupid now and I was still doing it. I was doing this because…I needed it. Not with Law, specifically, but I just needed to feel close to another person. And even though I knew he never would, I wanted him to tell me it was okay and I'd done the right thing. But he didn't even know what I'd done, so he couldn't actually tell me that. But I could pretend he was saying it silently, in the way he was touching and kissing me. The way he was accepting me.

"You're cold," he said, against the corner of my mouth. "n' wet."

"s'raining," I mumbled back. "Sorry."

Law grabbed onto my hips then and moved me around, stumbling us over to the little cot and dipping us both down to it. This wasn't hard and violent and affectionless, like last time. Now it was oddly gentle and hesitant, Law's touches light and quick and smooth, his breath coming in fast little pants. He straddled my legs and tugged his shirt up but not off, getting distracted from it when he reached around to his back pocket and fumbled something out. I glanced down—his wallet.

"What are you—"

"Just, shut up," Law said, his mouth still halfway pressed against mine. He fumbled with a little snap pocket on the inside of the wallet and pulled something out. It looked like a little sample packet that doctors sometime toss at you when they don't want to write a prescription. It was about that size. Except it just looked like lotion, or something. It didn't take me too long to figure out what that was supposed to be for, and my stomach did all sorts of weird, uncomfortable flops that only half felt like eagerness.

"You actually carry this kind of thing in your wallet," I said. Law's jaw worked a little.

"Yes," he said shortly. "Sometimes I—I'm at places where…it's just easier. To have it on you."

If he was telling me he went to seedy gay clubs where sex happened up against walls or back in the bathrooms or something, I really didn't need to hear about it. But it hit a note of alarm in me that made me put out a hand, still him in place when he shifted over me.

"Wait," I said, and moved my hand to his shoulder and grabbed hold. "Wait."

"What?" He practically snarled the word at me, and I think he was afraid I was going to tell him to stop, that I'd changed my mind.

"Have you been tested?" I asked, and he jerked a little.

"What?"

I swallowed. "I said, have you been—"

"I fucking heard you. Are you asking me if I have STDs?" Law said. "No, goddamit, I do not."

"Christ, I'm sorry," I said, holding up my hands. "I just had a—that's really something I don't need."

"You think it's something I need?" Law said. "Okay? I might fucking hate this, but I'm not—Christ, Alan, I'm gay, not a fucking imbecile."

"Okay. Okay. I know."

"I didn't ask you before," he said then, his face flushing. And no, he hadn't. He'd just gone right ahead and sucked my dick. I guess he'd figured I was the kind of person who would have said something. Like I'd just figured he was the kind of person who wouldn't.

"I'm sorry," I said again, and really meaning it this time. Law stared at me, his eyes hard, and he reached into his wallet again and pulled out another little square packet that, this time, I recognized. He threw it into my lap.

"I was about to get that," he said. "You didn't give me time."

"Shit," I said, feeling like an even bigger bastard. I picked the condom packet up and closed it into my fist. Law was just looking at me, furious and hurt, and all I could do was grab him back to me and kiss him hard. He molded into me, hands gripping at my waist, rucking up my shirt and scrambling at my waistband. His hands felt hot, rough with small calluses, on the bare skin of my back. He wasn't mad enough to stop this whole thing.

"Now," he breathed. "Now, now."

I didn't know what he really meant, but I agreed. Now. Before either one of us really started thinking. We peeled back from each other just a little, enough to yank off our shirts and struggle out of our jeans (I took a little longer since my clothes were entirely wet), and then Law slammed his palms against my shoulders and shoved me down to the bed. He landed on top of me, but then rolled us over, dragging me on top of him, one of his knees coming up between my legs.

"I want you to fuck me," Law said. Well, shit, no pretense here. What he wanted was right out on the table now. Then his eyes narrowed. "Do you even know how? Did that guy only fuck you?"

"Don't talk about him," I said. Mood killer. "Christ. And I know how to do this, okay? Turn the hell over."

"No," Law said, his eyes hard and daring me to fight him on this. "This way. Or not at all."

"You should be the last person making goddamn demands here," I said. Law's eyes burned, and he slapped the little packet of whatever the hell it was into my hand.

"I'm not turning over," he said. Jesus. We were going to fight the whole time, weren't we? We just—couldn't let one of us one-up the other. It was just a constant fucking competition with us, it always had been.

"Jesus Christ," I said. "Fine, fine, whatever you want. Just don't say a fucking word, okay? Not one goddamn thing or I'm done."

"Fine," Law said, practically a snarl. "Just—fuck, come here."

He grabbed me, pulled me down, and that was the end of conversation for a while.

#

It was…weird. The whole thing was weird. Law's body was completely unfamiliar, the way he moved and the way he seemed to want me to move, and mostly I was just thinking about how not very good at this I was, because I'd never really worried with Keyd that much since both of us were so inexperienced that we couldn't really be disappointed with each other. I had a feeling Law knew exactly what not-that-amazing sex was like. And this was probably it. I was almost waiting for him to start making fun of me in the middle of it, or critiquing my form, or something.

But it felt good. It was sex and of course it felt good and about halfway through I lost my glasses when they fell off and then I couldn't really see Law's face too well after that. It wasn't that I didn't want to see him, but just that I—didn't want to see anyone. And after that, then it was just sex. Yeah, sex with a guy, but at this point I really couldn't be too shocked about it anymore. The weirdest part was that it was Law. Even just five days ago I'd really not been able to stand him. And suddenly, this.

He held onto my arms so hard I could feel my hands going numb, and only made sounds when I lost balance or moved weird and broke rhythm. Mostly he just breathed hard and dug his hands into me and moved as best he could with how goddamn uncoordinated I was. I didn't even know if he was even—if it was even okay for him. He wasn't doing anything that was letting me know. I could read Keyd better than this.

Law didn't fall asleep after. Not like Keyd always did—fuck, I had to stop thinking about Keyd. Instead, he rolled away and lay staring up at the ceiling, his arms rigid by his sides. He didn't look happy and he didn't look upset and overall it was that same flat look he'd been wearing most of this week. I had no idea what was going on behind that face.

After about five minutes, I couldn't take the silence anymore. I sat up, scrubbing at my hair, throwing my legs off the side of the cot. And Law sat up right with me, scooting away so that he was a good couple of feet down the cot. I didn't know what to do, I couldn't even look at him. A mistake. This had been a complete mistake. I was stupid and—Christ, what the fuck was wrong with me?

I wasn't a person who did these kinds of things. I didn't take advantage of people—and I had done that to Law, because I knew what he felt and that he probably would have done anything. And I'd just needed to forget, and I'd used him to try, and it hadn't even worked and now I was just a stupid asshole who'd made yet another stupid, stupid wrong decision. And I'd probably made whatever deep complexes and insecurities Law had even worse.

"This was a mistake."

I'd said it, but so had Law. We'd spoken at the same time. I turned and stared at him. His mouth was set, his eyes hard, and he looked completely serious.

"I…didn't expect that from you," I said. Law pushed a hand through his bangs, raking them off his face, and shook his head a little.

"Look," he said. "You don't even like me. Maybe better than before, but at best I think you're pretty apathetic about me. That other guy, you—you're not going to get over him. Ever, probably. I can see that. And I can't do—" he made a vague gesture, "that. I just can't."

"He doesn't have anything to do with this."

Law grit his jaw, his throat rolling. "You said his name."

It took me a second to get it. Then I dropped my face into my hands. "Fuck."

"Yeah," Law said, a little viciously. "So. I'm—I can figure it out, when to really give up. I should have, a long time ago anyway. This has always been stupid. Since the beginning, I even—shit."

His voice had actually broken a little. I felt like such a bastard. "Christ, I'm sorry. Seriously, I am. I'm so sorry."

"Sure." Law lifted one shoulder in a who-gives-a-fuck shrug. But I didn't have to be any good at reading people to see that he was humiliated and angry and upset. And he had every right to be, this time. I'd called him by Keyd's name—which was about as insulting as you could get. Even Law didn't deserve that.

Law got up, found his jeans, put them on. I heard him do all that rather than saw, because I'd dropped my face back to my hands. I hadn't made a single good decision in the past two months, not since meeting Rysa and Keyd. Some of those bad decisions I'd been able to salvage, but some were just beyond fixing. This felt like one of those. Sure, Law had been a huge jerk to me for nearly four years, but that didn't give me the right to do this to him. Especially after I'd seen more of why he was the way he was. If he really had been just a natural bastard, I wouldn't have cared so much. But he…

"I know this doesn't help, or fix anything," I said, taking my face out of my fingers. Law was turning his shirt the right way out, turned at profile to me but not looking my way. "But you're—actually an okay guy."

He gave a thin, insincere, blurry smile towards the wall. "Thanks."

"I'm really sorry."

"I know," Law said. "I know you are. That's one thing. You're obnoxiously sincere about everything. It's fucking—it's annoying. I can't stand it." He put one hand over his eyes. His other hand tightened into his shirt before he abruptly jammed it over his head, static crackling through his hair. It flattened itself oddly around his forehead and ears, making him looking younger and softer and different.

"Put some fucking clothes on, Alan," he said, sounding a little more like the way I was used to him sounding. So I did as he said, getting dressed again and finding my glasses halfway under the cot and putting them back on.

"I'm just…I'm gonna go," I said, when I was all together again, figuring it was the best idea right now.

Law caught my arm as I moved towards the door, drew me up short. I looked at him, and he was staring right back, mouth set and eyes glittering.

"Maybe if I had done things different, not treated you—not acted the way I did. Maybe we could have, yeah?" he said. "I'm not—I mean, maybe in a different life. You don't actually hate me, or anything, do you?" He gave a rough, nervous laugh, his eyes darting over my face. I didn't think he was fishing for compliments. It seemed like he was sincerely asking this, because he had no idea.

"You're not a bad guy," I said to him, after a moment. "Or even that much of a jerk, really. I mean, you are, but now I get why. But other people don't. So just—I don't know. Be more like this, right now. People'll like you more if you don't lash out every ten seconds."

"I hate doing it," Law said. He sounded furious, but at himself, and his grip on my arm got tighter. "I hate it, but it's all I can do. I'm just so angry at everything. Other people. My own mistakes. I just—can't stop."

"Try it," I said. "Just try it. I bet you can."

I took his arm, pulled him closer. I meant to give him a hug or something, one of those manly back-slapping ones, but somehow, in the middle of tugging him towards me, I changed my mind. I caught his face instead and kissed him, not rough and hard like all the other times. Slower. Apologetic. He went still under my hands, catching a little at my elbow, but not doing much else. He just stood there and let me kiss him. And I kept doing it, nudging at his mouth and finally getting him to open it, until he suddenly pulled back.

"Fuck, Alan, don't do that like you mean it," he said with a rough little noise in his throat, pushing me back a little more.

"I'm sorry," I said, again.

"Shut up," Law said, but without any force to it. "This is my fault. I know it. I'm accepting it. So—you need to accept that I knew this wasn't going to work. Since the whole time, from the beginning, I always knew that. This, this was—it wasn't even a chance, but I guess I just had to. Really end it."

So I'd used him and he'd used me. It still didn't feel good at all. It felt bitter and regrettable and I still felt like the biggest bastard in the world and how had I ever thought that this would make anything better? I still missed Keyd like a knife to the gut and I'd slept with someone I really shouldn't have and all after doing something that I really didn't even know had been the right thing to do.

"I'll—see you later," I said to him, after being unable to come up with anything else besides that other than 'I'm sorry'. He obviously didn't want to hear it.

"Yeah," Law said, pushing a clump of still-damp hair off his face, and turning away. "I guess."

#

Worrying about Law at least took my mind off worrying about what had happened during my talk with Alief and the reality of what I'd just done. That conversation would have far-away and unseeable results, at least to me right away, and this thing with Law was here and now and immediate. I could deal with it, tangibly. It was a comparably small problem. Focusing on it made me feel like I could do something.

I worried for the rest of the day and about half the night about it. And the only thing I could come up with to do was to talk to him again. I still felt so unbelievably shitty that I didn't think I'd ever be able to live with myself if I didn't made some serious reparations. I didn't know what I could say to him that I hadn't already said yesterday, and he didn't want to hear apologies, but. Still. There had to be something.

I just kept thinking about how I could have handled the whole thing better. What we'd done almost seemed like a bizarre inevitability—I couldn't look back at anything that had happened and think, that was the moment we made the decision to sleep together. It just seemed like a final playing out of all the bizarre pent-up weirdness that had always been between us. That maybe it had needed to happen, so the whole thing could really end. But I still thought it could have gone better.

I could have asked him what he wanted, instead of just trying to take what I thought I needed from him. I could have thought about how much it might have meant to him, even though it didn't mean near as much to me. I could have been less goddamn selfish. I could have acted less like a bastard. Less like a person who was desperate not to be lonely.

I wondered if I had done the same thing to Keyd. If I had just always cared about what I needed, not what he did. I'd started the whole damn thing between us, Keyd never would have if I hadn't thrown myself at him and forced the whole problematic and stupid relationship on him in the first place. I'd always been concerned and careful about how much of a risk everything was to him, never stepping out of bounds there, but I'd never thought about if, even through all the threats and danger, if I was making him happy. If I was actually giving as much as I should have been, if I was making up for all the risk I was worth.

I'd never been good at relationships, that was why all of mine before this had been short-term and failed hard. And maybe this was the reason. I was always so absorbed in my own fucking self that I couldn't even see the other person. What had I ever done for Keyd, beyond just kind of exist and be someone who cared about him, that was worth any of this? I practically could have ruined his life, I could have gotten him killed, and I hardly could have been worth it.

If I ever even saw Keyd again, if we ever—despite all the fucking odds—managed to reconcile, I was going to do better. If I could manage it, if I got the chance, I was just going to do better. What I wanted was—I wanted him to be happy. I wanted that more than anything. Even if we never got back together, I still wanted that for him. He deserved it, out of everything he'd been through.

It already felt like I could barely remember him. It had been weeks since I'd seen him, over a month at this point, practically longer than I'd ever known him in the first place. Keyd was turning into a sort of vague impression, some things about him clear and memorable—like the color of his eyes and the feel of his hair. But I couldn't remember his smile, the way his voice sounded, how his hands felt on me. He was disappearing as a person to me, settling as just memories and moments and other unreal, hazy things.

And I hadn't cheated on him, since we weren't actually together anymore, but it felt like I had. I couldn't think about Keyd, or Law, without getting this horrible thick feeling in my stomach and this idea that probably both of them would have been better off if they'd never met me in the first place.

The next day I went back to the laemenna early, or at least what I thought was early. There weren't many people around in the streets, and the guy who sat in that front room all day (didn't he have a home to go to?) looked sleepy and half-alert. And then…Law's room was empty. He wasn't there. There was nothing in the room that even suggested a person was staying there at all, except for the unmade bed.

"Can I see that book?" I asked the clarbach who manned the front room. He eyed me, but let me look at the huge book that Law had always signed in and out of. I flipped to the last page, scanning over the list of signatures there.

Law had signed out of here four times with me. But I saw his signature at least seven times, standing out from between the other few scattered signatures made up of illegible long dashes and lines and curls and dots. The last signature on the page was also his, just a big scrawl that read C. Law.

"Is that from today?" I asked the guy behind the desk, since I had no way of knowing. He nodded, looking bored. "How long ago?"

The guy lifted one shoulder. Great, he was an awesome doorman. I'd thought the whole point was to keep track of the people in here. I wondered where the hell Law had gone, where he had to go, where he'd been going those other times. He didn't know anyone in this city but me and Ahieel, and he definitely hadn't been hanging out with Ahieel. Maybe he'd just gone out by himself. I guess he was allowed to do that, I just—had no idea why.

So, now I'd resolved nothing and I had nothing to do and no one to talk to. I didn't even know where to start looking for Law, and I had no idea how long ago he'd gone out and when he might be back. It was pointless to stay here, so I left. I had no real plan to go anywhere, so I just picked a direction and went in it. I didn't get very far before, suddenly, this weird overwhelming feeling welled p in my chest, feeling like it was expanding through my entire body and then pulling outwards.

"Jesus," I said, abruptly stumbling into a wall and clinging there. This wasn't something new—I'd felt this before. A few weeks ago, the same day I'd left Keyd and everyone back in Edo and gone home. It was the same feeling of being pulled, like a big hand had just reached in and closed around my chest and was tugged slowly forward. This frantic and insistent sense that I needed to be somewhere else, now. And that wherever it was, I belonged there. I'd been lying down last time I'd felt this, but this time I was standing and it was seriously hard to keep myself up. I had to basically hug the wall to stay on my feet, my mouth going dry while my eyes started to water.

The whole thing lasted thirty seconds. Maybe less. And then just shut off, abruptly. Completely gone. I inhaled carefully, pushing myself off the wall and rubbing a little at my chest. Felt a little like someone had reached under my skin and rubbed my ribs with steel wool. That feeling faded too, after another couple of seconds, and I was left just feeling shaken and fucking confused. Whatever this feeling was, whatever caused it—I hated it. I hated it because of how lonely it made me feel. I didn't have a place like that, a place where I honestly felt I belonged, was unconditionally accepted. Not anymore.

#

I wandered aimlessly around the city that entire day, trailing down dim streets and high bridges lit by hazy lanterns and trails of little lights. I sill had no idea what their power source was, and I was pretty sure the clar didn't have electricity. I went to the market district to see if I could find Ohean and Ieta's shop, but the place was bustling with so many tall, blond people that after more than about ten minutes, I got claustrophobic and had to get out of there. Not normally a claustrophobic person myself, but when everyone else is about a head taller than you on average, you start to feel a little crushed.

Nobody much paid any attention to me at all. Now that I was back to being somewhere near blond, I guess no one cared. And I'd pulled all the oen energy back to the little concentrated core I'd been holding it in before, so I wasn't freaking anyone out with that, either. And I was wearing Eleon's clothes again. I was just an uninteresting short person wandering around. And that was fine with me.

I went back to Ociir's family's house around a time I was guessing was early evening, but there was no real way to tell. When I got back there, Ieta was busying herself making dinner, so my guess had been fairly accurate. I offered to help her, and got kind of a snub and a sense of being offended in return, so I just went away and sat in the living room. I could see Ahieel outside, moping in his favorite chair. Ohean bustled in and out a few times, greeted me fairly cheerfully, which made me feel a little better.

The only meal that was consistently made in this house was dinner, I guessed because the clarbach ate just as infrequently as the oenclar did. Once in a while Ohean and Ieta had like, tea time together, and I could sometimes get something out of that. But generally I was hungry all the time, but I was practically used to it at this point. It had been the same way in the oenclar camp. And I didn't want to demand food out of them, since they were being damn nice to let me stay here in the first place.

A little bit later Ieta called everyone in to eat, and Eleon wasn't there. I noticed that right away, since that meant it was just down to three people and me, but no one else seemed to find it odd. Because dinner time in this house was never a time for talking, I didn't bring it up. But afterwards, I went up to the room I knew was his, and knocked on the door.

After about a minute and a half, the door pulled open. Slowly, just about six inches. The room was dim inside, and Eleon's head slowly pushed out and peered around. He was sweating a lot and looked ragged, dark circles under his eyes. His skin was pale and pasty, and his brown hair had gone stringy and damp, plastered against the sides of his face.

"Hello. Alan," he said, focusing with some obvious effort on my face. He was blinking a lot and his eyes seemed overly dilated. His voice sounded low and stripped. "I—what? You, what?"

"Hey, what's wrong?" I said, a little concerned. Usually he was the happy one around here; being snappish and short was new.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, pulling away from the door and taking a few off-balanced steps back into the room. I figured that meant I could come in, and I did, shutting the door behind me. Eleon weaved his way over to his bed and collapsed heavily to the edge of it, hunching forward over his legs. The only light was coming from a single one of those globes outside the window, and most of the room was in shadow. I could see enough, just not that well. But well enough to see how messed up Eleon looked.

"Are you sick?" I asked. Christ, he looked terrible. "I mean, should I get someone?"

"N-no," Eleon said in his hollow, rough voice, shaking his head. "I'm—I can't get sick. I'm not sick. You don't have to get anyone. It's only—it's uwilat."

"Oh," I said. "Oh." So he'd hit it, finally, apparently. And then, "is something going wrong?" Because he looked goddamn awful. But Eleon only shook his head.

"No," he said. His hand lifted, absently, rubbing at the center of his chest. His shirt was damp with sweat, clinging against him. "Why would you think so?"

"Because you look like shit, that's why!" I said. "I mean, I'm sorry, but you just look bad. Is this—this is actually hurting you?"

"It always does," Eleon said, with a tired smile. "It's all right." His hand clutched harder at his shirt, twisting into the soggy fabric.

"So, when the marks form, they hurt you," I said, making sure I was completely understanding this. "Every one of you. The oenclar too?"

Eleon nodded. "It's normal."

"It's not normal," I said. "Why is that normal?"

"It's just—how it happens," Eleon said, uncomfortably, like he couldn't understand why I was seriously disturbed.

"Jesus," I said, and sat next to him on his bed. For a few seconds I listened to his reedy, labored breathing, like he was being crushed under an incredible weight. Then, hesitantly, I touched his back, patted my hand between his shoulder blades. He shuddered a little under my fingers, his breath hitching.

"It's all right if I stay with you?" I had to ask it, because Keyd definitely wouldn't have wanted to let me if something like this was happening to him. He probably would have been off on his own, going through it by himself. But Eleon nodded, and even leant a little bit towards me, bumping against my shoulder.

"Why isn't anyone else here with you?" I asked. Seemed pretty heartless to just let Eleon suffer through this alone.

"Everyone goes through this," he said, like it was no big deal. "No reason to treat me differently."

"Well, okay, yeah, but—they could at least, I don't know, stop by or something. Make sure you're okay."

"Ohean has been by," Eleon said. "She tried to bring me dinner, but I," he swallowed like he was fighting back nausea, "I can't really think about eating. And Ociir came by earlier."

And Ieta and Ahieel were kind of the resident hard-asses of the family, so I guess they hadn't.

"And Christopher," Eleon said, after another moment. I actually had to take a second—who the fuck was Christopher?—and then I remembered. Law had a first name. I just never called him by it.

"Law was here? Christopher, I mean," I said. "Why?" And when? He'd been in this house and I hadn't known he was here?

Eleon shrugged, very carefully. It looked like even that hurt him, because he winced a little as he did it. "I think…we're friends," he said.

"Oh," I said, kind of dumbly. How the fuck had that happened? When had Eleon and Law even really met each other? When had all this been going on? "Well. That's nice."

Eleon nodded faintly, clenching his hands into the loose material of his pants. I felt a rogue wave of energy roll off him, jarring me down to my bones. I assumed that was from uwilat, that he really couldn't control much of what his energy was doing. And it was hurting him. I remembered Keyd, rubbing at his wrists when his new marks had been forming there, and that I'd wondered back then if they itched or something. But they'd been actually hurting—and he was so good at disguising everything that I hadn't been able to tell he was in pain at all. Not in the way Eleon was obviously in pain, now.

"Let me see it," I said, suddenly. "Let me see."

Eleon hesitated for a moment, his pale eyes wavering back and forth over my face. But then he nodded, and reached for the hem of his shirt. He dragged it up and over his head, baring his chest. The mark on him was faint, just a barely discernable white-gold pattern, like phosphorescent paint beneath his skin. It was in the center of his chest, circular, like a pinwheel of spikes and curves. Two longer, unsymmetrical spikes spun off of it, one reaching towards his shoulder and the other down the center of his chest.

I lifted one hand, held it over his chest. Not touching. His body felt hot—almost unbelievably hot, a fever sweating through under his skin. I could feel heat radiating from him even with my hand just hovering over him like this, and when I did touch him was like putting my hands on a cat that had been lying in the sun for hours. Eleon hissed and jerked away, and I yanked my hands off him.

"Sorry, I'm sorry. I forget," I said, clenching my hands behind my back. Everybody—oenclar and clarbach—reacted to me because I always had some of the opposite energy inside me. And Eleon was barely used to his own; touching him had been stupid. He shook his head, rubbing hard at his chest.

"It's all right," he said, sounding like someone had just punched him in the gut.

"How long is this going to last?" I said, and Eleon lifted one shoulder.

"At least another day, or more," he said. "It started last night." He smiled, weakly, but with an odd feeling of pride to it. "I was late, to start. I mean, I'm almost twenty-two."

"What's normal?"

"Oh. Twenty, or so," Eleon said. He winced and shifted and reached for his damp shirt. He started to pull it back over his head, then reconsidered, and just bunched it up in his lap. "Some reach it earlier, some later."

A shiver ran through him at the end of his sentence, and he gripped a little harder at the shirt. I felt another spastic jolt of energy fling off of him, whipping across me like a slap to the face. I flinched and scooted a little bit away from him. Then I tried to sort of…shield myself a little bit from him, switching my body's natural reaction to absorb energy around. I just tried to push—something, I wasn't even sure what—outwards, like some sort of invisible bubble. I wasn't sure if it was going to work, but I'd know if he did that again.

"What did you mean when you said you can't get sick?" I asked. I was trying to distract him, mostly, and it worked a little bit.

"I can't," Eleon said. "None of us can."

"Can't…what?"

"Get sick," he said.

"What, you mean—ever?" I said. That couldn't be right. "None of you ever get sick?"

Eleon nodded. "The energy, our entities—they protect us. We can't carry sickness in our bodies, because the bach kills anything inside it that it doesn't recognize, or like. Illness or disease or infection, anything."

I was still trying to get my head around the concept that they were incapable of getting sick. "And it's the same for oenclar?"

"Yes, I—I think so."

That was one hell of an immune system. No wonder these people had let these entities bond with them, if it kept them from all diseases, all the time. Although, sometimes this stuff could kill them itself, like it had done to Keyd's dad. That was the trade-off, I guess.

"Wow," I said. "So even things like—you can't get diseases through sex, or anything, can you?"

Eleon flushed again, but shook his head. "No."

"That's pretty damn nice," I said. And if I had known that, it would have saved me the most stressful week of my damn life, waiting for the results call from that clinic. It would have been impossible for Keyd to give me anything, if he couldn't even get anything himself.

But it did make sense, thinking about it. If these entities hitched themselves to hosts to survive, they'd want to make sure those hosts didn't die. And if there was generally a lot of world-hopping involved with the people they were hitched to, there'd be an incredible amount of weird and foreign viruses and things they were getting constantly exposed to, that they'd have no natural defenses against. Total protection from a hardcore immune system made a hell of a lot of sense.

Eleon jumped and shuddered again, and this time even though I felt another formless flare-up of energy come out of him, I didn't feel it. It was like the difference between seeing an explosion from far away, or actually getting caught in the blast wave. I knew it had happened and saw the results, but it didn't feel like someone had punched me with electricity. I was surprised my half-assed attempt at shielding myself had worked. Maybe I was getting better at this stuff.

"Thank you, for staying with me," Eleon said suddenly. He was looking at his hands, not at me. "I—it's better, not to be alone."

"Yeah," I said, and put my arm around his shoulders. "I figured."

#

A few days went by, uneventfully. I was still waiting for Alief to come back to me with the proof she'd promised me, and I wasn't really planning on leaving until I got that. But I wasn't going to try barging into that place myself, it'd been hard enough to get a talk with her when I'd had official permission. I either hung around the house all day, or occasionally went out and wandered through the city. Ohean took me to their shop one day, which was pretty cool, even if Ieta really didn't like me there and acted like I was five years old and was going to ruin everything I touched or looked at or breathed on.

Law was still avoiding me—I guess I couldn't blame him, and he was really good at it. He was gone every time I went to the laemenna. I could have always waited for three hours and eventually he'd have to come back, but that felt a little like stalking, and a little bit creepy. I never waited around for more than five or ten minutes before taking off. I just wondered where the hell he was even going. Maybe he just wanted to get out of the tiny little hostel—I would have wanted to.

Meanwhile Eleon was slowly recovering from his funtime energy puberty, sometimes creeping out of his room and padding down to the living room or kitchen, quietly saying hello to whoever was around and then sliding back out again. I could see his hair actually changing color, streaking into pale light blond. And he had a constant jittery, buzzy feel that surrounded him, a lot of unleashed and badly controlled energy. I guessed he'd eventually learn to control that, hopefully soon. I was getting better at shielding myself from feeling it, a little skill that I was kind of proud of figuring out on my own.

On the third day after I'd met with Alief, Ociir took me to the temple and sort of showed me around in there, and where he mostly lived, in a little set of plain but nice rooms with Ishan. They were very open, with the entire back wall not even a wall at all, just open to this sort of water garden looking thing. A shallow little pond ran right under the supports for this part of the temple, and you could basically sit on the edge of Ociir's floor and put your feet in, if you wanted. It seemed maybe rude, so I didn't.

We just hung out in his rooms for a while, and Ociir changed from his priest stuff into things that looked practically the same, at least to me. He changed pretty much in front of me, just like Keyd and Rysa always had, no real sense of privacy. Before I got busy finding other things to look at for a minute or so, I did notice that I couldn't see any marks on him, other than the one on his chest. When I'd first met him I'd figured they were just in a place I couldn't see, but he really didn't have any.

He made us both a drink, which was this stuff—I can barely explain it. It was this opaque tan stuff that tasted like milk and apples. With a weird rummy undertaste to it. I'd only tried rum once, but it was hard to forget. I wondered if it was alcoholic, if they even had alcohol here, if it was even vaguely similar, if I'd metabolize it the same. Then I decided I didn't care. If it was alcohol, it was alcohol. At this point I wouldn't have even minded.

"So," I said, for lack of better conversation, when we'd been sitting there quietly for a minute or so. "Where are your marks?"

"My marks," Ociir said, looking mildly quizzical.

"Yeah. Like, you know." I gestured, vaguely. "Like what Keyd and Rysa have. Like Ahieel."

"I don't have any," Ociir said, shaking his head. "Only this one." He touched the center of his chest. "I'm a priest."

"That…doesn't help," I said. "What does that mean?"

"You don't know, then," he said. "Only those in the warrior caste, and a very few other castes, have marks other than this one." He touched his chest again.

"Really," I said. "Learn something every day, around here."

"You were only around those in the oenclar army, before. I see why you wouldn't have known otherwise. It takes hard training and determination to teach the entities inside us to form physical manifestations, such as what you have seen on Keyd and Rysa," Ociir said. "Mainly it's soldiers who undergo that training—and they have to begin it very soon after uwilat. The whole body must be attuned to a singular mindset, a dedication to a lifestyle, not just an occupation. Without that training, the entities stay as formless energy within us, allowing us to access the presence, but not much more."

The presence—I hadn't heard anyone talk about that for a while. It basically meant magic, and was some sort of large force that enveloped some worlds but not others. Earth didn't have it, but Clarylon did.

"Wow," I said. "Yeah, I really had no idea about any of this. I kinda thought all of you had those things."

"I wouldn't have any use for them," Ociir said, shrugging. "There's no need unless one is a soldier, or of the other castes—like a healer. And the effort to do it isn't a decision ever made casually."

That made sense. What would Ociir, or Ieta or Ohean, need with a magic energy sword or wings or any of that? Still, every time I thought I'd gotten all this stuff figured out, somebody dropped a new twist on me. I couldn't keep up.

"For the castes that need that focus, it's very important to make the decision to enter that training early," Ociir said. "Usually as soon as uwilat begins."

"Does Eleon know what he wants?" I said. "I mean, does he want to join the army, or be a healer or anything?"

Ociir shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Who's gonna teach him to get a handle on his energy, then?" I said. "It's kind of crazy right now."

Ociir smiled a little. "I forget that you can feel these things," he said. "It will calm down naturally, once uwilat is finished in him. Eleon will enter an apprenticeship of his choosing after that, once he finishes schooling. That is, if he doesn't want to enter the army."

"So he does go to school," I said.

"Not at the moment, but yes," Ociir said. "There isn't a session going now, but traditionally, we go school until uwilat begins. After that, usually apprenticeships or training. Within the next few months, Eleon will be expected to choose something to pursue."

"Oh," I said. "Well, god, good luck to him, then."

We talked only for a little more after that, since Ociir was hinting that he had duties or something to get back to. But he did ask me a little about Keyd, cautiously, like he wasn't sure if he was allowed. He said he'd heard about Maedajon's death, and wanted to know how Keyd had held up. I didn't tell him that Keyd had pretty much lost it and cried in my arms for a night. I just told him that it'd been hard. I also didn't tell him that Keyd's major dad issues were probably a huge part of the reason I was even here. Because Keyd thought that he didn't just have to live up to his dad; he had to surpass him.

#

The next morning, Eleon showed up at my door. By this point most of his hair was entirely whitish-blond. There were still a few brown streaks through it, but most of it had already changed. He looked different like this, older somehow, and his features looked sharper. He actually looked a lot like Ahieel, which I'd just never noticed before. They had the same face shape, the same mouth. But—if I was even allowed to say this—Eleon was better looking.

"What's up?" I said, and Eleon fidgeted around a little.

"There's someone…here for you," he said. "Downstairs, I mean—it's kalach Asaed."

"It—what? It is?" I said. Eleon nodded.

"He's with two others. They're asking for you." His slight hesitation before he said asking hinted that it was probably more like demanding. Especially if it was Asaed, who didn't really ask anything. Whatever he wanted just got done.

I followed Eleon downstairs, where sure enough there was a nearly seven foot tall blond guy waiting in the entrance hall of the house. Eiphi and that other guy from before—damn, I think it was Atoen or something like that—were standing behind him.

How exactly did I greet this guy? He wasn't really a 'hey, whassup' kind of person. I settled for not saying anything at all, and just giving him what I hoped was a respectful nod. Eleon had taken up a safe position halfway around the wall, where only about half of his head and one shoulder were visible.

Asaed gave me a brief head-jerk in response. "Agistar Alief has sent us," he said, sounding just completely thrilled about it all. "There are some things she would like you to see."

So, this was it, I guess. Proof time. I glanced back at Eleon and gave him a nod like, 'it's fine, everything's okay', and followed Asaed and the others out of the door. Asaed walked in front of me, and Eiphi and Atoen fell into step behind me, a little flanking detail. It was cold, again, but at least not raining, although the wind kind of sucked. Next time I took a vacation to another world, I was bringing a damn jacket.

"Where exactly are we going?" I said, as I finally noticed the central city spire getting further away. I'd expected we'd be heading there, but apparently not.

"It is unlawful to make rifts within the city," Asaed said. I scoffed quietly in my head—unlawful. What a goddamn goofy term. And then—

"Rifts?" I said. "So, you're taking me—where, exactly?"

"As I said," Asaed said, "there are things that Alief would like you to see."

And he wouldn't say anything more after that. We reached the city wall, and the city gate that had a name I couldn't remember, and it was pulled up for us like it had been on our way into the city. We walked a good way out into the dark, cold field that was outside of the walls—but at least it wasn't raining. And this time, in the far distance, I saw something that looked like another little low grouping of lights. Probably the army barracks that Ociir had told me was out here.

Eiphi and Atoen put their hands together and made the rift, just like last time. Then they hung back, looking a little drained and out of it while Asaed nabbed my arm and pulled me forward.

"Go," he said, without much ceremony. And I went.

The first thing—after the brief vertigo and unsteadiness—was Jesus Christ real fucking sunlight. I'd practically forgotten what that even looked like. I pressed my hands over my face until just the left over light coming through my fingers stopped burning my eyeballs, and then risked looking up. And it wasn't even that bright out. Like a mildly overcast day, one of those where it's kind of hard to tell where the sun is even coming from. Asaed and I were standing on grass between clean grayish tombstones, a cemetery that I recognized. And we were looking up at the hill, the one that had used to be blanketed in a huge glowing white pillar of terror.

Now, it was just hidden behind a vague, gauzy screen of mild alarm. I could actually see through all the fuzzy light—just barely, but I could tell that there were more trees back there and, even further away, the mountains. It looked like what Ahieel's grove had done when we'd kicked his ass—just phasing out, evaporating. It was very obviously weaker and dimmer. And it was just about the most relieving thing I'd seen in my life. So this was the proof, I guess, what Alief wanted to show me.

"As you can see," Asaed said, as cordially as he could between gritted teeth. I think having to play tour guide to me was really pissing him off. Hell, I think I pissed him off in general. "We are withdrawing."

"Yeah, from here," I said, thinking about that right as I spoke. "Ahieel said you guys were in dozens of other places. How do I know—you aren't just doing this like, right here, just to show me?"

"Do you really think you are that important, that we would arrange such a farce for you?" Asaed said, and I started to feel like a real asshat, until Asaed grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back through the rift. I stumbled back into the courtyard in Uillad, briefly dizzy and disorientated, and nearly tripping over Eiphi. She practically clotheslined me to steady me, throwing her arm casually across my entire upper body and jerking me to a stop.

"Jesus Christ," I said to Asaed, who had followed me back through. "Could you not do that?"

Asaed ignored me, instead turning to Eiphi and Atoen and telling them something in their own language. The two of them glanced at each other, had a wordless conversation in the span of about five seconds, and then stepped forward and put their hands together again. He must have told them to make another rift, because that's what they did. It took them longer, and obviously more effort—they were probably still a little bit tapped out from making the first one not five minutes ago.

"What's the point of this?" I said. Because wasn't it just going to lead right back to the same place as before? "Won't it just take us right back?"

"Don't be foolish," Asaed said, sounding unimpressed. "It would be extremely inconvenient if we couldn't travel to more than one place in the same world, from the same beginning point."

Right, right, of course, that made sense. I guess I was more used to the permanent ones, which seemed to be fixed on where they went back and forth. Those were also the ones that were apparently dangerous to go through if you weren't pumped full up of the right energy. Maybe some day I'd understand all of this stuff. Definitely not now, because Asaed was busy manhandling me through the new rift.

We came out on a huge bridge, somewhere. And on a pedestrian walk, which seemed odd, because there were actually people walking around and wouldn't people popping out of nowhere scare the crap out of most ordinary citizens? Except nobody seemed to notice. Maybe the rifts were subtle enough to people who couldn't feel energy that we were literally not there one second, and there the next. That would actually be hard to catch, unless you were paying real close attention to empty spaces in the air.

I didn't recognize where we were. Somewhere not in California, that was for sure. We were standing on the sidewalk of a grey bridge, cars rushing past behind us, over a wide flat river colored dull brown-green, made darker by the darkly clouded sky and bitter wind that snapped around us. The river split two sides of a large city, but one that hadn't really built too far upwards, and all the architecture looked….older. It seemed like pretty late afternoon, compared to the early morning it had been back in my town. There were bridges as far as I could see down the river, all different shapes and designs, none of them even looking vaguely alike. They were all glowing, faintly, with gold-white energy that I recognized and felt, slightly, in my chest.

"Where the hell…" I muttered, mostly to myself. I groped my hands out and found a railing in front of me that was solid and cool beneath my hands. I'd expected all of this to be not real, somehow. People were walking by behind us on the sidewalk, bustling along in the cold, I could feel some of them brushing up along my back. Asaed was standing nearby, usually neat hair blown over his forehead by the wind, arms crossed, looking grim. Some people were staring at him. With his blind eye and hashed up scarred neck and being nearly seven feet tall, I didn't blame them.

"Look," he said to me, and I did.

I leant against the railing and peered around, still feeling a little dazed. A freezing wind snapped off the water and got right under my clothes,

On the right side of the river I saw a building that looked like a horizontally sliced glass pineapple had been slightly nudged off center. Directly down the river was what looked like a large moored warship. Like the bridges, even that was glowing a little. I looked upwards, again, at the bridge we were on. Two huge grey stone towers, intricately detailed like castle turrets, with light blue supports. Familiar from a million pictures I'd seen. And I finally recognized where we were. I wasn't well traveled at all and I'd hardly been out of California except once, but dammit, I'd seen enough movies.

"Oh, shit," I said. "I—we—is this London?"

"I don't know the name of the city," Asaed said shortly. "It is somewhere very far from your own. That is what you wanted, yes? To see that we were leaving other places as well. And we are."

I could see he was right, even through my dumb boggling at the fact that I'd just been transported to London. I looked back to the river—the Thames, I guess it was—and the bridges spanning across it. There was energy surrounding every single one of them, including this one that we were on, but it was all faded and dim, like dying lightbulbs. Just like the way Ahieel's grove had faded, just like the energy in the cemetery. Didn't matter that bridges in London seemed a hell of a lot more accessible and public than a random cemetery in California—but I wasn't going to question it. It was going away, that's all I cared about.

"We are leaving," Asaed said, and it took me a second to realize he meant him and me this time.

"Oh, yeah, right," I said. I'd been to two different worlds now, and still I was reeling at being here, in a city that was only an ocean and a continent away from my home. Somehow, being here felt more foreign. I could barely pry my hands off of the railing and step back. Asaed grabbed my arm, in that annoyingly forceful way he had.

"Do you need more evidence?" Asaed said, with a tone that suggested he might murder me if I said yes.

"No," I said. "I'm—fine."

"Good," Asaed said, and drug me back through the rift.