35. Sevara
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Sevara


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When they call the strip between a land that no man claims to own,
There's a fact we clustered 'round it have each almost always known:
That in ancient times (it's proven fact) we all must share a mother;
So why split hairs partitioning one cradle from another?

It was a terrible library.

This assessment had nothing to do with the recent chaos. The bears where columns should have been. The fallen stacks. The charred remains of no doubt priceless books. This library had been terrible before all that; it was small, it was cramped, it was airless and lightless and soulless, too.

It was, however, still a library.

She closed the Way behind her, and spun up a temporary seal from the ashes of knowledge swirling around her where the air had been displaced. Under normal circumstances this place would have been inaccessible, but whatever wards had been in force before, the shattering had disabled.

Something to tell her so-called sister about, once it no longer mattered.

The doors to the rest of the Site were bent out of shape and would not open, so she twisted her wrist and flung them off their hinges. She took her phone out of her pocket — technology had some advantages over magic — and was about to dial Udo up when Udo sprang up in front of her.

The golem was immaculate. It was red, of course, but other than that it was perfect in every detail. Clothed, long-haired, fiery-eyed. Fantastic.

"Not bad," she said.

"How did you sneak in?" The golem glanced over her shoulder, and grimaced. "Never mind. Why did you sneak in? You're already the liaison with Aph. You can use the front door."

"You don't want us at the front door. They're watching it. And she's watching it, too."

The golem scanned her face before responding. "The Council and the Queen." She must be half the dust in the Site to have a brain that fast. Mother is right to be afraid of her. "You're in stealth mode because she doesn't know."

"Yeah." She reached out to pluck a stray grain off the golem's shoulder. It blinked. "Like you said, I'm the liaison. Turns out that word has a lot of different meanings. Gives me plausible deniability. But it'll go better if I don't have to deny anything to her at all. She's not the easiest woman in the world to lie to. She was around for the invention of lying."

"Probably participated." The acid on the golem's tongue was palpable. She half expected it to hiss. "I did notice you said 'we'. Where's your invading force?"

"Waiting for my signal." She smiled in spite of herself. No. In spite of our mother. "You'll want to take me to your leader before I do that."

"And tell him what?"

She raised her hands between them in a complex salute. It had taken her years of apprenticeship to make her fingers bend this way; it had taken less time to bend the earth to her talented will.

"That if you're all done throwing stones, the Spinner-Mistresses of Aph would like to build you a new glass house."

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Joanna

Indivisible

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Character

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