Page 24 of Inkpot Gods

Roger jerks like he’s been stuck with a pin, abandoning all pretense that he’s not listening to their conversation as he slowly turns to stare at Chang’e. There is a clatter from somewhere far below, drifting through the half-real material of the house.

Chang’e looks unbothered by all of this, her eyes remaining fixed on Máni, her skin remaining bright with beaming divinity. “Everything I do, I do for the betterment of our community. Judy’s feelings are her own. I haven’t caused or shaped them in any way. But I have, perhaps, encouraged her to act on those feelings when her natural inclination might be to suppress them in favor of focusing on her position.”

“Why?”

“Because there is no virtue in self-denial, whatever the world may try to say to us, and because you speak of benefiting the Lunars as if we should have no other purpose in this world. Well, tell me, Máni, which benefits the Lunar community more: an intimate relationship with the embodied Doctrine, or a suppressed attraction leading to frustration and tension between us? Judy has influence that she would not otherwise have.”

“Hey, now,” says Roger, sounding mildly affronted.

Chang’e barely glances in his direction. “I say again, I have done nothing to force or direct Judy’s affections. She loves you because you speak more languages than she does, and because she finds you funny and sweet and protective in a very attractive way. You could release the Doctrine tomorrow and I believe she would still love you, and I would still allow it. I don’t control her heart.”

Roger frowns. “She’s never said she loves me. This feels like a conversation I should be having with her.”

“Oops,” says Chang’e blandly, with no real hint of apology. “Now, Máni. I said I wanted to talk to David. I have answered your concerns, and hopefully alleviated them. Let him come forward.”

“Yes,” he says, and sinks back, dropping down into the dark that waits when he is not ascendant. David responds by rising, and for one dizzying moment they have equal control of their shared body. Then Máni releases the reins, and David is in command once more, leaving Máni to only observe.

He immediately whirls on Roger, hands raised in supplication. “I’m so sorry, man,” he says. “I had no idea he was going to do that, we didn’t discuss it, he didn’t warn me. That was fundamentally uncool, and he was way, way out of line.”

“Yeah, kinda,” says Roger. He rakes one hand backward through his hair, momentarily looking like a disheveled cockatoo. “I don’t show up at your place and start interrogating the women you’re dating.”

“Not currently dating anyone.”

“That’s not the point. Please tell Máni that Judy’s friends will always be welcome in my home, but if he talks to her like that again, I won’t consider him a friend.”

David grimaces. “He can hear you, and he understands.”

“You people and your sublinguistics,” mutters Roger. “I will never understand how you don’t all lose your minds.”

“Divinity carves new channels for our thoughts to follow, even as ascension makes it possible for you to hold your singular self and all the words of the world in the same mind at the same time,” says Chang’e, surprisingly serene. “We are all as we were made to be, and we do what we must to survive.”

Roger meets her eyes, seemingly untroubled by the glow. “I need to talk to Judy when you’re done interrogating David,” he says.

“I understand,” says Chang’e. “I would expect nothing less.”

“Great. Now I’m going to go and make sure my sister doesn’t come charging up the stairs to break some noses. If you’ll excuse me?”

Roger turns and leaves the library, which doesn’t collapse into a haze of improbability as soon as he walks through the door, but for a moment feels like it might. David tenses, waiting for the moment when the floor pops beneath him like a soap bubble. Chang’e sees, and sighs.

“The equations that expand the space inside the house are completely stable, and not dependent on human presence beyond the fact that they need the embodied Doctrine to be alive to maintain them,” she says. “They hinge on Dodger more than Roger, at his request. He didn’t want to get so deeply sunk in a book that he forgot to keep bending space around himself. We’re safe here.”

“If you say so,” he grumbles, still uneasy.

“I do. Now. You wanted tell me about a possible alchemist? Why do you think there’s an alchemist?”

“Máni told you about the alkahest—”

“Alkahest is just a form of acid. He could have been smelling something else.”

“I smelled it too, and it wasn’t just any acid. Alkahest is acid mixed with ozone and mercury. It smells like atoms coming apart. It smells like dying. This was something that shouldn’t have been in my apartment, and I know it didn’t come from Raven or Snake. It was Lilianne.”

“I see.”

“You don’t, or you wouldn’t be sounding so calm about the whole situation,” he half-snaps. “She’s furtive. She slinks around corners, and she approaches socialization like she’s following a script. I know she has a thesis to finish, an advisor to answer to, but her classes are less coherent than mine are. She’s not here for an education. I’ve seen the books she brings back to the apartment, and they’re … eclectic to say the least.”

“Wouldn’t an alchemist be better about concealing themselves?” asks Chang’e.

“Not necessarily. A lot of them are self-taught. The Congress has taken serious losses in the last few decades, and they were very focused before that on undoing Baker’s alchemical mapping of North America, trying to prevent Reed’s creations from claiming the Impossible City.”