Sarcasm is armour, Saffron thought, and imagined she was donning a suit of it, plate by gleaming, snark-laden plate. “Nice undies,” leered Jared Blake, lifting her skirt with a ruler. No, not a ruler – it was a metal file, one of the heavy ones they were meant to be using on their metalworking projects. He grinned at her, unrepentant, and poked the file upwards. The cold iron rasped against her thigh. “Are you shaved?”

“Fuck off, Jared,” Saffron shot back. “I’d rather have sex with an octopus.”

He oozed at her, a ridiculous noise meant to ridicule. Giving her hem a final upwards flick, he retracted the file and pulled a face for the benefit of his laughing friends, then loudly yelled to the teacher, “Sir! Mr Yarris! Saffron said fuck, sir!”

Mr Yarris turned with the lumbering, angry slowness of a provoked bear. He was a big man, block-solid and bald – a stereotypical metalwork teacher, except for the fact that he mostly taught art, and was only filling in for Mrs Kirkland. He pointed a fat, calloused finger at Jared, then jerked his thumb at the doorway. “Out.”

Jared mimed comic disbelief as his friends kept laughing. “But sir! I didn’t do anything, sir! It was Saffron!”

Mr Yarris didn’t take the bait. “Out,” he said again, folding his arms.

Jared dramatically flung down the file. “This is bullshit!” he said. “I didn’t–”

“OUT!” roared Mr Yarris, loud enough that even Jared flinched, but the effect was spoiled when, seconds later, the bell rang for lunch. As Jared leapt from his stool, Saffron pointedly kicked her bag into his path. His sneakers tangled in the straps, and down he went with a crash.

“Oops,” said Saffron – loud and flat, so the whole class knew that she’d done it on purpose. “My mistake.” And before Mr Yarris could parse what had happened, she reached down, yanked the bag back from Jared and stormed out of class.

She was furious, shaking all over as she sped away from the metalwork rooms. How dare he. How dare he! And yet he did dare, publicly and often, to whichever girl was nearest. Nobody stopped it; nobody even came close. He’d been suspended last year for groping a Year Seven girl in the canteen lines, but once he returned, he was just as bad as ever, snapping bras, making sick comments and bullying Maddie Shen so badly – he stole her bag, opened her sanitary pads and stuck them over her books and folders, all while calling her names – that Saffron had later found her having a panic attack in the bathroom. He was awful, and got up to even worse at parties, but as appalling as Jared’s behaviour was, Lawson High apparently considered unrelenting sexual harassment to be insufficient grounds for expulsion. “Boys will be boys,” the deputy head had said, the one time Saffron had screwed up the nerve to approach him about it. “Or should I expel them all, just to be on the safe side?” And then he’d laughed, like the fact that the problem was so widespread was funny. Saffron came to a halt. She was outside the music rooms, and the air was filled with the yells and shrieks and laughter and profanity of lunchtime. She leaned her head on the rough red bricks and fought back tears. I can’t keep doing this anymore. I can’t.

But she had to. What other choice was there?

---

As Gwen saw it, the first rule of interacting with teenagers was simple: show no fear. Given its general applicability, it was also her personal motto, and one that had served her well in the decades since she’d first stumbled into the multiverse and out of what she’d grown up thinking was normal. Human adolescents, she reminded herself, were not more terrifying than magical politics and walking between worlds. You can do this. You have to. She took a deep breath, and stepped into Lawson High.

In Kena, where magic was ubiquitous, you could open a portal damn near anywhere. On Earth, however, things were somewhat trickier. The way Trishka explained it – which was, in fairness to Gwen’s comprehension, vaguely – some places were simply less accessible than others, resisting the touch of the jahudemet, the portal magic, like a knot that won’t pull loose. But even once you found a receptive location, you could only use it so many times in succession: the more you ripped a particular patch of reality’s fabric in any world, the higher the risk it would start to unravel, and Gwen had no desire to cause an international incident. With her previous portal point thus ruled out, Trishka had gone in search of a suitable substitute, and come up with a patch of bush alongside the local high school. If they’d had more time, Gwen would have protested – the last thing she wanted to risk was an accidental audience – but they didn’t, and she hadn’t, and now she was here, striding across the playground at what was evidently lunchtime and trying not to look as conspicuous as she felt.

She had a cover story, of course: if anyone asked, she was looking the campus over before applying for a job in the understaffed English faculty. The fact that Gwen had, once upon a time, actually qualified as a teacher meant she could probably bluff her way through an adult conversation should the need arise; the greater risk, as ever, was the curiosity of children. As a flock of shrieking tweens dashed haphazardly past, Gwen suppressed a smile and fought the urge to light up a cigarette, which was bound to attract the wrong sort of attention. Just get across campus, find the place, and wait, she told herself.

And then she saw the girl.

She was white, about sixteen. Long-boned and lanky, though her hunched shoulders said she was self-conscious about it. (Gwen, who was tall and had grown up hating it, could sympathise.) Her eyes were green, made prominent by the near-black circles beneath them, while her blonde hair – a natural shade, Gwen judged – hung messily to her shoulders. She was standing by a wall with a bag at her feet, her expression so nakedly lost, it was clear she didn’t know she had an audience. Gwen twisted a little to see it, but if not for what happened next, she might still have kept walking.

A rangy white boy came storming up from around the corner, yelling at the girl. He was all raw angles and sharp bones, like he was trying to grow into his body faster than it would let him, and the hooked smile on his face had no friendliness in it.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he shouted, pushing her. “You stupid bitch–”

“Get off me!” the girl snarled, shoving him away – or trying to, at least; the boy hung onto her arm with hard, thin fingers, and before she could stop herself, Gwen closed the distance between them. Smiling furiously, she grabbed the boy’s wrist, pinching just so to make him give up his grip on the girl, and twisted his arm up behind his back. He yelped, first in shock and then in pain, swearing as he struggled.

“What the fuck, lady?”

Gwen tightened her grip. “Say uncle,” she said, and looked straight at the girl, who was staring at her with a mixture of hope and hunger, as if the world had just completely rearranged itself.

Flailing, the boy tried to pull free. Gwen responded by tugging his arm up higher, harder. “Say uncle, boy.”

“Uncle! Uncle! Fuck!” Gwen counted to three, then shoved him roughly away. He staggered, turned and stared at her, incredulous in his anger. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

And before she could answer, he darted away like a rat from a trap, leaving Gwen alone with the unknown girl, who licked her lips and said softly, “Thanks.”

“Does he bother you often?”

The girl snorted. “He bothers everything in a skirt. Are you new here, miss? I haven’t seen you before.”

“I’m maybe applying for a job,” Gwen said. “Though I doubt I’ll get it.”

“I hope you do.” The girl’s jaw ticked. “No one else ever stops him.”

Anger washed through Gwen. She’d already stayed too long, made too much of an impression, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave just yet. “Well, they should,” she said, and winced at the inadequacy of the words. “What’s your name, girl?”

“Saffron,” she said, clearly surprised by the question. “Saffron Coulter.”

“Well, Saffron Coulter, let me give you some unsolicited advice,” said Gwen, because having already come this far, she might as well go that little bit further – then faltered at the realisation that there wasn’t much she could say. She didn’t know what else was going on in Saffron’s life, and the boy’s harassment of her wasn’t going to stop just because Gwen had literally twisted his arm. What could she possibly say that might make a difference?

“Yeah?” said Saffron, expectantly. “What?”

Gwen sighed. “Life is hard. Some days we get our asses kicked, but apathy breeds more evils than defeat. So, you know. Keep fighting.”

It was, Gwen thought, a shitty speech – Pix would probably laugh until she cried – but the girl, Saffron, lit up as though she’d never heard anything better.

“Thank you,” she said again - quieter than before, but also stronger. For the first time, she stood at her full height. “I’ll try.”

“Good,” said Gwen, and with a parting clap to Saffron’s shoulder, she strode away in search of a magic door.

---

Apathy breeds more evils than defeat. Keep fighting.

Saffron couldn’t get the words, or the encounter, out of her head. Which made no sense; it wasn’t as if she’d never had to deal with Jared grabbing her before – not like she’d even needed the help to get rid of him, however satisfying its delivery had been. And it wasn’t like she didn’t know the world was a messed-up place, either – you only had to look at the news to see that much. But she’d never had an adult acknowledge the fact to her face, let alone so bluntly, and especially not when it came to the predations of Jared Blake. Whoever the teacher was, she’d done more to make Saffron feel capable, safe and validated in the space of one conversation than either her parents or her teachers had since the start of term, and all at once, she didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

When the bell rang for the end of lunch, she felt like she’d been jolted out of a stupor; she hadn’t touched her food. Suddenly, the prospect of going straight to class was intolerable. Shouldering her bag, Saffron cut across campus and headed straight for the second floor entrance to the library, which was built on a slope against the old English block. Once inside, she hid behind the new arrivals shelf until she was sure that none of the librarians were watching, then moved quietly over to the emergency door. It was meant to be alarmed, but as she’d learned after accidentally falling against it a few months back, it wasn’t. For obvious reasons, it wasn’t locked either – not during the day, anyway – and Saffron slipped through with unobtrusive ease.

On the other side was a small, square landing stuck between two flights of stairs: one going down to the ground level exit, and one that led up to the roof. Saffron took the latter option, leaping up two steps at a time. The roof door was unlocked by virtue of being broken: the lock and handle had both been hacked clean out of the wood, and now it only stayed shut because the cleaning staff kept a heavy chock wedged under the frame. Saffron opened the door, used the wedge to pin it up against the wall so it didn’t bang in the breeze, and headed out into the sunlight.

The accessible section of roof was hemispherical, bordered by a waist high brick wall just high enough to hide her from casual scrutiny. To one side was a fat, square vent, and on the other, protected by a broad awning, was a locked metal cupboard at whose mysterious contents Saffron could only guess. Beside it were two plastic chairs, set facing each other under the overhang, and as had become her custom, she sat down in one and propped her feet on the other, head tipped back against the sun warmed metal.

The first time she’d skipped class to come to the roof, she’d been equal parts angry and terrified – angry, because the deputy head had just given her the boys will be boys speech, and she could no more have sat through Maths after that than flown to the moon, and terrified, because up until that moment, she’d never cut class in her life. She’d been shaking, so certain that someone was going to shout out or stop her that when she made it up without incident, she spent a full five minutes staring at the open door, convinced that someone was following. But nobody came, and when she showed up to her next lesson, it was like she’d never been gone: friends or faculty, if anyone had missed her, they didn’t mention it. It was like a revelation, as though she’d spent years preemptively flinching from someone who, it turned out, either couldn’t or wouldn’t hit her.

Since then, she’d grown incrementally bolder, coming up more frequently and for longer. She had a half dozen excuses worked out to explain her absence from class in the event that anyone ever asked where she’d been, but so far, she hadn’t had to use any of them. Now, she shut her eyes and exhaled deeply, savouring the luxury of privacy and silence as, over and over again, she replayed what had happened.

Apathy breeds more evils than defeat. Keep fighting.

Saffron stayed on the roof for two full periods, only going to her last class of the day for the sake of appearances. As she walked, she found herself surreptitiously glancing around in hopes of spying her rescuer again. She wasn’t exactly inconspicuous: where Lawson High’s teaching staff was almost uniformly white, the unknown woman was not. Her brown skin was warm and weathered, and when she spoke her rich, smoke-gravel voice was coloured by a faint English accent, marking her as doubly incongruous to Saffron’s suburban Australian sensibilities. She’d been tall, too, almost six feet, with kinky, iron-grey hair cut to jaw-length, and when she’d held Jared still, the muscles in her arms had stood out like cords. Such a woman, were she still on campus, should have attracted attention. But though Saffron looked, she didn’t see her, and though she listened to her classmates talk, she didn’t overhear anything that pointed to her presence.

---

The portal point turned out to be a nature strip. Technically, it was part of the school grounds, but happily for Gwen, it was right at the outskirts, and – better still – deserted. True, there were some classrooms nearby, but most of their windows were on the other side of the building, leaving the strip in a convenient blind spot.

Now all she had to do was wait.

Gwen hated waiting.

Irritable with unspent energy, she sat down on a tree stump and tried to remind herself why it was she’d left Kena in the first place. With Tevet dead and the rebellion with her, Gwen and her allies had lost their best shot at removing Leoden from power. They’d needed to lie low, regroup, and after a solid year away from Earth, Gwen had taken the opportunity to accomplish both tasks while proving to her parents, who’d retired to Australia years ago, that she was, in fact, still alive. Such reunions were always bittersweet, complex; none of her relatives or remaining friends had any idea how she lived her life, which made the act of lying to them more chore than holiday. And yet she was glad to have visited, if only because it left her that much happier to return to her (dangerous, wonderful) reality. She’d kept in contact with Trishka through the dreamscape, however patchily – and now, at last, she was going back to help fix the mess she’d made. Those were the facts, but just at that moment, they didn’t stop her from feeling as if she’d slunk off with her tail between her legs.

Guilt, after all, was the rightful province of people who’d had a hand in ruining whole countries, whether they’d meant it or not. Rationality didn’t enter into it. Her lips quirked in private irony: her son, were he privy to her thoughts, would doubtless see things differently. But then Louis had chosen a life stranger even than Gwen’s, and though she loved him dearly, she didn’t always understand him. Which was doubtless true of most parents, for all that she’d raised him in somewhat exceptional circumstances, even by the standards of the Many – or had she? Certainly Louis himself had seen nothing unusual in it, and if he harboured any resentment on that point, he’d never brought it up. Not for the first time, Gwen wondered if children, even when grown, weren’t inherently more complex than the multiverse, and decided, now as always, that some questions were better left unanswered.

Like water flowing downstream, her thoughts turned from Louis towards the white girl – Saffron – and that parting look of gratitude on her face. Helping her in the moment had been easy, but as with so much else, Gwen hadn’t really changed anything. That awful boy would likely still continue to bother her, and the school’s apparent indifference to the problem would persist.

I was still right to help.

It was a small comfort, but against the looming weight of Leoden’s coup and Kena’s complexities, Gwen would take what victories she could find.

---

Sighing, Saffron put her head on her desk and stared sideways at the clock. Her last class of the day was Personal Development, Health and Physical Education, also known as PDHPE, also known as a complete and utter waste of time, partly because she’d be dropping it next year, but mostly because the kind of sex education deemed suitable for state school students was vastly less accurate, detailed or relevant than anything she could find on one of a half-dozen sex positive YouTube channels run by people who, unlike Mr Marinakis, could say penis without twitching.

I need to find her, Saffron thought. I need to say – well, not thank you, because she’d already said that, but… something. She wanted to explain herself, or ask the woman’s advice, or maybe just spend five minutes in the company of an adult who might actually take her seriously. It was irrational and pointless and she couldn’t stop thinking about it, and when the last bell finally rang, she ended up walking towards the bus lines in a virtual fugue state.

“Saff! Hey, wait up!”

Saffron stopped and turned, smiling as her little sister, Ruby, came running over. “Didn’t you hear me?” Ruby asked, glaring. “I had to call you, like, five times!”

“Well, I’m hearing you now. What’s up?”

They started walking together, Ruby launching straight into a lengthy description of her day. But as much as Saffron usually enjoyed her sister’s acid observations about high school life, she couldn’t quite focus; she was only half-listening, still scanning the school for the mystery teacher.

“…so I told her, look, this isn’t a Monty Python sketch, there aren’t any strange women lurking in the nature strip, and she said–”

“What?” said Saffron, suddenly jerking back to the moment. She stopped, a hand on Ruby’s arm. “What about strange women?”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “God, you really don’t listen, do you? I literally just said, Cora was convinced there was some random lady hanging out in the nature strip behind the chem labs all afternoon, and I just… Hey! Where are you going?”

“Forgot something!” Saffron said, already moving off. Remembering that she’d left her phone charging in her bedroom, she turned and added, “Tell mum and dad I’ll be home later, OK?”

“Tell them yourself!” Ruby called, but Saffron didn’t answer.

Heart pounding, she made her way across campus, trying and failing to explain to herself why on Earth this felt so important – or why, more to the point, she felt so damn certain that the woman Cora claimed to have seen was her mystery teacher. What the hell are you hoping to accomplish here? she asked herself. School’s over, dumbass – even if she was there earlier, she’ll be long gone by now. And yet she kept walking, ignoring the awkward tug in her chest that said she should just go back to the bus lines. She passed the science block, turned the corner, and stopped.

There, standing in the middle of the nature strip, was the mystery teacher. She was side-on to Saffron, but unaware of her presence, head cocked as though listening for something. Saffron licked her lips and stepped closer, too concerned with trying to think of what to say to question why the woman was there at all.

And then it happened.

Scarcely three metres from where the teacher stood, a crack appeared in the world: a gaping, pink-tinged tear in reality’s flank, scything through the naked air like some sort of impossible portal. It almost hurt to look at, and as Saffron gulped and thought it’s real, I’m seeing this and it’s really real, her whole body went weak with shock, the way it had done last year when a clumsy driver had knocked her off her bike. Her blood was alive with panic, fear, excitement – what should she do? What should they do? And only then did she see that the teacher was smiling, striding towards the gap as though its presence was the most natural thing on Earth. In the split second before the teacher crossed the portal’s threshold, Saffron made a decision. All she could think of was that she’d wanted to talk to her, and now she was escaping, moving through a hole in the world that had no business existing anywhere, let alone in a nature strip behind the chem labs. And so, in her shock, she did the only thing she could think of. Saffron ran forwards and followed her through the gap.

Black light blinded her. A frightened cry died in Saffron’s throat, and then she was stumbling, falling into a small, square room. The walls were made of pale stone, the only light coming from cracks in a wooden door. The transition was so sudden as to be unreal, but when she turned, the rip – the portal, whatever it was – had vanished. All she saw was another stone wall and the mystery teacher, staring at her in shock.

“Oh, no. No, no, no–”

“I followed you,” said Saffron, stunned. “I wanted to talk, and then I just–”

“You just? You senseless, impulsive…” She broke off, visibly willing herself to calm, and into the silence, Saffron asked, “Where are we?”

“Somewhere you shouldn’t be,” came the snapped response. “Down the rabbit hole. Through the wardrobe. Over the bloody rainbow.”

“You’re not a teacher,” Saffron said. The realisation left her fighting inappropriate laughter. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

The woman sighed. “My name’s Gwen Vere.”

“Guinevere? Like the queen?”

“Like my father fancied himself a comedian. Gwen-space-Vere. First name and last.” She said it with the tired cadence of someone used to explaining their name to strangers. “Just call me Gwen.”

“All right. Are we, um…?” She nodded her head at the door. “Are we going outside?”

“Eventually, yes. Not yet.”

“OK,” said Saffron, strangely relieved to hear it. Swallowing, she put down her bag and wondered what to say. “So, ah. You come here often?”

Gwen raised an eyebrow, lips quirking in reluctant humour. Saffron mentally replayed the question, recognised its resemblance to a bad pick-up line, and blushed to the roots of her hair. “I didn’t mean it like that!”

“I’m flattered, really.”

“That’s not what…” She broke off, feeling strangely lightheaded, and looked at the room again. The floor was made from the same stone as the walls, the uneven surface covered in dirt, dust, straw. There were some empty sacks in a corner, a broken crate in another. It was all so achingly mundane, it made no sense at all that she’d come here by magic. Maybe she’d been drugged instead, knocked out and put in a van and driven away, and the hole in the world was just some hallucinatory way of dealing with a traumatic situation. “Go on,” Gwen said, suddenly. “Get it out of your system. Tell me what you’re trying to convince yourself actually happened, and see if you can still put faith in it once you’ve said it out loud.”

“I’m not trying–”

“Of course you aren’t.” Her mouth was hard, but her eyes were soft. “Oh, child. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

“It’s just a room,” said Saffron, mouth dry. A shining rip in the world. “We could be anywhere. We could’ve… I could be hallucinating the rest.”

“Could you?”

Saffron didn’t answer. She scuffed her shoe on the ordinary dirt of the ordinary floor, feeling the exact same mix of fear and exhilaration as when she’d first cut class to hide on the library roof, as though her understanding of rules and limits had quietly rearranged itself.

A tramp of footsteps, coming from outside. Gwen froze, and Saffron inexplicably froze with her.

Someone banged on the door.

It wasn’t knocking; more like a solid thump. The handle gave an abortive turn. The door rattled in its frame, unyielding, and whoever was trying to get in – a man, by the sound of it – called out in an unfamiliar language. Faintly, Saffron heard two more people respond, another man and a woman. The door shook again, harder than before, as though someone were kicking it. A woman’s laughter followed, more words were exchanged, and then they retreated, the unintelligible conversation growing faint with distance.

Saffron let out a breath she didn’t remember holding. There were plenty of languages she’d never heard before, and whose phonetics she was therefore unlikely to recognise. For all she knew, they might be in the Ukraine, or Scandinavia, or Timbuktu. But just at that moment, with the sight of a pink-tinged portal seared into her memory, she doubted it.

“Arakoi, most likely,” Gwen said, jolting her back to the present. Her voice was even, but the tightness of her shoulders said the abortive visit had rattled her. “Vex Leoden’s private forces. They’ve taken to patrolling outside the city walls since he came to power. Rumour has it, he’s started actively looking for temple castoffs and runaways to train as soldiers – – anyone happy to use magic without conscience.”

“Prove it,” Saffron said.

“Prove that magic exists?”

“Prove that we’re really in a, a–” god, it sounded so stupid, “– another world, and not some random cupboard.”

“Open the door, you mean? Let us out?”

“Just so.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s locked from the outside.”

“How convenient.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” Gwen’s tone turned serious. “If it hadn’t been, the Arakoi would’ve found us. Luck only knows what they’d have made of you, but if they’d recognised me, I doubt things would’ve gone well.”

“Recognise you? Why on Earth would they recognise you?”

Gwen sighed. “We’re not on Earth, girl – we’re in Kena, on the outskirts of the capital city of Karavos. And that, I’m afraid, is very much the point.”

Saffron felt as though she were spiralling inwards, teetering on a precipice she couldn’t truly see. Sarcasm is armour, she told herself, but for once she couldn’t think of a comeback. Her mental blank was interrupted by a soft, sudden knock on the door, followed instantly by the scrape of a key in the lock. Saffron watched as the door swung open, heart right back in her mouth. The light was bright enough that she raised a hand to her eyes, watching through a crack in her fingers as Gwen strode out. Her body blocked the sun as she crossed the threshold, and in that fleeting moment of darkness, Saffron was more afraid of abandonment than of whatever lay outside.

She grabbed her bag and followed.

A white sun many times the size it ought to have been sat low on an unfamiliar horizon. Forested hills and rocky soil stretched out in all directions, blanketed here and there with long, thin grass the colour of gum leaves. Even the sky was the wrong shade of blue. Saffron started shaking. If not for that impossible sun, she could’ve believed she was just in another country on Earth, but now–

“Shut your mouth, girl. The flies here are enormous.”

Saffron shut her mouth. Gwen placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“And stay close to me, hmm? You really don’t want to get lost.”

There was a cough, and only then did Saffron remember that someone had let them out. Turning, she came face to face with a slim, gold-skinned woman with wide-set eyes and four black braids looped back around the rest of her unbound hair. She wore a long, red skirt that was slit at the sides; her belt was tight, made of large, overlapping bronze discs, and her creamy blouse was stiff at the neck and collar with red embroidery. She looked to be in her late twenties, and her lips were twisted in an expression of obvious surprise. Raising an eyebrow, she turned to Gwen and spoke in a language that Saffron didn’t understand.

“Gwen?” she asked, hesitantly.

“It’s all right. She’s a friend.” Gwen made a wry noise. “Well, sort of. It’s a long story.”

---

“Who’s the girl?” asked Pix, by way of greeting. In her court accent, the clipped Kenan words sounded oddly fluid, an affectation that Gwen had always found strangely delightful. “Don’t tell me you’ve found an acolyte. Really,” she added, forestalling Gwen’s protests with a raised hand, “don’t tell me. Not yet, anyway. We need to get moving. The Arakoi are still nearby.” And yet she hesitated, looking Saffron over with a mix of puzzled disdain and shock. Despite every danger of the situation, Gwen was not above taking a moment to appreciate the effect that the girl was having on Pix’s cultural sensibilities. Kena being what it was, the only white-skinned locals were Vekshi expatriates, whose women were known for and distinguished by their shaved heads, loose trousers and long tunics. Saffron, with her dishevelled hair and school skirt, must have looked like a complete inversion of stereotype. Though she usually enjoyed poking holes in Pix’s worldview, Gwen knew that they didn’t have time for it now. More’s the pity.

“There were complications,” she said instead.

“Aren’t there always?” Pix muttered, moving at last. “You’re just lucky I brought three roa – they needed the exercise.”

“Only three?” Gwen blinked, surprised. “Where’s Matu?”

Pix’s face turned grim. “I’ll tell you when we reach the compound.”

As Saffron stared uncomprehendingly between them, Gwen sighed and switched to English. “We need to get going,” she explained. “And–”

The enormity of the problem Saffron represented hit her like a slap. Language at least was an easy fix, provided they could get her to the compound – but could they get there? Curling her right hand into a fist, Gwen gave a small shake of her head and forced herself to confront each hurdle in turn.

“We have to ride somewhere,” she said. The thin grass crunched beneath her boots. “Have you ever been on a horse?”

“A few times, at riding camps and excursions and things like that.” Saffron shouldered her bag, glancing around the landscape as though fearing attack. “Are there horses here?”

“Yes,” said Gwen. “But they’re less common in cities than… other alternatives.” She didn’t attempt to describe the roa; the main thing was that Saffron had riding experience. That problem dealt with, she turned back to Pix and switched to Kenan. “You brought me a taal to wear?”

Pix wrinkled her nose. “Don’t I always?”

“Good; Saffron can have it.” Her own skirt, blouse and steel-toed boots were odd, by Kenan standards, but Gwen looked Uyun, not Kenan, and Saffron’s need was manifestly greater. “We should hurry. Being exposed like this puts eyes on my neck.”

“Better eyes on the neck than knives in the heart,” Pix said, completing the proverb.

As Pix sped up, Gwen turned and hooked her arm through Saffron’s. It was less a gesture of comfort than it was an attempt to keep her close, but either way, the girl didn’t object.

“What happens now?” Saffron asked, meekly.

Gwen glanced around them. The building they’d exited was one of several empty storage barns, clustered starkly on the hilltop like teeth in a codger’s gum. Trishka had brought her through to this distant place for the same reason Gwen had been forced to enter from the high school: they’d used the compound too often and too recently, and each new portal there was an unnecessary risk. They’d hoped to avoid the Arakoi patrols by keeping their distance from the city, but evidently they still hadn’t travelled far enough.

Leoden’s getting paranoid, she thought; it was hardly surprising, after Tevet’s rebellion. And yet she couldn’t quite shake the suspicion that the increase in patrols was more personal than that, as though Leoden was specifically looking for her. It was sheer narcissism, of course – Gwen had erred badly in helping Leoden claim the throne, but the error had been in his favour, and even though she’d opposed him since, she was still only one person. He’d wanted her dead in the aftermath of his ascension, but now that he’d consolidated his power – now that her knowledge of his treachery was no immediate threat – what could he possibly want with her? It was a question with many frightening answers, and she felt momentarily furious that now, of all times, she’d managed to find herself saddled with a clueless initiate. But as Saffron looked to her for an explanation, Gwen remembered her own first foray into the Many, as she’d come to term the myriad, magically accessible worlds, and wondered, Was I any better, or less naïve?

As they passed into the shadow of nearby trees she heard the low, distinctive crooning of the roa, and smiled.

“Now,” she said, “we see if you really can ride.”

---

Weird day, Saffron thought, indulging in the sort of understatement that tends to accompany severe shock. She’d locked down on her desire to run screaming, and was now in an alternate mental state characterised by selective ignorance and a vague sense of building panic. Rapidly getting weirder.

Their guide, Pixeva, led them away from their arrival building and down the curve of a hill. Though the surrounding countryside was hardly exceptional – Saffron could see nothing other than trees, grass, and yet more hills – small details kept on leaping out at her, like the shade and shape of the leaves and the brightness of some unfamiliar red flowers. But as they entered a copse of strange, twisting trees, she found herself confronted with much more startling proof that this was an alien place.

Saddled, bridled and hitched to a tree were three utterly foreign creatures, snuffling in what Saffron could only hope was a friendly greeting. She couldn’t help herself: she let out a yelp, then clapped an embarrassed hand to her mouth.

“They’re called roa,” Gwen said, lips twitching. “Intelligent, sociable beasties, though they stink like wet dogs.”

Beastie. The single word coiled in her chest. Ruby’s kitten at home was called Beastie, and that sudden, unexpected reminder of his white-sock paws and deep purr almost brought her to the brink of tears. Yet it wasn’t sadness that moved her so, but poignancy: some weird and beautiful emotion all wrapped up in the instant at which she’d drawn a link between the world she’d left and this new place she’d come to. Kena, Gwen had called it. All at once, the roa were nothing compared to the fact that she’d watched magic tear a hole in the world – in the worlds, she corrected herself, feeling a thrill of excitement at the plural – and been brave enough to cross over. She approached the roa, made bold by the fearlessness with which their guide was rummaging through the panniers attached to one of their saddles. They looked a bit like cuddly velociraptors – that is, assuming your definition of velociraptor included a camel-like head, “hands” with fingers like a tree-frog’s toes, and a long-haired coat that resembled nothing so much as a shag pile carpet. Each one was at least Saffron’s height at the shoulder, their colouration ranging from a dirty white-and-tan mix to a sort of gunmetal blue. Their ears swivelled attentively at each little sound, while their long, plumed tails swept slowly back and forth, though whether the motion denoted happiness, boredom or anger, Saffron couldn’t tell.

“They’re, uh…” She was still searching for words when Pixeva thrust a large billow of red-and-yellow-striped cloth into her hands, muttering something incomprehensible as she did so.

“You wrap yourself in it,” Gwen said, pantomiming with her hands. “It’s called a taal.”

Saffron hefted the cloth – the taal – as though it were a bedsheet in need of folding. Setting down her schoolbag, she tried to tie it on like a sarong, but without much luck: the material was too thick to knot in the ways she was used to, and her hands were shaking so badly that she kept dropping it. Seeing this, Pixeva rolled her eyes and began to wind Saffron into the thing as though she were a mummy. Gwen watched the process with evident amusement, the wrinkles at her eyes and mouth deepening. When the guide finally stepped back, Saffron’s uniform had disappeared from view completely. Somehow, the taal conspired to cover not only her legs, but her arms and head too, as though she were wearing a wraparound, hooded poncho.

Gwen surveyed her critically, then turned to the guide, speaking again in the other language while motioning at her hair. In response, the guide scrunched a fist at the back of her head, a questioning expression on her face. After a moment, Gwen nodded assent.

“Do you have a hair tie?” she asked, switching back to English. The question caught Saffron off guard.

“You want me to tie it back?”

“Please.”

“Oh. I think so. Hang on.”

Careful not to unseat the taal – it sat awkwardly over her uniform, and the weight of the extra cloth was already making her sweat – she crouched down and fished around in her bag, eventually pulling out a rubber band. It would sting when the time came to take it out, but it was all she had; in the morning rush, she’d forgotten to pick one up. Gingerly pushing back the hood, she pulled her hair into a ponytail and covered it again. Both women nodded their approval, and for the first time since her arrival, the guide smiled as she spoke.

Gwen snorted and relayed the comment. “Pix says you look like a merchant’s daughter, but she apologises if you get too hot – she only bought that taal because it was cheap.”

Saffron had no idea what to make of this. “Um… thanks, I guess?”

Gwen laughed. For the first time, it occurred to Saffron to wonder just how old she really was. Though Gwen’s hair was uniformly grey and her face lined, her arms were ropey with muscle, her hands long-fingered and strong, and her posture straight as a soldier’s. “Christ, I’d kill for a cigarette. I don’t suppose you’re one of those delinquent teens I’ve heard so much about?”

Saffron shook her head, not trusting herself to answer. Almost, she giggled.

Gwen sighed. “Pity. The smoke-herbs here taste like desiccated toejam. I’ll take that,” she added, grabbing Saffron’s bag and tying it alongside one of the panniers. “We need to mount up.”

For all she’d been willing to think of them as cuddly a moment ago, Saffron suddenly found herself eyeing the roa with trepidation.

“Are they safe?” she blurted.

Gwen stared at her levelly. “Well,” she said, pulling Saffron forwards, “that all depends on whether you’re planning to fall off. Are you planning to fall off?”

“No!” Saffron squeaked, and in a rash effort to prove her competence, tried and failed to put her foot in the stirrup without completely entangling her taal. Gwen watched her flounder for a moment, then unceremoniously boosted her onto the roa’s back.

Saffron reached for the reins, but found none: they were still tied to the tree. Instead, she rested her hands between the roa’s shoulder blades – what she guessed would be called the withers on a horse – and tried to get her balance. Though she’d been thinking in terms of a regular riding saddle (or at least, regular by Earth standards), this one was flatter than she was used to, canted forwards so that she had to grip with her knees. There wasn’t much support at the back, either.

Swallowing, she nudged her heels to the roa’s flanks and rode forward.