The Comfort Of The Knife

I shot up from the dark of unconsciousness. Groping at the air as if to avoid sliding back into that dreamless sleep.

“Sphinx,” I called out.

Hands pushed me back down—gentle, but insistent. My head landed in a lap softer than any pillow. I blinked the remnants of sleep from my eyes, and found Secretary’s face looming above me. I was resting in their lap.

Secretary said, “She’s over there, little brute.”

With the back of their fingers they tilted my head in Sphinx’s direction. It had slumped across one of the chair’s that came with the room. Its face smoothed from one of wary grit to rapturous joy. Sphinx clambered down from the chair over toward me. Pressed its head onto my chest, and smiled with such beaming joy I couldn’t help but mirror back.

“She kept watch over you the entire night.”

Sphinx said, “I’d never entrust you to a puppeteer as cruel as they. Not again.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But, Secretary, Sphinx is an it, not a she.”

Secretary raised a brow. Quirked their lips at some hidden amusement to my statement.

“Hmm,” Secretary hummed. “Did you learn that from asking Sphinx?”

To be technical, I hadn’t, but I knew my bondmate. I looked towards it and was shocked. Sphinx had stopped looking at me. Its smile now sickly and pained—not too dissimilar to someone trying to swallow food that was lovingly made but tasted like shit.

“Oh,” I said.

Sphinx babbled, “It’s a new thing. Pay no heed to it. Just another thought that woeful secretary plucked from my mind.”

I mutely nodded. Then asked Secretary, “What about the hunt?”

“Over,” Secretary said. “The points tabulated, and the dogs to their crates.”

“Don’t tell me you broke the Mother’s Prayer getting me back,” I said.

“Then I won’t. What I will say requires you to get off of me.”

Sphinx stepped back and followed me while I slipped from Secretary’s lap. Got my feet under me and stood. I’d expected to find a weakness in my legs, my ribs, and my arms. I felt nothing—no, not nothing—just good. I turned the feeling over in my mind in disbelief. The memories of last night were clear as a freshly cleaned window.

“It was real,” they said.

“What was it?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“The Lodge had a label for it. A White Womb.”

“Yes, and that’s the extent of my knowledge as well. The Lodge likely knows more, but I don’t.”

“Who would?” I asked.

Secretary made a drama of pressing finger to chin. Tilting their head this way and that.

“ERO might,” they answered.

“ERO?” I asked.

“The Entity Research Organi—”

“I know what ERO is,” I snapped. A flash of heat in the hind part of my brain.

“Poor little brute, can’t be happy just knowing you killed it.”

Breathe. “I’m happy it’s gone, but if ERO is cooking up more of these. . .”

I trailed off. Remembering I was in a room with a Secretary. No matter the ease with which I fell into a rapport with one—mine—they would never be a friend in the way that mattered. Secretary’s smile curved wanly. Then nodded once.

“Noted. Now, despite your displeasure, the Lodge does know how to say thank you.”

Secretary rose and bowed. It was a straight-backed bow that bent entirely at the waist. Their hands folded over themselves atop their thighs.

“For the deed of slaying the White Womb, you’ve been afforded extra points atop the predetermined value each head from the hunting list would normally afford.”

Secretary rose and settled back into their habitual slouch of complete bemusement.

“The second thanks is from me directly. You won me the office prize pool.”

“I was the top hunter?” I asked.

“Alls below, no. You were above average I do believe.”

“You said I got extra points.”

“You did.” Secretary smiled darkly, “But some of the dogs this hunt were very prolific. No, I’m referring to a different bet. After you emerged from that domestic ruin, all of the Secretaries wanted to gamble on whether you’d die, live, or ever walk again.”

I shouldn’t have been touched by the sentiment. “What was your bet?” I asked.

Secretary rolled their eyes.

“Why ask when you already know the answer?”

“I want to see if you’d lie.”

“Fine. I knew you were too dumb to stay down, little brute,” Secretary said. “It’s your curse.”

“More like my power.”

“I find they’re usually both. Now, I’ve placed your suit and mask within the trunk beneath your bed. That key of yours is there as well. If that’s everything, then I’ll go?”

Their voice lilted at the end. Was that everything? I thought of the mask, and the way that even when I held it in my hands I could feel my eyes wanting to just look away. Secretary took my silence for approval. Swayed toward the window—it was open—and my hand shot out to catch their wrist as an arm swung back.

“No,” I said.

“You’ll have to be more specific than no,” they said.

“Who built the masks?”

“The Lodgemaster,” Secretary answered. “She pioneered it back during her time with AoSI, some odd seven years ago. They’ve been implemented for wild hunts and missions ever since. Anonymity is so hard to find when cute summoners like you have sorcerous work-arounds.”

“Great,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yeah, glad to know she’s been so involved.”

“Hasn’t she,” Secretary said. “Though if I could, how can you stand right now? I remember you leaving that house on the edge of death. Did you work out a spell in your sleep?”

“Can anyone?”

“You’d be surprised. Oh well, if you don’t have an answer, pay it no mind. Until later, little brute.”

Secretary tossed themself back through my window. I rushed over, throwing my arm out into the air. I caught nothing because there was nothing. Secretary was gone, and before me was a pleasant view of the district waking up. People out for a jog, shopkeeps opening up for the day, and even children racing and laughing amidst the morning dew. Sphinx dragged me back inside.

“Any ideas why I’m in one piece?” I asked.

Sphinx shook its—her?—head. “None that would be definitive. I can only see the end result of the method. Your body temperature is a few degrees above the human norm. While your spirit’s risen in density and mass.”

Normally damage to your spiritual musculature causes dips. Back during school—which felt like a long time ago—a kid had caught a curse. Made things like chairs and tables Return to being disassembled pieces. When it finally was removed it apparently caused a dip in his density. He ranted about it all day in line for the spiritual exam.

“Any chance this is just me adjusting to my spells like Piggy said? Or maybe it’s the remnant of sorcery in my body. Changing it like it did my eyes.”

“Perhaps, but neither are definitive things. In the former, it would be unlikely for you to see such precipitous growth. Your spirit would be at most more flexible to support future strains.”

“And the latter?”

“The change would usually be biological alone. Perhaps a path for future growth, but hardly growth in itself. The effects of residual sorcery have too many variables. Each human takes to it differently. While Court and the specific spell in question alter things as well.”

“Nothing definitive then.”

“Nothing,” Sphinx said.

I dropped onto my bed. Sphinx hopped in so I could lean on it—her.

“If anyone asks, we say it was Inviolate Star. Amber and Melissa were there when the Omensight changed me. This is just a thing Revelation does.”

Sphinx purred, “What does it do?”

“Reveals,” I said, cringing at how much didn’t get across in that answer.

“It is in the name.”

“Let me try that again. Revelation, is about showing you something. A way forward, a way out, a way to win. But, it’s a journey that’ll change you in the process—and it should! Change you, that is, because what you find in that way is so profound that it’d be impossible not to be unmade by it. Emerge as something new even if it’s something lonely.”

I felt my mind trip when I closed my mouth. As if I was being led down a winding way, and upon arriving my guide let me trip on a root. Help me see the view from an unconventional angle. I could feel the rumbling purr that vibrated through Sphinx at my answer.

“You’re a special summoner, Nadia. The only one I’ve heard of to come away smarter after what should’ve been brain damage.”

I smirked, “I told you I was a fast learner. Always have been.”

The rumbles became little thud-like hops—Sphinx was laughing. She was laughing.

“Sphinx, what’s happening to you?” I asked.

“Pay it no mind.”

“No. If it was just expressions then maybe, but you’re different. You kissed me last night. What’s happening to you?”

“You are,” Sphinx hissed. “The bond is more than an access point to Sorcery, or an avenue for telepathy. It’s an enmeshing of us. A slow bleeding of our colors into each other.”

“Like two glasses of colored water poured back and forth.”

Sphinx nodded.

“And my color?” I asked.

Sphinx whispered, “Painfully human. Beautifully you.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“It’s because of you I can really process that question,” Sphinx said. “I’m afraid, I think. Each day since my summoning I feel more, understand more, but I forget. Oh I forget so much, and am just left with the fear of the gap that exists where knowledge used to reside.”

“What did you know?”

“Everything. I think.”

My throat went dry. I slid my hands on my thighs. Sphinx knew, everything? And was losing it because she was gaining feelings. A process that was my fault I suppose. The bleed of my color into hers. The spark for the development of something new, personal.

You’re gaining a personality.

“And it takes up a lot of room. It’s not all your fault though. Causality holds no love for what I knew and smuggled in when you summoned me—incarnated me into this world. It would have disappeared slowly anyways, but these developments hasten things.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

Sphinx bent their neck down to look me in the eyes. I could actually see how red their eyes were—puffy too—and I knew I’d messed up.

“Just take responsibility. You’re my tie to this world. To this current incarnation of myself. Of this self. If you perish then I’m gone. In a way that I’ve only just begun to understand. Besides, I wouldn’t want to see you die anyway.”

I accepted the chastisement. I was right that I needed practice, but running into a road littered with the corpses of others just as hubristic as me wasn’t necessary. Fighting the White Womb rather than escaping when Piggy offered wasn’t smart either. I wanted to make sure Melissa was safe, but as I looked into Sphinx’s eyes—those eyes which rippled in burning rings of concentric color—I understood that I hadn’t kept her safe. Let alone the dream that she and her Sovereign held of a return into the world.

“I’ll be better. You’ll get your vengeance as well, I promise.”

Sphinx sighed, “Worry about your oaths when you can properly safeguard your life. Now, the mummer and maiden stir, and we still have tracks to clear.”

Her eyes landed on the letters left on the desk. My task laid before me, Sphinx walked into my body to curl up within my spirit. While I snatched up the letters. I stayed my hand, briefly, because I knew I’d just have to rewrite them later. I was going to do better by my girls—all of them if I could help it—but it would never be a hundred percent safe.

“Ugh, Temple, you up?” Amber mumble-yelled through my door.

Her banging caused my confidence to tumble in on itself. I split infinity and let the flames consume the envelopes as I spun about to findt Amber leaning in the doorframe. Her face, hardly as “sleepy” as her voice implied.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing, just some notes.”

“In envelopes? We have a word for those.”

“Teach me later.”

I slipped past Amber into the living room. Then stopped. Something was off about the room. I made a slow turn, and watched as the lights of the room fell unevenly across everything. Walls, floors, couch, coffee table, everything was splattered with a weird dullness where the light didn’t catch right. I finished my rotation with my gaze on Amber.

“Did something happen?” I asked.

“If it did, wouldn’t you have heard,” Amber said.

She smiled at me and then drifted over to Melissa’s door to knock on hers next. Though she’d flung the door open before Amber’s knuckles touched the wood. Already put together she took a look at both of us and clapped her hands. I couldn’t help but jump. Amber noticed.

“They say the body remembers more than the mind.”

I hissed back, “Shut up.”

“Get ready,” Melissa said. “Breakfast is being served right now, and I don’t want to lose out on any of the good stuff.”

Amber tousled Melissa’s freshly-brushed hair. “You bounced back pretty well after last night’s meal. Especially after all those drinks.”

“I produce worse toxins in the venom sac at the base of my spine. Now, let’s go.”

With Melissa tapping her foot by the door, Amber and I got ready in record time. Though Melissa stopped me when I had grabbed Mother’s Last Smile. She reminded me were going to breakfast, not battle, but it wasn’t out of combat preparation that I’d went to grab it. I just felt better when my glaive was in my hand. Though reason eventually ruled out when Sphinx said that we’d be giving my identity away too easily to my fellow dogs from last night’s wild hunt.

* * *

Brightgate’s Lodge district was nothing like my memories from last night. There were no masked killers whooping and hollering with each green check off their list. I didn’t see any of the blood that slipped into the gaps of the cobblestone streets. As we marched up a slope we passed the storefront I had smashed through the front window of when I killed that spider. In the daytime it was a laundromat.

Walls lined with shrines that doubled as cleaning tubs. People in pajamas or their most worn down clothes waited as their fabrics had even the memory of dirt or grime cleared from the fibers. There wasn’t the streak of blood across the floor I had expected to be there. Alls below, there was actual glass in the window which I hadn’t expected either.

As we marched we took a bend down a street and I saw the apartment building that had been a nest last night. A sign out front said: Rooms for rent. I looked up and saw that where there should’ve been a massive hole in the facade it was just good as new. Well, not new, but good as yesterday’s morning at least.

We weren’t as lucky as Melissa hoped—there was already a line for breakfast—but it wasn’t that bad. Though you’d think each person was fixing a plate that matched the one she saw for herself from how she tapped her fingers against her legs. A fast beat for big worries. It was only a couple of more minutes before we got to grab our plates and go.

Breakfast was being served in one of the Lodge’s banquet halls. The center of the hall was littered with curved booths filled with plush seats upholstered in formation fabrics. The interlaced phonemes were finely tessellated to keep stains from setting. While the floor was polished marble inlaid with lines of gold formations of Collection—an assumption I made from how those who’d finished eating would slide their plates and cups off the table to the floor. Each utensil and piece of dishware disappearing with a psychedelic ripple in the marble. While From the ceilings dangled golden shrines that when initiated—from a dial set in the center of the table—caused a misty curtain to descend. Surrounding the table in a privacy screen the color of a gentle intimate sunrise. The light of which brought a warmth to the dining room that allowed the blinds to stay lowered over the bay windows. There’d be no rude summer sun to sear your eye’s shut in that instinctive urge to stay asleep—slow to accept the labors the day would bring.

Along the walls were stations manned by chefs of Mastery. Each one offering a single dish made to perfection—as far as non-conceptual fare could go. We were only examinees after all. The line moved quicker than you’d expect seeing as the chefs each employed a field-spell to bend the temporal mandates of what was possible when it came to cooking. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to care much about the food. My memory—and my eyes—turning toward my fellow dogs. How feral we were when released from the burden of identity, and how much unity we had even as competitors in seeking out prey. When I looked over the line and the floor, I only saw starving men with dark eyes unwilling to share the riches they’ve just had a taste of. There were a few who were different, but I didn’t take note of them really at the time. I had only one I wanted to take note of. Find, and he wasn’t here.

“You look disappointed, Temple,” Amber said.

We slid past the waffle station and its chef whose face was of a dreamy peace as ten waffles cooked in the air. While his hands added ingredients into the ring of batter that he continually made and circled through the air about him. I waved at the spread of syrups and agaves that waited in quaint little decanters on a nearby table. Conjuring up a reason for whatever it was she read in my face.

“They don’t have the maple syrup I’m used to. It’s this habanero-maple blend.”

“Habanero-maple? I’m kind of glad they don’t. Sounds horrible.”

“Never, it’s the perfect thing for chicken and waffles. Has this sweet-smokiness that’s so good. With a little burn so you know you’re alive. Mom raised me on the stuff.”

Melissa added, “It’s definitely a try before you disregard. Nadia’s mom had this super special recipe. Never told it to anyone, so only she could make it just right.”

I felt a pressure against my chest. Exhaled a bit too loudly, and saw Melissa shrink in on herself a bit. She hadn’t done anything wrong—it was my excuse to use—but I had forgotten that bit. That I’d never get that taste ever again.

I waved weakly as Amber and Melissa shuffled off, apologetic for pain that was ultimately self-inflicted. All because I didn’t want to answer the obvious questions that’d follow after my real answer. I was looking for Piggy. I remembered him carrying me out, but I knew nothing about after. Though I don’t even know why I tried looking for him. He was big enough that if he was around you wouldn’t need to look.

I slid down toward the omelets. Couldn’t help imagining what I’d do if Piggy was here. If he’d say something first or slide his hand across the small of my back. Hook his fingers about my side and give a small—squeeze? I slid down the line to get a good look at who touched me.

Handsome. That was the first thought that slipped past the daze I’d fallen into at the sight of her. She was tall—between Amber and Piggy’s heights—with an angular physique that dripped down toward the hips that peeked just above the low-rise of her pants. If Piggy was some fusion between tiger and bear, then she was all wolf. From her shaggy cut to the slouch that masked her proper height. What wasn’t masked though was that face with a jaw a girl would want to slice her wrists with because who wanted to see anything else after that. It definitely helped that she was covered in bright silver piercings that complimented the gentle tan of her skin. Bars through her proud nasal ridge, a ring about her septum, and bands that looped over her lips. She had piercings that dangled from her ears—a stylized sun. Sunglasses however hid her eyes.

“Hey, I’m not talking to a pillar right now am I?” she asked. Fuck, her voice had a rasp meant for the blues. From the guitar bag over her shoulder I wondered if she’d play for me.

“Fuck, I did get a pillar. Damn power cables.”

“No, no, you didn’t,” I stammered. “Get a pillar, that is. I’m a person. Not a pillar.”

“Oh, the silence was a bit long. Can you tell me what’s in that?”

She pointed to the omelet station in front of us.

“Don’t think taking off the sunglasses would help?”

“I try all the time,” she said. “But it doesn’t seem to.”

She drew her sunglasses down to reveal eyes that were clouded over.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s omelets. The soft gooey kind you break over rice. They have plain rice, with steak, and the third is um lots of mushrooms and peppers.”

“Sweet,” she said.

Then slipped past me to gesture at the sign to the chef for the mushrooms and peppers one. It joined the stack of fruits and bread already on her plate. She was a vegetarian wolf. I quickly got my own omelet and hurried over to the floor to find Amber and Melissa. They’d grabbed a booth while I lingered.

“I think I met a vegetarian wolf lady,” I said.

Melissa asked, “What?”

I leaned across the table a bit, and pointed out the woman. She sat in a booth with nothing but her guitar for company. Melissa swatted my side in excitement—she had a tendency to hit whenever she saw a pretty girl. I often came home with a bruise if one of our people watching sessions proved too arousing that day.

“Okay, yeah, that’s woah,” she said.

Amber rolled her eyes. “Where’d you meet her?”

“In front of the omelets,” I said.

“Omelets aren’t vegetarian.”

“They’re not?”

Melissa explained, “The eggs.”

“That makes sense, but still…”

“Oh, she’s very hot. Maybe I should talk to her,” Melissa mused.

Then chuckled into her horchata from the look my face made. I didn’t want to imagine anyone with Melissa, but a woman like my wolf made that stance feel a little less firm.

“I’m unimpressed,” Amber said.

She swirled her coffee before taking a big swig backwards. Melissa backhanded Amber’s comment from the air.

“You’re never impressed.”

Amber disagreed, “I am when I am. I just haven’t seen anything worth the feeling in awhile.”

Her gaze landed on me, and that heat she kept hidden behind the joviality leaked out. I stopped watching the wolf and instead dropped my eyes to my food. Amber hummed pridefully at that. I stole a glance over to her table one last time—she was looking at us. Well, our direction at least.

It was about a half hour into breakfast before the proctor arrived. A harsh wind cut through the air at the appearance of a narrow rhombus cut into space that stood eight feet tall. Narrow however in the sense of one getting a peek at the beginning of an alley. The proctor arrived first, a broad man with a prodigious gut in a buttoned cotton shirt and a silk vest over fine trousers. His face covered a third by his mustache and another third by wide black circle glasses. He dropped to the floor, and held out his arms for the secretary that tumbled out of the aerial alley. Their hair swept up into a dripping copper crown. They squirmed in the proctor’s grasp for a moment before he set them down.

“No more Alleys!” the boyish secretary screeched. “I wanted a shortcut.”

“It was short, and we cut,” the proctor said, his voice airy in age.

“Through space. Which is the defining trait of an Alley. They’re always so wet.”

“When we’re done we can go through a more windy one. Will help with the drying.”

“It was only two floors. Now, do the stupid presentation.”

The secretary dropped into a booth. Formed a hand-spell that caused a wide screen to form in the air above the entire hall—it had a dusty pink hue to it. On the screen was a close-up of the proctor’s face. His cheeks were ruddy and his nose just slightly askew from some poorly healed blow he suffered in some raucous past.

“Hello everyone, I’m the proctor for the first test,” he said. “I consider it a pleasure to note that as your first proctor I shall be explaining the structure for this year’s exam as a whole. To those who have arrived at this starting line through exemptions of the year’s prelim, or the rest of you that had the wisdom, skill, and strength needed to overcome the teeming dreaming masses of those that strove to stand where you are right now; do not waste the moment you’re in. You might not get to experience it again.”

His eyes rolled over us—beyond us—to the ghosts of prior year’s examinees. I shuddered beneath the weight that fell over the room. My knee—unconsciously restless—suddenly stilled and my feet felt dragged into the floor like I had six feet to fall until my resting spot.

“Good. Stay here, like this, and you’ll get through this exam. Cause it is not about winning or losing, nor success or failure. If you want to pass, it’s life or death. Yours or theirs,” he said. “Now, as to the structure of this year’s exam. Lodgemaster Khapoor has decided to test you in the most practical way possible; doing the job itself.”

His face dragged to the right while shrinking on screen. Three bullet points dropped beside him but had almost nothing informative. They filled as he spoke.

“The first, Information Protection and Retrieval,” he said. “As fulfilling our role of summoners it comes to us to safeguard the architects of the New World and its futures. This being why so often a lab or research group has on loan at least one Lodgemember to protect the fruits of their work. As well as the bodies of the researchers who made it possible.”

He continued, “And it’s to that same end which we might come to be tasked with retrieving information from those whose research may be the undoing of everything we struggled to build. Thus why I’m your proctor for this test, as I head the committee which manages and posts these positions. As for the two tests they will be examining you through the lens of the other myriad of duties that you might undertake for the Lodge. So for those who’ve already decided they’ll be passing, think about what else we do hear if you want to get an idea of what awaits. Secretary, could you please?”

The secretary slid from their booth. Swiped their hand to display the next slide; four logos belonging to the four major research groups: ERO, AoSI, SIRD, and the Orphean League.

“You’ll be coming up here and telling us which of the four groups you’d like to be assigned to for this test. Afterwards you’ll be free to leave and wait to receive your assignment. We’ll be going in order of rank for picking.”

Someone yelled out, “What do you mean in order of rank?”

“How’d you rank us if some did the prelim and others didn’t?” asked another.

Questions rolled from the crowd in a murky discontent—not willing to accept someone might have an edge on them, but also unwilling to get rid of what could be a potential boon.

The secretary skewered them all in one answer. “The exam is more than the tests. We’re always watching, and you’re always being judged. However, we don’t love to announce that because it makes you all so tense.”

Booming, the proctor laughed, “Wait until you realize how many of you have already been eliminated. Show them.”

The secretary shrugged and swiped up to a different slide. On it were squares upon squares of reddened pictures, their associated names, and reasons for being eliminated clearly stated and scrolled through. Rare was the gift of an elimination reason that differed from, ‘Killed’ or ‘Lost’.

The proctor answered the unspoken question. “Killed is for those who were such. Lost is for those lost while in service to the Lodge and its aims.”

“Please, be safe with all nighttime activities,” the secretary said.

From there they started listing names. Amber, Melissa, and myself kept one ear out for our name to be called in the proctors airy grandpa voice.

“Which one we doing?” Amber asked

Melissa said, “I don’t really care. Do we go for what seems like it’ll have the least people? We don’t know what type of test it’ll be exactly. Maybe we don’t want a lot of people.”

“For the same reason, maybe we do. It’s not a good criteria to go on. Temple, you have an opinion?”

ERO, I barked out in my mind. The answer was quick, instinctual, a need to feed into or smother the fear of another White Womb that gathered in my mind in the only way possible, information. Then I reeled in the feeling. If I came out with all that feeling it’d be too much. They’d ask questions. Night would blur into day.

“But still you want answers,” Sphinx said. “Forward, Nadia.”

I exhaled, “ERO.”

Opened my eyes to see Amber and Melissa reading my face. I wonder what the text said.

“I expected AoSI,” Melissa said.

Amber added, “After the outpost I’d agree.”

It would have given me more answers about the axis mundi that the killers used, but I could get that later. Right now I wanted only one thing and that was an explanation for last night.

I said, “I can worry about that and the others whenever. I want to be in the here and now, and I didn’t hear too many choose ERO. Though it wasn’t like too many did choose it either. We go for the balanced option.”

There wasn’t a lie either of them could read in me—cause there wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t my deepest truth, but it was a truth of my reasoning. Which was good enough for Melissa by how she fell back into the seat. Amber was the harder—always the harder sell—but she shrugged in the end. Acceptance or an inconclusive determination?

“Alright. Anyways, you’re up first princess,” Amber said.

She slid out of the booth so Melissa could leave to go put her name down for ERO. Then told us to meet her outside. I was the second to be called up before them. Up close, the proctor seemed smaller, not the large imposing figure I saw on the screen. Though after I gave my answer—ERO, obviously—I couldn’t help but sneak a look back toward him. Blinked on the Omensight and immediately was blinking it off before the brilliance of an Earl seared itself into my vision. I was still trying to smudge it down when Amber finally exited the hall.

“How’d we get called up before you?” Melissa asked. “You’re the Baron.”

“No idea, princess, maybe it’s just too hard to judge my magnificence,” Amber offered.

“Whatever, let’s go head into the city.”

I peered up at her from my seat on a bench. “Why?” I asked.

“Well, I told my mom before I left that I’d give her a call when I made it to Brightgate. It slipped my mind the first day, and then I realized we’d have to get our sorc-decks synced to the local network before I can even make a call.”

“The district has its own local network we can just get on.”

Amber asked, “Were you thinking a private or a public?”

“Public,” she said.

“Okay, Temple we’re going into the city.”

“What’s so special about a public network?”

Amber said, “The temple for Brightgate’s public network is right atop the city library. Princess here is thinking after we get synced we can do some research. Isn’t that right?”

Melissa nodded. “I figured we could try to learn something about your dad, Nadia. Maybe by knowing him better we could figure out who’d want to go after him.”

My mouth stopped working as I oscillated between a touched smile and simple awe. I always did trend towards tunnel vision, each new question eclipsing the previous one. With all thoughts turned toward yesterday’s monster I’d nearly forgotten the question of two nights ago. I nodded and acquiesced to Melissa’s plan. We’d see what we could learn about my father, and in the process ignore the fact that depending on the test we might have our oaths to each other tested.