-Chapter Sixteen-

They nibbled their way through the remaining crumbs on the platter while Karlene told Axion all she knew. It took them awhile, as her narrative split into tangents every time she mentioned something that made no sense to her audience, such as what a parking lot was, and a country club, what golf was…

And cars. Oh, that was fun.

“You ride around in metal cans powered by miniature, volatile explosions taking place right next to tanks of an accelerant, and you think we’re the strange ones?”

“Yes, and I don’t really have the brain power right now to explain how full grown men flying on wings that couldn’t possible be big or strong enough should not be possible.”

“Surely you have winged creatures in your world?”

“Sure, and the biggest one that can actually use those wings to get airborne could fit in my suitcase.” She was actually pretty sure flight capable birds bigger than the condor had lived, but she wasn’t about to tell Axion about dinosuars. Besides, her point remained; those birds, along with the condor, had hollow bones, tiny bodies, and enormously disproportionate wingspans to make the laws of aerodynamics cooperate.

Diom and Leontis had looked neither hollow-boned, and definitely were not tiny-bodied.

Would nothing in Enoi ever make sense?

When she’d caught him up to the point that they’d met, she stopped abruptly. Axion didn’t ask to continue; a nearly imperceptible shiver made his shoulders and arms shift, and she knew he was remembering Diom’s ‘interview’ as she was. Karlene didn’t bother to hide her own shudder.

“I think that’s all I need,” he said, and as if winter had abruptly descended, the companionable warmth that had seeped into the air vanished. Axion stood up from the bed, and snapped his half-full notebook shut.

“Dox will probably want to talk to you after I take this to him,” he said. “It never seems to matter how many notes I take, he always wants more.”

“You’ve known him awhile, then?” Karlene asked, more as a way to keep the conversation going; the chill memory of Diom still clung to the shadows in the room.

“Most of my life,” Axion said, and a fond smile managed to push back at those shadows.

“You grew up together?”

Axion laughed. “Together? No. He was already well regarded in the imperial court when I was first brought for training as a child.”

Karlene frowned. Axion took note of her confused expression.

“Karlene, how old do you think Dox is?”

Wary of the question, she answered, “I’ve never been good with guessing ages. Not much older than us, I guess. Maybe another decade?”

Axion started to laugh. A real laugh, the kind that didn’t just chase away the memory of Diom, but all other bad memories along with it. Even though she herself, or at least something she’d said, was the cause of the laughter, she couldn’t ignore the way the warm sound filled the air and made her relax, just a hair.

“Karlene, Dox is probably the oldest thing on this ship.” He nodded to the pile of books. “He wrote most of those in his youth.”

Karlene stared at the books. The books that, while not exactly puffing to dust at a touch, were definitely not new. And were also not originals; she recalled the 3rd edition stamps on the title pages. Which meant the originals, whenever they’d been written, were even older.

Karlene scowled, then abruptly brightened.

She didn’t have to muddle through the books’ weary prose and inexplicable magic calculus on her own! She had their author at her fingertips! She didn’t think Dox would exactly mind talking to her about them, either. He had certainly seemed happy to talk about his projects -or anything else, really. And these tomes were dripping with pride.

Private magic wormhole tutor, to the rescue!

Except, when she volunteered to take Axion’s notebook to Dox herself, the now green-haired author took one look at her excited face, the copy of A Study of Gateways and Their Uses, Vol. 1 clutched in her hands, and scowled.

“He told you.”

Karlene came up short in the doorway, just barely remembering to close it behind her to keep the light particles inside. Her smile died on her face as Dox whirled away from her, muttering and grumbling about privacy and promises.

“Told me...what?” She asked, carefully. She’d apparently miscalculated, badly; Dox didn’t seem at all happy that she now knew his name, his full name, was emblazoned in gold leaf across most of the books he’d given her.

At her question, Dox stopped his muttering and peered back at her over his shoulder, pretty eyes glinting in the odd, soft light of the glowing particulates.

“He, uh, told me you’d want to read this and then probably ask me more questions,” she said, holding out the notebook instead of the textbook. “And then, I had some questions about one of the books you lent me? I, uh, don’t know if you know much about keyholes and corridors, but they were your books, so I figure you’ve at least read them and hopefully you understand them better than me and, uh…”

She trailed off. Dox had relaxed noticeably, confirming that his abrupt anxiety had been due to thinking she knew him as the author. She hadn’t outright lied, per say, but she did feel a twinge of guilt at misleading his understanding.

“My dear girl, I would be happy to help,” he said, and all at once he was returned to his chatty, jovial, scatterbrained self.

They started with the notebook, which let Karlene breath a sigh of relief. After coming so close to stepping on what was apparently a giant emotional landmine, she was perfectly fine with putting A Study of Gateways and Their Uses, Vol. 1 aside for the time being, especially if he was still willing to help her understand it later. It wasn’t like Dox was going anywhere; Axion had confirmed that they didn’t expect to arrive at their destination for another few days at the earliest, winds permitting.

Dox’s questions were, as Axion had predicted, far more nuanced and detailed than her previous interrogator’s. He focused on very different things. The mention of cars and parking lots and why she’d been alone hadn’t seemed to snag his interest at all, but he did seem very keen on the composition, use, and age of the asphalt of the parking lot where Nix and Sid and Rowe had drawn their makeshift keyhole.

And it would have had to be makeshift, she knew now from even her brief and mostly confused reading of Dox’s book. Most keyholes were permanent things, like the ones she’d seen at the travel station in the city. Anything else was too unstable; a stray boot toe here, a wind blown leaf there could fudge an important line and then the travelers ended up nowhere. Literally, in the worst cases.

“This Sid of yours must have had some professional training,” Dox murmured. “Useful to know.” And then he was off on another line of questioning.

By the time Dox noticed her yawning, she was ready to drop. The sun outside the portholes had withdrawn its light awhile ago, and her stomach was rumbling. Again.

Dox stopped talking, abruptly, at the god awful noise emanating from her gut.

“It’s reminding me that it’s accustomed to three square meals a day,” she said, trying not to flush with embarrassment.

“You come from a land of plenty, then,” Dox said. He was tapping the end of a pencil -a real one, not the wrapped charcoal stick Axion had used- against the table. “Where did you say your parents were from, again?”

“From a land down under,” she quipped. “Also known as the land where the grass tries to kill you.”

“The...grass?”

Karlene waved away his confusion, not a little bit pleased with being the one to befuddle him for once.

“Same planet, same language, different continent,” she summarized. “And I hadn’t said where my parents were from. Why do you ask?”

“No matter,” he said dismissively, and stood.

Apparently, it did matter, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked. This wasn’t the first time her parentage had come up with him, either. She wasn’t an idiot; it was obvious he assumed one or both parents had been from this world. It was the easiest explanation for how her blood could power the keyholes.

Karlene didn’t focus too closely on the implications of the topic. If Dox was right, it made for some difficult realizations. If he was wrong, it came with even more difficult questions.

“I think your day has been long enough,” Dox said. “I’ll have Olien bring you supper, then you should rest. I’d like to talk with you some more, tomorrow, if you’re willing.”

Once upon a time, Karlene would have taken such a polite request at face value. Here, though, with her new tattoo tingling at her shoulder, she knew it could be considered a grand show of favor that he bothered asking her instead of commanding her as he commanded the dull dropling -the same who had brought her to Dox for her tattoo earlier today- to bring her food and guide her to her bed.

“It’s ok,” she said. “I can get my own. And I think I know my way back to the cabin, by now.” The drab dropling, Olien, made her supremely uncomfortable.

“I’m sure you do,” Dox said, not unkindly. “But you didn’t think you’d be given the prince’s cabin for your personal use during the voyage, did you?”

Karlene’s mouth opened, then shut. She felt a flush on her cheeks. Actually, she had assumed exactly that. Belatedly, she recalled Leontis’ insistence that Axion take his cabin to rest when they’d first arrived on board.

“In that case, show the way,” she said, and followed Olien from Dox’s lab.

“I will collect your things from his lordship’s cabin while you dine,” Olien told her when they reached the mess hall. He gave a slight bow, a motion that was made awkward when he aborted it halfway through, as if only just recalling she was no higher than he on the grand social ladder of Enoi.

“Thanks,” she said, and made her way to the soup bar. Instead of the giant pots of bubbling stew and piles of bowls, however, there was platters of fried shrimp, steamed vegetables, split loaves of bread the size of her hand.

Well, it wasn’t a burger station, but a good, normal po’ boy sandwich sounded just fine.

She piled a plate full, conscious that despite Axion’s words she had no real guarantees of when her next meal would happen, and turned to look for a seat.

“Look who’s back!” A cheerful voice crowed. Karlene felt dread claw at her insides, and she ignored the voice as it called to her. She’d spotted an empty stretch of bench at the far end of the hall, and she made a beeline for it.

A large, beefy hand covered in calluses landed on her left shoulder from behind.

“And hey, look what you’ve got, now!” She felt the mammoth sized thumb land on her new tattoo, and while it wasn’t painful, it was sensitive. She jumped and twisted out of Mr Handsy’s reach, glaring.

“Are you blind?” She demanded. “You just planted your paw on a literal do-not-touch sign. Back off.”

To the man’s credit, he backed off, hands held up in surrender. Not to his credit, he was smirking like a kitten he’d just tried to pet had swiped at him, no more.

A sick, simmering something coiled in Karlene’s belly. She looked around, and that feeling spread, going up her chest, up her throat, choking her. Only a few people in the mess had looked over at their exchange, and most of those were similarly amused. The rest either stared at her with the dull eyes of the overworked and underpaid, or the gaze of someone who’d never been overly concerned with little things like consent.

Karlene shoved past Mr. Handsy and the other seated sailors, and barrelled towards the door. What had she been thinking, coming back here?

Back outside in the corridor, Olien was returning with her satchel of books.

“The place you’re taking me,” she said. “Does it have a door that locks?”

Slowly, Olien shook his head.

“Then no thanks,” she bit out. She grabbed her satchel from him, and marched past, heading back towards Leontis/Axion’s cabin. His lordly princeling-ness, or his squireness, or whoever was there, could just share.