Riley was worrying at her thumbnail with her teeth, and had her legs pulled up under her in the chair in Nora’s office. She and Therese had given their best explanation of what they’d experienced, and now Nora was silent, reading over the notes she’d taken, occasionally stopping to look off into the middle distance or make brief eye contact.

After a long moment Riley realized Nora had stopped looking around, and was staring at her. She froze, her right thumb against her teeth, her left hand wrapped around her right wrist. “W-what did I—”

“Nothing. Nothing important, I hope.” She looked over at Therese, who was similarly curled into another of the chairs. “I have noticed that you have many of the same habitual and reflexive behaviors as Therese, and generally dismissed that as nothing more than the way in which we come to imitate those we’re closest to.” Nora tipped her head to the side, as though getting a better look at Riley. “That imitative pattern has grown more pronounced and clear since your shared experience.”

“Why would that— Oh. Hm.” Therese started to ask, and then had a realization.

“Why? What?” Riley asked.

“My suspicion is that you’ve been sharing at an unconscious level through your link,” Nora said. “But how you described the Tower’s effect on your mind—”

Riley caught on almost immediately. “All the stuff that got erased. Had to get replaced somehow.” She felt a twisting horror in her gut.

“And your mind was—”

“With me,” Therese finished.

“So what, I copied your, your subconscious?”

“One step down from that, I suspect,” Nora said.

“Habits,” Therese said. “Reflexes. Things we do without thinking. Automatic behaviors.”

“You brought your mind, and its contents, over to the refuge Tee was providing, but…” Nora shrugged. “You left behind anything that only mattered to the body you were retreating from.”

Riley let her hand fall, a cold feeling sinking into her chest. While Nora was explaining, she’d put her thumb back to her teeth again. She didn’t even realize she’d done it.

“So I didn’t really survive, did I?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Nora said, but there was no malice in her voice. “Your identity is intact, yes?”

Riley nodded. “I think so? I— How would I tell, though?”

Therese interrupted whatever Nora was about to say. “That’s just brain-in-a-jar stuff, Ry. You either trust you are who you think you are, or.” She paused, gave Riley a shrug. “You know.”

Solipsism, Riley thought. None of this is real, I’m actually on an operating table and this is a dying hallucination. She shivered, holding herself, letting her arms press her aching breasts against her for the tangibility of it, for the reality of the sensation. No, this is real. This is the reality I want to believe in.

“I want to return to the topic of the link,” Nora said, back into her Theory Professor persona.

Riley’s plan, which she’d first run past Therese and then the two of them together had brought to Nora to discuss, was simple. If one person could absorb some of the Sigil and prevent some of the harm it would do to Riley, what could they accomplish with many people, all absorbing some of the energies, distributing the damage among many participants?

“Therese, when you first described it to me, it was just an occasional flash of emotional insight, and one that initially required a Working to activate.”

Therese nodded. “Or at least required a Working to find.”

“Over time, though, it’s become more pronounced? More, ah, available?”

Riley and Therese both nodded. Riley said, “It’s kind of always there, now. Except, we can, um. We can leave each other alone for, uh.” Riley felt her cheeks burn. “Private things.”

Nora smiled faintly and waved a hand to indicate she understood. “And the complexity of what can pass between you? That has also increased, yes?”

Riley nodded again. “I mean, even without the part where we’ve been inside each other’s heads, yeah. We can do, um.” She looked over at Therese, questioning. “How would you describe—”

“Empathetic communication,” Therese said. “We can convey emotions to each other.”

Riley frowned slightly. “I think it’s more than just emotions, now, though. I mean, it’s still not words or anything, but some of the stuff we’ve passed back and forth, like when you called me down from the suite during the attack? That felt more complex.”

Therese nodded. “It’s certainly gotten more useful over time. More nuanced.”

Nora had been looking down at her notes. Now she looked up again, but her eyes were far away. “If I could propose a metaphor?” She didn’t wait for a response. “It seems as though this link could be imagined as a kind of aperture, a passage between your minds. And with constant use, through the divinations, the dream-state sharing, the communication, and now the passing of Sigil energies, it’s become dilated.”

Therese shuddered. “That’s such a gross way to think of it.”

Nora held up her hands in a helpless shrug. “It’s accurate to your descriptions, though. The passage is larger than it was. Larger ideas, larger cognitive states, larger celestial energies can move through it, where before it was just a pinprick.” She focused her eyes on Riley, and then Therese. “I suspect if you worked at it, you could speak, with language, through the link.”

“Okay, but what does that get us? How does that help?” Riley tried not to let too much of her anxiety into her voice.

“For your plan to work, I imagine the aperture will need to be very large.”

Riley looked at Therese, who was lost in thought, and asked, “How large is very large?”

“At least the size of the channel you’ve established with Therese, but if you’re imagining some kind of equal distribution? Probably even larger.” Nora tapped her finger on her chin. “Potentially large enough to cause serious identity distortions.”

“What does that mean?” Therese asked.

“It’s why I asked about the imitative patterns. I noticed some amount of habit-sharing between the two of you before. I worry that an aperture that would allow sharing the Tower Sigil would potentially be so large as to muddle the ego distinctions between the link participants.”

Riley rolled her eyes, and Nora caught the expression and sighed. “In simple terms, you could lose track of which parts of you are you, and which parts are one of the other participants. Mixing your individual senses of your selves.”

Therese inhaled sharply. “Riley, when you first arrived—”

Riley nodded. “We were fused. We’d lost our separate identities.”

Nora’s eyes focused on them again. “You didn’t mention this before.”

“Forgot about it,” Riley said. “Right at the beginning, right when Therese pulled me over to her mind. We were, uh. Mixed up.”

Nora had a sharp, incisive expression. “I would like to propose an experiment.”

Riley looked deliberately towards the door of the office. “That sounds like, you know—”

“Yes, yes, technically I should not suggest this without one of your cadre-mates present. They will, unfortunately, clutter the situation unnecessarily. Let’s say that, hm. Let’s say that Therese and I are going to perform this experiment, and if you happened to come along, well.”

Therese snorted. “That’s the letter of the law, all right.”

Nora looked ostentatiously innocent. “I would never try to circumvent the entirely reasonable and well-considered regulations of this Academy, Adept Lasalle.”

Therese smirked. “Very well, Adept Nyström. I defer to your judgement,” she said with exaggerated pretension.

Nora stood, walked behind her desk, and returned with one of the empathy rods. “This has, I believe, allowed Riley to achieve a substantial level of mind-sharing with others?”

Riley nodded. “But Marama made it sound like it wasn’t supposed to?”

Nora smiled slightly. “Let us experiment, then. I have a theory.”

Therese giggled. “Of course you do, you—”

“Hush,” Nora said, and the look she gave to Therese was affectionate, smirking with a shared in-joke.

Nora moved her chair closer to Therese, and sat down again. “Therese, if you would take the other end of this rod?”

The two of them closed their eyes, and Therese took hold of the other end of the empathy rod. Almost immediately, Riley felt an inexorable pulling sensation, a lassitude that dragged her eyelids down. Before she could stop herself, she slipped into a trance.

Ah, there you are.

Nora’s presence in Therese’s mind was ephemeral, just a ghost-figure floating in the featureless no-space. Therese, by contrast, was solid and fully present.

Sorry, Ry. Had to drag you in before Nora would explain anything to me.

I just didn’t want to have to explain it twice.

Riley found the multiple mind-voices difficult to follow, but she nodded. So what are we doing?

My theory was that the link itself was interacting with the simple Working that Marama had embedded in the empathy rod Charm. And that seems to be the case; I am far more present in this landscape than should be allowed by the Working. I shouldn’t be able to see you, for example.

Riley frowned. Okay, so… uh, so what?

Therese’s amusement slipped out in a little giggle. She had a theory, Riley! And it was proven correct! You have to let her be smug for a while. It’s a rule. Aaa!

The latter exclamation was in response to Nora’s sudden appearance next to her, and Nora poking her repeatedly in the abdomen. Her intangible state meant that her hand passed through Therese’s solid form, her fingertips vanishing into her girlfriend’s side.

Nora, it’s cold! Cut it out! It feels weird and cold when you put your ghost fingers inside me—

Too late, Therese realized what she was saying. Groaning, she covered her face with both hands, as both Riley and Nora started laughing.

Okay, okay. Can we look at the link now? Please? Therese didn’t think she was actively whining, but all of them were pooling emotions by now, and she was pretty sure Riley and Nora could both read her embarrassment from the empathetic link with no need to see it on her face.

The link was, as before, visually present in the no-space as a flickering red spark, like sunlight off chrome at the periphery of their vision. Riley imagined it closer, and then they were all clustered around it.

Something is making it flicker like that, Nora thought, and before either of Riley or Therese could intercept her, she’d reached out to put her hand into the spark.

The flood of sensations and memories that filled Riley’s mental vision was overwhelming. Flashes of Nora and Therese together, sense-images of their intimacy, bits of whispered conversation, secrets shared, ecstasies, sorrows, despair and pain and joy and exultation.

And at the same time, Riley could feel the same happening to Nora, her nights with Su and Eve, the feel of their hands on her skin, the warmth of holding Himari close and smelling her hair, the moans of pleasure and the terror of the Tower visions, the face of the Spike, the awful Voice, and the terrible word [inheritor], and the red dripping viscera inside the dark cave of the windshield, and then with a silent scream of horror, Riley pulled away, or Nora did, or Therese did, and they were all back in the office, awake.

Nora and Therese were wide-eyed, looking at Riley, who took a moment to find herself in the jumble of perspectives she’d just been abruptly disentangled from.

“What?” The looks on their faces were unreadable,.

“Riley, you just...”

Nora spoke up into Therese’s hesitation. “You live with that all the time. The… The Spike. The Voice.” It wasn’t really a question.

“I… yes? Since the, since the Mountain, I guess, I’ve—”

Therese was next to her, then, her arms wrapped around her. “We’re going to find a way out of this, Riley.”

Nora was silent for a while. Then she said, “I was able to get a better sense of what the link actually is, and I think that might be useful.” She nodded to Therese. “It’s a divinatory link.”

Therese frowned. “Those are transitory. It’s why we have to feed Workings through them quickly, to get them established before the link closes. They can’t sustain themselves. Like the network link you and I designed in the City? I made the divinatory pathways for it, but you had to figure out the Working to keep them open and usable.”

Nora nodded. “I wasn’t just trying to torment Novice Hawkins when I touched the link. I suspected there was celestial energy there. Not a Working; we’ve both gone looking for any active Workings that would be sustaining the connection, and found nothing. But it stood to reason that something must be powering the connection.”

She drew with her finger on the low table’s surface, leaving a faint glowing trail. Neat trick, Riley thought, and then realized it was probably something Worked into the table itself. Make your work surfaces writable. Like whiteboards for tables.

The thing she drew was a pair of circles, overlapping, with a tangle of lines around them that all seemed to indicate the circles were being pulled apart, like lines of motion in a comic panel. She looked up at Riley.

Yeah. Okay. “Torn Asunder by Taloned Wings,” Riley said, and there was a faint shiver of celestial response. Nothing that required any action, not enough to need grounding, but this Sigil, this one in particular, had been with her for so long now that she recognized it before Nora had drawn even half of its lines.

Therese gave her a final squeeze and returned to her chair. “We’ve used this one before. It’s what got us out of— well. That place.”

Riley nodded. “I called it without even thinking.”

Nora gestured at Therese. “But as I recall, this is also the Sigil that.” She paused significantly.

“It was.” Therese nodded. “It’s the one Riley used to escape the car accident.”

Riley felt a cold tendril of fear. The accident. Everything about it was a red-lit burning horror in her mind. Just thinking about it—

Therese flinched, visibly. Fuck.

“I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“No, it’s not your.” Therese waved her hand towards Riley. “It’s not your fault. That’s just something that always gets through no matter how much I’m trying to pull back from your emotions.” She smiled faintly. “It’s horrible to say it, but I’m kind of glad the trauma of it keeps you from thinking about it very much. It sucks.”

Riley nodded.

“That’s precisely what I would expect, though.” Nora tapped on the Sigil she’d drawn. “In the moment that you, Riley, were overwhelmed by the experience? Therese, you made a divinatory connection which was immediately flooded with remnant celestial power. Riley calls Sigils instinctively and they fully occupy her mental landscape, so a divinatory link established at that moment—”

“It’s being held open by a demon,” Therese said, her voice taut with astonishment and fear.

“I believe so. I believe there’s a Sigil, bound into those overwhelming memories, and it’s sustaining that initial divinatory channel.” She waved her hand over the table, and Torn Asunder faded away from the surface. “And every time you bring another Sigil into your mind-space, Riley—”

“I’m reinforcing it. Opening it wider.”

They sat quietly for a moment. Finally, Therese spoke. “Okay, what do we do with this? How do we use this to spread the burden of the Tower Sigil?”

“Do I have to go through the, uh. The accident. Um, do I have to re-experience that every time?” Riley’s skin crawled at the thought of it, but if there was no other way?

“I don’t think that would work. I think it needs to be a new, intense experience for each channel. Otherwise I’d also have a link to you right now, and I do not,” Nora said.

“So. I just have to have an overwhelming emotional experience. And also do a Divination. And also invite a Sigil in.” Riley laughed weakly. “And I know how to do exactly one of those things. And we’re running out of time.”

Therese spoke, and Riley felt her sending reassurance through the link. “I think I can give you a crash course in Divination. It won’t be the whole field of study, just the basics of how to make links between things, but it should be enough to get a channel opened so you can do the rest.”

“As for the Sigil,” Nora said, “I suggest staying with Torn Asunder. It has a nice congruence for connections between two things, and as it already has a fairly substantial foothold in your mind, it should be easier to call and steer it in the directions you require.”

“Fuck. Wait, this means. Uh, this means calling a Sigil and letting it possess me, um, here in the City.” Gaveny’s lecture flickered through her mind. “Which is bad, I’ve been told.”

Nora nodded. “It probably is. But since the initial connection happened in the Primary, it should be possible to do this in the Primary as well.”

Therese interrupted. “Coordinator Sengupta banned her from the Mountain. She can’t go there.”

Nora smiled slightly. “We don’t need to use the Portal. A known portal location that leads somewhere usable should be sufficient.” Her smile turned wicked. “And with a close friend in the Rangers, I’m sure you’ll be able to find something.”

Riley felt Therese flood with embarrassment as she saw her face turn bright red. Huh. I guess not all of those nights I had to tune her out were because of Nora. She resisted the urge to tease Therese out loud, but sent a kind of exaggerated ‘oh really’ along the link, which made Therese blush even harder.

“So we go to the Primary, I use Divination to link up to a volunteer, and then I get possessed and uh, hope the Sigil knows what the fuck to do.”

Nora nodded.

“But um, there’s still one problem. How do I…” Riley shivered. “How do I get into another car accident? Other than the um, the obvious way.”

Nora shook her head. “You don’t.”

There was a pause, and then Therese laughed. “Right. No, you don’t.”

“What?” Riley could feel the smug amusement from Therese.

“There are other intense emotional experiences one could have, Novice Hawkins,” Nora said, primly.

And then Riley got it, too, and now it was her turn to flush bright red.

# # #

“Divination is basically making connections.”

Therese shifted on her cushion. She’d stolen multiple armloads of them from the Divination classrooms, and piled them all over her office floor, so that everyone would have somewhere comfortable to sit. Suliat had arranged herself in a careful side-sitting posture, hands in her lap, attentive; Eve was hugging her knees, and had one of the cushions squished between her body and her thighs; Himari was sprawled bonelessly with her head propped up on her elbow.

Riley was cross-legged and, Therese noticed, positioned roughly in the center of the rest of the cadre, equidistant, like the nexus around which the others orbited. I wonder if they do that on purpose, or if it just happens naturally when they all gather?

“I thought it was seeing the future,” Himari said, with a casual deliberateness that gave away her intent: to be irritating, just to see how much she could get away with. Therese was suddenly very glad she wasn’t going to be the cadre’s official Divination instructor next year.

Assuming we’re around to do instruction, of course.

She dismissed the thought before it could sideline her with worry. “That, and everything else we do, is managed by making connections. Linking things. To ourselves, to other things.”

“Like Sigils,” Riley said.

“Yes. Last week, when I explained how we get prophetic dreams, I described it as something like wandering around the celestial realm and finding the dreams. But the ‘wandering’ part, I kind of glossed over since I wasn’t expecting you to be doing any of it.” Therese mimed pulling herself along a rope. “We do it by linking to a Sigil we know, and we use that link to bring ourselves closer to the Sigil. Then once we’re near it in celestial space, we can find nearby prophetic dreams and enter them.”

“And that’s also a kind of linking, I’m guessing?” Suliat asked.

“It is, though you can end up in one just by getting too close to the Sigil it’s associated with, if it’s a strong enough dream.”

Riley shivered. “Some of them are really strong.”

Therese could feel her revulsion through the link. Whatever she’d seen in the distortion, when she’d been dragged into the vision and Therese had been left behind, it had left a permanent mark.

She moved onwards before Riley’s mood could set in to the whole room. “When you create a Working to learn information, you do it by linking yourself to the thing you’re trying to learn something about, and then you apply the Working to that link. We also use Divination when we make a connection between the City and the Primary, with one of us in each place, making a link to each other across the boundary between the worlds. When I um, when we attacked the rotten place in the City, I linked a bunch of the Rangers together, and then Nora and I made a Working to keep that link open.”

Which led, of course, to Therese revisiting her memories of that day. Of the feeling of being hollowed out. Of the twisting tangle of mouthparts diving for her flesh.

In the silence that followed, Eve leaned forward and touched Therese’s knee. “How do you, um, how do you actually do it though?”

She’s so quiet that it’s easy to forget what a natural empath she is. How quickly she attunes to emotions around her. Therese wondered if Eve would end up in Divination. She’d only ever wanted the celestial realm, but there were other diviners whose sole focus was on linking to other people, helping them process their emotions, healing their minds and easing their burdens.

Then again, what happens the first time she runs into something really horrible in someone else’s dreams?

Therese gave her a quick smile and shook herself back into focus. “Yeah. Okay. It’s kind of an instinct thing, for me? Now, anyway. At first, there’s all kinds of meditative work you need to learn to find the quiet empty place inside yourself, where you can attune yourself to other people, things, uh, Sigils. Kind of like the feeling when you start to imagine a Sigil, just before you see the fire and the shape in your mind? There’s that quiet pause?” She looked at the faint bafflement on all their faces. Shit.

“Right, uh, so here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to lead you all through an exercise and as part of it I’m going to link us all together briefly.” She motioned in a circle to indicate all of them. “This is a shortcut, basically. Instead of trying to teach you all the why and how, I’m just going to have you follow along. Do what I do, don’t worry about why it works.”

She paused for a moment, trying to work out how to phrase her next request. “I uh, I’m going to need your consent to do this, because we’ll be in each others’ emotions. Only shallowly? I’m going to try to keep it very light and surface-level, and we won’t be diving into each others’ deepest secrets or anything. But it’s still kind of a privacy thing and it’s possible we see things that—”

Suliat cut in. “Therese. You’ve got a direct line to Ry’s emotions, yes?”

Therese nodded.

“I’m guessing you’ve already… been along with her a few times? At night?”

Himari snickered, and Eve turned red. And from the way her cheeks burned, Therese suspected she’d turned just as red, herself. “I, um. I, that is.”

“I think we’re all past familiarity, wouldn’t you say?” Suliat’s voice was completely neutral and calm, but Therese could feel the giggles threatening to break loose from Riley. Suliat’s poker face was unbeatable, but the others in the cadre had come to recognize the subtleties of her intonation that gave away her teasing.

Christ, do they even need to link at this point? It’s like they already live inside each others’ heads half the time.

“Right. Yes. Okay. I’ll uh, I’ll do the linking. I’m going to connect you all to me, because Riley can come along for free that way, and it’s less work for me to build the Working to keep the connection open.”

She walked the cadre through a series of relaxation exercises, a kind of guided meditation to put them into receptive states, and then she began. “Reunited With Memories Lost to Grief,” she said in a voice just above a whisper, and the shape inscribed itself into her mind.

She reached out from the quiet place in her mind, feeling instinctively towards the other minds that her divinatory sense told her were nearby. Next to her, Riley’s awareness throbbed like a beacon, and she could feel the girl watching her intently, both within and without. As she tentatively reached out with each link, she Worked the Sigil into the fabric of the connection, pulling apart the lines of celestial fire and feeding them into the equations. She’d adapted some of them from the Working she and Nora had created, but vastly simplified from that, just a quick sketch of connection, just enough to keep the divinatory channels open for a few minutes.

“There,” she said, and opened her eyes. “Hopefully you can all feel that?”

“That’s weird,” Himari said. “It’s like I can almost see the room through your eyes.”

Riley laughed. “You get used to it.” Then after a moment, she said, “Actually, no, you don’t ever really get used to it. You just stop being surprised by it.”

“This isn’t nearly as, um, intimate? As the rod thing?” Eve’s emotions were a mix of embarrassment and excitement.

“That was probably—” Therese began.

“—something to do with me,” Riley finished. “By the way, Tee: it feels like I can hear an echo. Just, uh, in case that matters.”

“Huh. Well, we’re not going to be keeping this active for long.”

Himari was trying to keep herself away from the Worked link, like trying to hold the entire sensation of connection at arm’s length. Awkward discomfort radiated from her. “Okay, what are we doing with this? Cause it feels fucking weird and I don’t know if I like it.”

“Right.” Therese focused, grounded the remains of the Sigil, and tied off the Working to sustain itself without any additional input from her. “I’m going to slowly create a Divinatory connection, and I’m going to share the sensation with you all. I think, once you feel it happening, you’ll be able to do it yourself.”

She checked the connections again, took a deep breath, and let herself drift into a divinatory trance. She hadn’t been sure what to try Divining first, since contacting a Sigil would already be familiar to them, so she’d decided instead to link to Nora.

Gradually she extended her awareness from the calm meditative center she’d created. The entire celestial realm drifted overhead, calling her inwards, but she stayed centered, reaching, out and down towards the Theory department.

This reaching, this straining towards something, was really the heart of divination. It came up in almost every other field of magic; nearly every working included some form of the divinatory process. It was just diviners who focused it into a flexible multi-purpose tool, magical appendages to manipulate the world at any distance, to give the Adept reach and control.

She was letting herself get lost in the sensation of straining for connection. Focus, Therese.

She pictured Nora, and did so with as much clarity of thought as she could manage. It was like trying to enunciate clearly and at volume, like speaking from a stage. She wanted the cadre to feel what she was feeling. Reaching.

And then, there she was. Nora, in her office, reading. The connection completed, latching onto her with a feeling of satisfaction. Like a stretch that ends in a trembling burst of endorphins.

She held the connection briefly, and her thoughts drifted to Nora, to the physicality of her, the realness of her body and her presence. She could feel the depth of her love, could feel the impossible light of her swelling in her chest and gut, the wonder of her, the adoration—

Riley was sending gentle amusement. Therese returned from her distracted reverie, and realized she was feeling some variant of the same from all the novices. Shit, I’ve been shouting ‘I love Nora’ into a divination link. Belatedly, she shook herself for having chosen her girlfriend as a Divination target. You’re very clever and very good at your job, Therese. Jesus.

“Okay. Hopefully, um.” She let the links drop. “Hopefully you got the basic sense of it. What it feels like to. Uh.”

They were all grinning.

She felt her cheeks burn.

Himari opened her mouth to say something, and from the look on her face Therese could guess what the subject might be. Before Himari could say anything, though, Eve leaned over to push her with both hands, tipping her onto her back from the crossed-legs position she’d ended up sitting in. “H-hey!”

Eve, giggling, followed her to the floor, and Suliat rolled her eyes. “Honestly, it’s like babysitting a—”

Riley cleared her throat, and the others quieted.

“That’s it, then? Just that reaching sensation, from a trance?”

Therese nodded. “Basically. Think about what you’re trying to link to, and then reach out for it from within the trance. If you do it right, it will feel like stretching a muscle.”

Riley nodded. “How soon can we get started?” Her voice was quiet and serious.

Therese looked at the others, shrugged. “As soon as you want, I suppose. We just need to talk to Brynn and find a place to do the work.”

Riley stood. “Okay. I’ll go see her after dinner.”

As she left, Therese felt the calm and quiet resignation that had overtaken her.

# # #

At the light tapping knock on her office door, Therese called “Come in.” She was sorting through her notes, scribbled down on a sheaf of loose paper pulled from notebook after notebook, surrounding diagrams and Sigil geometry and equations. None of what she was doing was going to end up in any official reports, and she was kind of planning to burn it all once they’d finished executing Riley’s plan.

Assuming we succeed. Then again, if we fail, nobody’s going to give a shit about whether I followed proper procedures.

“Brynn, hi, listen, I need to ask you a big favor,” she began.

“I’ve asked Adept Keelan to wait down the hall,” Headmistress Gaveny said. “So that you and I could talk.”

Therese looked up, frozen. Oh shit.

“Good afternoon, Adept Lasalle. Would you mind clearing that chair off for me so that I can sit down?” Gaveny gestured at the battered, upholstered chair that lurked against one wall, which had acquired a litter of books and notes since Riley had stopped using it. “I can see the chair, but I’m afraid the objects on it aren’t quite persistent enough for me to be able to see them.”

Therese had absolutely no idea what she meant, but nodded. “Yes, of course. Um. One sec.” It was a matter of only a half a minute to gather everything and set it aside on a low work table that had a reasonably flat area still unoccupied in its center.

“Thank you.” The Headmistress glided silently over to the chair and, as Therese retreated, she folded herself gracefully into the seat. “To answer your unspoken question, I am able to navigate with the aid of the Tower, but it does not perceive on the same short timescales as we mortals. A chair that has been in place for weeks has left its mark in the Tower’s internal understanding. The detritus you’ve deposited on it in the last few days is little more than a grey blur.”

Gaveny’s eyes were bound by a length of black cloth, which matched her black robes and concealed whatever ruin the explosion and attack had made of them. As far as anyone knew, she was completely unhindered by her blindness, and moved about as though she were not injured. This was an insight into her coping strategies that Therese suspected no-one else in the Tower had been given, except perhaps the medics in the Infirmary.

“And to answer your inevitable follow-up question: I am very diligent in ensuring everything in my personal environment is carefully put in its proper place. It is mortifying to trip over one’s own slippers, when one has absent-mindedly kicked them off near the washroom.” Gaveny inclined her head towards Therese. “But that is not what I came here to talk about, and it is not the subject you are nervously waiting for me to broach.”

Therese nodded, swallowing hard. She always knows everything, she thought. Or does such a good job of seeming to that it might as well be true. “I, um. You know about—”

“Of course I do. Let me briefly outline my understanding, so that you can correct any mistaken details, yes?”

Therese waited, knowing this wasn’t actually a question.

“You intend to take Novice Hawkins to the Primary — and while your attempt to skirt the ban that Coordinator Sengupta has placed on her is a clever idea, the ban is for the entire Primary, not simply the Mountain. There, you intend to have her make a divinatory link to one or more of her cadre, and engage in some light demonology to make those links permanent. And this will, in some way, allow her to avert the catastrophe that the pair of you have been seeing, and diligently reporting to Diviner Rajavi, since I tasked you with that duty.”

Gaveny had been ticking points off on her fingertips. The count stood at four, which she held up before her. “Have I missed anything pertinent?”

Therese cleared her throat, knowing she’d croak if she said anything without first doing so. “I uh. I, that is. I think they may also need to. Um. Be intimate.”

“Oh? I do wonder how you discovered that particular — ah, of course, Adept Nyström.”

Therese felt her cheeks burning.

“I was not trying to be suggestive, dear. I was simply cataloguing your various strengths.” Gaveny smiled faintly, which looked strange on her usually severe face. “So, Novice Hawkins will establish these links, and she will then do something. And presumably we’ll be saved. I have one question, and one suggestion. First: why the links?”

Therese couldn’t be sure how much of the plan Gaveny already knew, and she also knew that there was absolutely no way to lie to her face and get away with it. The woman was uncanny, teasing hidden shades of meaning from even the most casual remark. She would know instantly if Therese tried to dissemble.

So she dove in with full and radical honesty. “Our best outcome involves Riley being consumed by the Tower so that it can defend itself against the Spike. She thinks, based on what we shared during the recent attack, that it’s possible to spread the burden between linked people. And um, not kill any of them.”

Gaveny was silent and still for a long moment, thinking.

“Have you, either of you, discussed this plan with.” She paused, as though sorting through a bin of possible words. “The Tower.”

Therese’s eyes widened. “N-no?”

“No nighttime visions, no dream conversations laden with meaning?”

“I’m not, I don’t know how to,” Therese began.

“I’m certain that if you applied yourself, you could manage it. In any event, it might be wise to discuss your notion with our strange benefactor. For one thing, if what you’re doing is doomed to failure, the Tower might be able to tell you. Or warn you away, if your plan is likely to cause its defenses to fail.”

Fuck. I never thought of that. What if splitting the burden like this makes whatever the Tower’s doing weaker? What if it fucks up some cosmic significance we don’t understand?

“For another, it might have advice for you, whether your plan is ill-advised or not. It seems quite invested in Novice Hawkins, and may be willing to offer direct assistance.” Gaveny held one hand up, palm up, in a half-shrug. “Just a thought.”

“S-so you’re, um, you’re not going to—”

“Stop you?” Gaveny laughed softly. “You are operating under a mandate that supersedes my own. I’ve spoken with Emerita Pérez about your meeting with her. She was very clear that I should not, under some unspecified threat, try to impede you.”

“Emerita?”

“Ah, yes, we haven’t had one of those in your lifetime. Magisters who resign their office. They tend to live in isolation, working on private projects and avoiding the rest of the Academy.”

Right, she did say something about resigning. I guess getting yelled at by the Tower is serious business for Magisters.

“So.” Gaveny brought her hands down on her knees with a soft clap. “I will only request, as before, that you keep me informed about your activities. I trust you, Adept Lasalle. You are one of the most gifted Diviners I have helped to train, and potentially the best of the last fifty years.” She smiled slightly. “Though I’ll trust you not to repeat that to Diviner Rajavi, who is very, very talented herself.”

Repeat that to Diviner— What Gaveny had just implied finally sank in, and Therese’s face burned once more. She’s kidding. She’s got to be fucking with me.

“You’re operating on a mixture of fortune and intuition, and that frankly terrifies me, but that seems to be the course we find ourselves on. May the Tower help us.”

They were silent together for a moment, and then Therese remembered. “You said you had a suggestion?”

Gaveny smiled. “I wondered if you would recall that. I do. It is this: your plan is simply to go to the Primary, to some convenient location. One of the established covert destinations. A barn in Iowa, perhaps.” She gestured with one hand as though perhaps to indicate broad farmland spread before them both. “May I suggest that instead, you speak to each of Riley’s cadre members and allow them to choose the location for their part of this. Hm. Ritual? Wouldn’t you say?”

Therese’s eyes widened.

“You needn’t be so shocked, Adept. We are already conspiring to engage in demonology; a bit of dark magic is only a small sin, compared to that. But consider: you’re proposing to create a working and then permanently empower it with the substance of a demon.”

“R-ritual magic always drives— that is, we were taught that—”

“That ritual magic drives its users mad. Which is, ultimately, true. Though the same can be said of demonology itself, and you were already prepared to take that risk.”

“Risk?” Therese didn’t mean to sound flippant, and she hurried to continue. “She’s able to control—”

Gaveny nodded, but interrupted anyway. “And you, skilled Diviner, are able to manage the link between the two of you, perhaps instinctively, to mute the demon’s power and influence, keeping it from spilling over into your own mind.” She gestured  vaguely to the door, the gesture meant to encompass all the rest of the cadre. “But what happens the first time Riley attempts this ritual with one of her partners already linked to her?”

Shit.

“Oh, I don’t mean to turn you from this path, Adept. But we should be entirely honest with ourselves: this is extraordinarily dangerous.” She nodded, as if to say ‘that’s settled’, and continued. “What you are doing is ritual magic, and it is no more dangerous than the demonology required to perform it. And, I suspect, by the end of this process you will have learned how to sever these links, and thus eliminate any remaining risk.”

Huh. I hadn’t thought of that. I could… I could maybe get my mind back. She felt briefly guilty; she did love Riley, and her presence was often comforting, and they’d grown very close over the course of the last four months. But the thought of having the silence of her own thoughts, and the privacy that would bring? The thought of being freed of the slight, constant self-consciousness that accompanied every emotion she felt strongly, every sensation she experienced intensely? And of no longer needing to question if the emotion she was feeling was her own, or Riley’s?

I want this so bad.

“Adept. Ask the prospective links their preference in location. Ritual magic is fickle and strange, and picking a propitious spot might turn out to be important to the process. Let them be guided by intuition, as you’ve been.”

With that, the Headmistress rose and nodded towards her. As she left the room, she said, “You are carrying a horrible burden, dear Therese. Do not allow it to crush you. Let others help you.” She smiled. “Myself, for instance. And the Tower, as well.”

And she swept out, followed a minute later by Brynn’s entrance.

“Uh, sorry, Tee. She was waiting for me. She already knew I was going—”

Therese held up her hand, still a little overwhelmed and shaken by Gaveny’s relentless interview. Interrogation, really. I shouldn’t kid myself about what that was. She shivered. Focus, Therese.

“It’s fine. She’s… she’s fine. She knows what we’re doing and is on board.”

Brynn’s eyes went wide. “No shit?”

“Yeah.” Therese smiled weakly. “But I could really use a hug right now.”

Once Brynn’s arms were around her, she relayed Gaveny’s suggestion.

“Sure, we can do that, but I might not be able to get us to a portal location that’s, like, convenient to wherever they’re wanting to go. I mean, if it’s a major city, no problem, but if somebody wants to go to the, uh, the middle of Western Australia? Might take some extra effort. Anywhere with like, single digit numbers of portals is iffy. The only ones could have an access point ten kilometers off in the City, for all we know.”

Therese nodded against Brynn’s black, tight shirt. Lesbian ninja, she thought, and tipped her head back to kiss her.

“So are we gonna do this here, or what?”

Therese nodded. “It’s my office so nobody will come in. Well, um. Except for Gaveny, I guess. But even the Diviner will knock before entering. It’s a whole thing with her, like a collegial thing.”

Brynn laughed. “I’m imagining Ianthe knocking before entering. That woman has seen my naked ass more times than—” She blushed, and her immediate glance down at Therese clearly telegraphed her abrupt awareness of who she was talking to. “Uh, that is, I.”

“Rangers are crass and lewd all the time. I get it. Coarseness comes from the top down! Poor manners, instilled by one’s leadership—”

Brynn put one hand over Therese’s mouth, laughing, and then moved it aside to continue silencing her with a kiss. They broke apart, and Therese grinned.

“Okay, Tee. Who’s up first?”

“That’s up to them. Let me just—” She signaled for Riley to head over. “She’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

“That’s still so fucking weird.” Brynn had let go of her, and collapsed in a boneless heap onto one of the cushions on the floor. “Watching you go all far away like that.”

“It’s just magic.”

Brynn shook her head. “I know what magic looks like, though. This is more like superpowers or something.”

Ritual magic. It’s ritual magic. She suppressed the urge to shiver, not wanting to explain it to Brynn.

Riley arrived a few minutes later, holding Suliat’s hand.