Thresholder

Perry was carrying as much of Marchand as he’d been allowed to, which had taken some conversations with both Luo Yanhua and the quartermaster. The drone had been extracted from the back of the armor and likened to a bird that could whisper what it had seen, while the left vambrace was compared to a vessel that could power the bird. It was a bad comparison to make, given that Perry was attempting to persuade her that March was nothing like a person, but without the vambrace, he was worried he’d run out of battery too quickly. It would have been better to take the microfusion reactor in the center, but then, it would have been better to take the entire suit of armor. Instead, the battery in the arm would need to suffice, allowing the drone to take three or four flights and the earpiece to be charged almost indefinitely.

“Nice to be out of that place,” said Maya once they were a mile down the road. “I always felt like I was being watched.”

“Does that matter to you?” asked Perry.

“What do you mean?” asked Maya. She raised an eyebrow. “Of course it matters.”

“You either don’t give a shit what these people think of you, or you’re doing a damned good impression,” said Perry.

“Oh, that, sure,” said Maya. She stuck her hands in the pocket of her hoodie. Her needle sword floated along beside her, without apparent concentration on her face. “But — I mean, Earth, right? You’re being spied on all the time, and you don’t really have a choice but to live your life as you want to live it. Still, you’ve gotta think in the back of your head that you’d really rather not have these huge companies and the NSA looking through all your personal shit.”

“Maybe for you,” said Perry. “There were certain things that I’d definitely just never share online.”

“All your racist diatribes?” asked Maya.

“Funny,” said Perry, though he felt a pang of discomfort at the mention of race. He’d been told he couldn’t understand what other people were going through enough times that he believed it, and it sometimes felt like navigating a minefield in a way that other topics of discussion didn’t.

The silence became slightly uncomfortable, and he shrank a bit, hoping that she wasn’t about to pounce on him.

“And I am doing an impression of not caring,” said Maya. “Partly to cover for the stuff that I really want to keep from them.”

“Which is?” asked Perry.

“The arbitrage stuff,” said Maya. “What they would consider high crimes and we would consider just kind of whatever.”

Perry frowned at her. “I didn’t know you were still trying to make progress on that.”

“Oh yeah,” said Maya. “Which is a sign to me that March doesn’t tell you everything.”

“March?” asked Perry.

“Yes sir?” March asked into his ear.

“No,” said Perry. “Sorry, forgot you were there, I should probably power the earbud down and save battery.”

“Very well sir,” said Marchand.

Perry slipped it from his ear and put it gently into his pack, where the vambrace was nestled. It was precious, irreplaceable like all things from Richter, but probably the thing that was easiest to lose. Perry had hoped that wearing it around would have made some material change in it, like it did in his clothes, but he hadn’t noticed anything spectacular, not yet.

“You were saying about March?” asked Perry.

“He helped out with the nanites,” said Maya. “He can give better directions than I can.” She raised a hand and wiggled some fingers. “Little spiders.”

“Spiders?” asked Perry.

“Tiny little guys,” said Maya, showing a millimeter gap between her thumb and forefinger. “Spiders made of nanites, able to crawl into places where the likes of you and I aren’t allowed.”

“Shit,” said Perry. “And I thought the surveillance network you had was bad.”

“You’ve never once expressed anything like concern about that,” said Maya, frowning at him.

“It’s bad if you get caught,” said Perry. “Also it does occur to me that worrying about them spying is kind of hypocritical given we’ve got the whole temple bugged.”

“This is true,” nodded Maya. “But we’re not actively spying on them, are we? I mean, it’s mostly just in case someone says ‘hey, how’s the plan to kill Maya and Perry going’. That’s basically not a spy network at all.”

“I mostly don’t listen,” said Perry. “March still can’t understand the language, and building up a dictionary with just the earpiece is a special kind of hell.”

“You know I’ve been talking to him?” asked Maya.

“Yes,” said Perry.

“But you wish I wouldn’t?” asked Maya.

“It’s not that,” said Perry. “It’s that … I guess he had said you were testing his defenses.”

“Early on, sure,” said Maya. “Now I’m mostly helping him with technical stuff. We’ve got a radio link through the nanites, and he reads me books sometimes, if I’m trying to get to sleep.”

“Huh,” said Perry. “I guess I haven’t listened in on those conversations.” Or been told about them, which will be something to fix in the future. “Anyway, you were saying about spiders?”

“Right,” said Maya. “Tiny-tiny little spiders, smaller than you can see with the naked eye. The library is locked up tighter than a nun’s snatch, but tiny-tiny spiders can get in there, and once they were in, they could start reading through the books.”

“They made lenses?” asked Perry.

“Nah,” said Maya. “March couldn’t make the lenses small enough, and the spiders were slipping between the pages anyway, where it would be dark. They’re using some other kind of detector, I guess.” She waved a hand. “Anyway, they’ve been scuttling through the pages and feeding the data to March, who’s been reading it off to me. That took a lot of work, I guess, though I didn’t get the specifics of it.”

“Language learning,” said Perry. “I’ve been putting him to work on that. I guess I hadn’t realized that he’d read a bunch of books. Seems like he should be able to make more progress, with a corpus that size.”

“Anyway, the upshot is that I’ve gotten a better look at our friends,” said Maya.

“And?” asked Perry.

“And I have the path to power,” said Maya. He could hear the grin on her face. “There’s lots of really messed up stuff in there, forbidden books that I’m glad are collecting dust, but there are other ‘forbidden’ ones that I can work with. Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, that kind of thing. Nothing that a sorority sister would blink twice about.”

It took a moment for Perry to process. “You’re going to fuck your way to power?”

“Eh, I’m not decided on that,” said Maya. “The dark arts all come with drawbacks, it’s just a matter of picking the right one to focus on. And I haven't done more than skim through the table of contents, such as it is. I’ve been trying to see if there’s a reason they look down on this stuff, whether there’s some harm I’m not seeing or some hidden drawback.”

She was being more circumspect than she normally was. Perry wondered whether she was worried about him judging her, but he stayed silent. Maybe he did judge, a little bit.

They walked together in silence, only the sounds of the forest around them.

“I’m tethering tomorrow,” said Maya.

“To what?” asked Perry.

“Benevolence,” said Maya. “I’ve double and triple checked that there’s not some catch. The best I can figure, if our tethers outlast this world, it gives me the best opportunity to keep it going and accumulate more. Plus it’s more or less what I’ve been doing, moving from world to world, or trying to do. Probably should have done it ages ago, but they treat it so seriously it’s hard not to hold back and think things through.”

“I was going to do academics,” said Perry.

“Rather than doing good?” asked Maya.

“You can be an academic and still do good,” said Perry. “It’s just an easier pathway to power.”

“Seems to me that you’ll be spending time writing papers,” said Maya. “Rather than, I don’t know, making sure that starving kids have food.”

“Seems like you’ll be tilting at windmills,” shrugged Perry. “And don’t threaten to kill me over a difference of opinion, it’s getting old.”

“Old?” asked Maya. “I’m wounded. Already?”

“Besides, if I’m going to get back to the alternate Earth, I’m going to have to crack some mysteries first,” said Perry. “Academia overlaps with that.”

“This girl must have really been something,” said Maya.

“Yeah,” said Perry.

Flora’s words were echoing through his head. Maybe if it hadn’t been Richter, it would have been something else. Maybe he was consumed by a self-centered lust for power that he was seeking out any excuse for. She’d gotten to him, and much of the time he was thinking about her words, they weren’t even her words, just things that he imagined that she might say to him.

It took them some time to reach the site of the murder. The body was long gone, the pieces given as much of a proper burial as they could be given. It hadn’t rained since the incident though, and there was still blood all over the place, sticking to the sides of trees and crusting the ground. It had lost the bright red color of freshly spilled blood and taken on a dark brown that made it a little less horrific. The iron smell hung in the air, undercut by rot.

“Not sure there was a point in coming here,” said Maya. “We’re shit detectives.”

“I’m going to fire up the drone,” said Perry. “It’s got enough range to talk to March and hopefully the sensors can pick up something.”

The drone was a quad-copter, and unfolded with such delicacy that Perry was surprised that it could do the whole operation at high speed when fired from the back of the armor. It felt like a flower in his hands, whose petals could easily be crushed if he moved just wrong. That feeling was wrong, he knew: it was as rugged as it could be given the weight, made with materials that would put anything from his Earth to shame. There was a good chance that he wouldn’t be able to snap one of the blades with his bare hands, but that definitely wasn’t a chance he was ever going to take.

The drone lifted quietly, its oddly shaped blades making little noise as it rose. After a half-second of calibration, Marchand’s voice came through.

“Ah, good to speak with you sir,” said Marchand. “I’ve taken the liberty of putting the drone into low power mode. I assume you wanted me to make a scan of the area?”

“Yes,” said Perry. It was a surprising amount of initiative for the AI to take, but Perry was fine with that, so long as he was being asked.

The drone spun up and zipped around, its bevy of miniaturized cameras and microphones taking in the area. Crime scene analysis didn’t seem like it was within Marchand’s wheelhouse, though he was a distant descendant of military technology. The crime scene was also far from pristine, having been trampled by people who knew nothing about evidence preservation. Perry was hopeful though.

“How long will this take?” asked Maya.

“Not long, ma’am,” replied Marchand. “Data transmission is the primary issue at the moment, but the drone will be done gathering data in just a moment. Hold out your hand, sir.”

Perry held his hand out, and the drone landed in it, gentle as a falling leaf, and folded up its wings with a few mechanical whirls.

“That’s it?” asked Maya.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Marchand. “The analysis will take some time, I’ll put the drone on standby until I have something to report. Data transmission is still ongoing.”

Perry gently set the drone down on a nearby rock, then leaned up against a tree. Maya took a moment to do the same.

“Alright, so why carve up the body?” asked Maya. “It was done after death, obviously, or most of it was done after death. Why do that to a body?”

“Ritual, satisfying desires, sending a message, extracting resources,” said Perry, raising fingers in turn.

“Show of power,” said Maya.

“I’d call that part of sending a message, but sure,” said Perry. “Everything else I can think of, it would be for things that pretty clearly weren’t done here: hiding the body, transporting the body, delaying the investigation, hiding the identity, that sort of thing. They wanted the body to be found.”

“In order to draw us out,” said Maya. She looked around the bloody clearing. “I’ve been on edge, waiting for it to happen.”

“Yeah,” said Perry. He had kept his sword close to him, and not fully dropped his guard. “Without March, I feel half-blind.”

“I guess we don’t even really know whether or not it’s a thresholder, not for certain,” said Maya. “But it seems incredibly likely.”

“Yeah,” said Perry. “If they had anything like the internet, we’d be able to find out the details of the deaths in the Grouse Kingdom. That would let us know whether it’s the same sort of MO.”

“Ha!” said Maya. “‘MO’. You’ve watched one too many episodes of Law and Order. But there was something in one of the books.”

Perry raised an eyebrow.

“You can harvest people for parts,” said Maya. “You can’t rip out the meridians or the vessels, not directly, at least at our level, but you can take the physical pieces of them and then integrate them into your own body. Most of the time this does basically nothing for you, I think, if you’re taking from the first spheres, but if you were taking from a powerful second sphere, especially one with royal blood …”

Perry frowned. “Power,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Maya. “Power. The power of three royal sons, an inverted tether to their kingdom? We could be looking at something — someone — that’s already eclipsed our power.”

Perry was still frowning. “I need to read those books. You should have told me.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Maya. “Talking about this shit in the temple seems like a real bad idea though.”

Plus it puts you far ahead of me. I’m sure that was a totally unintended consequence. And March didn’t breathe a word of it to me, for whatever reason. “What’s an inverted tether?” asked Perry.

“I’m not super clear on that,” said Maya. “My best guess is that it’s like that stocks thing, where you bet that it’ll fail, but it might be more than that — you dedicate yourself to the opposite of something, benefit from its downfall.”

“That works?” asked Perry.

“I’ve got no idea,” said Maya. “Tethers are weird.”

“You’ve been secretly reading through a bunch of texts you’d probably get killed for,” said Perry. “And the thing you’ve come away with is ‘tethers are weird’?”

“If you’ll excuse me, I have a preliminary report,” said Marchand, speaking from the drone’s speaker.

“Go for it,” said Perry.

“Based on simulations I’ve run, the method of death appears to have been bisection through the stomach,” said Marchand. “It’s very difficult to tell given everything that occurred afterward, but it must have been sudden. The distribution of blood suggests that the body was cut apart, into pieces, shortly afterward.”

Perry waited. “That’s it?”

“I apologize sir,” said Marchand. “I am working off the distribution patterns of days-old blood in a crime scene that has been trampled by a number of people using less than my full suite of equipment. There’s no body, sir.”

“Right, I just thought you’d shout ‘enhance’ a bunch,” said Perry. “And tell us, uh … some stuff.”

“You know that my sensors have been in a sorry state for quite some time, sir,” said Marchand. “I’ve attempted to correct for them as much as possible, but the error log grows with every day.”

“Error log?” asked Maya.

“He doesn’t understand magic,” said Perry. “The error log is a bunch of stuff that can’t be explained in other ways. Where possible, he’ll try to explain how it was actually technology all along, but half the time he’s got very little idea what’s actually going on. When we first got here he thought it was California, a movie set or something.”

“Poor guy,” said Maya with a little pout.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “I’ve tried to talk to him, but nothing has worked so far. Almost all of it gets chucked into the error log, but a few things sneak through from time to time.”

“And this is your best friend?” asked Maya.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “We make it work.”

“March, the upshot is that the killing happened suddenly, right?” asked Maya. “No signs of a struggle?” Perry really didn’t like the way she talked to him.

“It’s very difficult to say,” replied March. “But if I were forced to hazard a guess, which I believe I would be if I dithered on the subject, then yes, I would say that it was sudden.”

“From behind or from the front?” asked Maya.

“Both are equally likely based on the evidence, ma’am,” said March.

“Right, but we know how fast the second sphere can move, which means an attack from the back is much more likely,” said Maya. “So like, our thresholder might have descended down from above, caught him completely off guard, to his face … but that means a level of speed that we can never meet. Assuming that our thresholder isn’t superhumanly fast, or isn’t supersuperhumanly fast, probably they had some kind of a face-off.”

“What are you thinking?” asked Perry. “Also, I’m not sure that playing detective is panning out, we should just go to Moth Lantern Hall and see what we can learn there.”

“I’m thinking …” said Maya. “I don’t know. I’m trying to map it out in a way that makes sense.”

“We have no idea what the enemy thresholder’s powers will be,” said Perry. “If there’s an enemy thresholder at all.”

“Oh come on,” said Maya. “You think this is Worm Gate?”

“Or someone else,” said Perry. “From what Luo Yanhua has said, the only thing stopping evil techniques from gaining traction are that people are willing to stand up to those who use them, hunt them down or whatever. That, and cosmic karma. But even that stuff doesn’t seem like it works all that well, or not all the time. So yeah, I’m willing to believe that it wasn’t a thresholder.”

“There’s one more thing,” said Maya. “Our guy, the one who got chopped to bits? Why was he out here?”

Perry shrugged. “Second sphere are allowed to leave. This one didn’t, not often, but it’s not absurd.” His name was Xu Jinhai, but Perry knew relatively little about the man. He’d had a wife and family back at the temple, and was well-liked. There was no blisteringly obvious reason for anyone to kill him.

“It’s happenstance that killer and victim met here?” asked Maya.

“Happenstance happens,” said Perry.

“Sure, sure,” said Maya. “And you’re right, I’m done playing ‘who’s the worse detective’ with you. Let’s head off toward the moth den.”

Perry thought about it as they went. The crime scene had told them approximately nothing, and hadn’t done the one thing he’d really been hoping for, which was to illuminate what kind of powers they would be up against. As he saw it, meeting another thresholder for the first time was one of the most incredibly dangerous things he could do, not just because he expected them to kill him, but because he would have absolutely no idea what he was facing.

He thought Maya was probably right that the murder was a play of some kind, he just couldn’t figure out what. It would be easy enough to hide a body in the woods, especially if you had the power to chop it up. The Great Arc was relatively settled, but there were still all kinds of woods around. In fact, thinking about the clearing, he wasn’t entirely sure how the body had been found.

If they actually cared about the murder, it might have been better to return to Crystal Lake Temple and get more information from the sect, but their true purpose wasn’t actually to solve a murder: it was to get revenge, a counter-strike against Worm Gate. Moon Gate had already done their own investigation, come to their own conclusions, and were hopping mad about what they thought had happened.

“I think we go in and make friends,” said Perry.

“With the worms?” asked Maya.

“The moths,” said Perry. “But yes.”

“That gives away our biggest advantage,” said Maya. She folded her arms, and her needle swung around, pointing down for emphasis.

“It lets us talk to them,” said Perry. “It lets us gather information.”

“We’re not out here to gather information,” said Maya. “They’ve got your robot buddy held hostage. Do you think if we come back and say ‘actually, Worm Gate doesn’t appear to have been involved at all’ they’ll give you a pat on the back and tell you what a good job you’ve done? Not to mention we’ve got no proof one way or another, and aren’t likely to get proof just from talking to them.”

“So you think we bust in and just start killing?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Maya. “We spy on them, see what their numbers are like, figure out the layout of the place, then we go through with swords drawn.”

“I want to talk,” said Perry.

“Their head honcho is puppetting people,” said Maya. “And if we have to have the conversation about whether or not it’s consensual and what that means in the context of the power structures, I swear to god —”

“I’ll talk to them, alone,” said Perry. “You stay back. With the nanites, we’ve got radio communication, right? I can feed you information, let you know what’s up. You’ll have the benefit of knowing the personnel and the layout, I’ll get to know what’s up, and you get the element of surprise.”

Maya narrowed her eyes. “I want to disagree, but you make a compelling argument.”

“Really?” asked Perry. “I kind of thought you’d dig your heels in.”

“Nah,” said Maya. “I’ll take the earpiece and hide in the bushes like a creeper.”

It took them some time to reach Moth Lantern Hall, and they got lost along the way, enough to necessitate another use of the drone so they could get their bearings. Connection with March wasn’t the best, but they had tested the link between the earpiece and the drone, which still worked.

Moth Lantern Hall was, as promised, carved from rock, the decorative pillars having been hewn from the stone rather than mined and placed. It was three stories tall, but very narrow, at least from the outside, with only a door at the bottom level and a single window at each of the upper levels. The door was wide and thick, with a well-polished brass knocker, and Perry approached it carefully, having left Maya quite some distance behind. He had the drone with him, but was becoming skeptical that the signal would penetrate through the rock. Then again, signals analysis had been Richter’s personal field of expertise, and he didn’t want to doubt her.

Perry brought the knocker down twice, then waited as patiently as he could. He had picked up some of the local customs in his time on the Great Arc, and knew that they placed a lot of value on not rushing things — which was one of the reasons that he was looked down on by many of those in Moon Gate for the nature of his ascension to the second sphere. In fact, waiting at a door might be something of a test, though Perry was pretty sure that they didn’t go in for that kind of thing, not with strangers.

Even if they let him in, it was going to be almost impossible to figure out what techniques they had at their disposal. The second sphere were tight-lipped, and more than that, cautious about technique in a way that came off as incurious and aloof. The only person that had asked Perry any significant questions about the other worlds he’d been to was Xiyan, and she was first sphere.

The door swung open suddenly and a smiling man popped out. He had a wide grin on his face.

“Can I help you, sir?” he asked. He wore simple clothes, but they were unmistakably those of the second sphere, too tidy and fine for all but the most fastidious of the first sphere. He had dark eyes and shaggy hair that felt intentionally imperfect, and his smile showed his gums.

“I’m a traveler from distant lands, hoping to find shelter for the night,” said Perry, the words he’d practiced coming out even though they now seemed weirdly formal and stilted.

“Ah, but before you come in, can I ask whether you’re a member of any sects?” asked the man.

“I’m not,” said Perry. This was true, actually.

“Then you are welcome for the night, as an honored guest,” said the man with a low bow. “Come in, come in.”

Perry stepped in slowly. The hallway was longer than he’d thought it would be, leading deep into the rock. It opened up into a spacious room in the center, with doors going off in five directions. It was surprisingly bright in the center of the room, thanks to small lanterns on the wall. The glow reminded Perry of LEDs or something like them, and after such a long time with only gas lamps and torches, he found them mildly unnerving.

“This is Moth Lantern Hall,” said the man. “And I am Sun Lingfeng.”

“Peregrin Holzmann,” said Perry. He bowed, just enough to show deference. They were deep under the rock, and there was little hope of radio signals getting out. Perry had his sword, and his vessels were as full of energy as they could comfortably be, but a close-quarters fight would be a tough ask. “Thank you for your hospitality, Sun Lingfeng.”

Lingfeng waved a hand. “We have many rooms, though only a few are used at the moment. You are second sphere?”

It was a question that didn’t need to be asked. Perry’s sword didn’t have the right aura, but his clothes would, and anyone looking at him deeply enough would be able to see that he was exuding more energy than a first sphere ever could. His own ability to see was still being developed, a matter of the Liver Meridian and Kidney Meridian, though it was more complex than just strengthening them. The brain was also considered a more complex organ, and not entirely responsible for everything actual biomedicine thought it was responsible for, which Perry had been struggling to put to one side. Opening his third eye — which wasn’t a concept that they really subscribed to — was a matter of the heart rather than the brain. His was currently only opened a crack. He could see Lingfeng’s energy though, a gentle outpouring.

“I ascended to second sphere only a month ago,” said Perry. “There is still much for me to learn.” He bowed again, just to be on the safe side, but Lingfeng didn’t seem like a stickler. “Are there others in Moth Lantern Hall?”

“Only three of us,” said Lingfeng, shaking his head. “If you have interest in joining the sect, you would go elsewhere, but we can shelter you for the night, and you are welcome to partake of our food.”

Perry nodded. “It’s appreciated,” he said. “If there’s anything that I can do to make up for the inconvenience —”

“You said you came from a distant land?” asked Lingfeng. “The Grouse Kingdom, perhaps?”

Perry shook his head. “Further afield than that, as you might have guessed.” He gestured to his general appearance, from the beard to his skin color to his height.

“We have had many from the Grouse Kingdom, of late,” said Lingfeng. “Most stay only for a day or two, then leave, either to the Silk Serpent Shrine or continuing on their way through Green Snake Valley. Do you think you’ll stay?”

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “I was told this was a temple of Worm Gate, a competitor to Moon Gate within this valley. I have to confess that I know less than I would like about both of them.” He was trying hard not to directly lie, both because of karmic questions and because he didn’t want to be called out.

“It is a bit unusual,” said Lingfeng. “But those matters are quite beyond my station, and those of Moth Lantern Hall.”

“And the travelers you’ve had coming through here,” said Perry. “You said many of them?”

Lingfeng nodded eagerly. “Always in ones and twos, some of them from sects that no longer exist, weakened, wanting only a place to recuperate. But we are not such a place, not for most.”

“Why is that?” asked Perry.

“Come,” said Lingfeng. “I’ll show you to your room, and to the hall.” He took off, leaving Perry to follow.

The titular hall was huge, situated on the floor above and carved, with arches, from the same stone, leading down to pillars that supported the roof. There was plenty of space beyond the long table, which looked like it could have seated twenty. In one place, a crack that must have existed in the rock had been worked around then decorated, showing off an opening where a vein of quartz was exposed. The same strange lights dotted the ceiling, up high enough that a tall ladder would have been needed to reach them, and to Perry’s surprise, there were thousands of moths floating around up there. He hadn’t expected the place’s name to be quite so literal.

“Wow,” said Perry.

“This site is ancient,” said Lingfeng. “The moths come in from the outside through passageways.” He pointed up at small holes on the wall that Perry had thought were decorative. “It is a strength of the place.”

Perry stared up at the moths crowding around the lanterns. Their fluttering made him uncomfortable. Moths were a nuisance, vermin, and to have so many of them in a place where people congregate and eat was like being invited to someone’s dining room and being shown their rat collection in a tank on the dining room table.

“Worm Gate draws power from insects,” said Perry. This was something he’d learned from Luo Yanhua. “I hadn’t realized they’d be … here.”

“Oh, yes,” said Lingfeng. “I have no doubt that Moon Gate would pull the moons closer if they could. They have chosen the moon as their foundation.”

“I’m surprised there’s much energy in bugs,” said Perry. His eyes kept being drawn to the moths. The lighting in the hall was inconsistent, given the fluttering of their wings.

“Oh, there’s not,” said Lingfeng. “But while there is not much energy in a grain of sand, there is power in the beach, do you see?”

Perry nodded. “I have spoken with those of Moon Gate about their techniques,” he said. “I have even seen a few wonders of their technique.” He turned to Lingfeng. “There’s tension in the valley between the sects, I’ve heard. Do you worry?”

“There is cause for outright war,” said Lingfeng, rubbing his chin. “But in the end, I think cooler tempers will prevail.”

“What’s the cause?” asked Perry.

“Oh, it goes back for centuries,” said Lingfeng. “Spies, recruiting from each other’s camp, retaliation, the odd fight or two that everyone will insist was just the actions of an individual member going against orders. When we meet outside the temples, the feeling is always frosty, and sometimes blows are exchanged, more probing than serious.”

“You fight each other?” asked Perry. “Regularly? I hadn’t known that.”

“Regularly, no,” said Lingfeng. “But you are new to the second sphere, you said, and likely do not know what it is like to grow old.” Perry hadn’t pegged the man for being more than thirty, but he’d always been terrible about guessing how old people were, and that was before magic was taken into account. “Memories are long, which doesn’t help matters.”

“So fights,” said Perry. “But not murder?”

“Murder?” asked Lingfeng. He smiled but didn’t laugh. “Only a serious battle ends in death. The tensions between sects are not so far gone.”

“But you’re not part of the main sect, right?” asked Perry. “This is a satellite temple?”

Lingfeng tilted his head. “We are an ordered sect, arranged beneath the umbrella of power my great-grandfather holds. But not every vase fits so well within the same set of drawers. Thus, Moth Lantern Hall.”

Rejects, outcasts, mold-breakers, Perry translated. “But to what end?” asked Perry. “Is there … hope of going back?”

Lingfeng laughed. “You misunderstand. There is hope of not going back. It is a way to be a part of the sect — family, for most — without the uncomfortability of being part of a place that doesn’t suit you.”

Perry pursed his lips.

Either this was a masterclass in acting and subterfuge, or the people here had nothing at all to do with the murder. It was possible that Lingfeng was lying, and there was certainly a motive to do so no matter which way it was sliced, but if they were the relatives who didn’t quite fit and had been stuck somewhere out of the way, why would they go out and kill someone from a nearby opposing temple? Especially one where they were heavily outnumbered.

As he thought about this, it occurred to him that surely Luo Yanhua must have known most of this.

And as he thought about it more, it occurred to him that the murders of ostracized relatives of Worm Gate would be a much lesser offense than killing a promising young student. Worm Gate would still be angry, if they assumed that it was Moon Gate who’d done it, but it would be a poke in the eye rather than a knife in the gut. Maybe, from a certain perspective, it might seem proportional.

“I think I’m quite tired,” said Perry. “If you could be so gracious, I might take some air, then rest and meditate for a bit.”

“Of course,” nodded Lingfeng. “I’m eager to hear of your experiences, which seem as though they must be unique, but it can wait until another time. Let me show you to your room, then you can come and go as you please.”

The room was small and sparsely furnished, with a single strange wall light, the same as the other, that two moths seemed to be fighting over.

“Thank you,” said Perry.

“Go, get your air, and your rest,” said Lingfeng. “Dinner will be in two hours, and you will meet the others then.”

He left, and Perry hesitated for only a moment before walking down the hallways and out the front door. He took a breath, then walked through the forest to where Maya was waiting for him.

She was in the lotus position, eyes closed, but they snapped open when he approached.

“Let me guess, they’re all dead?” asked Maya.

“I don’t think it was them,” said Perry. “I only met one of them, but they’re familial outcasts, people who didn’t fit in and needed to be stuck somewhere. The guy I met was nice, nice in a way that pretty much no one else of the second sphere has been. Talkative too.”

“Oh, well if there was a guy there who was nice, then by all means,” said Maya. “Did you ask them about the puppet thing?”

“I didn’t, no,” said Perry.

“Seems like the kind of thing you should ask someone about before concluding that they’re nice,” said Maya.

“It does,” Perry admitted. “I’m not sure how much of a defense he would offer for his great grandfather, but from what he’s said, these are branches of the family tree that everyone is trying to prune while not directly violating a duty to family. They seem like your kind of people, actually.”

“Only three of them?” asked Maya.

Perry nodded. “I don’t expect them to be the best fighters, but I guess you never know, and second sphere is no joke.”

“If you come back and say ‘I don’t think these are your guys’, what do you think Moon Gate’s response is going to be?” asked Maya.

“I think they won’t be too happy. I think they probably know that it wasn’t these people,” said Perry. “But there’s no whiff of another thresholder at Moth Lantern Hall. I’ll go back in there, speak with the others, but … it feels like we’re being asked to ignite a full-on war. Which might have been just what the other thresholder wanted.”

“Or someone from Moon Gate,” said Maya. “We’re outsiders, definitively not members, and useful patsies.”

Perry’s face was set into a frown. “I need March back. And I would really rather not get embroiled in a war between sects, not while both sides are more powerful than we are.”

“Seems like those two goals are at odds with one another,” said Maya.

“You think we just kill some innocent people?” asked Perry.

“Nah,” said Maya. “I think you ask them about grandpappy’s puppets, then we see where we stand. Right now, knowing what we know? I think we spare them. But we don’t have anyone’s head to offer up, which is a problem. And there’s one other issue.”

“Which is?” asked Perry.

“March isn’t responding,” said Maya.

Perry took the drone out of his sack and powered it on. “Range on the earpiece isn’t really that far, we’re three miles from Crystal Lake through dense forest.” He waited while the drone started up. “Signal with the drone is better.”

But when the drone was powered on, it made a few beeps of complaint, unable to connect to the power armor.

“Shit,” said Perry.

“Told you,” said Maya. “Do we head back?”

Perry looked up at the sky for a moment, and saw a distant part of the Great Arc.

“Well?” she asked. “No skin off my scrote if we don’t, but March is your most valuable piece of kit and your best buddy.”

“No,” said Perry. “We stay the course. If they’ve taken the opportunity to do something with him while I was out — if that’s one of the reasons they wanted me away — then it’s already over and done with. Racing back … I think I could make it in five minutes, maybe less, but then what? If they fucked him, they fucked him.”

“Wow, cold and mercenary,” said Maya. She dug the point of her needle sword into the ground. “This is one of the reasons we don’t vibe.”

“I’m staying the night,” said Perry. “I’ll talk with the others. You should probably come with.”

“Yeah?” asked Maya.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “You have questions you want to ask, better to ask them there. Otherwise you’re sleeping out in the woods.” He looked up at the sky. “Better for me to get in well before nightfall. I can already feel the hairs sticking up on the back of my neck, and this place is a bunker. It’s kind of perfect.”

“Sure,” said Maya. “But if I have to start something, you help me finish it.”

Perry stared at her. She didn’t put on her serious face very often, but it was in full display.

“We’re allies,” said Maya.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “Yeah, we are. But … I don’t know if we’re that much of allies.”

“Fine,” said Maya. The seriousness faded and she shrugged off the question, as though it hadn’t been posed. “If I have to start something, I’ll finish it on my own.”

Perry let out a breath. That could have gone a lot worse. “Then let’s see whether they’re hiding anything in their closets.”