She sat at a translucent table, it and her stool seeming to grow naturally out of the glass floor. The room occupied the entire interior of a hollow cube, the patrons on other surfaces held to them by a strange field she didn’t really understand. She felt his approach – her sensitivity to vibration had increased considerably since they had last seen each other.
“You’re back,” she said. He just nodded. He assumed, correctly, that she would be able to tell. “I was beginning to wonder.”
He sat on the stool opposite her. He looked rather well composed, so she assumed that he hadn’t just returned. “How long have I been away?” he asked. Maybe her assumption was wrong.
“Two and a half years.” Rainne still wore his coat. She wore short pants, leaving her legs bare beneath the knee. Her shirt was short as well, exposing her stomach below the navel. On her right hand, she wore a silver fingerless glove. In his absence, she had adopted an Aldrinar fashion. Janus found that to be curious.
“You spent most of that on my home?” he asked.
Rainne nodded. “It seemed the most likely place for you to return. I started having doubts almost a year ago, so I left. So many of them remind me of you.”
“I figured I had to find you again,” Janus said in the silence to follow. “I still owe you a story, as I recall.”
“Your partner? Does she know you’re back?”
“We don’t see each other all the time. I’ve heard she’s on assignment. But yes, I’d like to tell you how we met.”
There was a report of wild improbability on one of the outlying worlds. We expect some degree of instability on the fringes of the network, as the paths tend to be tenuous at best. This incident was indicative of greater improbability than our calculations predicted, however. We weren’t sure what exactly was causing such an effect – it could have been quite a wide range of things – so I went to investigate.
Due to the improbability in the area, it was unsafe for me to gate directly out. Instead, I commandeered a trade vessel heading nearby to drop a small craft and me on the edge of the system and made my way in the slow way.
It was a few months after I had my first encounter with the Pack so I speculated that I was to encounter their leader, known only as the Alabaster. I figured that if his rumoured spacial control was so great, he could possibly affect the paths of gates, leading to the instability we had detected. Fortunately, that was not the case, and I now believe he doesn’t have that much power. Nevertheless, such were my thoughts as I travelled.
“The details of my initial investigation are largely unimportant to the tale,” Janus said, waving a hand dismissively.
Rainne leaned forward. As she pressed on the table with her elbows the glass changed colour, radiating a mild orange. “I’d like to hear it,” she said. Peering at him more closely, she could tell that Janus had a faintly haunted look about him. Disturbances in the air and vibrations in the glass distracted him, causing him to glance quickly at apparently nothing. He looked like he thought she didn’t notice.
It took me some time to track down the centre of the disturbances. I landed near the main gate for the world, figuring that would be the best place to start. Strangely, the local gate network was unaffected by the improbability. The technician I spoke with hadn't heard reports of instability, and the gate records indicated no problems anywhere on the planet. With that knowledge, I decided it was safe to use gates to travel about, seeking any sightings or rumours that would lead me to this apparently subtle instability.
“What world was this?” Rainne asked, leaning back again.
“I’m telling a story here,” Janus replied. “Probably not one you’ve heard of, if you spent most of my absence on Aldrin. Outlying worlds are, in a metaphorical sense, near the edge of our network.”
“Metaphorical? I came to understand that Aldrin was right in the middle of ‘civilised’ space.”
“It is. Just not literally.” Rainne crossed her arms at Janus’ explanation, obviously dubious. Janus sketched out a quick design on the surface of the table, his touch evoking a white glow, not fuzzy around the edge’s as Rainne’s did. “In terms of networking, Aldrin is in the middle of all our gates. However, in terms of physical space, it’s near the edge of our explored region. Neilis – that’s the name you sought – is close to the galactic core. About as close as we can manage before the radiation and heavy gravity alters space too much for us to get any deeper.”
“So it’s on the edge of your space, as well as the network. You were just teasing me for improper rhetoric.” Rainne feigned displeasure, but not very well. Janus just grinned.
“Not at all. We have gates on the other side of the core. There are paths that lead around the denser regions we can’t penetrate. Now, I thought you wanted a legend, not a physics lesson.”
I figured I’d start with exciting-sounding places. They seemed most likely to hold some oddity representative of my goal. I first tried a magma farm in the north. It had been built along the inner edge of, apparently, the last active volcano on the continent. While it was rather exotic – and a great place to have a swordfight – nothing was amiss there. Leather-suited farmers seemed horrified by the prospect of improbability anywhere near them.
I visited a city near the southern magnetic pole hidden amongst the innards of a gigantic furred quadruped for warmth. The smell was awful and everything had a visceral dampness to it, but everything was normal. Probability-wise, anyway.
One gate was on a raft in the middle of the sea with a tattered grey flag proudly displayed on it. Later inquiries indicated that it saw use in some manner of international sport.
My next inquiry was to a city that a small group of demons overran and destroyed about a decade ago. Though the interstitial space around the city was a bit heavier in activity than usual, the demons left shortly after the destruction and no improbability lingered.
I went to fifteen or twenty other cities around the world to no avail. I had run out of interesting options. I went through a few days of stunningly boring travel before a quiet fishing village turned things around for me. I found there coordinates for a gate previously unknown to me, leading to a large island a few hundred miles offshore. My inquiries about it led to a lot of shut mouths and frightened stares. Eventually somebody told me the “blue god” lived out there, and nobody used the island’s gate anymore. It sounded promising.
The gate deposited me on a stone circle carved into the ground. Apparently, the place still possessed considerable old world influence. It made me wonder how long the blue god had reigned over the island. I was on a plateau about half a kilometre up from dense woodlands. No cities were visible, but given the style of the local gate, settlements could easily be concealed beneath the canopy.
Before descending, I took a walk around the edge of the plateau, hoping I could get some clue where to begin. As I completed the circuit, something caught my eye. A rainstorm had appeared while I wasn’t looking and seemed to be moving slowly but purposely away to the southwest. As that seemed rather unlikely, I figured it was indicative of my target. It was far enough off that I felt safe skipping down the side of the plateau then jogging towards it.
As I approached the disturbance, I was sure that the source of improbability – the blue god – must lie within. The raindrops fell in a spiral towards the centre of the storm, struck leaf and ground at just the right angle not to make any noise. As I ventured into the storm the rain striking me did make a sound. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wanted to head directly into the middle, as it was obvious that such was where I would find the source. I couldn’t, though. Local space was slightly warped, forcing me to spiral around in the same direction as the rain.
Eventually, much wetter, I reached the middle of the storm – the middle of the improbability. A woman occupied it. The rain didn’t touch her, and she was watching me. She could tell from her storm that I was approaching. She wasn’t Aldrinar, like me. She was one of the winged folk, though they’ve always been hard for me to tell apart. Her wings were tinged red. She wore a short bluish dress, tattered at the hem and sleeves. Her fingers and toes were heavily ringed, and each ear had a row of silver hoops running from point to lobe. Finely woven silver mesh seemed to comprise a form of sandals. The blue god was a chance witch. She had a wild look in her eyes and the rain kept changing direction directly around her, seeming almost uncontrolled by her power.
“What do you want?” she called to me. The tone of her voice kept going up and down randomly. She seemed nascent, but I had the impression the blue god had settled here some time ago. Maybe she wasn’t it.
I crossed my arms and nonchalantly leaned against a tree. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
A scowl crossed her face and she raised her arms to the sky, as though she meant to call lightning down upon me. Wind picked up, blowing the opposite direction as the rain. The rain didn’t seem to mind.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She was suddenly in front of me. Even if it was mostly uncontrolled, she had a lot of power. That could be rather dangerous. She grabbed me by my coat and shook me. It sounded like she may have been growling faintly.
“I’d like to show you something,” I said. She pushed me back into the tree behind me and turned to stalk away. I grabbed a bit of her curly hair with my silver hand and tugged.
Rainne looked at Janus with a slightly horrified look. “Did you just…” she trailed off, clearly uncomfortable with completing the thought.
“I keep forgetting,” Janus said. “You’re probably still unfamiliar with some of my special terminology. I didn’t assault her – that would have been a rather abrupt change in behaviour, don’t you think?”
We were on a rickety-looking bridge strung between two platforms high in the trees. I assumed we were on the same world still, though I couldn’t have been completely sure about that. My coat and the witch’s jewellery had disappeared in the transit. She put her hands to her ears, as though my seeing them unpierced was an embarrassment to her. Her ecstatic improbability seemed to have quieted, though.
“What did you do?” she asked in a quiet voice. She looked a bit stunned.
“I took a big risk to make an interesting point,” I replied. “Where are we?”
The witch looked around, as though she were just now taking in our surroundings. Her eyes widened and her hands dropped to her sides. “My home. We can’t stay here – take us away again!” She stepped up to me, bare feet on the toes of my boots, and put her arms around my waist. Her wings fluttered in agitation. “Take us take us take us.”
“There’s nobody here,” I said. “This place has been abandoned.”
“I know I KNOW just take us away I can’t stay here please take us please please.” She buried her face in my chest and kept mumbling something.
“I’ll need your help,” I said. She didn’t seem to hear me. I put my head down to whisper, “Remember the west.”
We were sitting on opposite sides of a small creek. The witch’s earrings had returned and her dress was mended. Her toes trailed in the water and her wings were a pale blue.
“You’re not the blue god,” I said. “Where is he?”
“It’s me,” she said without meeting my gaze.
“He’s been here a long time, and you’re new.”
She nodded. “I’m the new one. The old one was taken a month ago.”
“What’s your name?” I asked again.
“Azurel,” she said. “What are you?”
“My name is Janus. I’m a Silver Arm for the Diarch of Aldrin. You’re a chance witch – it means you can alter the probability of events. I figure you don’t have too great a handle on it yet.”
“You’re here for me,” she said. She stood and looked around. She was checking her airspace.
“I’m here to help,” I said. “I can help you control this power. You don’t have to hurt anyone else.”
“Don’t you hurt people?” Rainne asked, playfully kicking Janus under the table.
“Never accidentally,” he replied. “What about you?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever hurt anyone,” she said.
“But you’re not really sure.”
“I – so, she came with you?”
“I can’t,” Azurel said. “I’m the new blue god. They need me.”
“They didn’t seem too fond of the last one.”
“I’ll do better!” She glared at me, and kicked an arc of water at me. It missed.
“I’d like you to. You can do better than a fringe world where they’re afraid of your power. I can show you the universe.”
“Will they come for me out there?”
“Maybe. Stick with me and I’ll make sure they don’t take you, though.”
“What were you two talking about?” Rainne asked.
“Chance witches are dangerous. If untrained, they usually destroy themselves with their own power before they figure out how to control it. Even if they survive the first year, their improbability eventually catches up to them. Something out there comes for chance witches. My theory is that such rampant improbability weakens the walls of the universe around the chancer. Eventually it’s thin enough that something can reach through.”
Rainne paled at this, and Janus glanced around again, as though he was just making sure.
“Why couldn’t you just jump up here?” Azurel asked as I reached the top of the plateau several minutes behind her.
“Your power and my skipping both alter probability. Until you have a handle on it, I can’t risk using it. The two jumps we made were completely uncontrolled.”
“What else does it do?” she asked. She must have noticed that my hand glowed silver every time I skipped.
“A fascinating array of things. Why, would you like one?”
That proposition seemed to unsettle her; she was quiet until we arrived back at my ship. “Why don’t we gate to Aldrinar?”
“Aldrin,” I said. “I came on the ship because gates are unstable here on the fringe. I thought your power might be interfering further.”
We travelled together back to Aldrin, where I had to leave her. Azurel was upset – I was the only person she trusted to help her. When I explained that I don’t have the knowledge to fully train a chancer and that she would see me again, she reluctantly went along with it.
I went on a number of other assignments before seeing her again. She had finished her training and had undertaken work for the Diarch.
“They say you need a partner,” she said, hovering along next to me. She hated the feel of the ground in our cities, and so never walked on it.
“I think you’re a bit young,” I said.
“That’s why I was assigned to you,” she said. I had the grace to look startled at this announcement. “They say you’ll show me how things work.”
I’ve been working with her, off and on, ever since.
“You’re not safe, are you?”
“What do you mean?” Though he feigned ignorance, Rainne’s question seemed to unnerve him.
“That arm works on improbability, right? Eventually you’ll weaken the universe, too.”
“No. My arm manipulates probability. That’s different.”
“How did it happen the first time?”
“When I got the silver arm?”
Rainne shook her head. “When you took the Alabaster away, you said that you’d been out there before. But I’ve never heard anyone else mention a gate accident like that.”
“You were right – I’m not safe. However, it’s because of my continued exposure to Azurel. Her improbability is slowly rubbing off on me.”
I was on my way home. There was a disagreeable ruler, who the Diarch felt we should remove from power. It had all gone rather routinely, and I was ready for a bit of rest before the next assignment. Ruvoth is fairly close to Aldrin, so the path between them is very stable and reliable.
A faint clicking announced Azurel’s arrival – the sound of her toe rings on the glass floor. “I don’t think you’re the best to tell this story,” she said. She seemed to glide onto a stool between Janus and Rainne. “He doesn’t tell anybody what he saw out there. So I think my perspective could make for a more enlightening tale.” She brushed a bit of Janus’ hair out of his face and pinched the tip of his ear. Rainne wasn’t sure what the gesture meant, as she hadn’t seen any Aldrinar do it before, but Janus found himself inexplicably just out of Azurel’s reach. Azurel seemed puzzled by this; Janus was bemused.
We had differing assignments when Janus was assassinating people on Ruvoth. I was watching one of the exits to the Webway near Aldrinar space, in case you’re curious. I’ve always been a better observer than warrior. I was home before him with nothing interesting to report – unfortunately, my work is often much less interesting than his when we’re apart. Being partners, I heard when he had finished and was on his way home. As he just said, it was a routine and stable path – not like gates out to the fringe. As such, it was rather surprising when he didn’t come through. In fact, it was more than that. It was extremely distressing. Because something did. The gate opened, and out poured some transparent steam and an odour best described as reminiscent of the colour grey. It wasn’t until days later that…
“Now, you’re messing things up,” Janus said, interrupting Azurel.
“I am not. I told you about this as soon as you returned,” she replied, quickly affecting a pout.
“You’re the only one who remembers this story. In actuality, I returned to Aldrin before I left Ruvoth. I just didn’t come through the gate. There was a distorted sphere, as if a bubble in reality was boiling and about to burst, then-“
“Why would you believe everyone else’s story over mine?” Azurel said. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot, reminding Rainne of an impatient cat.
“Why does he need to believe anyone?” Rainne asked. “Don’t you remember?”
Janus shook his head. “I was… scattered upon my return. It took a few months to reconstruct my psyche and I don’t have any memory of that time.”
“What happened,” Azurel said, taking control of the conversation again, “is that we had a split of our timelines. One in which Janus came through the gate a few days after he left, as though merely delayed. In this line he spent, I presume, much more time Outside, and never recovered. At least, he showed no sign of doing so. I only experienced about a week of that timeline before it was overwritten.”
“In the other, which everyone else experienced, I burst forth from a wound in space about an hour before my expected arrival, accompanied by some unusual interstitial goo,” Janus said.
“My improbability,” Azurel said suddenly, having noticed the question formulating on Rainne’s face before she spoke. “It does strange things to me sometimes. That time, I seem to have spent about a week in an alternate timeline.
“Now,” she said, turning her attention back to Janus. “Since I’ve properly enlightened the girl, where have you been? You have the look of the Lost about you again.”
“I was dealing with the Alabaster. It’s how Rainne and I met.”
“He’s not dead,” Azurel said after Janus relayed the story. “I’m sure his kin will find him and return him to whatever infernal realm he originated in.”
“Likely. However, it should be a significant delay until his return. And I believe I’m getting a hang of navigating the spaces between.” Janus stood and stretched. “Now, Rainne, if I may have my coat again, we need to get home. I have a few things to report on.”
Rainne, looking reluctant, stood and stepped around the table, her footsteps fading from red to blue. She draped Janus’ coat around his shoulders and turned away.
Janus caught her arm as she tried to leave. “Please, join me. I’m sure you missed some rather interesting things on Aldrin.”