“Why would”—a shiver ran down Trent’s back as the images of the thirty-first floor of the Mazim Estates again filled his mind, how the dirty woman had flailed to get at him through the wall. “Why would the queen’s passabridge lead to a forest? The other side’s not terribly far from Keep, then.” He contemplated what it meant, how it all fit, but he still couldn’t discern whether the queen knew about any of it, and if she did, how much.
But his mind wouldn’t let him devote much time to that; he and Kendra had other business, what his tale had been leading toward. “You know where we have to go, then.”
“Russ, if Light doesn’t affect the thing”—
“We need the Tomb.”
Kendra chortled. “And we’re just supposed to find it and get whatever’s inside and make all the nasties go away?”
“If not, what do you intend we do?”
Kendra chewed the corner of her lip. Though Trent hadn’t seen her in nearly two decades, her mannerisms hadn’t changed. “Wait here.” She disappeared into the hallway and returned half a minute later with a cloth bundle, which she laid on the table.
Trent unfolded it to find shards of glass. “Well, this isn’t the worst gift you’ve ever gotten me.”
Kendra rolled her eyes. “Gods,” she said and returned to the kitchen.
Trent picked up a piece and peered through it. Though broken and scratched, the world still looked clearer through it than without. The perspective twisted his gut. “Ley glass. What’s a witch doing watching things so far from home?”
“Big world,” said Kendra.
“Where’d ya get this make? It’s got a peculiarity.” He presaged her jibe: “Apart from being broken.”
“Got my own kiln out back. Makes it simple. All it takes is time and fortitude. Plus, the sand over here is unparalleled.”
“And you used it to—look after the demon, I’m guessing?”
“In a way. I wanted to stress it and see where it went, to see if I could find its master. I didn’t know what it was trying to find, but I’ve got a dozen eye-witness accounts of the damn thing popping up around town. Thought it had to be a Warlock at first. That useless bitch—the Fleecer, I mean—wanted nothing to do with it when the people came to her. Believe me, I tried to convince her, but the townspeople”—her voice changed to impersonate the Fleecer—“aren’t worth my life, darling.” Kendra huffed, and her voice returned to normal. “Like they’re worth yours or mine.”
Trent shrugged. “Maybe.”
“They’re not, Russ. Don’t be a damn fool. The Lich isn’t the point anyway.”
“The point is what caused this damage.” Trent pointed at the bandage on her right hand. “Caused that, didn’t it?”
After a couple seconds, Kendra nodded. “People aren’t afraid the way they should be.”
Trent let her words clear from the air before he said, “What should scare them?”
Kendra cracked the knuckles on her left hand before she said more. “The Ley crystals aren’t breaking because of the distance my sight traveled. They’re too well hewn for that, if you’ll allow me.” She rejoined him in the living room, though she didn’t sit. “But up in New Winstone, there’s a forest”—she noticed Trent’s expression change. “Oh, you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? The Dragons’ Forest. That Beast led me there. Guess what I found.”
The answer abjectly came to Trent. “A cave.” That vision he had at Karhaal replayed in his mind, all the eyes gazing upon him, a trespasser in their taken land.
“You’ve seen that too,” she said, not a question.
Trent contemplated what to say next, how to explain what he’d seen without sounding crazy. “Not in person. Someone—something, maybe—keeps trying to show me. Got through to me in the courtyard at Karhaal.” He thought of his meditations over the last few days. “They’re watchin me.”
“Watching?” Kendra said.
“I thought at first it might have been the master, D’niqa, but what peers at me from those distances”—Trent shook his head—“doesn’t feel like her. It’s something different. And I can’t figure it out.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“Keep goin with your story. Then we can get to comparing notes.”
Kendra sighed. “Well I pissed her off enough that this new master came looking for her. This is a different breed—it’s got to be. Humanoid forms. It’s a nightmare.”
“So the dirty woman is your Beast. You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. And the timing, the way you tell it, means you saw her literally minutes after I did. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where this D’niqa took me to break the crystal.”
“Her hive.” Though at first he said it with dismay, Trent’s mind quickly gained a new tack. All his haste over the last two days hadn’t been for nothing. Maybe he’d gotten here soon enough, could get there soon enough. “But that means we might not even need the Tomb. If she’s just some upstart”—
“With enough power to break Ley glass just by seeing through its”—
“If we found the hive and could stop D’niqa there, we wouldn’t even need the artifact. Kendra, we could finish this before it really even starts.”
“Oh.” Kendra hung onto the word like she’d just realized something. “Sorry, I almost forgot I’m not fucking stupid. Do you seriously presume we can walk into a hive and just shoo it away? That’s senseless even for you.”
Trent didn’t have a good answer. “So this—selling turnips is fine with you?”
“It’s not about the fucking turnips, Russell.” She snapped her fingers, and a turnip fell into her hand. “It’s what they do, and even then, it’s bigger than them.”
Trent looked between the root and the pile her kitchen. “That was a little theatrical. And all this”—he gestured to all the screens around the room.
“This isn’t mine,” she said. “All this shit is Reight’s.”
“It’s not shit, ma’am,” Reight said from down the hallway.
Kendra ignored him. “Something he’s working on with processing power, or—I don’t know. I’ve no idea where he’s even found them all.”
Reight called from the hallway again: “Recycling.”
“Do you remember the War?” Trent asked.
Kendra rolled her eyes. “No.”
“This could be nothin tomorrow. Or the day after, or the day after that. Life can turn on a tenth-piece. I’ve waited for too long, unable to do anything. If I can—now—I will.”
They stared at each other for several seconds. The front bell rang. A cwisp filled the air when Kendra teleported to and answered the door, which she opened a crack to converse with the caller and left it ajar when she returned to the living room. “Do you know a dumbass with a gash under his right eye? One’s looking for you.”
Trent sighed as he stood. “A dumbass sounds like someone I’d associate with.” Their bodies grazed the other’s when he passed her by.
Kendra’s lip curled. “Takes one to know one.”
“Ooh.” He signed a holy check at her. “Sounds like you know a few, then.”
A smile crossed her lips. The screen over her hearth chimed. “Shit,” she said. “I need to take this.” She got her tablet from the bar.
Trent appreciated the familiarity he still shared with his old friend as he watched her disappear into the hallway. Though Grenn had proven a fine buddy, being around someone who had seen the War felt good. Safe—er.
He turned and stepped outside.
“What are you doin here, Grenn?” Trent said, shutting the door most of the way, though he figured Kendra could eavesdrop on them even with the door closed.
“What am I doing here?” Grenn leaned backwards to appraise Trent, as though he viewed him for real for the first time. “What are you doing here? And with a woman so fine. No wonder you were antsy to get going.”
“How’d you find me?”
“I don’t know.” Grenn stepped back to inspec
t the outside of the house. “Just kinda followed my feet, I think.”
“Sure. What do ya need?”
“Ooh. Bit of a hurry?”
Trent cleared his face of expression. “Grenn.”
“All right. I get it. You need some personal time. I’ll make it quick, then. That Tiana woman—yeah, I’ve already got a meeting with her. All I had to do was go ask. How’d the witch go?”
“It didn’t. I’m deputizing you on that one.” Trent clapped Grenn on the shoulder. “Have fun.”
Grenn’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Wait, where do I”—but the door shut before he finished.
Peace spread across the living space, and Trent felt an eerie comfortability settle upon him: the late-afternoon sun hung through the kitchen window across the room, the bread’s aroma still played on the air, and Kendra’s voice came faintly from the hallway. He might have entered pense, given the chance. Though he didn’t need to, he lightened his step as he crossed the room. On the monitor over the hearth, a few lines that led to a point in the upper city had changed to dotted-gold.
Trent turned his attention to the cart that had parked itself in the kitchen and uncovered the pile of turnips. Kendra hadn’t cut off their roots, which hung in chutes a foot long on most, and their leafy stalks poked from the vegetables’ purple meat. He picked one off the top of the pile and brushed away dirt with his thumb. Though near-invisible to the eye, he felt a seam across the vegetable’s surface along its circumference. It didn’t twist apart when he tried, nor did it pull apart the same, but when he squeezed it, mash busted through his fingers, and a bundle of circuitry showed through its cotton innards.
He tossed it back and ran his hand across the countertop as he walked around the kitchen’s island. The tile’s grout had dirtied from lack of care. Dust gathered on the windowsill behind the sink, and boxes of—presumably—junk peeked from the top of her cupboards. Kendra’s sweater still laid next to the loaf of bread.
Just butter knives, really? Trent thought while he rifled through a couple drawers. What kind of mage doesn’t own proper cutlery? Kendra’s voice carried without shape from the hallway as he made the first cut, and he quickly surmised Reight had prepared it wrong. The bread smelled good, he gave it that, but it lacked—breadiness. Its center had collapsed and formed a tunnel between the crust and crumb. He grabbed a piece and dusted it between his thumb and fingers. Still, the crust tasted fine: buttery and pliant.
Trent licked his thumb as a door slid open in the hall. Kendra came around the corner.
“Ooh, you’re brave,” she said. “I could get you some butter and marmalade if you like.” She stared at him, a faraway smidge across her lips.
“Could you?” Trent asked.
“Well—no.” She crossed her arms. “You got me. How is it?”
Trent shook his head. “Heavy. Probably used the wrong flour.”
“There’s more than one type of flour?” Kendra’s face twisted in honest question.
Trent peeled another piece of crust from the loaf and popped it into his mouth. “Yeah. There need to be, don’t they? Baking’s a finicky thing.”
“Did you become a baker in your spare time?”
“Nope. Just know how to follow a recipe.”
Kendra laughed. “And Reight wonders why I don’t want to eat his cooking.” She looked toward her screen when it dinged.
“It wouldn’t kill ya to get real food, ya know? Got a penchant for pumpkin seeds lately.”
“Pumpkin seeds. Yeah, sounds delicious.” The screen over her mantle chimed again.
“Who’s that? Someone important?”
Kendra shook her head. “Just stuff about the convention. It’s no one.”
“Interesting thing about no one”—
Kendra groaned.
—“they fill in for a lotta people.”
“Gods,” Kendra said, annoyed. “Ya know, when I heard you were coming out of exile, whatever you want to call it, one of the first questions I asked myself was ‘What could get Russell Hollowman off his ass?’ If I’d known it was to keep making the same shitty jokes, I’d have been far less concerned.”
Trent couldn’t help the smirk that found his lips.
Silence became them before she went on: “The king’s broadcast the other day will suffice for most people. Then Karhaal’s Grand Master emerging when the world needs him most? A fitting and a perfect cover—for you. But I knew—I bought into the story myself for about a day—only one thing could make you leave your little hidey-hole. And she was conveniently absent from your story earlier.” Kendra waited, and when Trent didn’t fill the silence, she asked, “So where is she?”
Trent pondered what to say. He’d never liked talking about Lillie with Kendra. “I’d honestly convinced myself for a long time she was dead, and I struggled to find meaning in life without her. It’s why I own a fucking farm now. Trying to buy time or—something, I don’t know. Eventually, my mind got desperate, and I got low, lower than I’d been when you last saw me. So did my expectations.” He took a steadying breath. “Searched everywhere on Coroth, and I couldn’t find her. The last place—and Karli knows I didn’t want to go there—was the nether.”
“You got there,” Kendra said simply. “That’s where she was?”
Trent nodded. “Goddess, I was so close.”
“Close? She’s alive?”
“Yeah. She touched my face. Gave me that”—he gestured to the soul stone on the coffee table. “Good thing, too.” He chortled, trying to sound casual. “If I hadn’t found her there, I was just gonna stay.”
Disappointment slipped over Kendra’s face, and she paused a few seconds. “That’s really fucking greedy, Russ.”
“I know. But since I met D’niqa, I haven’t been able to shake”—he couldn’t find words for his meaning, so he spoke his feelings. “I’m just so close, like Lillie’s here.” If he let his mind relax, he could almost hear her whispering to him. “We have to get to that hive, to try to get to her.” He knew it. “And if we can figure out D’niqa and the Beast, more for us.”
Kendra’s face remained plain while she thought. A quarter-minute later her countenance melted into acceptance, and she turned in place, her hands on her hips, all the way around until she faced him again. “All right. But we’re not going tonight.”
“Why?” They’d just taken a shortcut. He couldn’t estimate how far they’d run ahead of his expectations. “Why not now?”
“It’s east of us. We need to make sure the storm has passed before we try porting in. Plus, do you really want to chase demons in the dark?”
“I’ve had it worse,” Trent said. “Scared, Kendie?”
“Don’t fucking call me that.” She cast at him a disbelieving glance. “We’re brimming on the start of another War, and I can’t tell you how I even made it through the last one. Scared is an understatement. There shouldn’t be another one in our lifetime—for several lifetimes—and gods alone know what that means.”
“My lifetime, yet here we are. I didn’t think a lot o’ shit would happen to me, but even you came around in the end.”
Kendra scoffed. “Yeah, late as usual.”
“We’re not too late this time. Lillie and everything—if nothing else, the way shit happened is the way it had to be. I have to believe that. Then and now.”
“I know what you think you mean”—Kendra tapped her right shoulder to gesture acknowledgement—“but I guess that’s normally it with you. Even when you’re wrong, you’re still somehow right.”
Trent chuffed and put his hands on the bar to lean against the cheap tile.
“You good, Russie?”
He glanced at her, his turn to say, ‘Fuck off,’ with a look. “I’m just tired.”
“Even more reason that tomorrow we go chasing demons.”
“And you will be here in the morning?”
“I’m not the kind to run off and do something stupid.” Kendra phased to her coffee table and picked up
their mugs, then ported to the kitchen and set them in the sink.
“Anymore,” said Trent, turning to face her.
Kendra huffed, and she leaned against the counter, her arms crossed. They watched each other for a minute, so far removed from their past lives and missed possibilities. They couldn’t go back, and despite the years—or perhaps for them—it gladdened Trent to see his old friend and that their time apart hadn’t turned them completely from the other. For the Goddess’s sake, one hint of a War and the first thing you do is try to find each other.
“Guess I should go, then,” Trent said. He stepped away.
“Don’t wanna stay here for the night?”
Trent gave her a stale look as he picked up his gauntlets from the coffee table.
“Of course not,” said Kendra. She ambled into her living space. “Inappropriate.”
“One last thing before I go,” Trent said as he stepped into his leggings.
Kendra waited.
“My glamor.”
“Gods, I wish you’d told me,” she said, complaining. She closed her eyes and held her arms out like an orchestral conductor. “I’d have prepared for it more. Just don’t move.” Her breathing became heavy, and she whispered a few syllables in a Ley dialect. Motes appeared off to Trent’s left, but by the time he glimpsed at them, they’d gone.
Kendra chuckled and threw her hand away from her face in a gesture of uncaring. “I’m fucking with you. It’s gone.”
“Just like that?” His voice sounded foreign in his head, to his own ear. He felt no different: Russ’s sun-beaten arms appeared much the same as Trent’s, tanned and aged. “It took a few minutes to fully cast last time.” He pulled his breastplate onto his body.
“Not to mention my hours of prep beforehand. But taking it off it just an exchant. What I did last time was”—Kendra bobbed her head to either side a couple times—“an evocation of sorts. It’s a lot easier to remove magic than it is to get it to stick. What do you think all the years of training are for?”
Trent walked toward the entryway, where he beheld himself in a mirror next to the door. For the first time in twenty years, Russell stared back at him. His mind stalled for the suddenness of it all. “Know—know a good place I can stay tonight?”
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