They had the war council in the kitchen, because the kitchen was where the confessions had happened and nobody wanted to break the streak.
Everyone came with something.
Dani brought three terminals and a wall map. Selah brought her own hands. Maren brought Mona, who was asleep. Joan brought coffee and a legal pad.
Yara brought a piece of chain and put it on the table where the fruit bowl usually went.
"Everyone look at this," she said. "This is the whole problem."
◆◆◆◆
"It’s not broken," Dani said.
"No."
"It’s not cut, it’s not filed, and the loop diameter is unchanged." Dani turned it over twice. "Whatever was in it left without deforming it. That’s not an escape. That’s a drain."
"That’s my mother’s whole family trick," said Yara. "We don’t break out of things. We go thin and pour."
Maren leaned in. "Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Since always. It’s how I get under his bed."
Maren sat back very slowly.
◆◆◆◆
"Alright," said Soren. "Tell us what’s coming. Assume we know nothing and don’t be poetic about it."
Yara put both hands flat on the table.
"She doesn’t fight," she said. "That’s the first thing and it’s the only thing that matters. You’ve all built your entire lives around fighting. Every one of you is very good at it. It won’t come up."
"Explain that," said Selah.
"When something is in front of her, it stops being in front of her and starts being part of her. There’s no exchange. There’s no trading blows and seeing who’s left. She arrives, and then there’s more of her and less of everything else."
"She eats," said Joan.
"She absorbs. Eating implies a mouth and a choice." Yara’s ears stayed flat. "She’s the thing all the shadow in this world came off of. Every dark corner you’ve ever stood in is a cousin. When she comes up, they’ll all remember whose they are."
◆◆◆◆
"And she wants you," said Soren.
"She wants me back. That’s not affection. A hand doesn’t feel affection for a finger." Yara’s fingers moved on the tabletop. "I came off her and I walked away and I stayed away, and to her that’s not rebellion. It’s an accounting error."
"And me?"
"You’re worse." She looked up. "I didn’t just leave, master. I opened a door in the wall of the world and pulled a soul through it and gave it a body I hollowed out. To her that’s not a romance. That’s stolen property, walking around wearing a jacket."
"So she wants me erased."
"She wants you corrected." Yara said the word flat. "She won’t hate you. She won’t be angry. She’ll look at you the way you’d look at a wrong entry in a column and she’ll fix it, and if you’re standing next to me when she does, she’ll be gentle about it. That’s the part I can’t stand."
◆◆◆◆
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Then Maren laughed, one hard note.
"So let me get this straight," she said. "You spent a whole year buying committees and setting monsters loose on a schedule to give us practice."
"Yes."
"You bought audits. You bought a man to fly across a border and ask me where I come from. You dug a grave under our exhibition slot and filed a chain until a god-piece could slip out of it on the exact night three continents were watching."
"Yes."
"And the one real problem we’ve ever had, the one you didn’t arrange, the one thing on this whole continent that can actually kill us." Maren spread her hands. "Your mom."
"...Yes."
"That’s so funny."
"It’s not funny."
"It’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened," said Maren. "I’m going to be laughing about this while I die."
◆◆◆◆
Soren took the chain and set it aside.
"Fine," he said. "Constraints. Dani."
"Working." Dani had four windows open. "Evacuation math, containment history, and every record of a primordial surfacing this continent has. There are nine. Seven have no survivors and two have no witnesses, so the sample’s garbage."
"Selah."
"My ice held a fragment for a season." Selah’s hands were folded. "It did not digest through my ice. It filed a chain instead. I’ve been thinking about that since the reception and I want it in the plan."
"Noted. Joan."
"Legal." Joan didn’t look up from the pad. "The moment shadows misbehave on campus, the Council will try to reassert custody so they can be the ones who lost the academy instead of the ones who handed it over. I’ll make sure the paperwork already says you have it."
"Maren."
"I’m going to burn something."
"That’s not a plan."
"It’s a commitment."
◆◆◆◆
Mona woke up in the middle of it, climbed onto the wall map, and sat down directly on the east yard.
Everyone stopped.
"Move her," said Dani.
"She’s not wrong," Soren said.
"She’s on my map."
"She’s on the hole." He looked at the mole, who was now grooming a paw on top of the pale patch. "She’s been pointing at that hole since the autumn and every single time she’s been right and we’ve been polite about it."
Mona chirped.
"Fine," said Dani, and drew the map around her.
◆◆◆◆
Troy came at four in the afternoon without being asked.
He stood in the kitchen doorway in a coat and looked at the chain on the table and the map on the wall and a goddess with her ears flat.
"So it’s true," he said.
"Which part," said Soren.
"The part where the shadows on the west stair went the wrong way this morning." Troy came in and shut the door. "Two of the third-years saw it. It’s already on the boards. By tonight it’ll be everywhere."
Dani swore and started typing.
"How bad," Troy said.
"Bad."
"Define bad."
"You’re going to want a number and there isn’t one." Soren pulled a chair out with his foot. "Sit down and I’ll give you the shape."
◆◆◆◆
Troy listened to all of it.
He didn’t ask about Yara being a goddess, which meant Yara being a goddess had been on his list for a while.
When it was done he sat back and put his hands on his knees.
"Right," he said. "What do you need from me?"
"Nothing. You should be on a transport."
"No."
"Minden."
"Last time something came up out of the ground in this building," Troy said, "I stood in a hallway with a Spectral Knight I couldn’t use and watched you go down the stairs with a wolf. I got to watch."
He looked at the map.
"I’m not watching this one."
Soren looked at him for a moment.
Then he reached over and turned the map so Troy could see the west approaches.
"Your light doesn’t work on this," Soren said. "It didn’t work in the sublevel. It won’t work now."
"Then fix it."
"That’s not how it..." Soren stopped.
He looked at Dani.
Dani had already stopped typing and was looking back at him with the specific expression of a woman who had just had an idea and hated it.
"Say it," said Soren.
"His light didn’t fail," Dani said slowly. "It ran at the wrong frequency. And I have every reading from that stairwell, because I have every reading of everything."
She turned a terminal around.
"Give me four days and a lot of coffee," she said, "and I can put Troy Minden inside your wire."