From where I'm standing, it's as if the world around us flickers, and is suddenly somewhere else.
Kalinda stumbles a little as the new world springs to life around us. If I hadn't been looking for it, I might have missed the way her eyes widen slightly, infinitesimally, briefly, before instantly returning to their usual emotionless opacity.
I haven't spent a lot of time around Kalinda - I think this might be the longest we've been in each other's presence, at least to my knowledge - but it's the first time I've seen anything at all register in her eyes, disturb the calm equanimity.
Kalinda studies our surroundings, head tilted fractionally to one side as she returns her gaze to me.
"No path," she comments, neutrally.
"Our magic doesn't use them." The power that is mine by birthright can do many things, but it can't make anything like the roads I've seen since I arrived in the Courts; delicate yet strong connections that can bridge world after world after world.
Before the war, the many worlds of the Courts were connected by a millennia-old network of such pathways; a sprawling spider's web anchoring countless disparate realms into one unified whole.
Before the web was shattered.
Before the price was paid. The price we are - that *I* am - still paying.
Before the Vortex.
But enough of such thoughts. They haunt my nights already. I'll give them no more time during the day.
I smile at Kalinda. "Do you want to know how it works, or simply *that* it works?"
She shrugs. "The latter."
My lips tighten. "Even this close to the Vortex, I've moved thousands of people from world to world." And I barely lost any of them.
Being able to do that was what won my family the war.
Once the paths had been destroyed.
It's hard to tell, but I think that Kalinda relaxes slightly at my words. At any rate, she doesn't make any protest as I take another step forward, taking us both into yet another reality.
Of course, I can hear Fiona say, she hasn't explained to you just how she came to conveniently be there when the assassins came for you. Perhaps it would be best if your paths were to... diverge a little.
Florimel would of course disagree. Stay close to someone who can protect you, she would say. You can keep an eye on her that way. And, if she does prove to be unreliable (not untrustworthy, because really, some things simply go without saying), you'll be all the better placed to deliver a knife in the back. Whether literal or metaphorical.
I stifle a sigh. I may be the other side of the multiverse, but even so it seems I still can't escape my family.
But then, who can?
After every hop, skip and jump through the various worlds, my eyes can't help but flicker in Kalinda's direction, but she remains silent and stoic.
Watchful.
Always watchful.
I can't tell if her constant presence is reassuring or unnerving.
Probably a mixture of both.
Finally, we reach our destination. Not our final stopping point, but the last that we will reach by walking through worlds. My... My home lies within this realm. I could have taken us directly to it, but to do so would have been... unwise. Call it a legacy of the war.
So we must make our way there by more mundane means.
Well, mundane by the standards of the Courts.
We stand on a smooth, almost chitinous platform that hovers unsupported within a vast, dark abyss. A single, curved pillar sweeps upwards from the rear of the platform, seemingly extruded or grown from its very substance. It curves over our heads, flicking back up to a point at the end, forming a hook from which dangles a small lightglobe.
Somehow, the red-tinged glow seems only to accentuate the darkness, rather than to illuminate it.
Such is a visitor's welcome to the personal world, the Ways, of House Florick.
The throne to which I am an inheritor.
In fairness, I understand this view is quite spectacular in certain modes of vision. But my limited eyes show me only the walls of a great canyon extending both upwards and downwards from where I stand. Both above and below, the solidity of stone - well, something solid and glistening - disappears into inky blackness. Up ahead and slightly below us, in the far distance, I can just about make out the flickering lights of civilisation.
"We're here," I tell Kalinda.
She nods. "Impressive," she observes, politely.
Before the Vortex this would have probably have been a backwater, a summer home, for some Lord.
Now? Now it's a precious commodity, a world securely anchored to the rest of the Courts.
"So I'm told," I reply, equally politely. "I'm taking us in now," I feel compelled to warn her, even though, of the two of us, I'm sure I'm the one most likely to fall.
She inclines her head in acknowledgement.
I concentrate on the platform, willing it forward and towards the largest concentration of lights. That's the one that passes for my house these days.
Well, mine plus the near thousand or so servants that live there as well.
Peter always did have traditional tastes.
As we draw closer, the lights and shadows start to resolve themselves into shapes. Twisted, organic structures that even after all this time look to me more like some kind of exotic coral than a place to live. I've travelled the length and breadth of the universe, but even with everything I've seen, everywhere I've lived, 'home' to me will always mean sunlit stone and fresh sea air.
Amber.
Jagged, familiar, futile pang of longing, quickly pushed aside.
I've made my choices. Now I will live with them.
"Why did you stay?" Kalinda asks. At my look of inquiry, she elaborates, "You have no husband now, and..." she tilts her head, and doesn't need to remind me about the assassination attempt.
I suppress a sudden urge to laugh, and tell her it just reminds me of home.
But it's an honest question and, whatever else, deserves an answer.
I gesture around me, encompassing the world we're in with a single movement. "This. All this. If I left..." I shrug. "Well, someone else would take my place."
She looks at me for a long second. "Responsibility for your servants?"
She makes it a slightly disbelieving question, but I nod anyway.
No one would trust the servant of another lord, even if he is dead.
Too much potential for hidden commands, for biological boobytraps.
It's not unfounded. There are many stories of the COurts that make much of such devices. And from what I understand, everyone keeps all the best ones to themselves.
So any lord, in these desperate times, moving into a new world will cleanse it first, then bring his own poeple in.
It's what's going to happen to that world I saved, but I can't do anything more about that.
I've given them another few days, another few weeks.
I have nothing else to offer.
Kalinda is still looking at me, doubtless trying to figure out what my game is. Finally, she inclines her head. "That's commendable."
"Thank you." I pause for a moment before asking, "Do you have Ways of your own?"
She looks at me coolly. "The Ways of my House were lost to the Vortex."
My stomach lurches a little.
I don't ask how many of her family, her friends were lost with them.
So many lost so much during the conflict.
And I wonder again why she saved me.
"I'm sorry," I say, and mean it, the family game of never quite apologising be damned.
I'm not there now, not with them now.
And I am sorry.
Kalinda doesn't say anything in response, and I let silence fall between us, thick, suffocating, endless.
Until my abode comes into view.
It's beautiful in its own way and I have learned to appreciate it. Here, a gleaming dome sheened with rainbows, like a black pearl. There, a fractal forest, the wind's own orchestra. A soaring, fluted tower. I like that one the best. (Looked at it just the right way, it could almost have been carved from stone.)
I feel the prickle of the House wards - plus a few extra of my own - as we reach the outer gate, a sensation not unlike a guard dog welcoming its mistress upon her return. They know me, accept me. And, because Kalinda is with me - and I give the right mental commands - they accept her as well. I sneak a quick glance her way, but she, of course, shows no reaction.
Idly, I wonder what *would* get a reaction from her, but immediately dismiss the thought. Antagonising the Guild's Head of Security - who may or may not have been following me, who quite possibly knows more than she's saying about that little attempt on my life, and probably knows more ways to kill or maim me than I've had hot dinners - would not be the wisest idea.
And I've no wish to test my training against hers.
In any case, we're finally home sweet home.
A slab silently recesses into the wall as we approach the entryway, revealing a cleanly-lit interior.
Ktktkt-ktkt, my head servitor, awaits me in the hallway, his glistening black chitin polished to perfection.
I reach out to him mentally. *Has there been any trouble?*
I can feel him stiffen slightly. *No, milady. Should I alert the guard swarms?*
*Please. And let them know that the people who attacked me had powerful cloaking magics.*
*Done, milady.* He focuses one eyestalk on Kalinda. *Will we be having company this evening?*
I look to Kalinda. "Would you like to join me for dinner?"
She tilts her head contemplatively for a second, before shaking it. "Things to do."
Hopefully assassins to find, but it's not like I can relax even if she does.
Not unless I'm tired of this life, anyway.
I step off the platform. "If you will it, this will take you to the nearest pathway."
Being a Lady, she could make her own, of course. But, without invitation, it's considered discourteous at best, deadly dangerous at worst.
Depending on how paranoid the lord is.
Peter was not the least paranoid of lords. For good reason, as it turned out.
"I'll let you know what I learn," she says, before disappearing off into the darkness.
Will you? I wonder.
But the thought of seeing her again is far from displeasing.
There are far worse ways to turn a girl's head than a daring rescue, after all.