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Life is full of moments where we get to choose the blue pill or the red pill. Only there’s no pill. And no choice.

Matrix Multiplication , by C. F. Gauss

Livira

Livira and Carlotte followed the canith woman through the streets. Despite the earlier urgency in her voice, the canith led them at the calm and gentle pace of the innocent, as if they had no particular place to be.

“Why are we following her?” Carlotte asked.

“Because of the way the Exchange works,” Livira answered in a low voice. “It doesn’t just spit you out at random. It drops you into important days, important places. This canith didn’t find us—we found her. We were meant to.”

Carlotte scowled. “That sounds like a bunch of mystic hoo-hah you just made up.”

Livira shrugged. “I found you, didn’t I?”

Carlotte’s frown deepened. “But we didn’t even appear at the tavern. We were on some street with bookshops. And there was a tavern there too. A much nicer one. Maybe we were supposed to go in there, not wander randomly to the Gates of Misery.”

“Heaven’s Gate,” Livira corrected.

“I call it as I see it.”

Ahead of them, their guide took a swift glance around then veered into a side street. She picked up the pace immediately they were clear of the main road. Despite the canith’s grey mane and emaciation, her lengthened stride forced Livira to jog in order to keep up. A few more lefts and rights took them from broad, well-lit streets into grimy alleys. The setting sun didn’t reach far into the slums, but above them the last strands of the earlier fog lit with crimson. The canith led them between tall rows of tenements, black with the smoke of whatever local industry tainted the air between one blocked sewer and the next. Clotheslines spanned the street, connecting random rooms. Overalls and aprons hung sullenly in the damp air.

“A dead end.” Carlotte stated the obvious. The canith hadn’t spoken since leaving the wrecked tavern and the vanquished Escape behind them. She glanced around at them now.

The square they’d arrived in was little more than five yards across, walled in by buildings. Livira could see no doors. The few windows were all shuttered.

“Come.” The canith approached a wall, pushed, and ducked through the opening that appeared.

Livira followed Carlotte in, fighting against the strength of the spring that wanted to return the centrally hinged section of wall back to its original position. A flight of steps led down. The place smelled earthy and was utterly dark.

“Don’t trip,” the canith advised.

Livira edged down the stairs, a hand on the wall to either side, not convinced she could find enough traction on the slimy stone to prevent her tumbling should she miss her footing.

None of them fell. Livira saved injury for the final step, jolting as she expected another drop, and biting her tongue. “Damnation!”

A door opened and lantern light blinded her. Blinking, she advanced into a chamber about the same size as the square above. Two men with crossbows stood against the far wall, one aiming at Carlotte, the other still cranking his cable back. Between Livira and the men some chairs and a table bearing the remnants of a meal offered little opportunity for cover.

The younger man finished loading his weapon and pointed it at Livira.

“Relax, everyone,” the stooping canith growled. “Don’t shoot them—but stay ready to.”

“Thanks,” Carlotte said with total insincerity.

“We need to consider the possibility that you’re the potentate’s agents,” the canith explained. “If the potentate got his hands on someone who seems able to work magic, I don’t think he’d risk sending them to a shithole like the Gates in the hopes of rooting out the Saviour. But I’m going to keep that possibility in mind.”

“Magic?” The older of the crossbow men snorted.

Livira took a step forward and both crossbows pointed her way. She reached for the nearest chair and sat down. “This would be easier if you assumed we’ve both dropped off one of the moons and landed today. I don’t know who the Saviour is or what your king’s called or what wars you’re fighting. I don’t even know what this city looks like in daylight without the fog. We”—she flickered a finger from herself to Carlotte and back again—“are not from around here. I’m looking for a book. A particular book. And if I help you, I’ll expect some help in return.”

“Who says we need anything from you?” sneered the older man.

“You’d like us to go then?” Carlotte turned for the exit.

“Enough!” the canith snapped with surprising authority. “Sit.” She pointed the former queen to a chair beside Livira. “I’ll get Tremon. She can decide what to do with you.” She stalked across the room to a door behind the men. Before opening it, she paused to address both men with a degree of menace. “Do not shoot them.” She held her hand out and the older man gave her a heavy key. She used it, went through, and locked the door behind her. “Unless you have to,” she called back through the thickness of the wood.

Livira and Carlotte sat in silence for a minute until the younger man lowered his weapon and said, “We don’t have a king. The potentate had him killed.”

“What’s the difference between a king and a potentate?” Livira asked.

The older man snorted. He seemed prone to snorting. “Don’t humour them.”

“About this much.” His companion used a hand to measure the distance from his shoulder to his full height. He grinned. “The potentate had the king decapitated and took his throne.”

Livira grinned back, despite the grim topic. The companion was a sandy-haired fellow of about Livira’s age, his pleasant face marred by a livid scar running from chin to cheek, carving through his lips on the way. She gestured to the chair opposite. “Sit down. Your friend can shoot anyone who misbehaves. You can tell me about this Saviour of yours…”

The man obliged. He wouldn’t give his name, but he proved eager to talk about the Saviour, his zeal almost religious, although despite expectations, the Saviour turned out to be promising salvation from New Kraff’s current woes rather than for anyone’s immortal soul.

Livira dubbed her new friend “Scar,” admitting a lack of imagination as she did so. Scar might not have believed the level of Livira’s professed ignorance, but in charting the deeds and ambitions of his leader, he provided a quick tutorial in the state of play within the city and beyond its walls, so by the time the canith returned, Livira’s education in local matters had improved considerably. She knew the potentate to be an upstart rabble-rouser who had ridden to power on the back of a witch hunt against the Amacar, a religious minority found across the continent in many countries. The Saviour—whose true identity was a well-kept secret—was leading an insurrection. The movement, while mildly sympathetic to the Amacar and the terrors being heaped upon their dwindling numbers, had been founded on a very different source of malcontent. The Saviour and his followers objected to not just the potentate, but monarchy in general. Carlotte had raised an eyebrow at this revelation. The Saviour planned to put votes in the hands of all adults in the city and have them set a leader of their own choosing in the potentate’s place and allow them a chance to change their minds every five years. Democracy, they called it. Livira had read about the concept but knew of nowhere in her old life that put it into practice.

“Won’t this Saviour just take the throne for himself while the last occupant’s corpse is still cooling?” Carlotte asked.

“Or just get all the votes because it’s his idea and everyone knows him,” Livira said.

“No! Because nobody knows who he is. None of us have ever seen his face. He wears a mask. And when the potentate is cast down, the Saviour is going to vanish. He’ll be one of us, but we won’t know him. He might ask for votes, but never as the Saviour. Everyone will have the same chance.” Scar’s eyes almost glowed with belief. Behind him even his friend’s snort lacked its usual derision.

“And why does he need me?” Livira asked.

“Nar— Our friend said something about magic?” Scar shook his head. “I mean, I doubt it, but we could use a miracle. There’s not much time left now.”

“You’re losing?” Carlotte glanced towards the exit as if considering an escape bid. “I’m not surprised if this is how you recruit members for your little rebellion.”

“Because the bugs are coming.” The big man levelled his crossbow at Carlotte, and under the pointed stare of its steel eye, she swallowed her retort.

Scar explained, “The Saviour wants us to ally with Iccrah before it’s too late. They have the weapons and the defensible position. We have the numbers. But there’s not long left to do everything that needs doing. But the potentate just wants to conquer Iccrah. He’s not even taking the bug threat seriously. They’ve got some sort of games going on in Tower Square. Men and canith against bugs, to calm the public. What he’s not telling them though is there’s an ocean of the things, and the tide’s rising.”

Livira frowned. “Why would a king…potentate, whatever, ignore a threat like that? It’s his cities, his land, and in the end, his life, that are going to be lost.”

“He’s found advisors that tell him what he wants to hear. That the bugs will turn north before they reach us. Take a hundred experts and you’ll always find a handful to dissent on any subject. The potentate’s chosen to listen to those ones. Thinks the idea that the bugs won’t turn is put about by his enemies, by the Saviour, to force him into decisions he doesn’t want to make.”

The door behind them banged open. The canith came back into the room, followed by a large woman, perhaps the largest Livira had seen.

“You can call me Tremon.” She stood as tall as Arpix and twice as wide, packed solid, her face one that looked to have been punched a lot and to still be angry about it.

“Livira,” Livira said. “And that’s Carlotte.”

“Show me this magic.” She shot a sharp look in the canith’s direction.

“Why should I?” Livira asked.

Tremon sighed. “I could say, because there are two crossbows pointed your way. But I hear you’re after a particular book?”

“Do you have it?”

“Does it make holes in things?”

Livira thought of the cracks spreading across the library floor from where she’d dropped it that last time it left her possession. “Probably.”

“Then I know where it is.”