Rowan, settling into a chair that shifted to hug him as he sat, looked up at me. Some part of his expression reminded me of Cicero – he’d held a genial smile and soft, gentle words, before he steamrolled me. Children weren’t their parents, but they inherited a lot from them. I held firmly in mind my impressions of Quinn and Siciliana, using them to get a sense of how this meaning would go.

A bark of laughter reeled me back from my thoughts. The old man pointed a finger my way and wagged it; he had a large grin, revealing teeth that looked too white and too straight. I took him in – from the wrinkles which looked carved into his skin, to his nose which was long and pointed, perfectly at the centre of his face, and the eyes that were a piercing blue.

Artificial, I thought on a visceral level. There was something off about his face, but when I tried to put a finger on it I failed.

“Yes, yes,” said Rowan. “You had a temporal stone, didn’t you?”

I shrugged, still standing. “How do you know?” I asked.

“It’s not something many realise, but once you’ve used a temporal stone long enough and lose it, you experience something mages call the drift. You become accustomed to moving at a greater speed and that becomes your reality; you take for granted certain things such as your inability to dodge an arrow.” He laughed. “Then you get smacked by one as you’re trying to sidestep it, and you end up on the floor regretting all the decisions that took you there.

“You, Champion,” he said, punctuating the words with a jab of his finger. “You’re doing it, taking longer to gather your thoughts and make your observations. But you don’t have that extended time and you leave a heavy silence in the interim.”

I sat, considering his statement. The chair was hard for a moment, until it moved beneath me, resettling as if I was trying to get comfortable and I was in the way.

“Guess that makes sense,” I said, doing my best to seem at ease with everything. My mood was dark and I knew that meant my expression had settled into a glower. I hoped Rowan wouldn’t see how unsettled I was.

I’d wanted this meeting, and Rowan’s action in service of the common man was what gave me hope that everything would work out alright; but it was hard to cast away the lessons I’d picked up in the castle. Right now, they told me this would be more of the same. I felt out of my depth the same way as in the castle, especially when I’d been talking to the king and queen.

Rowan tapped the table three times and a ripple washed across it. When the effect faded there was an ornate kettle hovering above a fire gem, on either side of which were two cups without handles, overly stylised red diagrams painted on them.

“Your daughter took my temporal ring,” I continued, watching as he carefully poured the tea in both cups and settled the kettle back on its hovering perch. He motioned for me to drink and I shook my head.

“This ceremony is supposed to be about silence,” he said. “Enjoy the tea in tranquillity. But cultures in new environments change. I wonder what the Champion who taught those of the Sunward Empire this ritual would think at seeing how it evolved.”

I stayed quiet, not sure what he wanted me to say.

“That can’t do,” he said after a sip of his tea. He flicked a hand and near the spatial obelisk Siciliana appeared, looking unsurprised by the sudden summon. “You took a ring from him.”

“A temporal ring from the Sunward Empire,” Siciliana said with a slight nod.

“I…” he stopped as the woman pulled the ring out of her pocket. Rowan chuckled. “My daughter knows me so well,” he said as he beckoned with two fingers. The ring disappeared, appearing again on the table in front of me. “You’re not supposed to have favourites as a father, but…she more than the others has made me proud.”

I glanced at Siciliana who stood with her shoulders straight and head slightly tilted up; her expression seemed impassive, but I knew the words would have some effect. I’d felt something similar in the castle, not liking the people I was surrounded by a lot of the time — even hating them in the case of Jaslynn — but their compliments being something I took pride in.

“Put it on,” Rowan said, gesturing.

I did and leaned on it. Rowan had the same energy as Quinn, an easy confidence and a rhythm that made it hard to keep from getting swept up in it. If the similarities went any deeper, I’d have to expect the same sort of subtle duplicity I’d gotten from Quinn — seemingly upfront, but guiding the conversation to make it seem like my options were more limited than they actually were.

“Thank you, Siciliana,” he said, sending her away. “So protective. You’d think I couldn’t take care of myself the way she sees it. Why, she wouldn’t have let this meeting happen if it was up to her.”

“She must love you,” I said.

Rowan brightened. “You hope for it,” he said. “Lord knows I’ve been a bad father at times — if I could even be called that.” Rowan sighed. “But something happens when you’re a Champion, the people who flock to you seek to please you, offering platitudes even when they’re undeserved.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I muttered.

“Is your Isekai adventure not going well?” he asked, humour in the words.

“I was imprisoned in Malnor castle,” I told him.

Rowan waved his hands. “That’s how it always starts, except for the very first Champions,” he said, as if it were nothing. “My predecessors went through it, I went through it and the same will be true for those who follow you. The stories had it wrong, didn’t they? They assumed it would be a breeze to get power, to be important, to matter.”

“But you’re all those things,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.

“And I’ve been in this world for about eighty years,” he said. Rowan chuckled bitterly. “I’ve had friends here, many of whom I’ve lost. I bore children,” he sighed heavily, “some of whom I’ve lost. Whatever much I’ve accomplished, you can trust that it wasn’t easily obtained.”

“But at least you came here white,” I said. “That has its advantages.”

“Yes. Yes,” he said. “It does, but also…I think it’s good that you came here as you are.”

“Good?”

He nodded. “Good,” he said. “It means…well, I can predict the person you will be within certain parameters. How much history do you know? Of our predecessors?”

“I know some names, but it wasn’t my focus,” I told him, using the ring to adjust to the abrupt change in topic.

“Well, something you notice when you do the reading, is that all of them drank the kool-aid,” he said. “They bought into the power fantasy of this world, and how could they not? How were you summoned here? What were you doing before you appeared?”

“Sleeping,” I said, blinking twice at another abrupt shift. I was very aware that I hadn’t said much in our ‘conversation’.

“I was riding my skateboard,” he said, nostalgia touching his tone. Rowan took a long drink of his tea, looking away as he lost himself in memory. “I was a boy.” He let out a low chuckle. “It’s so long ago now, that I can’t remember how old I was. But I remember that it was summer, and my parents had gotten me a skateboard. I was with my brother and his friends, and he’d dared me to do some trick. The ground rushed towards me, my heart in my throat and the idea I might die sitting in my mind. And then I was surrounded by people who were chanting, pillars as dark as night towering over them, and the sky flashing with lightning. I thought I had died and that everything that followed was a fever dream.”

“But you survived,” I said.

He nodded. “I was a tool for a time, so I could prop up a king who sought to secure his power.”

“That seems to be a pattern with these things.”

Rowan chuckled. “Yes. Yes it is,” he said. “It shows the fragility of power, doesn’t it? That young men and women would need to be summoned from elsewhere so a king might remain on their throne. But things weren’t simple for me. I was tested and found wanting. It seemed — through some fluke of how I’d been summoned — I had been imbued with enough celestial waters that I was no different than anyone who had been born here. I was a Champion to all who had seen me summoned, but to others, the claim was refutable; and thus deemed useless, I gained a semblance of freedom. One of the mages who had summoned me had already taken a liking to the scared little boy and he tutored me.”

“Lucky you.” Rowan laughed again. I ignored him and the building sense of dissatisfaction. “Quinn said you’re the reason that I was summoned here.”

“She’s right,” he said, pouring himself another cup of coffee. I waited, expecting him to continue and there was nothing.

“How? Why?” I asked, the word coming out in a huff.

“Quinn mentioned you were from South Africa,” he said.

“Are you going to answer my questions?” I asked, my tone tight.

“We’re going to get there,” Rowan said. He gestured at the tea. “That’s why I presented you that cup. I know what it is to be young, everything has to happen quickly. From one thing to another, on and on and on until you’re so tired you can’t even muster the effort to take another step. My question is leading somewhere, I promise you.”

I let out a long breath and took the tea. It was still warm and I had to be careful as I drank it. I didn’t even really taste it, the drink was for the conversation to move forward, for Rowan to feel like I was listening to him.

Does that mean you’re not listening to him? came the errant thought. I pushed it aside, it didn’t feel like it would take me anywhere pretty.

“Yeah, that’s where I’m from.”

“The fall of your country’s segregation happened much later than ours,” he said. “In the nineties if I’m not mistaken?” I nodded. “So it’ll be in your mind, all those atrocities. I cannot know who you are, Champion, but I can guess that you will have a healthy sense of justice and injustice.

“You ask me why I summoned you,” he said, “and I didn’t. I don’t have the first idea who you are.” He chuckled. “I don’t even know your name. Jordan, I’ve heard, but then Quinn comes to me prattling about something else?”

“Khaya,” I said. “That’s my name.”

He nodded. “I’ll make sure to remember it,” he said. “Well, then, Khaya, you weren’t summoned because of some great destiny. I didn’t see some vision that saw you saving this world or becoming some great king. You are not the chosen one. You are only some boy who happened to be caught in a spell through some cosmic fluke. Not special in the least.”

I should have felt offended, but after being called a coward for so long, buying into it and finally realising that courage came in different forms, the words were water off my back.

“I never thought I was,” I told him.

Rowan, who looked like he’d been prepared to say something, stopped, looking at me for a long moment before he smiled and settled back in his chair. He let out a breath of relief, suddenly looking much older than before. The man ran his hand through his beard, his eyes glassy.

“Was that what you felt?” I asked as the silence stretched. The question felt right in the same way my words to Jaslynn had felt right — the same way I’d been able to hit Owain and Leonard where it hurt. Rowan hadn’t been speaking to me, but a past self, and maybe that was why the words hadn’t hit as hard. “What you thought when you got here?”

Rowan snorted. “That makes it seem like a thing of the past,” he said. Another silence passed, finally broken by a chuckle. “Champions are the bringers of change,” he recited. “Have you heard those words before?”

I nodded.

“Those are the words I grew up with,” he said. “I was from a more civilised world and I knew better than these people here…these barbarians.”

“Colonisers thought the very same way,” I muttered, “and look at where that got us.”

Rowan beamed. “Yes. Yes,” he said. “It took you a moment for the thought to connect. Do you know how long it took me? Most of my lifetime. A time where all my plans saw me as a king of the Commonality, where I was putting people who thought as I do in places of power. Washerton would be my own, then Susserton, and then finally Althor; and if those three were mine, it would be a matter of time before the rest of the Commonality allied with me.”

“What made you change your mind?” I asked.

“Again you speak as if it’s past tense, Champion,” he said.

“But…you’re not running Washerton.”

“Aren’t I?” he asked, sounding surprised. “Three sons and two daughters are High Lords in what has followed after the culling of the old nobility. They speak with my voice, are driven by my ideas and lessons I taught compel them. But it’s more of the same. Yes, I’ll grant, the people in power have changed, things are better than they were in some ways — when one discounts the impact of war — but the structures are still the same aren’t they? It is my family’s ideas of freedom — and thus my ideas — which are being worked towards. And that was one of the thoughts in my head as I drew the spell that would summon a Champion.”

“Because you needed to ease your conscience?” I asked a little too hard. “For someone to tell you you’re doing the right thing?”

“Oh. Oh no. I know I’m doing the right thing,” he said. “Of that I have no doubt. I only wondered, am I going about it the right way?”

“That’s a really heavy question. A really big question that I don’t have the first idea how to answer. And that’s not even getting into if I’m the right person to ask. Why don’t you ask the people from around here?”

“Because they’re barbarians,” he said flippantly. At the outrage that flickered onto my expression he sighed. “You’ve been amongst kings. You must have seen how awful they are to the lower classes. You’ve been amongst the commoners and you’ve seen how deeply this world has limited their view on what they deserve. No doubt you’ve thought the same, haven’t you? That these people know nothing and they might be better if they thought like you?”

Luther, I thought. I’d been confused at how he’d defended all that Matthaeus and his family stood for even though they didn’t give a second-thought to people like him. Had I thought him barbaric or stupid? That didn’t feel like me, but I could imagine it in a moment of frustration.

I shrugged. “Maybe, I don’t know,” I said. “But…honestly, it’s been more of the same. I keep seeing parallels between the things here and those happening back home. Not as bad, maybe, but it’s still more of the same.”

“This is why your age had to be factored into the ritual,” he said. Another abrupt shift, but this time I was very aware that he hadn’t even tried to defend how he thought of an entire group of people as barbarians.

“A complex piece of work for that to be keyed into the summoning,” he continued. “But I had to be careful. I couldn’t be sure how much time had passed since I’d been whisked off — I know that time is wonky between the two worlds, but not by how much. If I called someone too old, they might have been born during your segregation and they might have still been too angry, with too much resentment. I wanted someone who was close to the before, but had lived after, with an anger that wasn’t as fierce. And, if I’m being honest, I was worried that I might have called another white person, and if they were much older, then that could have been really bad. We’ve had a few supremacist Champions before and the Commonality is still recovering from them.”

“If you’re the one who summoned me, then why did I end up in Althor?” I asked. “Why couldn’t you summon me?”

The situation still wouldn’t have been ideal — I would have been in another world — but at least it wouldn’t have been the hell and loneliness of the castle.

“The celestial convergence point in Washerton is spent,” he said. “It takes about thirty years before these rivers replenish enough that a human can be summoned from another earth, but ours has never had that long to heal because of the work we’ve been doing.”

“I have a friend who’s a spatial mage,” I said. “He left the spatial school in Althor. He said that you might be trying to get a way back home.” I tried and failed to find the hope in my voice.

“He’s right, this mage friend of yours,” said Rowan. “I have the resources and the knowledge, how could I not go back home? To see my parents again, my siblings?”

“When were you summoned here?” I asked. “Dated by our world?”

“Late twenty-thirteen,” he said. “I was meaning to ask you the same.”

“Twenty-twenty.”

“Eight years and almost eighty for me,” he said with a nod. “Good. Good.”

“How close are you?” I asked. “To being done on a way back home?”

“Ah. Yes. We’ve reached that point,” he said. “How much do you know about America?”

“Some, but not a lot. Mostly from movies and TV.”

“Who were the last two presidents?” he asked.

“Maximilian Emmerson was the last president,” I said. There wasn’t even a flicker of recognition from Rowan. “He was a wrestler.”

“A wrestler became president?” he said.

“That wasn’t the only thing he did, but it’s the one I remember. I think he had some businesses too? Mostly I remember him for how much of a shit-show he turned your country into.”

“A wrestler?” Rowan said again, shaking his head. “When was he elected?”

“Twenty-sixteen. Before him it was Jerome Tanner, and before that it was William Hedge.”

“Presidents Tanner and Hedge,” he said. “Okay. Those I know. Which is good.”

“Because?”

“Because it means we’re truly for the same world,” he said. “The multiverse exists, Champion,” and he gestured at our surroundings, “I’ve long worried that the worlds that exist are so many it would be improbable for me to find a way back home. But we have a few points of commonality: that I was able to appropriately position the ritual that brought you here down to the region, the little I know of your country’s history, these presidents you’ve shared and the existence of Usher.”

“What if those things are fixed points in time?”

Rowan’s eyes opened wide. “You’re a fan of Doctor Who? Have there been new seasons since I’ve come here? Are they good? Do you remember them? Tell me everything.”

“No,” I said and he visibly deflated. “Sorry. It’s something I saw on Tee-hee-shee. The few times it’s played on TV the show looked crappy. The sets looked cheap, and everyone I talked to online was like the earlier seasons are better.”

“Yes,” he said, excited, almost childlike. “They have a charm about them.”

“If you say so,” I said with a shrug.

Rowan tsked. “You have no idea how long I’ve longed to speak to someone from my world,” he said. “You pleasantly surprised me before, and now you disappoint me.”

“Maybe you have bad taste, dude,” I muttered under my breath and Rowan laughed. “So what now?”

“Hmmm?”

“What now?” I asked. “You have no idea how much of my planning led to this point — meeting you. But now…what?”

“What now?” he said. I thought he might be thinking, but the long silence that followed said otherwise. It was a question posed to me.

“You called me here,” I said. “You must have had a plan.”

“I thought I told you before that you were insignificant,” he said. “That should have been enough for you to glean that I didn’t have some grand plan. I had doubts, a moment of hesitation, and it seems I was right in having said doubts. As I move forward, I’ll have to rethink my approach.”

Rowan swept his hand and the table with the tea disappeared, a moment later a desk with scrolls took its place. On it were maps of the Commonality, not in much detail except for red lights which ran across the entirety of the continent. I saw the celestial convergence points there: in Washerton, Althor, the Sunward Empire, one in the Blighted Lands, and two in the ocean.

“What about me?” I asked.

“Enjoy your adventure,” he said with a shrug. Rowan shuffled some papers around, pulling up a scroll with an expansive network of diagrams, stapled on it were more notes. He started to add to them. “Go out and hunt some monsters, look for ancient relics and artefacts, explore the world beyond the Commonality, learn any of the many mage-crafts that exists. Do as you please. You’re free.”

“But…” My mouth opened and closed. “My life will never be the same again and all of it was for this conversation?”

“This was a very important conversation,” he said. Dramatically he added a full-stop. “You’ve done more for our understanding of the multiverse than you’ll ever know.”

I stopped as thoughts clicked into place, an undercurrent that I hadn’t been able to discern. He’d mentioned the moment of doubt, but it felt like he’d already been going through the process of summoning a Champion, and everything else had been ancillary.

“Can’t you have looked at the stories of past Champions?” I asked. “Do you have any idea how shitty it was being here at the start? How lonely and terrifying it was? It still is?”

“And in the process you’re experiencing something many others have only dreamt of,” he said. “I think that’s a fair trade.”

“That decision wasn’t for you to make,” I said. “Not for me. Not for anyone else.”

Just like it’s not your decision how things are going to play out with the settlement, the thought connected. I’d talked to Matthaeus about things, but that was also a part of the problem, favouring the opinions of those higher on the social rung instead of those really affected.

I should have already talked to Clyde, gotten his input and that should have been instrumental in whatever decision was made.

“That’s really shitty,” I finished, for myself just as it was for Rowan.

“Whatever the case, the decision’s already been made and we have to deal with the consequences,” he said.

“Consequences that I’ve been living with for a fucking long time,” I said.

Rowan laughed. “Less than a year compared to eighty of my own,” he muttered. “Calm down. You’re still new to this world so you miss the old one, but with age those feelings will dull.”

My mouth opened and I tried to find words, any words and there was nothing. There was something in his eyes that told me he wouldn’t listen, and I wasn’t surprised. He’d mentioned past Champions drinking the Kool-Aid and he wasn’t exempt from that, just as I wasn’t exempt from my own biases.

“Maybe they might not even dull before I perfect the way back to our earth in the next five years,” he said.

“That’s a long ass time.”

“You’re young, you’ll see that five years is nothing in the grand scheme.”

“So that’s it?” I said, a part of me dissatisfied, wanting something more.

“You’re looking to me for answers,” he said. “I could give you something to do if that’s what you wanted. Become an advisor to any of my sons. I’m too busy planning and coordinating some trips and I’m worried about the decisions they’re making. A person divorced from things might be good.”

I frowned.

“You don’t want that?” he said.

“I don’t know what I want,” I said and sighed, settling back. The chair shifted, getting comfortable. “There’s people I want to help and Matthaeus thinks your daughter’s trying to screw me over.”

“Quinn?” I nodded. “Be careful of that one. I had a great fondness for stories with manipulative bastards and that is how I approached breaking Washerton. Quinn seems to have picked up on that affinity, and it’s magnified in a way. After my dear friend Clifton died and there was a hubbub in Althor’s spatial order, it was her idea to call young mages to undermine Althor. From what Ran says, that fool of a king took the bait. Even in these trying times he’s trying to increase his grip on power even as it ostracises those around him — though that’s set to change. Princess Allycea is set to be engaged to Owain the Younger in the next few weeks.”

My stomach shifted, doing my best to dismiss that I had a part to play in that.

“I don’t want to get involved in all of that,” I said.

“My Quinn will want you involved,” he said. “She knows she can’t have me, but a Champion has its own momentum. It’s a good piece to have on your side.”

“But she’ll help me? With my settlement?”

“That she will, but you have to be careful. Now, should I extend the same trust in this Mandaron child? You know him. What does he want?”

“I think Matthaeus sees the throne as the root of all of his family’s problems. If I’m being honest, I see it too. Odysseus and Allyceus might have much better lives if they didn’t have the expectations they do. They don’t believe that — they want the privilege that comes with their lives without the cost — but Matthaeus sees those privileges as a trap.”

“What if, for the freedoms of commoners in Althor, his family had to die?” he asked and it was terrifying to hear the words said in such an even tone. I know both Odysseus and Allyceus, and I didn’t want them to die.

I shook my head, thinking about Corneleus. “I don’t think he’d accept that.”

I’m not sure I’d be okay with that too.

Rowan stood, the air rippling around him and taking the furniture away, leaving only me in my chair.

“We’ll see how much of an ally he’ll be,” he said, arms crossing behind his back. It was bent with old age, but the way he moved was too spry, only punctuating the feeling of something being off. “And you…you’ll be with this settlement of yours? Caught in my Quinn’s web?”

“Helping people. Yeah. That Quinn stuff, not so much.”

He gave a short nod. “Let’s speak again on less serious terms, I’d very much enjoy it,” and with that he waved a hand, banishing me into a brightly lit room that had the same aesthetic as a waiting room; long and narrow, walls that were grey and a pale blue, three chairs on either side looking towards each other, but there were no doors in or out.

Matthaeus almost bumped into me as he paced.

“Khaya,” he said, surprised. “How did it go?”

“Unsatisfying,” I said looking around. We were the only people in the waiting room. “But it went just about as expected. I’m not going home. He’s still working on it, but it sounds like it’s still a far-off possibility.”

“Didn’t you expect this outcome?” he asked.

I took a breath, trying to sort out my feelings. “It’s…at school I used to do this thing. When I wrote a test and I had the feeling I did badly, I’d tell myself that I’d failed, that I knew I did and it was okay. Then I’d get my results, see that I failed and it would still suck. At a certain point I figured out that I was playing a game with the universe, hoping that it would trick me and show me that actually I’d passed and everything was okay. Maybe some part of me expected the same thing here.”

“What will you do now?” he asked.

“Go back to the settlement,” I said. “This is good actually, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Now I can focus on making sure Clyde and his people are okay. Then we’ll — or I’ll — move forward from there. I don’t know how things will work on your end. I gave a good word, but who knows how much that counts. But…”

“But?” he said.

“Quinn said something to me last time we talked. That her father believes in fighting fire with fire. It’s just…your siblings don’t want to lose power and they’re going to fight for it. It’s not out of the realm of possibility he might see their deaths as a means to an end.”

“If he sought to end Althor, that was always going to happen,” he said. “But by my inclusion I can steer the ship.”

“You do you, dude,” I said, the last words I said to him before he disappeared with a loud sigh.

“Dude,” a voice said and I jumped, whirling around, reaching for my gun only to find it gone. My eyes found her, Quinn, sitting in one of the chairs, legs dangling over one side. “Father used to say that when he was younger. It was all the rage for a time until the fad passed.”

“Have you been here the whole time?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I wanted to see who you were when no one’s watching. The stories I heard weren’t good, you’re supposedly a coward; but then you fall from twenty stories and survive somehow — no one knows how — you escape somehow and then fight against the Caller of the Boar and beat him. It makes a girl curious. You know, I even thought about going to that settlement of yours and spying, but your spatial mage would have made things complicated.”

“Your father says I should be on the lookout for you, that I shouldn’t trust you.”

“I remind him too much of himself,” said Quinn. “He doesn’t like that in his old age. But he is right. I think you’re smart enough to have figured that out. Constant vigilance.”

“Harry Potter? Really?”

Her expression scrunched. “Is that a story? Did Father get that from a story?” I nodded. Quinn let out the longest breath of disappointment I’d ever heard. “And there goes me thinking he was the wisest man I’ve ever known. He also loved to say something pithy a while back: a mage is never late or early, they are always on time.”

“That feels familiar.”

“Oh, gods, Dad,” she groaned.

I smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I think every Champion does that. I mean, King Zeus stole his name from Greek Myth. I’m betting that wasn’t even his name back home.”

“You look nice when you smile, Champion,” she said.

My smile dropped. “Are you playing me?”

Quinn’s carefree attitude disappeared. “I grew up on tales of the greatness of America,” she said. “The land of the free and the home of the brave. People who fought from and won against empires, becoming the greatest country in the world. People were free — all people, no matter the station of their birth. That is the goal I seek and I think you and I can bring that future forward.”

“I’m not American, Quinn, but I’m absolutely certain that your father’s view of his country does not match reality.”

“I’d long feared that might be the truth,” he said. “Which is why you’re so important. You know the problems and you can spot them. You can make sure we don’t fall for the same traps. Working with me ensures the liberation of an entire people.”

You’re talking about things at a scale that’s terrifying, I thought. The idea was thrilling in a way, imagining myself making that big a difference to the lives of the people in the Commonality, but…I was someone who was struggling saving one village, how could I make decisions that big?

“I need time,” I said. “I need to see that I can help one place before I could handle a load like the one you’re talking about.”

Quinn nodded. “You know how to contact me,” she said. The air shimmered before her and she disappeared.

Not a ripple but a shimmer. No sigh. No movement of any kind when Rowan and Cicero had to move their hands in gestures or circles. She was able to do this before and when I had my marble, I was able to sense her. Then there’d been the fact she’d been listening to my conversation with Matthaeus.

I strode forward, three steps and she appeared again, grinning. “You figured it out?”

“Yeah.”

“I look forward to eventually working with you,” she said before raising the cuff of her shirt, revealing a metal band studded with spatial stones. “Beam me up, Scotty,” she said and disappeared.