Thresholder

Perry watched the video closely, for the fourth or fifth time. The shadow woman snuck into the armory, opening the door only a fraction. If all the cameras had been functional at the time, there would have been a better view of that fraction, but there was only this thin sliver. Because of the door’s angle, it was impossible to compare that sliver with what had been there before, but Perry had Marchand make a map of the Crystal Lake Temple and project it, and it very much appeared as though the sliver didn’t match.

Perry was pretty sure that the smoky woman was Xiyan. March had run something called gait analysis, which hadn’t come back with a match, but March had all kinds of caveats, and obviously if you were an assassin you wouldn’t move the same way while engaging in sabotage as you would while pretending to be a humble maid. Other analysis pointed in the direction of Xiyan, such as comparing their heights and the lengths of their limbs. Perry felt safe making that assumption.

Xiyan could use doors to move from one place to another. The details were very unclear. That was one power down, and it was a very dangerous one, especially because the details were unclear. Could she have slipped into his room whenever she wanted to? Did it need some kind of preparation? Perry didn’t know. But that was Power Number One.

He watched the video of her getting shot. It hurt her, clearly, but she’d been hit five times out of five and kept on moving instead of flopping to the ground. She’d bled, but not very much. That was Power Number Two.

The smoke thing, that was Power Number Three.

And the power to swiftly punch straight through Marchand with a blade, that was Power Number Four, probably. She’d also stabbed Perry in the chest with a huge amount of speed and power, and was strong enough to slip out of his grasp, even with him being a second sphere wolf-powered man with almost a full foot on her.

So that was four Known Powers, with lots of gaps in what their actual bounds were. If Maya was right about how allies worked, then Perry had to assume that Xiyan had approximately ten separate powers available to her from ten wins in her journey across the multiverse. That left way too much ambiguity, too much room to get blindsided by her.

Perry trained. Much of that training was done with the second spheres of Worm Gate, learning their techniques. After a singular chiding, he didn’t show off anything he’d learned with Moon Gate, and instead pretended that he was a total novice that was learning everything from the ground up.

They despised him, naturally. He was an up-jumped second sphere who had eaten a flower rather than gaining enlightenment, he wore armor — armor that he kept on most of the time, not trusting Worm Gate with it — and he was favored by the grandmaster, who hadn’t been shy about extending benefits to Perry. But while they despised him as a general rule, they didn’t treat him poorly, instead treating him more like a coworker they didn’t like but had to work with anyway. And there were exceptions.

Sun Baoxi was the least stuck up second sphere that Perry had met, which wasn’t saying all that much.

“It’s like the grandmaster says,” he explained. “We focus on balance, on elimination, but that’s just a step, that’s not the end goal, and knowing how to go without water is important, but you’re almost always going to be close to water, so why not drink it?” He had a hairstyle that was nearly a pompadour, and a slight gap in his teeth. His usual outfit was green, with tails like a tuxedo coming halfway down his thighs.

“It’s training,” said Sun Xiyue, who often took up a spot next to Sun Baoxi, in spite of not seeming to like him too much. She wore pink silks of different designs, with a puff of fabric bunched up at her throat. “If you eliminate your intake of water, and you keep up with that, you’re doing constant training of the internal alchemy. That’s the point of striving for balance.”

“Sure, sure,” said Sun Baoxi. “But you understand what dad is getting at.”

“Dad?” asked Perry.

“The grandmaster is our father,” said Sun Baoxi, gesturing between himself and Sun Xiyue.

“He should be referred to as grandmaster,” said Sun Xiyue.

“See, you say that, but isn’t father the more important of the terms?” asked Sun Baoxi.

“Have you asked him?” asked Perry.

Sun Xiyue laughed. “As if. Baoxi is terrified of the grandmaster.”

“Like you’re not?” asked Sun Baoxi. He raised a hand as if to hit her, and she didn’t so much as acknowledge it.

“Focus on your studies,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

Perry learned their techniques, but more than that, learned the core pillars of their techniques, which he thought might serve him better over a long enough timeline. The core of many of their attacks and defenses was quick snapping and explosive force, which was aided by their energy manipulation technique. It wasn’t the metaphor they had used, but Perry saw it sort of like blowing up a balloon and then letting the air out all at once. There was very little of the emphasis on smooth flow and continual draw that Moon Gate had.

The other main pillar of their technique was bugs. They drew power from the bugs in the same way that Moon Gate drew power from the moons, and when they were drawing hard, it meant the death of the insects. Supposedly when the grandmaster was at full draw, he could kill every insect out to a mile and punch with the power of a dying star, but he hadn’t done that in half a century, and Perry wasn’t sure what ‘power of a dying star’ translated to in terms of actual force. Most of the second spheres weren’t able to do anything nearly like that, and had to either use the insect life directly nearby or have a worm vat setup.

The worm vats were incredibly gross, tubs of wriggling worms that had been fed blood so as to create a sort of tether. In some ways it was supposed to be like having another vessel, but in other ways it was just offloading certain functions of the body. If you didn’t want to balance your internal alchemy, the worms could drink water for you, or eat for you, and apparently they could tank a hit in combat even if you were a few miles away from them.

Perry wasn’t sure it was better than being able to shoot moon lasers or jet to a base on the moon, but it was something he was interested in, even if there was no way he was going to carry a tub of worms from world to world.

He wasn’t going to stay at Worm Gate long though, certainly not long enough to master a whole new set of techniques. His only hope was that he could learn enough to work on it on his own later down the line, maybe when he was in a different world. That had become his one shining goal, but there was only one way to do that, which was to find and kill the other thresholder.

“You’re planning to get out of here?” asked Sun Baoxi.

“I am,” said Perry. “I told the grandmaster that when I first came here. Being a thresholder means not sticking around.”

“Father is hoping to leave too,” said Sun Baoxi. “That’s the word, anyway.”

Perry nodded slowly. “He doesn’t want to stay with this temple? With his family?”

Sun Baoxi looked around, then gestured for Perry to come closer. When Perry did, Baoxi moved forward, until his lips were practically touching Perry’s ear. “He’s capped out.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Perry after he’d pulled away.

Sun Baoxi pursed his lips as he tried to find the words. “What does every second sphere want?” asked Baoxi.

“To live a virtuous life,” said Perry.

Baoxi rolled his eyes. “Yes, but beyond that.”

“I really don’t know,” said Perry. “To … grow stronger?”

“To become third sphere,” said Baoxi. “It’s what I’m training for. But just like not every first sphere can become second sphere, not every second can make it to third, and …” he trailed off with a raised eyebrow.

“I see,” said Perry. “But for first sphere, it’s a matter of the spirit root. What governs the transition from second to third?”

Baoxi shrugged. “Hard to say.”

“You don’t know?” asked Perry.

“They don’t tell,” said Baoxi. “You’re supposed to discover it on your own. If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. But I don’t know, not yet. A balanced internal alchemy is a requirement, I know that much, but beyond that, it’s up in the air. The mark of third sphere is being able to project your energy — maybe even your whole matrix — outside of your physical body, and it might be that once you know how to do that, it’s easy enough. But third to fourth? No one really knows, except that there are a lot more people at third than fourth.”

Perry nodded. And the grandmaster is capped out. He’s grown as strong as he’s ever going to be. He could claim more territory, but he’s always going to be answerable to those of the fourth sphere in one way or another, even if the way they would choose to interfere is indirect.

“What will become of this place, if he’s gone?” asked Perry.

“It will be like having a vessel ripped out,” said Baoxi. “It’s one of the reasons no one wants you here. Even before you showed up, father was talking excitedly about the news from Moon Gate of people who had traveled worlds.”

“Worm Gate won’t survive?” asked Perry.

“We’ll lose some to the countryside, first spheres who are only here because of the assurance of a third sphere’s protection,” said Baoxi. “And we’ll surely lose some to Moon Gate, especially those who aren’t a part of the family.”

“Even with the rivalry?” asked Perry.

“Rivalry,” said Baoxi with a wave of his hand. “A rivalry is a complicated thing, but it’s more between the sects than between the people that make up the sects. We’ve taken in their rejects from time to time, either those who didn’t make it to second sphere or in a few cases second sphere who grow disillusioned with that particular path to power. Some people cap out gently, but there are those who keep scrambling, trying more and more.” He cocked his head to the side. “Which are you?”

“It’s not really like that for a thresholder,” said Perry.

Baoxi seemed to accept that. “I think my sister is probably right that I don’t have the drive to make it to third. But sometimes all the drive in the world won’t get you there.” He shrugged and pulled a pipe from somewhere, then went to a nearby fire to light a thin piece of straw to light the bowl.

“Your sister has that drive?” asked Perry.

“Half-sister,” said Baoxi. “But yes, maybe.” He took a long drag from his pipe. Perry didn’t know what he was smoking, except that it didn’t have the smell of pot or tobacco. “Like I said, the drive isn’t the best thing. That other thresholder you were with, she went to the dark arts.” He sniffed a bit, then let the smoke curl up out of his mouth. “That’s a thresholder thing?”

“Every world has power,” said Perry. “I haven’t been tempted. It would be nice to leave as third sphere, but —”

Baoxi laughed. “You’ve been here two months, second sphere for one of them, and you’re thinking of third sphere?”

Perry didn’t correct the timeline, since it wouldn’t flatter him. “Everyone knows I jumped up from first to second,” said Perry. “But that’s because I’m not like other people. It doesn’t seem, to me, that third is out of reach. There are shortcuts, and for me, maybe they aren’t things of folly and danger.”

“Shortcuts,” said Baoxi, rolling his eyes. He had a habit of repeating words, putting his own intonation on them — usually dismissive. “You’re lucky you didn’t die.”

“I’d just need to get lucky again,” said Perry.

He was itching to ask whether Baoxi knew of any shortcuts, but he kept the question to himself. Baoxi was as close to a friend as Perry had, assuming that the grandmaster didn’t count.

That night, when Perry came for what had become a nightly session with the grandmaster, there was a surprise waiting for him: the grandmaster had a pile of black powder sitting on a wooden board.

“What is this?” asked Perry.

Rather than answering, the grandmaster snapped his fingers, casting sparks down onto the powder. It lit up quickly, bright enough that Marchand corrected the contrast, and let off a great deal of smoke into the air.

“Gunpowder,” said the grandmaster with a smile.

Perry was silent for a moment. The grandmaster had seemed dismissive of firearms. Perry had given a long-winded answer on what gunpowder was, since the modern stuff used in bullets from Richter’s world was a far cry from what they had used during the Revolutionary War, but the grandmaster had pressed Perry on the matter, and Perry had eventually given the ingredients, and when pressed, also given the ratios.

“Saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur,” said Perry.

“Yes, as you said,” replied the grandmaster. “Now the only matter is the creation of a cannon.”

Metalworking on the Great Arc wasn’t all that good, which was part of why Perry had been willing to part with the information. The bigger part was that lying was difficult work, and he’d have had to lie about not just what he knew, but about what March knew, and during the hours-long interrogations that kept circling back around to revisit old subjects, he’d have to lie again. Now it was all seeming like a huge mistake.

“Now then,” said the grandmaster. “You must tell me about the worlds.”

They had already gone through everything that Perry knew about thresholding. He’d been able to keep a few things back, but the basics were plain, laid out and clear. Now it was a case of going through everything with a fine-toothed comb, and when that wasn’t enough, Perry was asked to speculate.

“Do you believe Maya’s account?” asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. It was maybe the third time he was asking that, though the wording varied.

“I believe her account of what those worlds were like,” said Perry. “The specifics … that’s less clear. There’s a difference between intentionally lying and twisting around what you say to suit your own purposes. I think people can do that unintentionally. Sometimes we misremember because it’s easier on us. I’ve actually heard that the way human memory works, you can’t help but change a memory when you think about it, it’s not stored in the mind like it’s written in stone, it’s more that you’re putting back a copy.”

“Her account of the wizard, who knew of the multiverse, and what he said?” asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. “What do you make of it?”

“That … I’m less sure about,” said Perry. “Xiyan tried to kill me. She came so close that I have to be thankful I’m not dead. If I had revealed more to her, she would have done it in a different way, with different trade-offs. So she’s a good candidate for third thresholder, but it could be we were supposed to be going up against Maya, and there are more exotic solutions to what’s going on.”

“Three thresholders,” said Grandmaster Sun Quying, shaking his head. “It’s an embarrassment of riches.”

“Yes, grandmaster,” said Perry, bowing slightly. “But the portal won’t open until one side has conclusively won. That’s been the rule so far. You have my eternal thanks for the shelter you’ve provided me here, for the membership I still struggle to earn, but I don’t know where the other thresholders are, and I wish to conclude my business in this world.”

Really, Perry was hoping that there was some way to get out from the grandmaster’s thumb. If possible, he’d take a page out of Maya’s playbook and just slit the grandmaster’s throat on the way out, but that didn’t seem remotely within the realm of possibility so far. The exact scope of what a third sphere grandmaster could do was unclear, but the deferential way people behaved around Sun Quying certainly wasn’t because he was a venerable elder.

“You wish me to find the other thresholders?” asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. He stroked his chin. “Is such an action allowed by this contest to which you are bound?”

“From what I know, there are no restrictions,” said Perry. “That the fights have happened as they did is a result of the worlds we’ve been in. Where there are more powerful forces, we are beholden to them, and can be subjugated by them.”

Grandmaster Sun Quying smiled. “As you are subjugated here?”

Perry shook his head. “You tease me.”

“I do, I do,” replied the grandmaster, chuckling to himself. “But you ask for help, and I am inclined to oblige. I would like to see this other thresholder, to hear her stories, and when the time comes, to see the much-talked-about portal present itself.” He eyed Perry. “What do you think happens, if a man walks through such a portal not meant for him?”

“I don’t know,” said Perry. It was an old conversation, an old question.

“What do you speculate?” asked the grandmaster, giving a displeased sigh.

“I think they become a thresholder themselves,” said Perry. “When the first portal was presented to me and Maya, we were only ordinary citizens of our world. The portals were meant for us, almost certainly, but if she’s right, they’re only trying to pull the right people from across the multiverse for a particular sort of battle. I have to imagine that they could simply pull the wrong person, someone unsuited.”

“Yet you have all these worlds you’ve heard of, and no record of it happening?” asked Grandmaster Sun Quying.

“I feel fortunate that Cosme and Maya shared their stories with me,” said Perry. “I don’t imagine that I’ll be so fortunate again, though I’d like to know as much as I can about thresholding.”

When the grandmaster eventually released him, Perry went back to his room and topped up March’s battery, which was getting to be routine. Perry was getting better, faster, and more and more he was able to draw only on outside energy rather than the wolf vessel. He was worried he would need it, and didn’t want a slow, weakened transformation, but he didn’t know how the vessel could be filled without transformation. What he really wanted to do was transform out in the woods and kill some deer, on the theory that would slake the appetite and refill the vessel, but that was guesswork, and he didn’t have anyone he trusted to help corral him, especially not when it would mean leaving the armor behind at Cicada Temple.

The gunpowder had scared Perry more than he would have liked to admit. He’d sort of assumed that Grandmaster Sun Quying would be as arrogant as everyone else, eschewing armor and even most weapons — but no, the man was intent on building a cannon, just to see whether it could be done. The man was also intent on making his way through a portal, and the only upside of that was that Perry might get some help in the showdown against Xiyan. Perry had been able to lie about becoming a werewolf, claiming that it was a tonic he was made to drink, and he was glad that he’d been able to keep it back.

Perry didn’t have many cards to play, but there was at least one other one he’d kept in hand.

“Marchand, send out a blast of radio,” said Perry. “Try your best to signal for the nanites. Open up a channel.”

“Are you certain, sir?” asked March.

Perry frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“You had previously expressed a preference for radio silence, sir,” said Marchand. “I only wanted to double-check that you wished me to temporarily violate that directive.”

“Oh,” said Perry. “I had thought …”

“You had thought that I was inquiring after your judgment of Miss Singh following the events at Moth Lantern Hall?” asked Marchand.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “That.”

“I am not charged with second guessing your judgment or personal opinions, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry frowned. “I hereby charge you with second guessing my judgment and personal opinions,” said Perry. “So long as we’re not in a combat scenario. Or … even then, I guess, if you think that I’m emotionally compromised.”

“Very well, sir,” said Marchand. “Did you still want me to send out the radio signal?”

“The Maya thing,” said Perry, taking a breath. “If we could find her, get a line of communication open … I haven’t warned her about Xiyan, and she’s persona non grata both here and at Moon Gate. There’s actually a good chance she’s dead. But this guy … you know, I was talking to Baoxi, and I had asked about the concubine thing, apparently the grandmaster takes in a new one every seven years like clockwork. Then Baoxi did this impression of his father, sort of an old man's voice, and said ‘the fruit must be plucked when it’s ripe’. Which is a hell of a catchphrase. And I walk by these glassy-eyed people that everyone assures me have signed up for servitude, but I haven’t been able to actually talk to one, because the grandmaster sees through their eyes while he’s putting them to work.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow, sir,” said Marchand. “You feel the need to warn Miss Singh, but also feel some discontent with your position here and the moral character of this resort’s director?”

Perry paused for a long time, soaking that in. “Yes,” said Perry. “But those things are related. Maya’s kind of a bitch. I wouldn’t want her as an ally, and she betrayed me, but she wouldn’t do what I’m doing. She wouldn’t say all these honeyed words and then hope to scurry away like a cowardly little rat. She sure as hell wouldn’t put that guy anywhere near a portal, because I don’t doubt he’s strong enough to dominate most of the worlds in the multiverse. So I’m going to try to get in touch with her, and maybe yell at her, and then … I don’t know.”

“You’ll be partners against your many enemies?” asked Marchand.

“Maybe,” said Perry. “I’ll at least put my plans to kill her on hold.”

“That was a cunning joke, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “You can laugh now.”

Marchand was silent. Perry didn’t know whether that was because the AI didn’t find it funny or if it was just a natural part of its personality. He chose to believe that this was just banter.

“Shall I send out the radio signal then, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Yes, please,” said Perry.

“I have a response from the nanites, sir,” said Marchand.

“What, already?” asked Perry. Not even a full second had passed.

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “It appears they were waiting for just such a communication. There is no location signal, but triangulation should be relatively simple — and is now done. Would you like to see their position on the map?”

Perry nodded. The HUD changed from a view of his room to an overhead view of Green Snake Valley, with helpful labels on the temples, towns, and other features. The map zoomed in on Cicada Temple, with a 3D model of all the buildings there, and a small dot glowed within the large building set furthest away from the gate — the very same building that Perry was, at that moment, standing in.

“What?” asked Perry. “She’s … in the basement?”

“The nanites are in the basement, sir,” said Marchand. “I do not believe Miss Singh is with them. The last record they have available to share is from two and a half weeks ago, when she suffered a catastrophic injury. It was at that point they were separated from her.”

“Shit,” said Perry. “I need to go get them.”

“Do you, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Yes,” said Perry. “I need to know what happened. The grandmaster knows more than he’s let on, and if she’s dead … I need to know.”

If she was dead, Perry was on his own. He hadn’t been looking forward to talking to her, but he found himself getting angry at the thought that she was dead. They’d had beef they needed to settle. And of course there was the grandmaster’s betrayal, the lies — or lies by omission — but those stung less, because they were to be expected of the man. It did not, of course, bode well for Perry’s continued living arrangement at Worm Gate.

Perry waited until the dead of night and then made his way down the building, using the sword to float, which was as silent as he could possibly get. He’d never been down to the basement — hadn’t even known there was a basement — but March had sent a pulse through the building and made a map, just like they used to do in the good old days.

The basement wasn’t like a typical sublevel, it went deep into the ground, with twenty feet of rock separating the basement from the first floor. The door wasn’t even all that hidden, and there was no lock on it. This was the grandmaster’s domain though, and there were all kinds of insects around, which might serve as his eyes and ears. Perry knew there was a good chance he’d get caught, but he elected not to care about that. If the grandmaster confronted him, he would confront the grandmaster right back. He at least had something the grandmaster wanted: the portal to another world. He wasn’t foolish enough to think that would insulate him, but it was one of the few options he had left.

The stairs were hewn stone, and reminded Perry of the way Moth Lantern Hall had been carved out. Maybe it had been someone with a particularly powerful technique. The map that Marchand had made showed where everyone in the building was, and no one was anywhere near Perry, but there was only one entrance down into the basement, and if someone came down after him, he had no way to avoid them and escape back into his room.

The basement had unexpectedly tall ceilings, and the same lights that were used in Moth Lantern Hall, a constant illumination. Perry wondered whether they were left on all the time, or whether they could even be turned off. They were only used in particular locations, not up in the temple itself, where the working day was governed by whether or not there was sunlight.

There were six doors leading off from the main room, each with a shutter to allow someone to look in. There were heavy locks on the doors, enough to stop most second sphere intruders, perhaps. They weren’t enough to stop Perry, not unless they were reinforced with some kind of technique or magic like the library at Crystal Lake Temple.

It was a dungeon. Perry should have figured that the grandmaster would have a dungeon.

“Tell me what’s in these rooms,” said Perry. He dropped to the ground as silently as he could and placed his hand against the floor.

“One moment, sir,” said Marchand.

The map in the corner of Perry’s view updated, showing March’s best guesses. Only one of the rooms had a person in it, her heart beating slowly. One of the other rooms held the nanites.

“Shit,” said Perry.

He went to the door of the room that had the woman in it. She was strung up, arms in the air, back against the wall, feet only barely on the floor. All that could be seen with the sonic mapping. Perry picked up the lock and looked at it, ignoring the shutter. It was huge and clunky, nothing particularly special as locks went. It was a million miles behind what they had on Earth. There was no key, just a set of dials with symbols on them, set into a casing that looked vaguely like a beetle.

“What’s the combination?” asked Perry.

“One moment, sir,” said Marchand.

He must have been feeling fancy, because he displayed some of the work on the HUD, showing an internal diagram that had been made using microvibrations and the ‘solve’. The individual icons needed to be moved in a particular way, but it wasn’t all that much more complicated than a combination lock on a high school locker, just fancier.

In just a moment, Perry had the door open. There was no light in the room but that which came from his armor.

Maya was there against the wall, stuck within a metal contraption that kept her arms locked in place, her head unable to move. The rest of her was free, more or less, though her ankles were chained to the back wall. She was wearing her athletic shorts and tank top, with her hoodie nowhere to be seen. She didn’t actually look that much worse for the wear, no blood or grime on her, but that might have just been the second sphere keeping her clean.

It took Perry longer than it should have to realize that her right hand was missing.

“Well, this is awkward,” said Maya. Her speech was being affected by the piece of metal that touched her throat and the awkward way her head was held high.

“You’re alive,” said Perry.

“I suppose it’d be a bit impolite to ask whether this is a rescue operation,” she said.

“It is,” said Perry without really thinking too much about it. Whatever bad blood there was between them, there was no way he could leave her like this. Not in the long term anyway. “Just … not yet.”

Maya swore. “You know, I promised myself if you came by I would try to play it cool, but I haven’t been having the best time here. They cut off half my arm.”

“Yeah,” said Perry. He leaned down and looked. The cut had been clean, just below the elbow, and it was completely healed over, with not so much as a scab. Maya could heal fast, but apparently not regrow an arm. The stump had been held in place with more metal. “That’s how they took your nanites?”

“Just get me out, we can figure everything else out later,” said Maya. She struggled fruitlessly against the restraints.

“If I let you out, they’ll hunt me down,” said Perry. “I’ve got Moon Gate on my back, I can’t fight off one sect on my own, let alone two.”

“Please,” said Maya. Her voice broke. “Please, just,” she wriggled against her restraints, as though she was going to get out. “I have no idea how long I’ve been here, he barely comes down to see me anymore, I know you’re pissed, I’d be pissed too, but you were going to let them kill me, and —”

“That’s in the past,” said Perry. “I found the third thresholder. Or, I guess, she found me. We kill her, we escape this world.”

“Why are you waiting?” asked Maya. “What’s the hold up?”

“They’ll kill me,” said Perry. “I need to find the right time, make the right plan. I need to know where Xiyan is —”

“Your handmaid?” asked Maya.

“She’s the third thresholder,” said Perry.

Maya laughed, a laughter tinged with hysterics. “Under our nose that whole time?”

“Yes,” said Perry. “Unless she stole the face of Xiyan. But she had positioned herself in the temple as a refugee before we got here, and that would be enough to explain away the oddities of a thresholder. I had thought she didn’t look quite like them.” He looked at Maya. “I’m going to get you out of here. We’ll kill her. Then we’re off through the portals, to somewhere better.”

“I really don’t know how long I can keep this up,” said Maya. “They haven’t given me food or water. I fixed my internal alchemy, I had to, but I’m sitting here, in the dark, going out of my fucking mind. If I didn’t have meditation, I would be insane, and meditating for twenty hours a day will make you insane.”

“Taking you out of here the minute I found you is a bad idea,” said Perry. “I need to plan, create a diversion, think of a place for us to go.”

“He’s planning to eat me,” said Maya. “He’s going to strip out my vessels and take them for himself. The only reason he hasn’t is because he doesn’t know what that will do to the thresholding. Perry, you slipped past the guards, but you don’t know what it’s like in here — holy shit, you’re working for them, aren’t you?”

His face must have given it away. “I got attacked, by Xiyan. I had to turn into the wolf to survive. I killed a woman, one of the second spheres at Crystal Lake. There was nowhere else to go.”

“The new questions, these last few days,” said Maya. She tried to move her head around to get a better look at him and failed. “That was you, that was him trying to confirm what you were telling him.”

“Yeah,” said Perry. “And you’re right, he wants out of here, almost as much as I do.”

“I told him you killed his grandkids,” said Maya. “Perry, he knows, we need to get out of here. If he can rip my powers out of me —”

“Then we’d be fucked,” said Perry. “More fucked than we already are.”

“You’re going to leave me here?” asked Maya.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “I’m sorry, but I need time before I make a move. I need to know where Xiyan is. I’m probably going to need help. I shot her five times and she just kept moving. Look, there’s more to say, but I can’t stay down here.”

She strained against her restraints. “Perry, please, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I can’t stay here, I can’t, you’re going to lock the door and I’m going to be alone with my thoughts for days or weeks, and —”

“Hold tight,” said Perry.

Maya’s eyes were locked on him. “You have five days.”

“What do you mean?” asked Perry, suddenly still.

“I can’t keep this up,” said Maya. “He’s going to break me down for parts, use my bones for his broth, he’ll have more than enough power to take over some other world, one that doesn’t care about cosmic balance.”

Privately, Perry wasn’t sure how much this world did care about cosmic balance. “You’re saying —”

“I’m not tapped out,” said Maya. “I’m down a needle, down the nanites, down a hand, no sun on my skin in a month, but I’m not tapped. Five days, then I do something I really didn’t want to have to do.”

“Can I get a hint?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Maya. Her face was set. In spite of everything, she still had her resolve. He didn’t even remotely doubt that she had something awful up her sleeve.

“Five days then,” Perry replied. “Are you going to tell me how you got trapped down here?”

“It’s a long, embarrassing story,” said Maya. “If everything goes well, we’ll have time for it later. If you’re going to go, go. Don’t get caught. Remember I’m down here.”

Perry nodded.

He put everything back how it was when he left, closing the door on Maya and then resetting the combination lock, making sure to consult March’s video so he could make sure it was all set properly. He floated after the sword, back up the stairs, keeping a close eye on all of the insects. It was entirely possible the grandmaster had seen the entire thing.

Sleep was difficult. Planning kept getting in the way. If the security on the dungeon was as poor as it had been tonight, getting Maya out of there wasn’t going to be a huge issue, but everything that came after was sure to be a complete mess.

The next day, he found out that the grandmaster had more than one secret plot in the works, and the whole affair became much more complicated.