And the door still wasn’t opening. I turned and knocked again, more forcefully.

  “Are they going to let us in?” asked Lyn.

  “If they don’t, they’re going to be sorry,” I said, voice going a little singsong at the end. These people barely knew me, and still they knew enough to take that as a bad sign and step back, eyes going just a little wider.

  The guards tensed at the sound of footsteps coming from our left. I glanced to Sally. “One of yours?”

  She shook her head, expression drawn. “No.”

  “Any chance the Haspers have more forces out here?”

  “They don’t do lying in wait. Too subtle for them. But they’re not our only neighbors.”

  “Great.” I was almost out of bullets, I couldn’t keep chucking grenades this close to the compound, and we were running out of time. I started hammering on the door.

  I was still pounding when it swung open and I all but fell into the hallway, stumbling past the woman I’d been introduced to as Aadya. She shot me a startled look, transferring it to Sally as the other woman followed me through the open door. “Did the two of you go out looking for strays?”

  “We took out the jerks who were trying to huff and puff and blow your house down, and we picked up these folks along the way. They were answering the summons from your beloved leader.” I waved for the Murrays to follow me inside. “Come on, all you, get in here. We can’t keep the door open forever.”

  I was asking them to enter the stronghold of their oldest enemy, someone many of them had grown up fearing and hiding themselves from. But I had also taken the time to talk to them, and they were exiles now; whether they liked it or not, we were the best chance they had left. One by one, they came inside, and when the last of them was inside, Sally leaned over and pulled the door closed.

  There was a finality to the sound of it latching that made me wonder about magical locks, and how secure we actually were in here. The walls seemed thick enough, but Thomas said that some of the people from the neighboring dimension were also in this one. How were our aerial defenses? How secure were the windows?

  “The Autarch will not like this,” said Aadya.

  How much was she going to like it if I redirected all of my current frustrations onto her? I swallowed my rising temper, forced a smile, and said, “I think you’re wrong, since this was his idea. Don’t scare the nice people. They’re already anxious, and I for one don’t want to deal with a stampede of panicked Lilu.”

  “Lilu?” said Aadya. “These are the Murrays, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Yeah, and with a name like that, at least some of their founders probably came from Earth, but we can worry about that after we’ve given them something to eat and a place to rest,” I said.

  One of the smaller children started crying softly, out of hunger if nothing else. Aadya thawed somewhat, inclining her head.

  “Of course,” she said. “Children never go hungry here. If you would all come with me?” She gestured broadly with all four arms before she turned to make her way down the hall. The Murrays followed, more quickly than they had followed me. I guess food is a better incentive than violence. Cer and Lyn were the last to go, stealing anxious little glances in my direction until I smiled and waved them on. I didn’t need to pick up any strays this trip. Not when it looked like we were already taking Sally home.

  Sally, who was looking at me with amusement in her eyes. I bristled a little. “What?”

  “You know, I expected the boss to be into getting his savior complex on, the same way he always does. I didn’t expect you to be into it. I also didn’t expect you to be that prepared for the boundary line.”

  “What were you going to do if we reached it and I stopped breathing?”

  “Shove you back onto the good side and send a couple guards to walk you home,” she said unrepentantly. “Boss may have thought it was a good idea to send you with me, but I didn’t know how well you could handle yourself, or whether you were going to freak out the second you saw things get messy. That’s on me. I underestimated you, and while I’m not going to apologize for wanting to protect my people, I won’t do it again.”

  That was understandable, even admirable, no matter how little I liked it. “Good thing I had a breathing charm on me,” I said.

  “Yeah. Boss warned me about that one,” she said. “He’s got a whole list of magical effects he thinks you can manage with what’s written on your skin, and a list of what he thinks the side effects will be. Did you know that if you triggered too many of those in quick succession, you could put yourself all the way into a coma?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “Can I take the speed and chipperness of that answer as an indication that you’ve done it?”

  “I don’t know. Can I take the fact that you keep acting like I’m somehow infiltrating your base to make problems and not because I belong here as an indication that I’m allowed to push you out this door and lock it behind you? If we’re asking crappy questions, I mean.”

  Sally laughed. “Okay, okay, fair enough. The boss will be thrilled to see us all safely back home, with no major injuries, a threat eliminated—or at least reduced—and a whole bunch of new mouths to feed.”

  “Assuming they don’t start any trouble,” said one of the guards.

  Sally shot him a glance. “If they try, I’ll play the xylophone on their ribs. Now come on. I understand there’s snacks on offer.”

  As a group, we tramped down the hall, following the path charted by Aadya and the Murrays, moving deeper into the estate. When we passed a wide doorway, the guards who were still carrying their fallen companions stopped, looking to Sally. She nodded, sharply.

  “Take them to the meeting hall to lie in honor until they can be given to the fields,” she said. “Tell their husbands and their wives that they died fighting for the glory of the Autarch and the protection of their people, and tell them that I understand the knowledge does nothing to stop the pain.”

  “We shall,” said one of them, quietly, and they walked through the door in a smaller, sadder group, taking the bodies with them. Sally looked at me.

  “The war we’re fighting here . . . it’s not a game,” she said.

  “I never thought it was.”

  For a moment, she stared at me challengingly. Then she thawed, sighing. “Just as long as you know.”

  We continued on, fewer than we’d been before, but still standing.

  Maybe that was all that mattered.

  * * *

  Aadya had taken the Murrays to the kitchen to raid what looked, to me, like a fairly pathetic continental breakfast—hard bread, mealy fruit, and strips of some unidentified meat that I was at least reasonably sure hadn’t come from anything intelligent—but which the Murrays had already fallen upon like it was the greatest feast they had ever seen by the time we arrived. Which, to be fair, it might well have been. None of them had been eating regularly. Some of the women chewed bites of bread and meat before offering it to the children, openly weeping, and not one of them tried to refuse anything they were given. Pickiness is a product of plenty, after all.

  Watching them made me miss my own children, who hadn’t been children in a long, long time, who had always felt like they had the privilege of being picky. Other than Nem, who had had good reason to make a choice she clearly regretted, I didn’t think any of these people had made crossroads bargains: they looked too much alike, unified by a blend of genetics enabled only by the Lilu aspects of their heritage. They had been born here. They had expected to die here. And not a single one of them deserved it.

  I turned my face away, momentarily closing my eyes, and opened them when a hand touched my upper arm. Sally was standing closer than she ever had before, looking at me sympathetically.

  “It’s hard here,” she said. “It always has been, and it’s only been getting harder. But it’s not going to be hard for too much longer.”

  Either we’d be out of here, or we’d all be dead. Strangely enough, I found that encouraging.

  “I think we’d have a riot on our hands if we tried to take these nice people away from the food,” I said, and looked to Aadya. “Can you keep them from eating themselves sick?”

  “I’ve raised three of my own,” she said, amused. “I can babysit.”

  “Good. ’cause I need to report in before I head back to the wall to join the rest of the guard,” said Sally. “And if I don’t get the lady here back to the boss before he loses his patience, we’re going to have issues.”

  I couldn’t feel bad about my presence hurrying us along. Sally and I left with about half the guard, leaving the others to stand watch over the Murrays as we made our way to the throne room to report to Thomas and his council.

  Normally, I would have wanted to stop and clean myself up before any more potentially fraught introductions, but as the only place I knew of to change my clothes was on the other side of the room, that wasn’t so much an option. The guards peeled off when we were about halfway there, heading for the wall Sally had mentioned, and we carried on alone to the throne room.

  It was empty when we arrived, but the door to the council chamber was standing open, and soft voices drifted from inside. Sally made straight for the door. I stopped outside, standing there for a long moment before I took a breath, steeling myself, and stepped inside.

  Thomas, Sally, and several men in linen robes were gathered around the table in the center of the room. I paused in the doorway, trying to identify their original dimensions. None of them looked familiar in the slightest, save for the fact that they all followed a roughly bipedal body plan, which is more common than not in the dimensions that can support human life. Finally, I walked toward them, hoping I wasn’t about to get another exciting round of “who are you and why are we supposed to trust you?” It hadn’t been fun coming from Sally, and at this point it was starting to get a little old. Thomas glanced up and sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of me, that familiar pained inhale that usually came right before someone said, “Oh, Alice . . .” in a pitying tone.

  Not that Thomas had ever been much for pitying me. I still wasn’t in the mood for being fussed at, no matter how much I might deserve it. “You should see the other guy,” I said brightly. “Hi, honey, I’m home. Hello, gentlemen. You weren’t here when I left.”

  Everyone in the room turned to stare at me, almost as one. One of them, who could have passed for human if not for the two smaller sets of eyes, one above and one below the normally-sized pair, reached over and gripped Thomas’ sleeve.

  “You were speaking truly,” he said. “Your lover—”

  “Wife,” I amiably corrected.

  “—has come to help you save us all.”

  “It’d be great if everyone in this dimension could stop questioning whether or not I’m married to you. It’s enough to give a girl a complex. And if by ‘help him save you all,’ you mean the assholes who were getting ready to attack you are dead, you’d be right about that,” I said, strolling toward them. “They were trying to kill me, and I didn’t like it. I take that sort of thing personally.”

  Thomas’ look of dismay blossomed into one of almost malicious delight. Guess he didn’t like being called a liar any more than I liked being called a lover. Learn something new every day. “I appreciate you handling a few little problems for me, dear,” he said. “My advisers and I were just attempting to agree on a plan.”

  “So I see. Where were you keeping these fine gentlemen during our tour?”

  “They were attending to their duties here and in the village,” he said, holding out his hand in invitation.

  That’s not an invitation I’ve ever been able to turn down. I took his hand and let him pull me against his side, only wincing a little when my bruised elbow brushed his side. He gave me a hard sidelong look, clearly picking up on even that brief discomfort. I managed a smile. Nothing was broken, and I wasn’t bleeding internally. He was going to have to remember what life with me was like because there were some things that weren’t going to change.

  “A village which is still in dire danger,” snapped one of the other men. “We brought as much with us as we could carry when you called for us to take shelter within the palace walls, but the O’Vera are coming. They’ll be upon us in a matter of hours. We have to protect our fields and our homes!”

  “Then we’ll fight them off, the same way we always have before,” Thomas replied.

  “They’ve never been sending this kind of force before,” said the man. “You have to see that this is different.”

  “I do, and we’re taking this situation very seriously, but as I’ve been trying to explain, we won’t be here much longer, and then the fields won’t matter.” He turned to Sally. “How many of your guards are ready to be sent back out?”

  “About two thirds, at a guess,” she said. “We lost fewer than usual, thanks to somebody,” she hooked a thumb toward me, “deciding she could aggro a whole pack of Haspers by herself. But we’re going to need more archers—we don’t have enough to protect both the palace and the farmland at the same time.”

  Thomas gave me a hard look. “Did she,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  There was no point in denying it. I smiled at him. “You knew I was a tailypo when you picked me up.”

  “True enough,” he said, fond despite himself. “I did.”

  “We have greater issues at the moment,” insisted one of the advisers. “We don’t need guards. We need an act of great and terrible magic!”

  “As I keep telling you, great and terrible magic is no longer an option,” said Thomas. “The pneuma of this world is dead, and we receive no additional infusions, thanks to the cessation of new arrivals.”

  “You closed the barrier between this world and the cosmos,” said one of the men. “Can’t you open them again?”

  “That’s part of the problem,” said Thomas. “I already did.”

  Everyone fell silent, visibly shocked by this announcement.

  “Excuse me, you did what?” I asked.

  “While you were sleeping, I took down the barrier that was keeping people from entering this dimension. As your arrival proves, even with the barrier in place, people could get through if they pushed hard enough. Once, the crossroads did the pushing. Not anymore. They’re gone. So it seemed wise to stop powering the barrier in order to conserve what magic I have left,” he said softly. “This world has been dead for a long time, and we’ve been prolonging the inevitable for as long as we possibly could. We can’t prolong it anymore. The collapse is coming. The fields will die, the wells will fail, and all will be brutality and chaos until it finally, mercifully ends.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Is this really new information, gentlemen?” I could tell there was still something he wasn’t saying, which was strange. It had been a while, but I still thought I knew my husband, and he was normally tediously enthusiastic about sharing information regarding impending doom.

  “No,” admitted one of the advisers. “But it seems very final, and there has to be another way.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve seen a lot of corpses in my day. Never yet met one where I could tell it that it was time to stop being dead and get more use out of it.” That wasn’t technically true. My son-in-law, Martin, is a Revenant, meaning he’d been several dead men before an enterprising mad scientist glued and stapled them all together and ran the perfect electrical current through his heart. Or hearts, I’ve never been clear on what he’s working with, and it’s never seemed polite to ask.

  But Martin is a special case, assembled by an expert. We didn’t have two more dead worlds to splice this one into, and even if we did, we were too small to survive an electric current of that magnitude. No. There was no option that allowed human-sized life to stay here.

  The one with all the eyes frowned at me. It was pretty impressive, given all the glaring he was built to do. None of them looked overly thrilled by my presence, except for Thomas, who looked quietly content, an expression I’d spent years mistaking for neutrality while we were learning one another.

  A process I was more than ready to start over from the top. I stepped up to the table, skimming the tips of my fingers over their map and staring at it until I found what I was looking for, what I had somehow already known would be there. “Don’t bother defending the walls,” I said. “Call everyone into the compound.”

  “Excuse me?” said one of the advisers.

  I smiled sweetly at him. “Call them all in,” I said. “All your guards, all your people, any particularly beloved house pets, any living thing you want to see survive, call them in.”

  “What?”

  “Look at this.” I pointed to the edge of the walls around the compound. They extended farther than I’d been able to see from my limited exposure, stretching out to sweep mostly around the shape of what I assumed was meant to represent the village. “There’s a gap in the wall. You have enemies on their way who can fly, who eat living flesh, and who would be happy to treat this gap as the best kill chute ever constructed.”

  Something about the shape of the full compound still nagged at the edges of my mind. I’d seen this before. This shape, this construction style, I’d seen it before. I just didn’t know precisely where.

  “So you let the invaders come,” I said. “You let them burn the fields when they can’t find anyone to kill. You let them do what they’ve come here to do. And we fight them through a bottleneck, if we fight them at all, not in a mob.”

  They stared at me before looking to Thomas, like children begging their father to tell Mommy to stop being so mean. He looked at me. I looked back, defiant.