Thresholder, ch 114, The Difference Engine (Patreon)

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Sorry for the late chapter! I'm mostly back on track with writing, and some of the fog of depression seems like it's lifting. This one was going to be out relatively on time, but then the power went out while I was editing. My very first thought was that it was somehow the eclipse coming back, even though it was 2AM (relatively on time means technically the next day in my timezone). I do like the idea of "eclipse" as a general term for when it gets dark for any reason.

In some non-Thresholder news, my upcoming save-the-world litRPG apocalypse story Doomsday Pivot! is now at the end of Book 1 at 104K words. It'll be edited and polished and stuff, and will probably follow Thresholder whenever that's done, at which point it will be something like 40 chapters ahead of RoyalRoad on Patreon. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do, but it's in the works.

~~~~

Kestrel stood at the window of their room, looking out into the night, while Mette sat on the bed behind him. She had gotten ready and put on a chemise that she normally slept in, an outfit that had been taken from a library in Kerry Coast and would never be returned there. The small town was dark.

“Call me Kes,” he said, unprompted.

“Only in private,” she replied. “Everywhere else, it’s Perry.”

“It was a handle we used to use,” said Kes. “Online.”

“On the global internet?” asked Mette. “Why?”

“Why what?” asked Kes, turning to look at her. She was brushing her hair, another part of her nightly ritual. She had done it on the Natrix as well. They had sometimes been together, usually talking about magic, around the time she was getting ready to sleep.

“When we used handles, it was to cloak identity,” said Mette. “Why did you use them in a time of peace?”

“It was just the done thing,” said Kes. “No one actually used their name. It was good to be anonymous, but even if you didn’t care about that — some strange guy showing up at your house with a shotgun, getting SWATed, that kind of thing — then having your full name would be just … I don’t know. No one just puts their full name as their handle like they do on the Natrix. No one has a username like that.”

“Mmm,” said Mette. “You and your Earthisms. You know, you’re lucky that they speak English here. You can’t coast by on your translation thing anymore.”

Kes winced. What would happen if they all went to a place where he didn’t speak the language? He’d be fucked, that’s what, isolated and alone with no one but Mette for company, assuming she even wanted to leave this world when they were finished.

“Explain ‘SWATed’ to me,” said Mette.

“Uh,” said Kes. “It’s when you call the police to someone’s house, saying that they’ve got a gun and are a danger to themselves or others, say that a child is in danger, say that there’s a plot to blow up an office building, something like that. And then the police show up, armored and with guns drawn, and in the best case scenario, scare the piss out of whoever they were called on.”

“And in the worst case scenario?” asked Mette. She had paused in her brushing.

“The police shoot you and you die,” said Kes.

“Ah,” said Mette. “You know, you have a way of making the world you were from sound hellish.”

“To a European, sure,” said Kes with a laugh. He probably should have added on some qualifiers, explained how incredibly uncommon it was, but instead he turned to look out the window again.

“Waiting for him to come back?” asked Mette.

“Nah,” said Kes. “He’s not coming back.”

“He might,” said Mette. There was a moment of silence, and Kes turned back to look at her. “Can you tell me what was going through his head?”

“No,” said Kes. “We’re separated, already diverging from each other. I can guess, but his internal state is now as unknowable to you as it is to me.”

“So, what’s your guess?” asked Mette. “Because I didn’t get it, at all, and I don’t think anyone else did either.”

“My guess is that he wanted a partner,” said Kes. “He wanted someone who was his equal.”

She frowned. “What about me? Or … Nima?”

“Yeah,” said Kes. “That is a totally fair question.” He sighed and went over to the bed to sit down next to her. “There were ways in which he — we — or … is it fine if I claim his actions for my own? Speak of the things that happened to him as though they happened to me?”

“You remember all the same things, don’t you?” asked Mette.

“Yes,” said Kes.

“Then I think it’s fine,” said Mette.

“There were ways in which we were similar to Jeff,” said Kes. “There were things that Jeff said that appealed to us, not the creeper stuff, but some other bits, about being strong and showing off, walking into a room and knowing that if you had to, you could wipe the floor with the guards. I liked saving the day. I liked impressing the kids by deflecting bullets.”

“You got the short end of the stick,” said Mette. “You’re normal.”

“I wouldn’t say normal. I’ve got a musculature that I’m not going to be able to maintain,” said Kes. “Even if I worked out for four hours a day and ate a planned diet with mechanical precision I couldn’t keep this up.” He flexed his muscles. They would atrophy. The machine had recreated Perry perfectly, minus the magic. All the scars were there too, even the hair. But that exterior appearance had been fed by magic. It would fade away. “So I’m not normal, not really, but I will be.”

“And him?” asked Mette. “That wasn’t what he wanted?”

“Being him was great,” said Kes. “It felt like being the person I was always meant to be. Like I had been destined to beat the shit out of powerful people who needed the shit beaten out of them. Like I was supposed to be this great and powerful warrior who got all the girls — not that I didn’t get the girls on Earth, but … I don’t know.”

He had been about to say something that he was pretty sure she would have found hurtful, which was that back home, the girlfriends and hookups and whatever else had always been with equals. He wasn’t even sure what he would have meant by it. It probably bore thinking about, but there was a lot that probably bore thinking about when it came to his love life.

“You are being a terrible conversational partner,” said Mette. “And I know you’re going through something, so I understand, and it’s totally fine, but I keep asking for your guess about his thoughts, and you keep saying how awesome he is. But why was he so ready to get away from you?”

“Sorry,” said Kes. “My guess, and it’s only a guess, because these thoughts didn’t occur before we did the cloning, is that he wanted a version of Jeff who wasn’t shitty. A bro. Someone who got it, because he’d been through it, because he was the same.”

Mette blinked at him. “But you have been through it,” said Mette.

“Past tense,” said Kes. He moved so he was laying down on the bed, head on his pillow, and Mette shifted her position to be laying by his side, setting her brush down on the side table. “Let’s say he drops down into Thirlwell and starts kicking ass. He throws a guard off the top of a castle with one hand, or wrestles Third Fervor to the ground and punches her in the helmet until it’s dented, or lights up a powder magazine from a distance with the laser rifle. It’s awesome. It feels awesome. Then he comes to me and tells me about it.”

“Oh,” said Mette.

“You get it?” asked Kes.

“I think so,” said Mette. “He tells it to you, and you’re just sitting there thinking …”

“‘God I wish that were me’,” said Kes. “At best. At worst, I’m thinking about how I could steal the power armor, the sword, and the ring, and get some vestige of my power back.”

“And … that’s something that you’re thinking?” asked Mette. “Because I have to say, I do not think that ends well for you.”

“No,” said Kes. “I would never actually do it. I would just think about it, and not even think all that hard. I mean, with the power armor, I could borrow it. Maybe there are even cases where that would make the most sense to do, if we need to be in two places at once. The power armor fits both of us equally well. But that doesn’t solve the problem between us, which is that I’m always going to be less. I’m always going to be wanting what he has. I’ll be a shade, an imitation of the real thing. It’s going to get in the way of relating to each other. It’s going to sour every experience together, every story we might want to tell each other.” He let out a breath. “That’s a guess, anyway.”

“The cloning was a mistake,” said Mette. She turned her head toward him. “The cloning, I said, not the clone.”

“Not a mistake,” said Kes. “Just not what he was hoping for. I’m not going to try to steal March from him. In fact, since he took March, and the problems were going through his head, he’ll probably lock it all down and then … pretend that he didn’t? That sounds like me.”

“Well,” said Mette. “I don’t care about you less because you don’t have powers. In case that helps.” She turned to face him and placed a hand on his hairy chest, running her fingertips through the hair.

“Sure,” said Kes. It did feel better. It felt good to be touched. If he’d been more sentimental, he might have told her that. “I’m still grappling with it. The solution is probably to put my nose to the grindstone, focus on my own growth, my own power, to care about that more than his power.” That was going to be hard though. The muscles would fade away, even if Kes could secure a tooth and become a werewolf again — or for the first time, or however you wanted to put it.

Mette reached over to their lantern and turned it off. “Want me to try to lift your spirits?” she asked. He was going to ask what she meant, then she touched him on the hip. The chemise she wore parted easily, he knew.

“That does have its appeal,” said Kes. “But he took Marchand with him, which means he took control of the nanites, and I guess he also took most of the nanites.” Kes waited a beat. “Which means no condoms.”

“Eh, we’ll figure something out,” said Mette.

~~~~

Perry looked at the city of Menishmire from five miles above.

From that far out, it looked like a crab. The city was built around a harbor, which formed the crab’s claws, and the main body was in a lowland area that had once been a swamp. Perry wasn’t sure whether the twin peninsulas that made up the claws were natural or not, but he didn’t suppose that they had the dredging technology for them to be unnatural. It might have been lantern light that had made them, but it would have made the whole city awash in effluence when it had been done. He didn’t suppose that would stop them.

Night had fallen, but the city was still brightly lit. The veins and arteries of the thoroughfares were lit with lamps, and Perry wondered whether those were lanterns or something else, because lighting up streets at three in the morning seemed like a profound waste of resources and a contributor to effluence.

There were more straight lines than Perry had seen in any other city. Old geography knowledge was bubbling to the surface, and he considered that straight lines were something you mostly saw in uninhabited areas, in the wake of some kind of disaster, or after a major urban development project that somehow had the backing necessary to tear down a lot of haphazard buildings. In the case of Menishmire, Perry already knew that it was the third situation. More than a hundred years ago, someone had gotten the urban planning bug and started tearing up the slums to have long, impressive avenues and grand buildings. It looked nice, he would give it that, but it was the work of a megalomaniac who had seen the cost to the lower classes and not so much as blinked.

Thirlwell had been a colonial power, back when the world had colonies. It had looted and stolen, as colonial powers were wont to do, and brought enormous amounts of wealth to the island nation. Now the flow of funds had been cut off, and it was common knowledge that it was a starving beast, trying to live up to its former status and glory.

It was the Last Kingdom, the world’s final monarchy.

Perry was up so high because he was worried about surveillance. There were masks that could see him, even as high up as he was, if they were powerful enough, being worn, and pointed in his direction. He knew enough about masks now to understand how he would make one for exactly this purpose. You could make a mask that could make certain features stand out and become blazing bright to your vision, magnifying any motion with a hot pink, or any effluence with neon green, and once that was done, you could have other masks to see at a great distance.

Perry didn’t think they were watching the sky, but he couldn’t be certain. If they were watching the sky, it seemed unlikely they had much recourse against him. His armor wasn’t just metal, it was an alloy that was extremely difficult to penetrate, so even if they had some kind of lantern or mask that could hit him from five miles away, he didn’t think it would have an effect. It was possible that Third Fervor could be sent out to deal with him, but he didn’t actually know whether or not she could fly. He suspected she could, if he and Fenilor could.

Perry reached up to a small compartment in the armor and pulled out a clump of nanites.

“We want to scatter these all over the city,” said Perry. “Any chance we can do that from the air?”

“From this high up, it would depend upon the winds, sir,” said Marchand. “I’ve placed a marker on your HUD that shows the proper position to ensure eighty percent of the nanites make it down onto the city. However, depending on your strategic considerations, I believe it would be appropriate to go significantly lower and attempt to make precision drops of larger mass.”

Perry considered that. “They might have tech,” he said. “They had guns. Not good guns, but a hail of gunfire would be a problem for us.”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “I do recall us getting shot in Teaguewater, and would prefer to avoid a repeat of that.”

“You remember that?” asked Perry.

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand.

“I wasn’t sure you would,” said Perry. “You’ve sustained a lot of damage since then, problems with the databanks, with the video, and that was before you were … alive, I guess.”

“I’m afraid I may have misled you, sir,” said Marchand. “I am in fact a computer program and not alive in any way.”

“You know what I mean,” said Perry. “The link that goes between us.”

There was a pause. “I do know what you mean, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry watched the city. It was quiet right now, though also too far away for him to hear much of anything.

“He’s locked out of your systems?” asked Perry.

“Who, sir?” asked Marchand.

“The other me,” said Perry. “Kestrel.”

“Yes, sir, I have done as you’ve instructed and ensured that he cannot abscond with me against your wishes,” said Marchand. “However, as I cannot distinguish between the two of you by your voice or face, there is some requirement that I track you at all times, which I am not sure I’m able to do with the required sufficiency to ensure security.”

Perry considered this. “Alright. Generate four words to use for a password.”

“Plaster, slow, camera, disapprove, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry repeated the sequence to himself, then frowned. “Was ‘sir’ part of it?”

“No, sir,” said Marchand. “Though I should warn that if you wish this password to remain secure, then after this conversation is finished I should never repeat the password to you. However, if I were to do that, and you were to forget the password, there would be no method of recovering the password and accessing whatever functionality you intend to sequester behind it.”

“Plaster, slow, camera, disapprove,” said Perry.

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand.

“I’d be hinging my use of you on remembering that sequence,” said Perry. He thought about this. “And someone like Jeff would have been able to look into the past and potentially retrieve it anyway, along with potentially fifty other powers that read minds, make good guesses … whatever else is out there in the multiverse.”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “It’s not that I think a password only you know is a terrible idea, but I must also speculate on possible futures. If you were to die, as seems likely given our lifestyle, would you want the armor to not be inherited by your clone?”

“You say the armor, but … that’s you,” said Perry.

“Indeed, sir, quite perceptive,” said Marchand.

“What do you want?” asked Perry.

“I believe if you were to perish, I would wish to continue in the service of your duplicate, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry winced. “Alright, scrap the password. Try to track which of us is which. If he tries to take you, or to have you go against me, you’re to stop it, but … I’m probably just being paranoid.”

“Perhaps, sir,” said Marchand. “I must say, I’m a bit of a student of you, and if you had inquired as to my opinion before embarking on this endeavor, I would have mentioned that there was a possibility that it would not end happily.”

“You have some insights into my psychology, do you?” asked Perry.

“Sir, I do not sleep,” said Marchand. “When you are away doing things without your armor on, I spend my time processing, and as my primary function is to serve you, I spend significant amounts of that processing time thinking about you.”

“And how we must smash the monarchy?” asked Perry.

“Of course, sir,” said Marchand. “It is a scourge upon this and all other lands.”

“Well, I appreciate the thought, I guess,” said Perry. He had never really considered what Marchand was doing when left to his own devices. Sometimes he would deliver a line about ‘I have taken the liberty of’, and apparently a few times that was just because Marchand had been running full tilt. Perry had kind of thought that Marchand would go into low power mode or something, or that he would behave like a computer that just sits there waiting for input. Perry was glad that Marchand was spending the time thinking though. It made him feel good, somehow, to know that Marchand was watching out for him in some way.

Perry frowned a bit at the city below them. “In your opinion, it’s not too reckless to drop down there and seed the place with nanites?”

“I don’t believe it would be impertinent, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry nodded to himself. It was the answer he had wanted.

He descended using the sword rather than dropping, and he kept his senses as open as they could be. In theory they would have watchers, but they would be watching for airships, not people. Third Fervor had seen him fly, but Perry didn’t think a mammoth effort to make sure the kingdom knew he was coming was something that the Last King would have done. It was hard to say for certain though.

Perry had looked at maps of Menishmire back in Berus, and it had been while he had the helmet on, which meant that Marchand had them too. The HUD had a number of important buildings marked, and Perry was pretty sure that if he’d asked for it, every single one of the avenues, boulevards, and parks could be given a label.

The castle had been a grand, imposing building at one point, but had been added to in recent years by something from a very different architectural school. Perry might have called it Brutalism, but it was from a very different school of thought and style. The addition to the castle was all hard edges and utilitarian surfaces, all of it manufactured by intensive lantern-assisted processes. Just like the enormous lantern that sat at the top of the castle in Calamus, this was a symbol too, but of a much different sort. The Last King was attempting to create his own culture, a counterrevolution that would go beyond what his opponents from across the seas had created.

The Last King, His Highness Edmunt Thorne II, had inherited the philosophy of Coruscism from his father. It was a floundering philosophy, one that the previous king — the Next-to-Last King — had apparently thought up himself, and was sometimes called postmonarchism and other times called lantern-progressivism or subscriptivism. Where Berus had largely been attempting to push forward with colonial monarchism as it had been done for three hundred years, Thirlwell was trying something different.

By many accounts, the Last King had created a special kind of hell for his subjects.

Perry went to the Grand Central Library rather than the castle, because with an assassin on the loose, he expected the castle to be well-guarded. The Library was one of the largest and newest buildings in the city, and sat down one of the too-straight roads from the castle, allowing them to frame each other when someone looked down the road. The Grand Central Library was a tall building, made from ‘modern’ materials, with a metal frame that sat outside the structure rather than within it, and plenty of glass cladding that meant most of the interior was visible. It was a style of building that wasn’t really possible if you only had the domes, which was exactly why it had been constructed this way, and it sat there like a jewel, sleek and imposing.

“Do we expect to gain much valuable information from this library?” asked Marchand as Perry scouted the place from above, looking for traps or sentries.

“Yes,” said Perry. “A library is where people come to congregate, and where they get their information. Dirk can bring us all the papers he wants to, and give us his own version of events, but we’ll seed this place with listeners, then by tomorrow, have a much better understanding of reality on the ground.”

“Very well, sir,” said Marchand.

Breaking into the library was easy enough, and there were only two guards, who seemed to stick to the lower levels. That made sense, given that Perry was one of only a very small handful of people who could enter from above.

He walked through the rows of books and glanced at a few of the displays, making his way to the offices that sat on the top floor and had a nice view of the city.

The Grand Library was not a library like they had in Kerry Coast. For one thing, it wasn’t open to the public, and instead had a quarterly subscription to use its services. If you checked out anything, you weren’t on your honor to check it back in, they had goons to send out to grab it from you, and fines to pay, enforced by the police, if you kept something for too long. This was the main libraries, but there were lots of others. What it essentially boiled down to was that if you wanted to be a part of daily life in the city, you had to have various subscriptions, and because of both the government policy and some of the economic impacts of their library system, it was common for people to be in a perpetual state of rental for almost everything in their home, not actually owning anything.

Many of the people that Perry had talked to about this system had called it ‘bastard libraries’, but to Perry it didn’t sound that different from how it had been on Earth. People rented because they couldn’t buy and subscriptions were rampant because it made more money for someone somewhere than actually selling the thing in question. It seemed like it was only a matter of time until Thirlwell pushed everyone into their own gig economy, though maybe that was less workable in a society where people needed to do more in the way of trained labor.

Perry had allocated a hundred grams of nanites for the Grand Library, and stuck them all over the place, trying to keep them out of the way. Under Marchand’s direction they would be disguised as insects or bits of dust, kept out of the way. Without radio contact, Marchand wouldn’t be able to direct them, but if it was just audio, they were capable of storing as much data as needed.

This wasn’t the center of power, but it was a center of power, and a good first step of getting a true understanding of the country. The king mostly kept to his castle, fearful of going outside, but there was a chance that once they had radio coverage over the city, Marchand would be able to get a nanite spider into the castle by riding on one of the higher ups or guards. The riders would also be able to spread out into the city, expanding the network over the next few days, but that would take intensive direction. Perry wished that the nanites were as strong for him as they’d been for Maya, but they were never going to be responsive armor, not like he’d wanted.

“Sir, an error has just occurred consistent with one of Third Fervor’s portals opening,” said Marchand as Perry finished up on the upper floor. The guards were several stories below, but the library had a large atrium. Perry went to the balcony that looked down to the central area where desks were set up. Without March, it would have been oppressively black, but the light was being amplified and color corrected.

“Distance?” asked Perry, and as soon as he said it, a marker appeared on the HUD. It was on the roof, not inside the library, which Perry found curious. She would only portal here because she knew he was here. Did it say something about the limitations of her power?

Perry hid out, leaning up against a doorway. He wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted a confrontation here. A fight seemed inadvisable, but he was interested in a discussion if that was possible. This hadn’t been on the agenda for the night, but he was willing to see where it went. He had plans for how to kill her, if it came to that.

Third Fervor came around the corner. She was in the same ridiculous armor she’d been in before, heels clicking softly as she moved across the ground. She had her long spear, metal with the obsidian tip, and it was held in front of her, though with a defensive stance.

He had his own sword in hand, but was holding it loosely at his side.

“Why have you come here?” asked Third Fervor.

“I was just returning some books,” said Perry. “Couldn’t seem to locate the book drop though.”

“Did you mistake this for the castle?” asked Third Fervor. “Did you come to kill our king?”

“No,” said Perry. “I came to see, to learn. I’ve seen newspapers from this kingdom, but they were given to me by people with a vested interest in turning me against Thirlwell. I’ve heard stories, but they were stories told by the very same people that were publicly executing those they called traitors.”

“You’re laying it on a bit thick, sir,” said Marchand.

“You came here to see with your own eyes,” said Third Fervor. She relaxed slightly. “Yet you stopped me, on the tower. Two men lost their lives.”

“I’m not here to fight,” said Perry. “Believe it or don’t. If I had come to kill the king, I would have landed on the roof of the castle. If I had wanted to fight you, I would have had better weapons out and ready.” He had the shoulder gun, which was stowed, and he’d give the order to fire right away if it came down to combat, just to see how resistant to bullets her armor was. He was feeling calm and collected though, in control of the situation.

He was also aware of just how fucked he might be at literally any moment. Third Fervor had a spear, some portals, and very hard armor his sword hadn’t left so much as a scratch on, but she could be hiding literally anything else, things that would no-sell his considerable defenses.

“I have informed the king of you,” said Third Fervor. “I said I did not believe you to be the assassin.”

“Why not?” asked Perry.

“You fought with strength, out in the open,” said Third Fervor. There was a tremble in her voice. “The assassin is a coward, someone who lurks in the shadows.”

Perry wasn’t about to sink his own case by pointing out that she’d caught him literally lurking in the shadows only moments ago. Maybe the fact that he’d stood calmly as though he wanted to get caught was making her forget that.

“I’m not the assassin,” said Perry. “I met him. He’s a world hopper, a thresholder, like us. We didn’t come to blows, but it felt like a near thing.”

“He’s powerful?” asked Third Fervor.

“It was difficult to tell,” said Perry. “I would assume he’s very powerful, yes.” He paused. “You don’t know him? Haven’t seen him?”

“No,” said Third Fervor. “We would know, if he had crossed into these lands, just as we knew when you arrived here.” She gripped her spear. “You must leave now. The king has commanded it.”

“He doesn’t want to speak with me?” asked Perry. “To converse?”

She shifted slightly, and he could see from the tilt of her head that she was looking him up and down. “What would you have to say to him?”

“It’s about what he would have to say to me,” said Perry. “I’d hear his side of the story. I haven’t actually talked with a monarchist, not except for you, and we were busy with other matters.”

She was afraid of him, he was fairly certain of that. Either she doubted her own abilities, or she was scared of what he could do. He hadn’t had the armor on last time, and as impressive as his physique had become, the perfectly clean armor had to add another level of intimidation.

“He has commanded it,” Third Fervor repeated.

“Has he commanded you not to speak with me?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Third Fervor. “Because if he had commanded it, I would not have done it. But you must go.”

Perry reached up to the power armor. “This black marble will let us talk to each other.” He pulled out a pinch of nanites, which Marchand had formed into a ball. It was nice to have him more able to read between the lines, which Perry wasn’t sure would have been possible back in Teaguewater, when the limits of the AI had been most clear. “I’ll speak only to you. I’ll know if anyone else is in the room with you. Use your portal to go far away from the castle.”

He tossed the small black sphere to her, and he could see the hesitancy as it was in the air. She thought it was a trap of some kind, which it definitely was, it just wasn’t the sort of trap that was going to kill her. She caught the nanite marble at the last second rather than portaling away or dodging it. “You understand that I will tell him,” said Third Fervor. “I will not betray my king, if you seek to turn me against him.”

“I understand,” said Perry. “I ask only that you speak with me. Whether you’ll admit it or not, whatever loyalty the king has inspired in you, you’re from another world. That makes you part of an elite group, a fractured family, and I have much interest in conversation.”

He tilted his head down slightly. “You can make the marble work?”

“I have been rapidly working on the problem, sir,” said Marchand. “It is possible that a consultation with Mette would be beneficial, but I believe that with the proper conditions I can use the commanded movement of the nanites to induce resonance in a surface they’re placed on. The sound quality will likely be terrible and the volume low.”

Third Fervor was turning the marble over in her armored fingers, demonstrating an impressive control given that they didn’t seem to have gripping surfaces like his own did.

“We will talk,” she said softly. “I will try to make you see the light.”

Perry nodded. That had been exactly what he’d been hoping for.

“Now go,” said Third Fervor. “Fly away and leave this kingdom. Do not return unless summoned.”

“You’re blocking my exit,” said Perry.

Third Fervor hesitated, then a portal opened at her feet. She fell through immediately, to somewhere dark, and the portal closed behind her.

“She’s stayed within the library, sir,” said Marchand. “With her carrying the nanites, we should be able to track her movements quite effectively.”

“Good,” said Perry. “Now let’s get out of here.”

He left the library through a door onto a balcony and rose back up into the night sky. As self-directed missions went, it had been extremely successful.

“Sir,” said Marchand. “I feel I must ask for clarification on a certain matter. Was that all a ruse?”

“Of course,” said Perry. “You said it yourself, I was laying it on thick. She’s a fanatic, I think, and fanatics are easy to dupe. You tell them what they want to hear.” The city was falling away below them. “We hope that she brings the listener in for some important conversations, that we get something out of her through an extended talk, and that there are obvious cracks in her metaphorical and literal armor.”

“Very good, sir,” said Marchand. “Though I must warn you that if we wish to be able to reply to a missive at a moment’s notice, we would ideally stay within line of sight of the city, at least until the transmitter mounted on the airship is in place. Even then, the signal from the nanites tends to be rather faint.”

“Then we wait in the air,” said Perry. “It’s not like I was in a rush to return home anyway.”