“Got all your stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  Evalyn triple checked her own belongings before she confirmed Iris was just as complete. The sun was leisurely sinking over the horizon, its last nurturing rays for the day peeking through the train car’s generous windows.

  Her mother checked her watch again.

  “We’re entering Geverde soon,” she said. “What do you say, your majesty?”

  “Exit through the back door. I will prepare a shortcut.”

  The volume of her voice in the cabin’s tame atmosphere jolted Iris out of a stupor, granting her the curse of consciousness to worry about what would happen next.

  “Let’s go,” Evalyn declared, taking the initiative by standing. Her footsteps hadn’t slowed since her conversation with Marie, and where she couldn’t walk, her feet had taken up incessant tapping in its place.

  Things had become personal, and her attitude had starkly shifted with the flick of a switch. The intensity in her current demeanour, however, wasn’t a way Iris could live out her day to day.

  From that perspective alone, she couldn’t deny the value of detaching herself from her work. Otherwise, anyone would crumple under the pressure.

  Whatever was necessary; that included changes to the self.

  They strode past half-conscious passengers, their footsteps disruptively loud. The cabin ended in a single sliding doorway which Evalyn didn’t hesitate in opening. The wind gleefully accepted the invitation, and the sound of the outside world shattered the quaint atmosphere inside the carriage.

  Iris stepped out onto the open platform, the wind having its way with her hair as Evalyn shut the door behind them. She checked the watch again through her frenzied hair.

  “Almost!” she shouted over the wind.

  “My, I haven’t done this in a while,” the Queen muttered. Impeccable timing, as always.

  “Anytime now!”

  The blood red sky, clouds dyed by the sun’s rays, was suddenly drained of its colour. Bright yet fading blue, and not a cloud in sight.

  “Cloudless? On this Thursday? What did I tell them about—”

  “Your majesty!” Evalyn shouted.

  “Of course.”

  No fanfare, no forewarning: a violent fracture in space sent air panicking in all directions.

  “Great Library. Direct.”

  “Would be convenient if you could do this anywhere, your majesty,” Evalyn muttered.

  “Agreed. Now hurry.”

  Her mother took the lead, venturing one foot off the edge of the train platform, where through the portal, her boot connected with a different surface entirely. After Evalyn’s body disappeared into the blurred mirror, the last of her causing a ripple on its surface, Iris followed close behind.

  Visually, the environment carried over, the hazy surroundings in the portal simply gaining clarity; it was the change in sound that stunned her most. The steam, the chugging, the great iron wheels against the track traded places with a hushed urgency.

  It was the Great Library, but the subtle movements in the shelves and readers now overwhelmed the general stillness. Geverdian Federal Police in the same uniform as Terrence Hotherland buzzed around the scene like flies.

  An entire section of the Great Library had been cut off from the rest, sunk into a great pit that Evalyn and Iris now stood at the precipice of, separated only by a wooden railing.

  “What the hell happened after that phone call?”

  An area the rough size of a sports field, frozen in time, cordoned off in the same way a crime scene would be. The arrangement in the bookshelves told a story, however, of where an altercation started and where it ended, two trails cutting through the strangely uniform arrangement of shelves.

  One path forged by force, bookshelf after bookshelf torn apart, woodwork and binding alike, while the other was forged by the furnishings themselves, creating walls as though it were a maze.

  “Goodness,” the Queen muttered. “You don’t mind if I stay in this gem a while longer.”

  “Yes,” Iris answered. Considering the turmoil, it wasn’t hard to see why.

  “Who the hell is in charge here?” Evalyn roared, but even her loudest voice didn’t travel as it should have. A knife it was, but the turmoil was too thick to slice through.

  Something behind Iris caught Evalyn’s eye, and Iris found two Special Operations officers at the end of her gaze. By then, Evalyn was already moving, shouldering her way through the crowd with a feverish obsession as she clasped Iris’s hand.

  “Take me to the Lieutenant-General.”

  There were only two stripes on their epaulettes. The exact rank eluded her, but they weren’t enough to rub shoulders with Marie, and the two officers reacted accordingly.

  “Sorry, who are you?” the Beak of the pair asked. “Civilians aren’t allowed in this area.”

  “I’m—God never mind.”

  “On second thought,” the Queen muttered into Iris’s ear. “Your mother seems to be having a hard time.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Ask politely. Say, do you like jewellery?”

  “…sort of. I think it’s pretty.”

  “Perfect. Think of it as a memento.”

  A perfectly manicured hand, nails painted a vivid, crystalline blue, glided across the fabric of her field jacket. Confirming the stranger’s identity with her eyes was a waste of time; the gem in her hair had become half as heavy.

  The Spirits in the vicinity noticed first; the change in the Aether drawing their attention to a single point. The humans in the room followed their eyelines, and what Evalyn could do with all the air in her lungs, the Queen managed with presence alone.

  “The Lieutenant-General of Special Operations, if you would be so kind.”

  The Spirit with the two stripes reacted first, a shaky finger pointing in a vague direction further down the catwalk.

  “Thank you,” the Queen said. “Let’s go.”

  Evalyn once again took charge, following the direction as they walked alongside the railing, until eventually a partition in the crowd was forming a few steps ahead of them. While the crowd’s eyes were on the figure still lightly grasping her shoulder, Iris’s were still on the remnants of the battle below.

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  “Let’s hope for the best,” the Queen muttered, the last words she offered until a shout from somewhere in the crowd altered their course again.

  “Evalyn!”

  It was Elliot’s voice, and the tousled head of hair shouldered through the last wall of bodies before he broke through, all but falling into his wife’s arms.

  Evalyn squeezed as though she refused to be outdone, and soon he had pulled Iris into the embrace as well.

  “You two golden?” he asked.

  “I should be asking you,” Evalyn said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “How much did Marie tell you?”

  “Everything you told her. I haven’t called her since.”

  “Okay, well…hi,” he said, eyes flicking to the Queen, who returned the gesture. “You know what? Follow me.”

  Elliot broke the embrace and dived back into the crowd, the Queen’s charm extending to him as a pathway opened before him. Iris followed in his wake until the newly laid catwalk ended and the familiar forest of bookshelves began.

  There, nestled in a horseshoe of bookshelves, sat Alis, his head wrapped in a bloody bandage.

  “Iris!”

  Crestana’s voice found her before she could, and her friend all but barged into her, tackling her from the side.

  “What happened?” Iris asked, it slowly dawning on her just who was at the centre of the cordoned off crime scene.

  “How much do you know?”

  “That you and Alis realised Peter Nair was in Excala.”

  “He was here. Here, pretending to be a refugee and living in the dorms.”

  The rest was history, and the details were unnecessary.

  Iris moved past Crestana, making a beeline for Alis. She didn’t catch his eyes until her arms were around his neck, his focus on someone else entirely. She wasn’t one to ruin moments, but she desperately needed one of her own.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “A concussion. It wasn’t too badly hurt, thanks to Crestana.”

  “Pulled him into the shadows before his head hit the ground,” Crestana said, catching up to Iris. “But he was struck quite badly.”

  Iris pulled away, giving up some attention to the other irregular presence.

  A ragged girl only recently bathed and groomed, wearing second-hand clothes several sizes too big. The similarities to her own early days remained uncanny, and the piercing, circumspect gaze she regarded Iris with acted almost like a mirror. Intuitively, she knew it was a spitting image of her own stare.

  “Is this Moira?” Iris asked, and Alis nodded.

  “She was probably a former slave, so she’s scared of Spirits. I’ve taken care of her.”

  “You’ve—” Iris couldn’t help but be slightly surprised by it. She turned to Crestana, a look of pride about her regarding the dynamic.

  It was certainly different, but just as trivial.

  “Where’s Peter Nair now?”

  “We don’t know. He’s gotten away, but Ms Elvera said they won’t get out of the city,” Crestana explained. “Why? Is it urgent you find him?”

  “He’s the one killing Wizards and Witches. It had nothing to do with the F.S.A.”

  “Bullets that disappear into thin air,” Alis muttered. “That fits the bill. Not of Nair’s magic, but of whoever he’s travelling with. They’re a pair.”

  Marie was only a few strides away, already in discussions with Iris’s parents and the Queen. Iris walked over, butting herself into the conversation.

  “The Queen knows as well as I do that our regular mercenaries aren’t keen to take contracts from us at the moment,” Marie said. “If we tell them we’re hunting down the serial-killer, I can imagine almost all of them will decline. It certainly won’t be enough to scour a city.”

  “Relying purely on law enforcement or the military is not an option either, I’m afraid,” the Queen added. “Enacting anything resembling martial law requires substantial reasoning, which would require revealing Wizards and Witches to the wider public.”

  Even if the suspects were apprehended as a result of the increased measures, execution would loom over the heads of many as the public raised their pitchforks and stakes. Geverde would be worse off for it.

  Marie’s line of thought seemed to be at a dead-end and perhaps had been there for a while.

  “Every Deity Division unit in central Geverde has been rerouted to fly over the city, but it’s finding a needle in a haystack when you’ve got no clue what a needle looks like.”

  But all that Iris could be sure of was that needles were made of metal, and if they could find a magnet, the frantic search would be nothing more than a simple wait.

  Marie hadn’t a full grasp of the situation, but the three in the room that did had likely come to the same conclusion, Iris betting she was the last to do so.

  “We need to throw down a gauntlet,” Evalyn said, glancing at Marie, then the Queen, then finally to Iris. “They came to my office looking for a fight. All we’ve got to do is give them one.”

  Night had fallen, and a hasty plan had grown out of the high stakes and dwindling time, sprouting something strong enough to deem actionable. A section of the city—a stretch of sparsely used industrial district straddling the edge of civilization—was cut off from the outside word.

  Taking a perch on the roof of a necrotic warehouse, Evalyn and Iris watched the city sparkle from a distance, wondering which light was the one they were looking for. Alis and Crestana had only just left their side, the former pulled into the shadows by the latter in the name of acclimation.

  Alis had assured Iris he had made good use of her magic and that he would do so again. It was a small comfort, and an equally small gesture of good faith. Still, it comforted her to no end.

  But now she was alone with her mother, the clock ticking closer to zero hour.

  “Can you tell me another story?” Iris asked. “Like the one you told me about before.”

  “You want to hear something like that?” her mother asked.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  Evalyn seemed hesitant, but was kind enough to not deny her outright. Her lips quivered slightly, but eventually, she caved in.

  “All right…well…did I ever tell you how long it took me to make my armour?”

  “A few years?”

  “Two and a half, roughly. Quite a while and quite a lot of scars. For months, it was partial; I’d think about one part and completely forget about another.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Well…it was a job, right? Jobs you’re focusing on improving yourself, getting better at certain things, its very…intentional. You know how your armour works; you don’t think about it that much, do you?”

  “No. If I do it falls apart.”

  “Exactly. So, maybe ten years ago now, Special Operations received a threat from a Witch. She wrote Marie a letter saying that she was somewhere on the Steel Whale and could destroy the place if her demands weren’t met on time.”

  Evalyn’s face grew a tinge colder. “Elly was on it and there just wasn’t any way to evacuate the ship fast enough. So he called me, saying that he would have to stay and fight…but could really use my help.”

  “That sounds like something he would say.”

  “Not very heroic, is it?” Evalyn said, the memory at least warming her frigid expression a little. “But anyway, I got there as quickly as I could. Thankfully, the Steel Whale wasn’t stationed too far from our house.”

  She paused, as though considering the latent possibility that never came to be.

  “By the time I got there, they’d found her, but I don’t remember her name. She was…in the ammunitions bay. They figured the only place she could do enough damage was there. Negotiations were falling through, and Marie let me handle it. It was the first time I was fighting without Colte, so in hindsight I should have been terrified, but the thought of losing Marie and Elly in one go made me forget about it completely.”

  Evalyn sighed, gaze falling to her intertwined fingers.

  “She was tough. This…crazy magic that was doing a number on everything around me. I flung her out of the ammo bay before she could do enough damage, but by the time we were fighting, I had just…my armour was there. It wasn’t intentional, I just knew what I needed, and in that moment my ‘job’ wasn’t just that anymore.”

  “And then you got used to it?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Really?”

  Evalyn looked as surprised as Iris was. She frowned and shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “You don’t act like it,” Iris said. “Sometimes when you put your armour on, I forget you’re a person. You’re so sure about what you’re doing.”

  Evalyn closed her eyes, a measured smile on her face as though she were feeling the wind across her face.

  “I wanted to become a soldier because I thought that’s how I’d…make up for my father’s mistakes. This,” she said, pointing at the marking on her face, “only happened once I realised what I actually found important. It only makes sense my armour would come about when I was reminded of that.”

  She leaned back, lying on the cold, corrugated metal. “I’m a soldier, and I need to remember that. All these years I’ve done all this because without it I know I won’t be able to live. But once upon I time, I was dead set on living to be a soldier, but if anything, I’m glad it turned out the other way around. I love this city, I love my home, I love Elly and I love you. I could be fighting the Queen for all I care, I’d do it because…”

  The silence dragged on.

  “What?” Iris asked.

  “Nothing. I just…need to tell you something.” Evalyn looked at her watch again. “After this is over.”

  She stood, the marking on her cheek glimmering. Aether rushed towards her in a whirlwind, making a star out of the spark. Her golden recurve bow sprouted from her left hand, from the right an arrow held between two fingers of her gauntlet.

  By now, Crestana had felt the Aether moving, and dragged Alis out from the shadows behind her.

  Evalyn aimed the arrow into the sky and fired.

  The arrow joined the stars as another bright speck in the sky before, like a firework, it outshined every single one of its contemporaries.

  The golden figure of the Wishing Whale swam across the expanse of space like a shifting constellation. Riding above the wind, above the clouds, it lasted longer than Iris had ever experienced. Evalyn’s marking didn’t fade, and the swirl of Aether only intensified.

  The night was bright again; golden light thoroughly washed over the city and blessed every seam between the buildings. It was an invitation to the entire city; the direction the whale fell the last part of it.

  “Now we wait and hope,” Evalyn muttered, the golden light finally fading. “Because I don’t think he’ll be using the number on that business card again.”