Chapter Thirteen: Sneakers

+++++Anise+++++

Anise wiggled her thumb, soft and pink and perfect. Well… it wasn't quite perfect. It was missing the writing callous she'd cultivated through her hundreds of hours and hundreds of pages of writing at St. Quillia's. At first, it had felt inexplicably off and Anise was worried it would stay that way, but all she'd had to do was pop it back into the joint and her new thumb worked just fine. Of course, she wouldn't have even needed a new thumb if it wasn't for that unhinged asshole, Plenakton, who appeared to be the big boss of the 'demon liberation' movement. If the infernics wanted a poster boy to sway popular opinion away from demon liberation, Anise could hardly think of a better guy.

Now she'd been locked in a cell 'for her own protection'. A little six-by-six cinderblock-walled cubby of a room with a reinforced door that was bolted from the outside. Anybody with opposable digits (which Anise had a newfound appreciation for) could get inside if they wanted, but Anise couldn't get out. She didn't feel very protected.

The worst part of getting her thumb cut off with a pipe clipper hadn't been the pain or the bleeding, though those had been pretty bad. It had been the violation. The way that Plenakton had strutted up, as calm as you please, grabbed her by the wrist like it was the branch of an unpruned shrubbery, and crunched her thumb right off. He'd taken her thumb because Ezra couldn't immediately think of a way to prove he was an infernic without his plug scar (where it had gone off to, Anise could only speculate). If they'd asked Anise for her opinion, she could have told them: quiz Ezra's memory. Check his reaction speed. The boy isn't normal. And, if that didn't convince them, a little literal soul-searching from a nuanced practitioner (and infernics could be pretty nuanced in their magic) would show that Ezra had a deeply abnormal, definitely-not-human soul. At least not the sort of human that lived on Medias.

Where he came from… some plane called 'Universe' (how pretentious!) on a planet called 'Earth', everybody was like him, more or less. Presumably, they were all disembodied spirits paradoxically also inhabiting bodies… but capable of leaving them occasionally via 'astral projection', 'psychedelic trips', and 'out-of-body experiences'. These were three Earth phenomena that Ezra had cited that, among the humans of Medias, sounded nonsensical and insane but, to the 'humans' of Universe, were interesting but ultimately unremarkable experiences. And, if accidentally summoned to Medias while on one of these out-of-body trips, the humans of Earth apparently made for strange enough infernics that Plenakton and his people were at least as excited about Ezra as they were about the fact that Anise's uncle had summoned a literal goddess of fire into a beautiful, crimson-haired woman's body.

Anise sighed. It was way past her bedtime. She hadn't studied a single page today. She had to pee. And every passing minute made her a little more annoyed at Plenakton and his very rude people. Yes, Anise was willing to admit that infernics were people, too, but people could sometimes be quite uncivil. She inched over to the door and stood on her tiptoes, peering through the little smudgy window. She didn't see anybody in the hallway, and the only thing keeping her in was a three-centimeter-thick steel bolt right on the other side of the door. Most infernics could do magic reasonably well, but they clearly hadn't had mages in mind when they designed their 'guest suites'.

Anise took a moment to focus and then popped the bolt up and over with her magic. If she could lift up a grown man a foot off the floor and hold him there for the better part of a minute, she could undo a push-bolt from five centimeters away. The bolt chunked unlocked and the door creaked open before Anise could even push it. She nudged it the rest of the way with her foot and stepped out into the dimly-lit confines of the hallway. She crept down to the next door over and leaned up to peek inside.

"Fuck!" She stumbled back into the wall, taking a moment to calm herself. She didn't usually curse, not out loud. "What in the four hells, Ezra?" she whispered.

His face was right against the doorway window, his eyes glowing the same pale, intense light they'd shone when he first took his goggles off. With a frown of concentration, he managed to tamp the brightness down until those eyes were an unnaturally pale gray, like the smoky color of an aerojin's irises but a shade or two lighter. They still looked odd, but not as odd as that intense, glowing white, like a pair of ring-shaped magic crystals charged close to cracking and embedded right in his eyeballs.

"Are you leaving?" he asked, his voice heavily muffled through the thick door.

"Sure… what about you?"

He backed away enough for her to see most of him. He shrugged and mouthed, 'sure.'

If Ezra was close to the elevation level she'd felt earlier, he could probably open the bolt from the inside himself, but he had no idea how to harness and focus his magical energies, so it might be months before he could control that power. Though, knowing Ezra, it was more likely to be days. Anise unbolted the door, no magic required, and Ezra stepped out, bringing her into a hug. Ezra was big on hugs, Anise had gathered, and that was fine. A little annoying sometimes, but fine. It was jarring to see him without dark goggles bolted to his face, but he looked a lot more human this way, his thin eyebrows, ash-blond like the rest of his hair, strangely emotive.

Next down was Rill's room. The ifrit sat in the corner literally playing with fire. She tossed a little ball of flame back and forth like a carnival juggler, motes of fire flickering and dancing on her fingertips as she did. According to Ezra, she'd barely been able to ignite her hands when she'd first awoken - at the rate things were going, Anise was going to be the weak link in their trio before long.

Before Anise could knock, Rill looked up, her gleaming, fire-flickering eyes staring at her with a strange feral intensity. Then, as calmly as you please, she paced over to the door and waited for Anise to open it. Then she just stood there in the doorway with the tiniest flit of consternation creasing her delicate brow.

"Plenakton wanted us to stay," she said. "It's dangerous out there for us infernics."

"We don't look like infernics," Ezra stated. Implied in that was that they'd have to manage their strange, glowing eyes. "Besides, if they wanted us to stay, they wouldn't have locked us up."

Rill frowned in earnest. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Yes it does," Anise said. "You don't lock people up if you want them to enjoy your hospitality."

Rill visibly ran through the logic of Anise's thinking. "Yes, that's fair. Are you as starved as I am?"

Anise was.

+++++Anise+++++

She kept expecting somebody would try to stop them. It turned out that infernics slept like regular people so, in the middle of the night, there were only a few guards. And the guards they encountered were so surprised, and possibly awed, to see the 'fire goddess' and the 'zero demon' (that's what they were calling Rill and Ezra) that they didn't bother to stop them. Besides, Plenakton had been quite clear when he stated they weren't prisoners… though, if you'd asked him to clarify, Anise was certain that what he'd describe her, Anise Derrigin, as, would be very close to synonymous with 'a prisoner'. But he hadn't felt the need to elaborate. Too bad for him.

They found their way out of the compound - where they'd come in at the back of the building was semi-secure, but most of the doors locked from the inside, so they could proceed to the outside with no problem. They passed from the back into a cramped part of the building that reeked of urine and other assorted waste, a section not yet rescued from squatters. They gathered around cooking fires in little metal drums and brick enclosures, sometimes looking up as the three of them passed, but mostly paying little attention. Most of them were urmal with a few dorthek huddled in little feathery nests. There were a few humans, kao-alta, and kao-etema, too. Anise suspected that a significant fraction among their number were free infernics. Unless the constables stormed in and cracked heads, it was likely that nobody would ever notice, so long as they didn't make waves and stayed out of the city's major thoroughfares.

They entered what had once been the lobby of a grand hotel, long since gone to disarray, and soon found themselves pushing through a great, creaking wooden door and out into the cool autumn night. Anise stood on the stoop for a moment, somehow finding it hard to believe that she was standing on a dilapidated concrete porch in the Old City in the middle of the night… and that this was perhaps the least unremarkable bit about her day.

"Where to?" Ezra asked.

That was a good question. Anise just wanted to go back to her room. Back to Franyi who, bless her soul, didn't yet suspect that Anise lusted after her, and who would have probably laughed in your face if you told her the sort of day that her roommate had just endured. But where could Ezra and Rill go? They couldn't go back to Mama Pathula's boarding house. They definitely couldn't go back to Uncle Fenrik's… so, then, where?

Her parents' house? No… that was an even worse idea. Mother and father were conformists to their bones and would probably go out of their way to turn rogue infernics in. They wouldn't turn Anise in… they probably wouldn't… though they might well send her to a nunnery or something similarly absurd. Anise was still even wearing a nun's plain brown gown, though she'd lostbthe shawl at some point between early afternoon and now. Presumably, sometime after everything went absolutely bonkers.

"I can sneak you into St. Quillia's?" she said. In her ears, it sounded like a bad idea. In her bones, it felt like a bad idea. But Anise really, really wanted to collapse into her bed for a few blessed hours before dawn. And tomorrow was a school day.

"I've never been to a school before," Rill said. "Though I've probably destroyed a few. You know… along with the rest of the town…"

"I get it," Anise said. Rill had not been especially even-keeled during her time as a volcano goddess.

+++++Anise+++++

After her gamut through Chartham and dropping a few bills at the Mochine-wei clinic, Anise was running out of pocket money. When word got back to her parents that she'd been disciplined over the potion incident, they'd likely restrict her allowance, which was only twenty brownbacks per week already, if not shut it off entirely.

Every brownback counted… even so, she wasn't about to trudge for two hours through the Old City, along East Shore, and all the way across the Wen's Ridge Bridge back to St. Quillia's. Therefore, she shelled out the two brownbacks for a night coach to take them just past the bridge - she didn't want to ride right up to the school, because they'd be caught by the gate matron immediately and Anise would be disciplined (again) and Ezra and Rill would be turned away, or possibly reported for indecency. It really depended on which matron they got.

Ezra helped her over the little stone wall delineating the edge of campus and they crunched along through the dry leaves for a bit, the moonlight not quite enough for Anise to see by - though Ezra seemed to see just fine, so they followed after him. Aside from the shift of dry leaves and the occasional chirp of crickets, the campus was utterly silent. In the distance, along one of the little brick paths, a matron in a gray dress shuttled along like a ship at sea, her drab gray dress billowing behind her in the cool air. But they were far away and in the dark, so there was no real danger of being spotted.

Anise navigated them away from the obvious approaches and around to the back of St. Bastia's hall, counting out the second-floor windows - seven windows from the corner of the building to the room she shared with beautiful, brilliant Franyi. Whom, Anise hoped, would be all right with two infernics staying for the night. Just a few hours, really. Anise had never actually snuck in after curfew before, but she knew the drill from Eloise's barely-believable tales of sneaking boys in.

She focused her magical energy and pulsed it at the window, buffeting little flutters of force against the pane. Rattle… rattle-rattle… rattle-rattle. Rattle… rattle-rattle… rattle-rattle. After a moment, the window slid open and Virtupi-Grace stuck her head out, squinting into the darkness, her keen kao-alta vision picking Anise out with no problem. Right… the corner room on the floor had two windows… her and Franyi's room was the next one over…

"Anise?" Virtupi-Grace whispered. "What… are you sneaking in?"

"No…" Anise lied for some reason.

"You are," Virtupi said. If anything, she seemed a bit excited at the prospect. "Eloise will distract the house matron… I'll meet you at the back entrance in two minutes." The window slid shut and the room's little reading light flickered on.

They took two minutes to get to the building's back entrance, which was the 'servant entrance', though it was rarely used since the girls didn't really have servants. They waited another two minutes in the night breeze under wan moonlight for Virtupi to arrive and let them in, grinning when she saw Anise and then gasping when she noticed Ezra and Rill behind her.

"Oh… there's three of you?"

"Is that a problem?"

Virtupi scratched at her golden ruff. "I suppose not. Is Franyi going to be okay with it?"

Anise wondered the same thing. She worried that Franyi would pretend to be okay for Anise's sake but that it would worry or annoy her nonetheless. It was just for the night… just until Ezra and Rill could find somewhere safer…

As they crept through the dormitory, Virtupi's sharp night eyes leading them down unlit halls, Anise could hear Eloise speaking with the house matron out in the atrium, the matron rifling through her medical bag to find a decoction for Eloise's fictional indigestion. The matrons were servants, but they were highly-paid ones with some training and cultivation in magic and alchemy, even if they weren't as highly-elevated as most of the girls who graduated from St. Quillia's, and their tasked orders included enforcing campus rules (like curfew) and seeing to the girls' needs.

"I don't care if it tastes bad, you have to drink the whole thing," the matron whispered.

"I… I think I'm feeling better now," Eloise said. "Thank you, Kalia…"

If Eloise was about done stalling for time, they only had a few more seconds. Virtupi-Grace padded up the stairs, the wood barely creaking beneath her feet. Anise was fairly certain she was the least stealthy of the bunch of them, assuming glowing eyes weren't considered unstealthy. She nearly tripped on the stairs, and it was Ezra's fast reactions that managed to hold her up and avoid a thump! that the matron (apparently, it was Kalia tonight) definitely would have heard. As they crept down the corridor, floorboards creaking beneath their feet, moonlight casting little rectangular pools of pale light through the windows, Virtupi leaned in to Anise and whispered: "good luck!"

+++++Anise+++++

The girls' rooms at St. Quillia's had locks to provide some facsimile of privacy, but they were flimsy locks that you could pop open with a hairpin. You could use magic to make things a bit more secure, but doing so was pretty pointless when every other student in St. Bastia's Hall was at least 3rd elevation and could undo whatever little lock-jamb you'd put in place. Anise pulled her hairpin out, her dark hair loosening out of its bun, and clicked the lock open, gesturing the other two inside.

They tried to be quiet, but the sound of the lock clicking open had awoken Franyi. She propped herself up and activated her reading light, blinking back sleep and squinting at the wall clock.

"It's three in the…" Franyi noticed the other two. "Oh! What's… Anise?"

"It's a really long story," Anise whispered. "My uncle tried to kill them, and now they need a place to stay…"

Franyi rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "So you brought them to our room. Wonderful…"

"Franyi!" Anise hoped her pleading look conveyed that now was not the time to argue.

It was three in the morning and she had to be up for class in four hours. Four hours, and then Ezra and Rill could find their own accommodations - go back to Plenakton without their human carbuncle if they so desired. Between the two of them, Ezra and Rill had the ingenuity of three resourceful people and the common sense of a prymen.

"We'll sleep on the floor," Ezra whispered. "I'm used to it…"

Franyi sighed and muttered to herself, as if she couldn't believe what she was about to say… "Nonsense. These beds were made to be big enough for a borrenkin… they can fit two if you're willing to sleep close."

"I guess I'll sleep on the floor…" Anise murmured. She had to admit it made more sense - she was playing hostess, so the lousy sleeping digs were on her.

Franyi lifted the covers and patted the mattress. "Don't be stupid. Crack the window open so we don't get too warm."

Anise forced calm breaths. For a brilliant girl, Franyi was truly clueless… and Anise wasn't about to blow her cover by admitting that she was hopelessly attracted to her own best friend. It felt like she was participating in some strange admixture of a death march and a dreamtime fantasy as she cracked the window, sweet, cool autumn fluttering in from the night, and shuffled over to Franyi's bed, sitting on the edge for a moment, watching Ezra and Rill on her own bed.

Ezra already looked to be asleep, his arm draped protectively over Rill. The ifrit's eyes peeped open and closed a few times, fire glistening within them, and a contented smile spread across her pretty face as she relaxed back into him. Anise couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy…

"Sleep," Franyi murmured.

Anise sighed and rolled onto bed, her arm dangling over the edge as she tried to put as much space as she could between Franyi and herself. Her chaste posturing didn't last for long, though. A soft hand snaked around to Anise's belly and pulled her in. The hand stayed there and Franyi was warm behind her, her breasts and belly and thighs warm against Anise, her hushed breath humid upon Anise's ear, her bath oils smelling of cinnamon and flowers… Anise didn't want to know what she smelled like. Franyi's fingers traced little lazy circles on her belly, sending tingles up Anise's spine and making her ears burn with embarrassment. She wasn't allowed to feel this way!

"This is nice," Franyi whispered.

Anise couldn't say anything. She just sighed, knowing that sweet Franyi couldn't possibly understand how she felt. Or… what if she did? Anise didn't dare speak the possibility, lest it crumble like the ash of an exhausted fire. Instead, she imagined a world where Franyi meant to drive her crazy with those soft fingers on her belly, and her own hand reached up, and their fingers entwined, Franyi sighing happily as she drifted off to sleep. And Anise cried with what had to be happiness, because she knew she wasn't broken, for the tender glow that she felt in her heart could never come from a corrupted soul.