THREE HUNDRED EIGHT

Jump Again

Alden tried twice to throw cooling words at the Artonans before a real argument could develop. First, he said again that he really didn’t want to throw the squad’s flow off. Then he tried to slow Tilliver and Emban down by requesting some guidelines for what they were all about to do.

He might as well have tried to douse a fire by spritzing it with gasoline.

“Do you hear him?” Emban said. “He doesn’t know anything about what we’re doing!”

“I hear him making an effort to get along with our squad.”

Both of their voices were raised.

Alden’s final play was to loudly announce that he needed to go get ready for whatever the group decided. “I’ll be in the bathroom,” he said, already out of his seat and on his way to the hatch that he’d seen Seth use once. It was a hexagonal panel that dropped down to the deck below.

At least this way I won’t be dragged further into it, he thought, willing the little elevator to lower him quicker. Maybe with me gone for a few minutes, they can recalibrate.

His head had barely made it below their deck level before Seth, Tilliver, and Emban started talking over one another again, in a much less productive example of Artonan multitasking than Alden had witnessed during the meeting.

He grimaced as Emban apologized for not being in the mood to watch Seth “try to be Ryada.”

“Yes. Only one member of our squad is allowed to be the <<cheery>> one, and everything must be misery until she returns. Seth and Bithe trying to make us smile is a betrayal. Your way is so much better.”

Tilliver could’ve stripped paint with that sarcasm.

“She needs a place to come back to. Her place.”

“She has one. This isn’t about Ryada’s needs! It’s about you trying to control everything for all of us because you’re scared and selfish! You’re acting like our squad is a tool you can use to force her to feel the way you think she—”

Alden was relieved when the hatch in the ceiling sealed again and cut off the sounds of their voices.

Is Seth not usually so cheerful? Is Emban controlling? Should I have brought Divin and Bithe down here with me so that the three people on this boat who aren’t in fight mode could stick together?

No…I’ve got enough problems of my own right now.

He felt sorry for them up there, but he was going to take a breather for however long he had and sort himself out.

He looked around.

Great. Even the bathroom on this ship is too complicated.

It was bigger than he’d expected. Everything was silver and gray, and the large windows gave him awesome river views from near the water’s surface. There were seats that were not toilets and a tile floor with channels running through it.

Is this a bathroom? The logogram for “dry” was on the wall near him. He touched it, and a panel slid up to reveal towels.

“I’m just going to give myself a break and ask,” he said. “Contract, where’s the toilet?”

[Press your hand to the wall on your left. There’s no logogram.]

He did as instructed and another panel slid aside.

Worried that he might only have a few minutes before Tilliver burst in and told him it was time to go, he splashed water on his face, took another dose from his inhaler, and looked through the contents of his messenger bag. What was he supposed to carry, wear, and do out on a knight training field? How had he landed himself in something similar to the pessimistic summoning scenarios that had haunted his brain before Healer Yenu and Stuart had helped him?

Alone in chaos with nothing but fifty feet of paracord and a poncho.

“Only it’s going to be together in simulated chaos with five near-strangers, fifty feet of paracord, and a poncho. Some honey locust thorns. Maybe hundreds of knights and votaries will be there watching me make a fool of myself. I’ve also got…a temper sphere with no enchantments left. A sling. One origami klerm.”

He had stuck it in this bag after class. He took it out now and set it on top of his head. The bathroom had a time delay on the wall that served as a mirror. It could be adjusted, but he hadn’t bothered, so he watched himself put the klerm there a few seconds later. The paper animal didn’t look like it would save him.

“Embarrassing myself in front of the people I’m trying to belong with isn’t worse than dying…but I don’t want to do either.”

He tucked the klerm back into the bag with the other odds and ends he’d brought for what, he now remembered, was supposed to have been a low-key day trip.

He didn’t even have decent clothes for this.

“Can I take my bag with me? Do Forgetful Traveler’s bags go with their owners into battlefields because they’re valuable magical objects that don’t want to be left behind, or will it make me look like all I brought to the fight was my designer purse?”

He shut the bag.

Let’s think this through. If they’re really taking me, there has to be some standard equipment. And one reason I’m not carrying armor and guns around is that I’m on the most well-protected, well-supplied planet in the known universe. If I need something to help me do my best, I can just buy it.

It wasn’t real chaos. Delivery existed.

For a moment, that gave him a feeling of control. He lacked things. He would buy things.

Easy-peasy. What do I want?

He stared down into the silvery bowl of the sink, waiting for an answer to come. He was willing to spend piles of argold on this, so…surely any second now, the answers were going to flicker to life in his brain like light bulbs.

Any second…

“Shit, I have no clue what I’m doing here!”

He laughed. It was more of a pressure release and an acknowledgment of the absurdity than genuine humor.

“I give up. Help me, please, before I end up at a knight training exercise with nothing but pieces of my birth tree for protection.”

He didn’t have to wait. The one he was addressing replied via his interface.

[Of course, Alden. Come out here and appreciate the river with me.]

He opened the bathroom door and there she was, standing across the tiled room looking out one of the windows. It reminded him of the meeting they’d had in his dreams at the streamview cottage.

That feels like it was so long ago.

“Not at all,” she said. “You’ve just come a long way since then.”

“I’m going to assume nobody upstairs has super hearing as one of their abilities since you’re here for an out-loud conversation.” He went to her. “I was about to try buying my way to being a helpful member of their squad. Then I realized I don’t even know enough about them or the rules to know what to buy. I’m not prepared for this. Have I made a mistake? Should I go up there right now and retract my offer to participate with them?”

She looked the same as she had last night when they’d spoken by the Yatanger triangle. She chuckled at his questions. “You have jumped and jumped again on this trip, haven’t you?”

“I had a few things that felt like wins, so I wasn’t cautious enough about this moth ship situation. You should have put a sign over it on my interface. ‘Warning: leads to training quest with unstable squad.’”

“But it was only a boat with young knights on it, and you thought it might be good to see Bithe again. Your own choices have made it more than a social visit.”

He sighed.

“What would you like to do?” she asked.

“I’d like to leave this planet unhated and unhumiliated when it’s time for me to go back to Earth. And undiscovered, as far as my secrets go.”

“You do want that. But if those were your only desires, would you have offered to help their squad with your skill?”

The number of buildings along the river banks had grown. Alden didn’t recognize them. He wondered how close they were getting to the coast and Wathe.

“Of course I want to know,” he said after a minute. What it’s like, if I can do it, how I’ll feel about my skill and the choices I’ve made when I’m working with them…

He didn’t need to say it all aloud since she knew.

“I don’t know how long it will be before another chance like this one comes my way. Can you tell me if going along with them will cause a disaster?”

“I can assure you that I will prevent all of my knights and the people training with them today from suffering significant physical harm. But protecting you all from embarrassment and mistakes would make the training a bit pointless. I promise to treat you as well as any knight on the field if you join us for our battle.”

That’s like a promise to let me ruin everything for the sake of realism.

But he did want to know.

“Could you at least help me figure out what to take with me? And what I should wear? So that I show up looking like I had more than five minutes to think about all of this.”

“I’ll always advise you about what to take with you into battle if I’m available and you ask. Would you like a little longer than five minutes to think?”

He thought he knew what she was suggesting. “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

******

******

Alden sat in one of the chairs in the tiled room and closed his eyes. When he opened them, only a second later, he was sitting on the couch in the living room of the house where he’d lived with his parents for the first few years of his life.

It’s looking a little different.

There was no Christmas tree with gifts this time. Through one window, he saw his old backyard on what looked like a summer’s day. A sprinkler was spinning in the grass. Beyond it was an impossible Chicago skyline.

“Come downstairs” was written on the television screen. He got up and walked barefoot across a fluffy white rug that his roommates had trimmed a few stains out of, through a kitchen that smelled faintly of canned cinnamon rolls, and to a door that he somehow knew would lead downstairs.

He found a massive room down there, clearly inspired by the supply library at the siblinghold.

Giant honey locust thorns pierced through the ceiling instead of tree roots, and flocks of paper planes and cranes circled above him, glowing to provide the room with light.

Unlike the supply library, there were no aisles of shelving and chests. Only a single piece of furniture waited in the center of the room. It looked like the piece in the streamview cottage that held all the conveniences for guests.

She stood waiting beside it in a blue striped jacket that Alden recognized.

“For some reason, I don’t remember the Nashville house having a basement like this,” he said when he reached her.

“No?”

“And are you dressed like Tuck from Needle & Wheedle?”

“I have different cufflinks,” she said, showing him the shiny gold logogram for Contract at her wrist.

“I guess I do associate him and Yinuo with getting geared up. For social battlefields anyway.”

He studied the piece of furniture. It was the one from the cottage, but the doors on top had a carving of him and Kibby. She was leaning forward to blow out the promise sticks on his Thegund seven-layer birthday dip.

“This image does make me want to beat up chaos.” He opened the doors.“I’m not spending your favor to be here for a while, am I?”

“Do you think selecting tools to help you perform your purpose as a knight, or an Avowed, should cost you something?”

“No. But the time-extension vision seems like a luxury.”

“It’s one you deserve!” she said brightly. “We won’t take it too far. Doing your best with limited notice is good training for you in its own way, but all of the others do get much more help than you’ve had before they set food on a field here. My Tilliver spent half a week deciding what he’d take with him today.”

“And then he picked a Rabbit at the last second.” Alden reached for a drawer. “I can’t think about it anymore, or I’ll chicken out. What’s in here?”

“Some things you will like, some things I suggest, and some things Stu-art’h imagines you carrying with you on missions when he should be paying attention to his instructors.”

The first drawer was full of pills and potion injectors. Alden opened the next one and found a wand. Something that looked like hair scrunchies was in the third.

“Talk me through it,” he said. “Obviously you don’t expect me to carry everything here with me. I won’t even be able to remember what that many different pills do. And I know half of what Stuart’s got in mind is going to be way too ambitious for me to use today.”

******

******

Alden felt like he’d had around an hour of planning time, but when he opened his eyes again, it had been just under ten minutes. His interface was crowded with proof that working with a vastly powerful entity as your guide was great for efficiency. Records of the orders he’d placed were already shifting to the side to make room for a notice that a drone was waiting at a summonarium to accept his arriving purchases and bring them to him.

A list of items he couldn’t or wouldn’t be providing for himself had been made for the squad of knights to take care of. There were a couple of things he considered nonnegotiable and one he really wanted that he thought they’d probably say no to.

An argold transfer was now going through to a maker of eyewear in Vethedya, and a reminder to text Stuart was flashing.

[Hi,] he typed mentally. [I’m probably going with Emban’s squad on their training quest this evening. I’ll explain how it happened later. Don’t worry. I might damage everyone’s opinion of my capabilities beyond all hope of repair, but other than that, I’m not an idiot and I’ll be completely safe. Wish me luck.]

His chest felt a little tight. It was definitely more than before the obstacle course, but it wasn’t unbearable.

Save some of that adrenaline for whatever is going to happen.

He headed for the elevator.

There was no loud argument underway when he made it up to what he thought of as the boat’s main room. They were all looking quietly at the map or their interfaces. But there was tension in everyone’s posture.

“Am I going with you?” Alden asked.

“Yes,” said Tilliver. It sounded like a threat.

“We’re discussing it,” said Emban, her attempt at a smile so strained that it made her look ill.

If this was real, and I was an Avowed they were about to take with them into danger, their behavior would make me scared for my life.

“Let me know when it’s unanimous,” he said, heading for the exterior door. “I’m sending you all the material you should review to understand what I can do, as well as a list of requests. And you should send me anything extremely important I need to know about you or our objectives today as soon as possible. I’ll be as ready as I can with or without that, but with it would be better.”

He went out onto the back deck and closed the door behind him. The vathas were gone except for a straggler here or there. He walked to the side and stood at the low railing, the breeze ruffling his hair.

Giving them a to-do list feels pretty unnatural.

There had been a couple of times this month when he’d wondered if Emilija would be willing to do a chore other than social media and email management for him, but he hadn’t worked himself up to ask her yet because he didn’t want her to think he was too demanding. Now I’m demanding things of knights.

Spending an hour that wasn’t an hour going over the tools he’d need for a journey into chaos again had highlighted the significance of this exercise for him.

This is as close as I’ll get to the real thing before I’m actually in the real thing. Maybe they can be a bit more experimental or casual about parts of it because they’ve already been doing the real thing together and they have access to this kind of training experience whenever they need it, but if I’m doing this I need to go all out.

Thinking that way had made him confront a couple of decisions he’d have agonized over if he’d had more time. Literally yesterday he’d been wondering if he needed to be excommunicated from the Palace of Unbreaking, and now he ran headfirst into the reality that for the next few years he was going to be using the wordchains he knew even if he thought the organization had serious flaws.

The sweet spot for wordchain usage as a knight was exactly where he was. Chaos on Goldbush wasn’t so bad that chains would break down rapidly or be impossible. He wouldn’t have to use fifty casts to get the equivalent of a single foundation point of efficacy. Being good at them was an advantage that enhanced everything else he could do.

One day, he’d replace wordchains with his wizardry and new affixed talents. But learning a “run faster” or “be agile” spell when he had a million other things to learn didn’t sound like the best use of his time. And the wordchains he knew would let him run faster and be more agile even when his free authority was at its weakest.

He’d gotten reassurance from Mother that the child who was his Opposite shouldn’t end up on the hook for anything he was able to cause with the chains he knew. All that was left was deciding how he felt about paying for the wordchains he used.

Knights tried to avoid negative halves, especially when they were working.

After he’d spent a day using chains to fight chaos was Alden really going to eat all the debt for them himself? Even if he didn’t have to? Being clumsy, slow, and anxiety-stricken for several hours in an unsafe location sounded like a good way to shorten his life.

The negatives couldn’t always be avoided, but according to Mother, there was a difficult spell that disconnected debt from debtor. It was illegal for most wizards, but there should be votaries who were very accustomed to casting it available on any planet Alden was likely to find himself on in the next few years.

A record of those dropped debts was regularly sent from the Rapports to the Palace to keep the chains healthy.

Alden was uncomfortable with the idea that volunteers at the Palace would be doing some suffering for him. He was more uncomfortable with the thought of being unable to control his own body and mind while he hid in a tent surrounded by demons.

He’d decided he’d be using all of his physical wordchains today, and if he thought fear or nerves were making him less effective, he’d put on Peace of Mind. The first thing on the squad’s to-do list was getting his chain usage for the day covered the same way their own would be. Alden had decided it was a nonnegotiable. If he were really helping them in chaos, he’d expect them to do this for him even if he were an ordinary Avowed.

Beyond the principle of it, he needed to test the gremlin. And he didn’t need the bad half of Peace of Mind waiting in the wings for him right now.

He watched the buildings and the other boats slide by. As a couple of minutes became several, he started to worry that they were in there finding their sense of teamwork by commiserating over what a pain in the ass he was.

If they’re like that, this wouldn’t be the kind of experience I need anyway. I’ll use everything I’ve learned and bought today with Stuart eventually.

He told himself that, but when Divin-zadja came out onto the deck, he knew he was going to be disappointed if she said to get lost. She walked over to stand at the railing with him. She was a little shorter than Stuart, and now that they were this close he noticed that she had a thin blue line tattooed around the curve of one ear.

“Seth is taking care of the wordchains, and Tilliver is ordering most of the supplies you asked for. One of the items may be substituted.”

“So Emban agreed.”

“I’ll honestly tell you that she doesn’t agree your inclusion is beneficial, but she agreed that it shouldn’t be her decision to make. Don’t feel alone! She doesn’t agree that my inclusion is beneficial either.”

“I’m sure it is,” Alden said.

“I’m sure it is, too.”

The factual way she said it made him realize he’d only said it to be comforting. Apparently, Divin didn’t need his reassurance.

“This much <<bickering>> is normal. This will be my fourth squad. I’m looking for someone, so I swap a lot. Binding puts pressure on everyone. And being home after a mission gives people a chance to reassess priorities. It means that changes happen even if your squadmates aren’t ready…but you shouldn’t worry about how it will go today. They’re all good knights.”

“Looking for someone,” said Alden. “You mean you’re swapping squads a lot to find a partner for inesvul.”

Divin turned to lean sideways on the railing and face him. “They’re out there, and they’re lucky I’m running around looking for them. Here I come.”

She had a soft smile on her face.

“I don’t know if you meant to break our squabble’s throat by coming through with assignments for everyone to do, but it worked well. And it’ll save us from some embarrassment. I didn’t know we needed to request some of those drugs individually for you instead of just asking for a species kit. How did you know? And you put your list together so quickly! Were you actually hoping we’d take you with us from the moment you sat down at the table? That’s not what I would have expected from the first human Ryeh-b’t I’ve met, so I wonder.”

“Look, there’s my drone arriving!” Alden said, grateful to the inanimate object flying toward the boat for providing him with a distraction so that he didn’t have to explain how he’d made such a thorough list of important items for an event he’d never witnessed. He wouldn’t even be taking the drugs Divin was talking about, but Mother had told him how having them along would affect her assessment of different penalties.

Their mission failing because they assumed Alden could use the same alien mosquito repellent as everyone else would certainly be an education on being careful with your Avowed, but Alden didn’t want to be a part of that  kind of learning opportunity if he could help it.

The incoming drone was a type he’d never seen before—a flying blue blob that settled silently onto the deck and then lifted off a moment later to reveal his purchases like they were an egg it had laid.

It wasn’t a shocking quantity of supplies, but the packaging on some of the items seemed to clue Divin in to what he’d ordered. She looked concerned suddenly.

“You didn’t have to spend that much on our quest. You didn’t have to spend any amount. We’d have borrowed near-equivalents for anything you wanted, and you’d just return them after we’re through.”

“I know,” said Alden. “But there were some things I knew I’d want to keep, so I went for it.”

“That’s the shop in Vethedya that one of my friends just ordered new eyerings from.” She was looking at the tiny box on top of the pile.

“It’s a small universe,” said Alden, picking up his new equipment.

Even smaller when you’re trying to buy something so well made that it will last you for a few trips into chaos.

He headed back into the boat with Divin following him.

“You needed even more than was on the list you gave us?” Tilliver sounded more worried than judgmental, but one of those pale eyebrows was raised, so Alden wasn’t sure.

“How much do you take with you in the field?” Alden asked. “You don’t run from demons in your favorite pezyva, I bet.”

“I don’t…”

Alden glanced at Emban. She was quiet in her seat, jaw set as she worked on her interface.

Seth shook her head about something, and Tilliver flicked one eye toward her while the other stayed on Alden.

“Everything you asked for is reasonable…except for the kelsithe. As fascinating as it would be to see one in use, it’s just too much for us to think through on short notice. The rarity and how troublesome the owner might be to deal with…maybe if we had more time. I’ll ask for a slybark shield instead. It was one of your alternate choices.”

The kelsithe was a shield Stuart imagined him carrying. But Stuart’s imagination could be too grand. Mother had told Alden there was only one kelsithe on the Triplanets that he’d actually be able to wield today.

I didn’t really expect it. Some other time.

“Slybark is fine.”

“The kelsithe would be better for your skill, though, wouldn’t it?” Bithe asked.

“Of course. But it was an odd request. I’m going back downstairs to get ready. I won’t be long.”

Bithe was frowning at his interface as Alden left.

******

******

Emban’s squad is ready to go, thought Noh-en, as the announcement of their arrival sounded throughout the staging area where she was working.

Noh only had a short while to be here at the training fields today in between lectures at DawnStep, so it was fortunate that her timing was good for a meeting with one of her art’h neighbors. It would be brief, but Noh’s encouragement couldn’t hurt. Especially since she’d heard that squad had failed this quest earlier.

That’s right. The Contract was pretending not to work in this area to mimic the inconveniences of being on a corrupted planet. Instead of using her eyerings, she had to look for the information about what had happened to Emban’s group using a display on one of the portable shelter’s walls. Tilliver-gare was hurt, and they were exhausted. I’m sure they want this second attempt to make right all that went wrong with the first.

Two other votaries were in charge of making sure all of the requests the squad had sent were met and their supplies were ready to go. They’d chosen one of the “weakened” flyers this time, so they must be planning to set it down before they reached the worst of the chaos in their field. That flyer would return here and probably be good for another flight or two before the Contract listed it as destroyed and removed it from the battle.

Noh-en liked to try to guess what all the knights who came through here were attempting. She made predictions about their successes and failures and then compared those predictions to what actually happened.

There wasn’t much time for it, since even in her current role as an errand runner for the more experienced votaries she stayed busy. But trying to develop her sense for what contributed to the ups and downs of the battle seemed like a proper thing for a votary to do.

Asay and Nell will be out here this weekend if they don’t change their minds. They’ll want to know how Emban’s squad performed, too.

What are their other significant requests besides the flyer? A few rings, an Avowed, a special…an Avowed? Noh blinked. They decided to summon for this?

There were quite a few Avowed around. Some of them were waiting to be summoned. Some were already on the field pretending to be demons. But Emban’s squad wasn’t one Noh expected to see an Avowed with. The Avowed on hand were experienced. Having one for a low-level mission might make it so easy that it didn’t really count as training.

Or everything will become a mess because they don’t have any practice at all leading an Avowed. And they’re not with a votary who could handle it for them, are they?

What species? Maybe they’re planning to do some terrain work as they go?

She tried to look it up. Instead of the clear and concise answer she’d expected, there was a narrative about how during Tilliver’s “recovery from his grievous wounds” they’d found an Avowed whose summoner “must have died”.

They wrote that he seemed eager to help and suited to their squad’s quest “despite him being a Ryeh-b’t, so we’re taking him with us. Please delete a different Avowed from the available resources so that the numbers work out and everyone knows we aren’t cheating.”

“How do you find an extra Avowed? They don’t just appear on their own!”

If knights want to trade one Avowed for another, then of course they can…but a Ryeh-b’t?

Noh was worried now. If they were bringing a griveck, then their goals must be completely different than during their first attempt.

Why wouldn’t they use one of the grivecks who are already available? she wondered, hurrying outside to meet their flyer.

There had been more notes on the display, but she might as well find out in person since they were here and all arriving knights needed to be greeted by a votary ready to take care of any last moment issues.

The pleasure flyer that had brought them from wherever they’d been enjoying their break landed near the bulkier, winged vehicle they’d be taking to their field. Noh had been told it was looking battered on the knight’s interfaces to add realism, but to her it appeared to be in excellent condition.

Emban was the first one to step out of the pleasure flyer.

She looks unhappy.

Noh held back her frown. Emban’s mood was to be expected. A votary should try to lighten it without disrespecting it. Bithe was right behind her. Then Tilliver-gare.

Griveck?

Seth.

No griveck.

Divin-zadja.

And finally Alden Thorn.

Alden Thorn? She stared at the human. Yes. That is Alden Thorn.

He looked just like the human Stu had introduced her to. But not.

Does Stu have something to do with this?

“Welcome,” Noh-en heard herself saying as she rose from a bow. “All is as you’ve ordered, and I will hear any more you might want and see it done.”

That was what she usually said. Usually, her attention was fully on the knights she was talking to, though.

Alden Thorn was all in black, wearing a pack on his back and a coil of rope at his waist with an obedience charm hanging from it. A pair of pouches beside it were unmarked. He had lenses of some kind in each eye. She could see the golden modifiers for them on his sclera.

And Tilliver was beckoning him over to see something the other votaries had laid out beside the flyer for the squad.

“Hello, Noh-en,” the human said to her as he passed.

She ended up nodding instead of speaking.

Well. He is a Ryeh-b’t.