“Devera?” she said sharply. She had been half out of her chair, now she sat down and looked at me. “What has Devera to do with this?”
“She’s the one who got me into it.”
“Into what, exactly?”
“Brought me to the house, the place, the”—I coughed—“platform where all of this happened.”
“Why?”
“She’s trapped there.”
“Trapped? Impossible.”
“Uh, if you say so.”
She settled back fully into her chair, the way you do if you plan to be there for a while. “Tell me everything,” she said.
I glared at her. “You first.”
She stood up. “Vladimir—”
I didn’t stand up, but I touched Lady Teldra’s hilt and said evenly, “Do not threaten me, Goddess.”
“You would draw that, on me, in my own home?”
“Only if I have to.”
“You’re a fool.”
“Is that why you picked me? I mean, the first time. When I was Dolivar. You needed some idiot you could wield like a tool, who’d be too stupid to know he was being played? Was that it? All the way back, the first time? I’m stupid, Goddess, but maybe not as stupid as you think I am.”
She slowly sat down again, and I let go of Lady Teldra’s hilt.
“First of all,” she said, “I didn’t pick you, Devera did. Second, it wasn’t because you’re a fool, it was because she thought you’d be willing to stand up to her grandmother when it was needed.”
“So, in other words, a fool.”
She chuckled, and I relaxed a little more. If Loiosh had been here, fool would have been the kindest thing he’d have called me.
“One thing,” I said.
“What?”
“When I was remembering that, that life with Dolivar when you and I first met—at least, I assume it’s the first time.” I paused, but she didn’t choose to comment. “I remember thinking that Devera must have been around nine years old.”
“What of it?”
“Well, Dragaerans grow slowly, right? I mean, by the time they’re grown up, a human would be dead.”
“Yes, that’s true, now.”
“Now?”
She nodded.
“When did it change?”
“Gradually, over an immense length of time. You know how long the Empire has existed.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Yes?”
“That seems an odd thing to happen.”
“A natural side effect.”
“Of what?”
“Of the way the Jenoine tampered with the world.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was a result of their whole effort. No, not effort. Experiment.”
“Experiment?”
“They live a long time, Vlad. Long by Sethra’s standards, long by mine. And they’re observers, and they are absolutely heartless, at least where other species are concerned. This world is an experiment to see if a society can be made to stagnate.”
“I am lost.”
“Societies develop and change, Vlad. There are inventions, and inventions have repercussions throughout society; associations among people grow and become different.”
“If you say so.”
“You’ve never seen it, because, for one thing, you don’t live long enough, and for another, that hasn’t happened here. Or rather, it has, but it has been very, very slow. The formation of the Empire, from scattered tribes, took tens of thousands of years. Without the interference of the Jenoine, it would only have taken hundreds.”
“That’s—I don’t know what to say.”
“I was one of their servants, and I didn’t enjoy it. My sisters and I took offense at the whole idea, not to mention how they treated us, so we took action.”
“The Great Sea of Amorphia.”
She nodded. “It didn’t undo what they’d done, but it introduced a certain amount of slow, gradual progress. Between that and our efforts to keep them from interfering, things have moved. A little. But now…” She smiled.
“Now what?”
“I should have realized it, of course. Adron’s Disaster. That was it. Seventeen Cycles. They built in their stability, and I destabilized it. That was the proof it worked. I should have recognized my own handiwork.”
“Um. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about Devera, my granddaughter, my little seed of catalyst thrown into the swamp of stagnation. Catalyst, yes, the silver tiassa. How did I not recognize it?”
“Goddess, I have no idea—”
“Devera. A product of the Interregnum.”
“That makes no sense. Her mother wasn’t even around during the Interregnum. I know, I rescued her myself.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “From the Halls of Judgment. Where she came in a disembodied form because of the actions of her father. It was, after all, why I introduced that ability into the e’Kieron line so long ago, though I had no idea in what way it would bear fruit.” By now, I was generating questions faster than I could even remember them. She kept talking. “But there it is, time out of time, stretching from the first disaster to the second, and the second brought everything—even you, my oh-so-tough Easterner—together to create little Devera, the perfect catalyst to unlock—everything. This is splendid. I should open another bottle of that wine.”
“Yes, that would be—”
“Tell me everything that happened.”
I was done trying to fight her on it. I gave her a more-or-less complete version of events, leaving out things that were none of her business, or that I’d promised not to mention. She listened, nodding occasionally, her eyes fixed on me like they’d keep me pinned to the chair.
When I finally stopped, she sat back and rubbed her chin with one of her weird fingers. At length she said, “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Stuff,” I said.
“How did she end up trapped there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask her?”
“Our conversations kept being cut short by her vanishing abruptly.”
She nodded. “Of course, yes, that would happen.”
“Why?”
She brushed it aside as if it didn’t matter, which, with my luck, meant it was the key to the whole thing (it wasn’t, but I didn’t find that out for a bit).
“All right, then,” she said. “It makes sense now.”
“I’m glad it makes sense to someone. Can you explain why, when I struck the mirror, it brought me here?”
“I am certain,” she said dryly, “that if you put your whole mind to it, you can work out why it was that when you, in your typical subtle, discreet, and nuanced way, blasted a big hole in the fabric of the universe, you happened to come here.”
“Uh…”
Verra, I hope this doesn’t kill me.
“Right,” I said. “Got it.”
She shrugged. “That’s a relief. Come with me.”
I followed her down a narrow white hallway, trying to organize my questions into something coherent. The hall ended in an arched opening, with a large room on the other side, also white, except that it didn’t. I followed her through the arch, and we were in an entirely different room, circular, not especially big, with windows looking out—
“Hey,” I said. “This is Morrolan’s—”
She unceremoniously pushed me. I fell backward into one of the windows, and ended up—
Of course. In the manor, on my back, just outside the mirror room.
“Boss?”