Mare Undarum

TIMELINE: AUGUST 18, 2017. THREE DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

Máni and Kelpie are exploring the blackberry maze. Kelpie's hands are filled with fruit, the orange skin around her mouth stained with streaks of purple like delicate bruises. Máni is more familiar with blackberries; he's clearly been picking them as well, but more carefully, and his hands are nearly clean. Both of them look around as Artemis comes clattering down the porch steps, Máni relaxing at the sight of her, while Kelpie tenses.

Artemis hopes the other woman will eventually be able to look at her without seeing a loss of autonomy and an unasked-for future full of gods and monsters. Desired or not, that future is coming for them both, and this will be easier if they can accept it. Máni waves.

"Artemis!" he calls. "Any trouble?"

"The man was dead when I got there, but I saved Isabella and the boy." Bobby sees Kelpie and bounds across the yard to greet her, tail wagging wildly.

She pales, even as she shoves her handful of blackberries into her mouth and bends to pat the dog almost robotically on the head. Swallowing her mouth of half-chewed fruit, she manages to squeak, "Dead?"

"The alchemists who made you somehow tracked Isabella's footsteps back to the apartment," says Artemis. "They made an auf, and set it to catch her."

"She told me she'd warded the apartment. She swore!"

"I think she was telling the truth." Artemis pauses briefly, expression sorrowful. "The boy and dog were both inside when she got there, or they'd be dead too. There must have been something preventing the auf from just ripping its way inside."

"What's an auf?" asks Máni.

Kelpie has a more pressing question: "Who… who was it?" she asks.

"A woman. Blonde. Isabella knew her. She didn't tell me what her name had been, but… she knew her before this happened."

Kelpie wobbles, looking momentarily like she's going to throw up. "Catrina," she says. "Her name was Catrina. The coven met at her house. Isabella took me there. Oh, they were looking for me, and they found Catrina."

"Which gave them a destination they could backtrack from," says Artemis. "Smart. Primitive, as hunting techniques go, but… smart, all the same."

"You're praising them?" asks Kelpie.

"Not in the sense of admiring what they've done, but refusing to acknowledge the skills of your enemies doesn't take those skills away. It just leaves you more vulnerable to having those skills used against you." Artemis shrugs. "It wasn't a stroke of tactical brilliance. Like I said, it was primitive. But if they wanted to find Kelpie and Isabella had wards keeping them from perceiving the apartment, hollowing out someone Isabella knew and using them as a hunting dog was clever, especially for alchemists. It's so simple and so gruesome that modern alchemists don't usually think of that sort of thing."

"But you recognized it right away," says Máni, eyeing her warily.

"I'm a hunter. I know hunting techniques," says Artemis. To her relief, he lets it go with that.

She focuses on Kelpie, who's still bent over, petting the dog. Bobby, for his part, is in ecstasy at all the attention. "How are you feeling?"

"The same as I've felt all afternoon. Lost. A little confused. But still like myself, if that's what you're really asking."

"You're the one who was worried," says Artemis. "I drew my bow. At the apartment. It's the reason Isabella and the boy are alive. I shouldn't have been able to draw my bow before the moon was out, but I needed it, and when I reached, it was there. I saved them because I could do something that shouldn't have been possible. I saved them because you were here."

"They were in danger because I was here," says Kelpie, and Artemis can't argue. She sighs as Kelpie straightens and storms back into the house, Bobby following. He stops halfway, looking uncertainly back at Artemis. "Go with her," she says, and he goes, bounding after Kelpie, vanishing.

Artemis turns to Máni. "I don't know how to help."

"I don't know if you can help. She's trying to cope with the idea that she was made, not born, and it's tearing her up inside. I think she's more embarrassed and frightened than anything else."

"Fear I get, but embarrassment?"

"Look at her." He shrugs. "It doesn't seem quite realistic that she would have thought she was anything other than constructed, does it? Especially in a lab where everyone else was a natural human. If she'd been thinking clearly, she would have looked at them, looked at herself, and known the truth without anyone needing to tell her. But she couldn't think clearly, because she didn't have all the information. She did the best she could under the circumstances. And now she's in the real world, where all those pretty lies are falling down, and she can't fool herself anymore. She feels bad about that. She's afraid spending too much time with you will wipe out who she is as a person, and she's also afraid that might not be the worst thing ever, because who she is as a person let herself be lied to for so long."

"Ah," says Artemis, softly.

Máni shrugs again, smiling. "I just want us to finish this, and figure out what the hell is going on. Blackberry?" He holds out a hand filled with fruit, and Artemis takes one delicately, popping it into her mouth.

It explodes on her tongue in a perfect cascade of sweet and sour. It tastes like the height of summer, like the harvest in its most platonic form, and she swallows almost eagerly. "Fuck, that's good."

"Guess when the Doctrine of Ethos orders a garden to grow, it listens."

"Guess so."

They're quiet for a moment after that before Máni asks, slowly, "Were you telling the truth before? About why you're here in Berkeley?"

"I was." Artemis looks at him. "That's not really what you want to ask, is it?"

"Why were you pretending to be Losna?"

"Because I knew there wasn't a Losna here to contradict me, and if your Diana heard an Artemis had come into the area, she'd start trying to make me leave." Artemis looks at him calmly, trying to make her point without forcing him to see things her way. "She doesn't like other Lunars who might rival her for power. She only puts up with Chang'e because she needs the peaches, and every Chang'e I've met who's been around more than a few decades knows better than to go near Berkeley. This Diana likes her territory to be hers, and she doesn't like to share."

"How old are you?"

That's a question she doesn't want to answer. Grimacing, she sidesteps. "Old enough to know that I didn't want to start a fight with an established Diana in her own territory. That's the danger of Dianas. For all that they're syncretic with Artemis, they're a lot more territorial than we tend to be. We follow the hunt where it leads us; they find a forest and claim it as their own. So even though we're generally comparable in power, most of us won't go into a Diana's den and start poking them in the ribs. The ones who think that's funny don't make it long enough to understand why it's not."

"And Losna…?"

"Isn't a threat to Diana's authority the same way an Artemis is."

"What are you planning to do if Diana shows up at the gate tonight?"

"Has she ever done that before? Just decided to drop by and see whether things are going the way they're supposed to?"

"Well, no, but she could."

"And if she does, we'll deal with it." Artemis's expression hardens. Máni has to make an effort not to look away. That look doesn't make it seem like "dealing with it" would be something temporary.

The back door swings open, and Chang'e is there, back at the forefront, Judy once more tucked neatly out of the way. "It's time," she calls to the other Lunars, glancing up at the sky, where the pale disc of the moon's daylight face has appeared through the clouds. "We can open the gate now."

"And we're sure this is the best way?" asks Máni.

Artemis glances at him. "You're full of questions today, aren't you?"

He shrugs. "I want to understand what's going on before I wind up joining Aske in the everything."

"A noble desire. Come on." She starts for Chang'e, looking her up and down, taking in the disheveled state of her hair and the new wrinkles in her shirt. "Mmm."

Chang'e flushes red. "Just because you're a virgin goddess, that doesn't mean the rest of us feel the same way."

"Isn't he the head of your department or something?"

"He's not my advisor." Chang'e shrugs. "He speaks languages I've never even heard of. It's a nice change from all the monolingual assholes I have to deal with on a daily basis."

"Right. Is Kelpie coming?"

"She is." Chang'e sighs. "She doesn't want to, and she's pretty upset about what happened to Isabella's apartment and husband, but if her being there ups your effectiveness, it's worth it. It means she might be able to give us the edge against anyone who thinks they know what we're capable of."

"I wish she felt better about all this, but coming along grudgingly is better than not coming along at all," says Artemis, climbing the stairs to the back door, Máni close behind her. The three Lunars proceed into the kitchen.

Dodger and Erin are already there, the one making a fresh pot of coffee, the other making sandwiches. Dodger looks over her shoulder as the door swings shut, giving a short nod of acknowledgment. "We're leaving the civilian and her son here," she says. "I know she was planning to come to campus, but that was before she got widowed. Tim and Kim are fine with it; they're not planning to come downstairs anyway. And the wards on the house will keep the alchemists from finding her again. She'll be safe here until we can get that house set up and establish some protections."

"You say ‘wards,' I say ‘negotiations with the universe on a scale that few people can perceive, much less match," says Erin. "Anybody want a sandwich?"

"I want a vocabulary sheet," grumbles Máni.

Erin laughs, and keeps slapping sandwiches together. It's a good use of her time; manifest or not, being incarnate means being at least partially human, and humans need to eat. They'll be on campus right around when they should be eating dinner, and not many of them have had lunch today. Personified concepts underpinning the universe do not survive on coffee and spite alone.

In short order, the five of them are on the front porch, waiting for Roger and Kelpie to join them. The orange woman emerges first, wearing a borrowed cardigan over her dress, the sleeves too long and the neckline too low, the knit fabric swamping her like a canvas draped over a piece of furniture. It makes her look smaller than she is, more fragile, and her tail is wrapped around her leg, tightly enough that if she had toes, Artemis would be worried about her cutting off her own circulation and losing a few of them.

People with hooves should probably still worry about blood flow, but this doesn't seem like the time to point that out. They collect on the porch, a ragged group of seven, and the afternoon air is cool. The pale face of the moon above them is a small comfort.

"This is the plan," says Chang'e. "Just so there's no confusion. We proceed to the Campanile, verify the gate is anchoring there, and open the everything in a rotating order. Tonight is Artemis's night to cross the City, so we'll start with me, then open for Máni, and finally open Artemis. Once we open the first passage, we'll take Dodger inside, and she'll start doing the charts to establish which window belongs to Aske."

"Can we back up to where you said ‘verify'?" asks Erin. "Is there a chance we get there and the gate isn't there?"

"It moves," says Máni. "Not every night, thankfully, or we'd spend all our time chasing the thing, and not nearly enough time doing our actual jobs. It felt stable enough last time I was there."

"I'm expecting it to move tomorrow, probably to the back hall of the old UC Theatre. It's been there about once a month for the last year. But right now, it should be on the Campanile. I don't know whether the everything has preferences, but it definitely has patterns, and it didn't like being unable to open on the Campanile while the repairs were going on. So it tends to show up there reliably."

"Okay," says Dodger. "What happens if I can't go into this ‘everything' of yours?"

"I was able to go in while stepped all the way down," says Artemis.

"Yeah, but you were still a Lunar, stepped down or not," says Dodger. "I am still the Doctrine of Ethos, irritated by a system I don't understand or not. There's a difference."

"As if you can't convince reality to view you as anything you want," says Erin, sounding halfway amused.

"Not the point," says Dodger. "If we need to be able to get you, or Roger, or even Kelpie inside to avoid splitting the party, we need to know what happens if I can't get in."

"Not sure I follow, but let's go with that," says Erin. "Chang'e?"

"Dodger's right: we haven't technically tested this with someone who isn't tied to the Moon in some way," says Chang'e. "If nothing else, we should hopefully be able to pull you through by holding on to your hands until we're safely into the everything, and then we just take you to the window. Honestly, my bigger concern is what happens to someone who's not a Lunar if they're present when we open the window? City air is… intoxicating, even for us, and we're basically designed to endure it. I don't know what happens to you."

"Reed created us to take the City," says Roger. "I'm not worried about getting drunk or passing out. If anything, I'm worried we'll get one whiff and decide it's time to fulfill our purpose."

"Nope," says Dodger, easily enough. "I just joined another think tank in Australia, and we're going to figure out the necessary calculations for creating perpetual motion."

"Isn't that engineering? Or physics?" asks Máni.

Dodger shrugs. "It's all math when you dig deep enough. Pretending otherwise wastes everyone's time."

"Let's not stand here and start a philosophical debate when we have things we need to be doing, all right?" asks Roger, mildly. "Erin, you ready?"

"Ready," she confirms, and starts down the stairs.

Artemis frowns. "I know why the two of you are coming, and we couldn't do this without you, so I'm not complaining. But why are we bringing her?"

"She's our best killer," says Roger. "If something goes wrong, or we lose control of the situation, Erin will take care of it."

"Love to be useful," says Erin, deadpan. "But yes, I'm capable of murder, and I'm not squeamish when we're talking about killing alchemists. Some people need killing."

"That's a very soothing and reassuring attitude, and not at all alarming," mutters Chang'e.

Erin shrugs, unrepentant. "If it's us or them, you'll be happy to be on team ‘us.'"

"Right," says Chang'e. "We access the everything, and Dodger determines which window belongs to Aske. Then we find a way to get to her window, and we break in. That should get us into her version of the everything, and let us try to figure out what happened to her. There's a good chance her body is still there, since Máni left her inside to avoid uncomfortable questions."

"And once we know? What does that do to solve things? We have dead Lunars, we have agitated alchemists, we have no proof they're connected—"

"Except that they're happening at the same time, and it seems like a pretty extreme coincidence if they're not."

"When you put this many nonhuman people in the same place, we have to start distorting the laws of causality at least a little," says Roger. "I would be shocked if we didn't. That would actually be more of a stretch than the idea that we do."

"You do," says Kelpie. "I mean, we do. It's part of why there's a lab here. Setting up under your noses meant taking advantage of the strain on the laws of reality, and being able to turn those little improbabilities to nobler uses."

Silence falls, uncomfortable and awkward. Kelpie grimaces as she realizes what she just said.

"Or, um. To use them to hurt people, I guess. Sorry."

Artemis pats her on the shoulder, stopping when she sees how Kelpie shies away. "It's all right," she says. "You're still adjusting."

"They killed someone," says Kelpie, sounding miserable. "Two someones I knew, and maybe more than that. I shouldn't need any more time to adjust. I should be able to just know they're the bad guys. But even if I don't know for sure that your dead Lunars and the alchemists being all upset are connected, I do know it for sure, because the eclipse is coming. Margaret was in a tizzy for weeks, trying to push everyone to find the answers she needed, and when they didn't, the man from the Congress showed up to investigate the lab, and that's when she…" She pauses, swallowing hard, and looks away from the group, staring at the house. "That's when she told me what I was, and told me to run, and died. When the Congress came. The only thing that changed was how close we are to the eclipse. So that's what's going on."

"If they've been trying to find a way to trick their way into the City, could killing enough Lunars let you fake being one for long enough to get into this everything you keep mentioning?" asks Erin, thoughtfully. "Just lie to the world, get to the window, and slither into the Impossible City. Once you're inside, you can open the gates to anyone you want. We know that from the books."

"Earlier, Smita mentioned Zib getting into the City via the graveyard path," says Dodger slowly. "She assumed we would be looking for someone who was trying to use the road of moonlight to get inside, but what if we're wrong about that?"

"My sister, the literary analyst," says Roger, sounding almost entertained. "What are you thinking, Dodger?"

"I'm thinking Artemis told us the alchemists who're looking for Kelpie made an auf," she says. "They're not alive, not really, but they're not dead either. They're in-between, unresolved integers, and they could probably use the graveyard path, if you could get them access."

"How do you open these gates?" asks Roger.

"We have keys," says Chang'e. The conversation leaps from place to place like a rabbit on hot cement, never staying still long enough for her to feel like she has her bearings. "We use them to tell the gate who's coming."

"Uh-huh. Does everyone have their own key?"

"No. We share them around."

"So where do they come from?"

"Hecate," says Artemis. "She doesn't manifest often—she's associated with the moon, but for some reason she's not generally considered a goddess of the moon, and I guess that keeps most of the people who still believe in her from lumping her in with the rest of us. But when she does manifest, she's the goddess of entries and of keys. She makes the keys we use to open the gates, and then we pass them around, because they're physical things, and when they're lost, they're gone."

"Could the alchemists be killing Lunars to try and get one of these keys?"

"Wouldn't work," says Chang'e. "There are only two keys in Berkeley right now. The one I brought with me when I moved here, and the one that was already here when I arrived."

"How did you get one?" asks Máni. "Why didn't I know you had your own key? Shouldn't someone have told me?"

"First, no one told you because most people don't know. I play it pretty close to the vest," says Chang'e. "I think most people who have their own key do it that way, for the sake of not having people get careless about the gates. As to how I got it, it was given to me by a Chang'e who was tired of doing her job. She'd been incarnate for so long that she'd buried her husband and all three of their children, and the youngest of her grandchildren was about a year away from going into assisted living. She was tired of crossing the sky. She was ready to go home to her version of the Moon and walk in the peach orchards forever."

"And where did she get it?"

"Hecate, I presume," says Artemis. She reaches into her pocket and produces a perfectly normal-looking key that gleams like mercury, surface glittering like it's been infused with pearlescent glitter. It's a solid object, but something about it looks like liquid, like it could burst and flow away at any moment. "That's where I got mine."

"How old are you?" asks Máni again.

Artemis shrugs. "Older than I like to admit. Old enough that I probably knew the Chang'e you're talking about. Was her human host's name Grace?"

When Chang'e nods, looking stricken, Artemis smiles.

"I always liked Grace. She was friendly; even welcoming, and she never objected to new people washing up on her patch. She used to make this spiced peach jam that was absolutely to die for, except for the part where if you ate it, you'd live forever." She looks to Roger. "We get the keys from Hecate, and then we pass them along until she comes back again."

"Who owns the other key here in Berkeley? The one you all use?"

"I think you know the answer to that one."

Roger sighs, deeply. "Yeah," he says. "I guess I probably do."