Page 96 of Tidal Creatures

“Ah. I guess that makes sense. It’s the passage between this world and the City. I always sort of figured the rainbows were a function of entropy, and entropy is chaotic, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s a perfect manifestation of order at the same time.” Erin shrugs broadly. “I’m not the one who made the rules. Sometimes I sort of wish I were, because a lot of them would be very, very different.”

“It’s so quiet,” complains Roger.

“Only because you’re too used to having someone in your head all the damn time. I liked it better before that happened.” Erin gives Kelpie a sidelong look, then says, in a tone that implies she’s imparting a great and profound secret, “Dodger used to talk more. Not in conversations about serious shit, just like, in passing. She’d comment on the weather or ask about dinner. Normal people talking to each other things. Now she can go days without saying a word, and neither of them notice, because they’re so busy carrying on a conversation none of the rest of us can hear.”

Roger blinks at her. “You didn’t tell me it bothered you that much.”

“So there’s something in the world you don’t know? Be still my heart.”

“You okay?” Artemis asks, looking at Kelpie.

Kelpie hesitates, then shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I don’t want to be here. I was never going to be here again. I’m only here because we had to get to the gate. Why is it down here?”

“Maybe we needed to be down here, or maybe that alchemist we saw figured out a way to force the gates to manifest where he wants them to be.”

The door at the end of the hall slams open, then, and two figures in white lab coats lurch into the room. There’s something wrong with their faces, some indefinable lack of tension, some inaccuracy in the way their skin fits over their bones. Kelpie stiffens.

“You know them?” asks Artemis.

“I did,” says Kelpie.

“What does that mean?”

“It means they’re dead,” says Erin, moving in front of Roger and falling into a fighting stance. She tilts her head, smiling sunnily at the pair. “Hi. I’m the one who’s about to ruin your entire day.”

“Auf,” says Artemis with disgust, stepping to the side, putting herself next to Erin. She reaches behind herself, gripping something that isn’t there, and when she brings her hand around, she’s holding a bow, long and curved and gleaming like the gate.

“Why is this asshole so enamored with the things?” asks Erin. “They fell out of fashion centuries ago, right around the time you stopped being able to swap somebody’s kid out for one of them without getting caught.”

“What’s an auf?” asks Kelpie.

“Used to be an interchangeable term for ‘changeling,’” says Roger, eyes on the pair. They’re slowly advancing down the hall, walking without difficulty, their heads occasionally twitching as if they’re not quite sure what’s in front of them. “Of course, they’re not the same thing.”

“Nothing ever is,” says Kelpie.

“Alchemists make them out of dead people,” says Erin. “They’re different from constructs because they’re not as durable. An auf will fall apart in a matter of weeks unless you put a lot more care into it than most alchemists do. And you don’t want to know why they might take that kind of care. It’s almost always a sex thing.”

“Ew,” says Kelpie.

“Precisely.”

The two auf are continuing to head down the hall, not moving with any real urgency. They feel more like an environmental hazard than a real threat, or possibly a psychological attack: Kelpie is getting paler and paler as they approach, clearly recognizing the people they used to be. Artemis pulls her bowstring back. There’s no arrow notched. Maybe there doesn’t need to be, not when the bow and the arrows are made of the same textured moonlight.

“This isn’t a sex thing,” says Kelpie. “This is a message.”

“What’s the message?”

She pauses, swallowing hard. “Everyone I’ve ever cared about is dead,” she says, after a long moment has trickled by, unremarked. “These two worked in hydroponics. That’s where Margaret said they put the Rabbit they’d managed to manifest before they got me. So he’s probably dead too. The Congress is cleaning house.”

“Cleaning house and making it personal,” says Erin grimly. “All right, Artemis, you’ve dealt with aufs before. Anything I need to know?”

“Haven’t you?” asks Artemis.

“Yes, but not from the ‘killing them a second time’ side of things. It was more that I was around when they were being put together,” says Erin. “I even helped with a couple. Leigh called them her little craft projects. She never liked making her monsters out of mud or iron or other inanimate materials, and constructs like us were too much trouble. We got ideas in our heads, we rebelled against our makers. A good auf will never do that. A good auf is a tool, always and forever.”

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as a ‘good’ auf,” says Artemis. She pulls her bowstring back a little farther, and looks to Kelpie. “Can we kill them?”