Hugh wasn''t amused.


    Errod hadn''t said much, but Hugh now knew - roughly - why Hammersmith wanted me. Before, he''d been under the impression that the entire interest in me was about the fact that I was from somewhere strange. The Grand Alignment Task Force had a broad interest in anything odd going on that could conceivably turn into a bigger problem when the Grand Alignment actually hit, and so it was well within normal expectations to want to talk to someone that had mysteriously arrived from some distant land, but also I clearly wasn''t trying to become a demigod or take over anywhere or do some huge dangerous magical experiment. And so, as Hugh thought, if I wasn''t willing and wasn''t a risk then why shouldn''t I be allowed to fuck off somewhere?


    It wasn''t that he thought I should, and it certainly wasn''t that he didn''t respect Hammersmith - hell, he clearly worshiped her - it was just that he believed people should have the right to make their own choices whenever reasonable. This was, of course, why Connie had insisted it be him that come to get me. But now that he knew I was absolutely vital to getting into Brinkmar to not only end the war but stop Halenvar from doing whatever dangerous shit they had planned (he didn''t know the world had briefly ended, thank god) he wasn''t about to set me free no matter how nicely I asked.


    I was frustrated with Errod, but I knew that it wasn''t really his fault. And anyway, the main thing I wanted kept secret was my extra Dumines which I wasn''t sure would be possible in the long term; Hammersmith would almost certainly have someone give me the once-over and find them. Second to that was the existence of Earth, but Hammersmith already knew that and so the risk of having some magical empire try to invade or, worse, cause a nation from Earth to invade Fantasyland was already out there. Keeping Erathik in the dark was of questionable benefit, I didn''t have the first guess if it would mean a race to Earth or pressure for them to have some sort of treaty saying they would both leave it alone.


    Hugh tried to - gently - give me shit for not telling him, but I wasn''t going to let that stand. "To be fair, I didn''t know until after we split up. And why didn''t Hammersmith tell you?"


    "I am only a retired royal guard," he said, "and she may have had valid reasons to keep this information from me."


    "Bullshit. You didn''t correct me just now. I said Hammersmith, and you always correct me with her full title. You''re distracted, and probably pissed. She should have told you, or someone above you should have told you, or something. Admit it."


    He scowled. "Very perceptive, Calliope Smith. Yes, I am bothered. But that is a matter for me to discuss with other people, yes? With you, my concern is your careless risk-taking. You should have stayed with Lord Protector Hammersmith, and not run off to find the Duminere or trekked off into the jungle to train and fight monsters."


    "Again, bullshit. Hammersmith was supposed to keep me safe? I got attacked by Telen and the Behemoth under her watch, and then were able to waltz right out of the fortress afterwards."


    "Yes, you seem to be good at vanishing from secure locations."


    That was the second time he''d made a comment like that, and I was certain now that he thought I''d done some clever escape from Erathik as opposed to just leaving through the city gates. It did lend some credence to Katrin''s suggestion that Lute might have done something to get us out of there but I couldn''t probe more without tipping Hugh off and either getting Lute in trouble - which I didn''t want to do if he really had helped us - or making it clear I was clueless.


    "Anyway, we killed Telen - you''re welcome - and hucked the Behemoth into another plane. And then we made your nation way stronger by finding that Duminere - you''re welcome again - and we''re still doing just fine. I can handle myself." I didn''t mention that I, personally, hadn''t really done any of that shit. Connie had stolen the location of the Duminere from the other timeline and blown up Telen with time mana, and Sige had neutralized the Behemoth. I''d mainly just followed along and tried to avoid dying. I had for sure taken care of those bounty hunters, but mentioning that wouldn''t go over well since he was pissed that I was risking myself and that was a ridiculously risky maneuver.


    "Not my nation, our nation." Hugh said, and tapped my nose ring. "And the fact that it has all worked out well is good, but you could not have known that beforehand. No, I will have to escort you to the nearest city with a teleportation circle, and from there to... hmm. I suppose still Lord Protector Hammersmith, although I will be discussing matters with the Primarch, yes?"


    I considered ditching Hugh somehow, but in addition to not being sure I could pull that off I also ran into a problem with Errod. He didn''t openly agree with Hugh, but as soon as we were alone he nervously broke the news that he was not down to try any shenanigans.


    "I felt nervous about even leaving Theramas, but the situation moved too quickly. And then we were on the road, and I did, somewhat selfishly, want us to make it to the Duminere. When we were able to leave Erathik so easily I convinced myself that meant they''d figured something out and didn''t need you anymore, and besides... I''d seen how hard it was on Connie to be stuck in one place and I didn''t want that for you. But now we know that there are still bounties on you, and it''s only two months, and if there''s any chance that the whole world is at stake - I know you think that''s solved but I mean any chance at all - we need to make sure you get the way to Brinkmar open. My only remaining concern is them seeing your other Dumines, but I had some thoughts about how to deal with those."


    Katrin tilted her head. "We''d talked about covering two of them up, we could try to convince Hugh to let us get that done - under the guise of shopping for supplies of course - before we head to wherever Lord Protector Hammersmith wants you."


    "I had that thought, but I believe it would actually be better to cover them with false Dumines, maybe even get a few extra. As soon as someone realizes you have multiple, if they pry you can have them test one of the fakes first. It would look like you''re just paranoid and don''t want anyone to know which one is real, and since it''s known that nobody can have more than one as soon as they confirm whichever one you want to designate as the ''real'' one they''ll stop looking at the rest."


    That... was not a terrible idea. I wasn''t totally sold on it, but it was worth thinking about. I wasn''t ready to give Errod any credit though, because even if his reasons were good I was annoyed he wasn''t on my side about avoiding responsibility. It was hypocritical of me, of course, since when Connie had been the one saying we should escape Theramas I had the exact same thoughts as Errod; the stakes really were too high, and it really was a more than reasonable price to pay. But that was then, before I had these extra secrets and when I didn''t have to deal with the panic caused by knowing that the end of my freedom was so close. And so, despite knowing full well that I was wrong, I snarked at Errod.


    "You just want me to let you into Brinkmar because you think you''re going to be a knight of a cursed wasteland."


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    He looked... disappointed. "Callie. You know that''s not it. If it helps, if it convinces you, I''ll gladly agree to stay away - honestly I doubt Lord Protector Hammersmith would let me through the portal regardless."


    "Ugh. Fine. Fuck it, fine, I''ll go like a good little girl. But I''m going to bitch about it the whole way."


    We''d debarked from the barge and were once more traveling via wagons, with Hugh riding a moskar of a slightly different variety to ours - its head was more like an axe than a hammer. He slept in Errod''s wagon the two nights it rained, and outside otherwise. That meant Katrin and I still had plenty of privacy to talk about secret shit, like the fate lines. I hadn''t made as much progress with The Paradox of Fate as I would have liked to, partly because I was lazy but also because it was super dry and kept referencing other books or making assumptions about how much I already knew.


    It had left me with mixed feelings about developing that power.


    Based on the information available about messing with fate using wild magic, I was expecting it to have a huge up-front mana cost but then linger indefinitely for free which was actually pretty cool. The issue was that - unless doing it via a Dumine changed things - imprinting your intent onto it was a shaky prospect at best and even if you got it right you had no control over the execution. Let''s say I wanted to kill the Behemoth, and since he heals so quickly I fated one of my knives to end his life.


    The ideal outcome would be that next time I ran into him I would have a super lucky shot that would drive the knife directly into his brain, killing him before he could regenerate. But for that to happen, I''d have to be in a fight with him. So now fate would be drawing him to me, when I''d actually rather avoid him. When we did fight, there''d actually be no guarantee I would hit him at all. He could kill me and then ten years later just happen to die by that same knife, thrown by someone else. Or, hell, he could kill me and keep it as a souvenir and then ask his great grandkid to use it to put him out of his misery at the ripe age of a hundred and thirty.


    The book had a whole huge chapter on stories of fate gone wrong, monkey paw shit where people tried to use fate and had it bite them in the ass. Wish for money, you get a settlement for the wrongful death of your only child. Ask for power, you accidentally devastate your whole town because you didn''t get the ability to actually control that power. It could also fail in sillier ways, like finding a single coin on the ground fulfilling your fate of finding riches, or it could just... fail. Fate made things more likely, it tried to manipulate the world to achieve a result, but sometimes that simply wasn''t enough. I could fate myself to go to the moon, but if the moon was inaccessible my fate wouldn''t change that.


    Even the Clockmaker was rumored to have fucked up with fate, though as with most stories there was no guarantee it was true. There were as many tales explaining the fall of the Old Empire as there were stars in the sky, but one claimed that he tried to harness fate and it caused his downfall instead. The only person that had truly mastered it was some chick named Poicelria, who had lived like four thousand years ago; her palace was still largely intact and run by a guru that claimed to be her descendant, but reading between the lines I didn''t think professor Yanipliss had been impressed. Still, it was on the list. Poicelria must have been important, she''d been mentioned in that primer on the gifts Dumines could grant that Connie had given me.


    I''d want to develop it eventually despite the risk, but I wanted to do it right. Fate would work best with things that were already random, so it would be trivial to make a coin come up tails or something. But again, all indications were that I wouldn''t be able to do it on the fly - for that, I''d probably be better served by regular old Probability magic. Longer-term stuff was probably the better use for it - the classic health, wealth, and happiness thing. That could be nice, but it wasn''t urgent. Instead, I was thinking that my first foray into that branch of magic would have to be reading the fate lines, or maybe manipulating them somehow.


    Of course not everything I was seeing was a fate thread, but it did seem like despite the different colors anything with that particular opalescent sheen was fate-adjacent. From cycling through spells with Katrin I was pretty sure black was Perception, red was Comprehension, and white was Binding. Further, the two threads almost everyone had coming off of them were yellow-orange and orange-yellow - I was incapable of explaining to Katrin what the difference was - so while I didn''t know which was which that would be Thought and Spirit.


    Some of the fate threads were kinda turquoise, so I was tempted to say green was Temporal, but again I couldn''t say why some were simultaneously two colors and others were a blend or somehow layered or... it was all slightly different. And some threads turned kinda green or purple at the ends, but was that the same green? And was the purple just purple, or was it red and blue? I kinda wanted my money back on the color thing, honestly.


    But if nothing else, that silvery opalescent property did seem to indicate a sort of... permanency. If I could learn to just tap into that, maybe I could take that property of fate magic and apply it to Binding in general - Katrin already wanted me to learn how to make her mana wells last without her paying attention to them, but if I did it this way could I make it last forever? That would be immensely valuable. Likewise, people did things to bind spirits to them all the time and while it could be made permanent it had been implied there was some ongoing drain on your mana - could I circumvent that?


    I looked at all the threads coming off me, and tried to categorize them. One in particular had a lot of colors to it, more than any of the others. Black, red, orange, yellow, and white - and it, too, had that shimmer to it. I suspected there was even more going on than I could see, since there were twenty-seven gifts I hadn''t taken and therefore hadn''t linked that ability to. If one was made with fate magic and, I don''t know, Force... would I just see the opalescent shimmer without any actual color? Or would that be invisible to me?


    I ran my hand through the extra colorful one, trying to guess what it was. Could I feel it at all? Perception was in there, after all. I closed my eyes, and visualized it. Was it my imagination, or was there something there? A connection, or a feeling of motion? I imagined grabbing it and feeling it in my hands, and it was like I could sense a phantom tingle. It felt like when you grabbed a metal pipe and could feel the water rushing through it, but somehow I was sure whatever was going on there was something going both directions.


    I tried to zoom in somehow, to focus on whatever that rushing sensation was, and without opening my eyes I could see.


    I was standing in the woods, but it wasn''t anywhere near where our wagons actually were. The trees weren''t the same type, the smell wasn''t the same, and it was colder. I couldn''t control my body which should have scared me but it felt... familiar, somehow. I could feel strange clothing against my skin, and my breath was blowing back onto my face as if I was... oh. I was wearing a mask. I watched as I ground up some sort of vegetable and added it to a pot of water, and then mid-stride I stopped dead and stood very still. A hoarse voice whispered from my mouth.


    "This connection is for me to spy on you, not the other way around. I wonder, do you know whose eyes you are looking out from? You stumble around, so stupid. So careless. Do you know anything at all? No matter. It is time for you to leave." The wild mage stepped back to the cookpot, bubbling over the fire, and stuck her knife just under it into the flames. I felt something about the connection change, and when I tried to break away nothing happened; she was holding me there, in her body. I was using mana and hadn''t been at full, so in theory the connection would fail on its own eventually - unless she could somehow force it to use up my life mana as well.


    Slowly the wild mage pulled the knife out and pressed it against the skin of her arm. It was agony. I was sure that I was thrashing around like an animal in a trap, but at the same time my body was calmly burning itself without flinching. I could feel, distantly, someone shaking my actual body by the shoulders. A slap on the face. Water splashing on me. They were trying to wake me up.


    "I will come to you, when it is time for you to die," that scratchy voice whispered, "until then you will not spy on me. Do you understand?"


    And I was back in the camp, collapsed on the ground and gasping for air.