Page 55 of Butterfly Effects

The door slid open behind him. Ikko and I stepped into the airlock, and the guard didn’t comment on my silent companion, or ask Ikko where she was going. Between her jumpsuit and the slick surface of her mind, she genuinely wasn’t there for him.

Once we were outside, she giggled and seized my hand. The skin-to-skin contact was enough to plunge me beneath the shell of her mental defenses. I saw the village she was taking me to, the ancient woman she referred to as the Eldest Living, her parents and siblings. And more, I heard a word I hadn’t been expecting to encounter here, however far away we were from Earth.

We were on the public street, surrounded by Johrlac on all sides, and so I couldn’t ask aloud, only hold on to Ikko’s hand as we walked, and wonder what in the world a runaway preteen on Johrlar could possibly know about the Kairos.

Fourteen

ANTIMONY

“Never underestimate the power of gossip.”

—Jane Harrington-Price

The map room, in the aftermath of a terrible proclamation

THE DOOR CLOSED BEHIND THE four Johrlac, and Alice sagged in Thomas’s arms, sobbing into his chest. He held her tightly, watching the room like he thought it was going to attack us at any moment. It was … bracing, seeing the two of them like that. They were supposed to be untouchable, my powerful, terrifying elders, but here they were, brought low by a single group of Johrlac operating at a lower instar than Sarah. If they could do this to Alice, what could the queens who controlled this society do to the rest of us?

Sam apparently had the same thought. He stepped closer to me, large hands resting on my shoulders. “I know they took two of your cousins, and that’s a bummer, babe, it really is, but you have a lot of cousins, and I only have one of you. Do you think we could make with being someplace that isn’t here? Like, I don’t know, some other dimension entirely? I never got to see the one with all the giant spiders. That sounds better than staying here.”

I looked up at him, sighing. “You know I can’t do that.”

“I do,” he said, with what sounded like genuine regret. “But you know I had to try, right? I love Sarah and Arthur, I really do. They’re my favorite fucked-up weirdos in your family. I just love you a hell of a lot more.”

“I would certainly hope so, since you’re supposed to be marrying me.” I looked back to Alice and Thomas. She had stopped crying and was wiping her eyes, while he dabbed at her upper lip with a handkerchief he’d produced from a pocket. He looked over at us, expression hard.

“Being part-Kairos isn’t enough to protect against the full focus of a hunting Johrlac,” he said. “Never has been. We grew careless in assuming it would be sufficient. We won’t make that mistake a second time.”

“No, we won’t,” said Alice. She pushed herself away from him, then staggered slowly to her feet, swaying in place as she worked to get her balance back. “I should never have taken off my anti-telepathy charm.” She pulled it out of her pocket and slipped it back over her head, adjusting it until it hung under her shirt, directly between her breasts. She paused when she was done, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead.

“Shouldn’t have stopped drinking the cooking sherry, either,” she muttered. “My head is ringing like a damn gong. How long do we think this is going to last?”

“You have more experience with the Johrlac than I do, dear,” said Thomas.

“Yeah, but you have more academic research,” she countered. “Anything in there about them giving people chronic migraine as a form of punishment?”

“I’m not sure they’ve ever thought of it,” he said. “Let’s not make the suggestion.”

“I want to suggest a few things,” she said, tone leaving no question of whether or not those things would be bloody and violent. She looked around at the rest of us. “I heard you just now, Sam. If you really want to bail, we can’t stop you. I wouldn’t even blame you—this isn’t your family yet, not quite, and this may be your one opportunity to hit the bricks. But you’ll still be stuck in this dimension, because we don’t have the resources to get you home.”

He huffed, then slumped where he stood. “That, and you’ll probably hate me forever, which is totally fair, because I’d hate me forever too. These people are—they’re not great people. I’ve always been a little weirded out by the way you’ll all accept that cuckoos are universally evil unless they’re related to you, because that’s not the kind of racist or speciesist you try to be. But now that I’ve met more of them, I’m wondering how you ever got close enough to learn that some of them aren’t complete and total assholes.”

“Well, our son married a cuckoo’s daughter, and that sort of opened the door, although not until after I’d decked the mother of the bride at Kevin’s wedding,” said Alice. She was looking better by the moment, her color improving and her balance getting more stable. She had started to prowl around the edges of the room, peering at the cubbies full of rolled scrolls.

“How many major family decisions have you made via fistfight?” asked Sam.

“Most of them,” answered Alice and I, in unison. I shot her a look. She shot one back, clearly amused, but didn’t comment, only continued peering at the various scrolls.

“What are you looking for, dear?” asked Thomas.

“I’m not sure, but I’ll know it when I see it,” said Alice. She paused at one of the cubbies, beginning to poke around inside it with more focus. “If you need something else to be pissed about, Lybee being here means they knew what Naga was having her do to me, and they allowed it. His other Johrlac helpers—the ones who came before her—may be here, too.”

“The thought had already occurred to me,” said Thomas, voice going dark and somewhat dangerous. When he sounded like that, he wasn’t a man I’d want on the other side of a fight I couldn’t get out of. “But if I go around setting everyone who hurt you while I was detained on fire, I’m going to get the sort of reputation that brings unwanted guests back to the house. I can let her live, for now. Unless you’d prefer I didn’t…”

“I’m not that kind of malicious,” said Alice. “Sometimes I wish I were, but I haven’t been since I outgrew putting my hair in pigtails.”

“I miss your pigtails,” said Thomas.

“You’re the only one,” she replied, pulling out a map scroll and moving to open it on the table. “Look at these directional arrows. Caerus borders on Johrlar, but it doesn’t border on Earth.”