Thresholder, ch 160, Dreams of the Otherworld

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There were three options on the table with regard to the Inspectors.

Hiding would be easy with the shelf space. Perry could slip in there, and bring Anaksi with him or let her fend for herself. It would be difficult to know when it was safe to come out, and the shelf space would anchor to the ground rather than the train, which would mean that they’d be abandoning the train. It would also mean revealing the existence of the shelf space to Anaksi. Really, the biggest problem was just how uncertain the whole thing was: they would have to go in, then close it completely if someone came looking, and if it was spotted or detected, they likely wouldn’t be in for a good time. Still, the option was there, looking quite attractive.

The second option was running. The window opened wide enough to slip out of, and Perry could use the sword to fly just about as fast as a horse. He could also put on the armor and then run across the prairie, which would easily make him twice as fast as anyone on horseback, maybe even three times as fast. That would also mean abandoning the train, but there was no way they would be able to follow him.

But it was the third option that Perry liked best, which was to bully his way through the inspection.

When Anaksi had said they could look into his very mind, he worried that they had some kind of truth detection like Fenilor had, or worse, that they could take his memories out and look at them like flipping through a slide projector. All that was extremely possible, if Perry’s understanding of the multiverse was right.

But as she hurriedly explained it to him, their view of the mind wasn’t like that at all: it was more collaborative, like standing beside someone while they operated their computer, explaining things to them, helping to make sense of what was there. At no point did the Inspectors have the mouse or keyboard under their own control. And you could hide from them, keep things back, refuse to comply — and it was the nature of this compliance that made the whole thing complicated. There were ways of getting past the Inspectors. You could show them things that were true but misleading. You could lie, in various ways.

Usually this took some prep time. A classic scam was to repeat the same action twice, once legit and once with whatever fraud or scheme you were running. When the Inspectors asked you, you would have an entire parallel timeline of memories to draw from. And because they would ask for a lot, you needed to have an entire life to draw from. You needed to be able to show them the school you went to, the people you knew, and you’d sit together in the scene or memory that your mind had called up, until the Inspector was satisfied that you weren’t bringing in something awful from the Flux.

The Inspectors knew every trick. They knew how to interrogate people using the images of their own mind. You didn’t go against them if you could help it, because they had muscle to back up those golden eyes. They couldn’t just pull from your mind, they could show you what was in theirs, and that was a tool they could use against you.

And if they came, and decided that Perry was worth the sit-down, then Perry would feel the full brunt of their power with only minimal advance warning. Anaksi had been through it twice, having gone in and out of Charlonion a few times. She had attracted attention often by virtue of her race. She was going to pretend to not speak Commish, and with a language barrier, there was no way to request the right memories. She was still nervous as all hell though, which wasn’t ideal. Whatever those prior encounters had been like, they had spooked her.

“We should flee, if you really can outrun them,” said Anaksi.

Maybe she was right. But that would introduce an inevitable delay, along with danger from being out in the Flux, and there was a good chance that even the conservative option of hiding in the shelf space might end up with him compromised.

Maybe it was just the pull of the unknown that was getting to Perry. An unknown man with loosely defined power, that was something that Perry thought he could handle. Based on Anaksi’s descriptions, he’d been making a plan.

And of course going through the whole inspection and interrogation thing wasn’t something that they’d do with everyone, Perry had been through border control enough times to know that. Most people listed everything they had to declare, then were waved through without further incident. There were too many people on the train to have a full inspection for all of them.

“If we’re doing this, it’s important that you don’t lie,” said Anaksi. “If you tell him something, you should assume that he’s going to ask you to show him. If you say that you got those pants at a store, he might ask to see the store, and if you can’t show him, you need an excuse, which you won’t have. He could ask about any excuse.”

“Right,” said Perry. “How long do these stops usually take?”

“An hour, maybe more, depending on what they find,” said Anaksi. “It’s less likely we’ll reach Charlonion tonight.”

“So it’s likely that they’ll just not even speak with us,” said Perry.

“They’ll see me and have questions,” said Anaksi. “They’ll want to assure themselves that I’m not a Yuuk coming into their territory to kill them.”

“How would they even know that?” asked Perry. “They can’t prove anything one way or another, at least from what you’ve said. It’s pointless.”

“They will ask many questions,” said Anaksi. “If I admit I speak their language, they will ask to see the moment I stepped on the train, the moment I bought my ticket, bits and pieces from my childhood, from my marriage, until I’m exhausted by it. Perry, I have done all this before. If you’re going to be my shield — I don’t know how you can be. They’ll ask questions that you have no answers for. They’ll ask you to furnish memories you don’t have.”

“Their power doesn’t work on me,” said Perry.

Anaksi shook her head. “They won’t accept that.”

“Of course they will,” said Perry. “I’ll force them to believe.”

It was another fifteen minutes before anyone came to their car, and they spoke in low voices, confirming and clarifying that Perry’s strategy had a decent chance of working, at least from Anaksi’s understanding. She’d obviously had an extremely bad time during the interrogations that she’d suffered before, which didn’t surprise Perry in the slightest, given that she had probably been much younger when those happened — and she was only about his age, early twenties. They worked on a backstory together, and Perry got introduced to parts of the world he’d never heard of before.

When someone finally came to the door of their room, it was a woman. She had the same uniform as the man outside, blue with shiny boots, though it was a woman’s uniform, which here meant that it had a long skirt and a cinch around the waist. Like the man on horseback, her eyes were glowing, but not terribly brightly — it was still possible to be comfortable making eye contact. She had a clipboard with her, which was surprisingly modern to Perry’s eye, with a metal clip at the top and a spring to keep paper pinned in place.

“May I sit?” she asked, pointing to the empty spot on the long bench seat where Anaksi was.

Anaksi gave Perry a questioning look, and Perry answered for her. “Yes, you can sit, sorry, the woman isn’t very good with language, I don’t suppose you’ll get much out of her.”

The woman sat down, smoothed out her skirt, then looked between the two of them before settling on Perry. The room was built for four, or maybe six if they squished together on the long benches. She was surprisingly short, even shorter than Anaksi was, and young enough that Perry had cause to wonder how long she’d been doing this.

“I’m Inspector Lain, and I imagine you’ve gathered that this is a surprise inspection,” she said. “We’re hoping to get through all our questions and get everyone on their way.”

“Does this mean that we’re not going to make Charlonion tonight?” asked Perry. “Because we weren’t planning on having to stay at a hotel. I’ve been trying to keep the expenses down.”

“It is recommended for anyone traveling that they make allowances for the Flux,” said Inspector Lain. “Travel times can be inconsistent.”

“Well, I know,” said Perry. “It’s just the cost, that’s all.”

“Names?” asked Inspector Lain. She had a fountain pen, which looked thick in her fingers, though she handled it deftly.

“I’m Peregrin Holzman, this is Anaksi,” said Perry. “Like I said, she doesn’t speak too well.”

The names were swiftly entered in some kind of pre-printed form, and Perry wondered what kind of technology they were using for that. He would have to ask Marchand or Anaksi later, but his best guess was that some poor soul was doing it all by hand.

“And your business on this train?” the Inspector asked.

“I came out to Grabler’s Gulch after some correspondence,” said Perry. “This woman is to be my bride, though we’re not yet wed, and won’t be for a month after we’re back.”

“You’re taking a Yuuksen wife?” asked the Inspector.

“I aim to,” nodded Perry. “I’m part of the Society for Indigenous Reform, and consider it part of my duty. This one is already half-civilized.”

Anaksi was keeping a stone face, like she only barely understood what he was saying. She’d helped him with bits and pieces, though it was clear that she was hoping that Perry just wouldn’t have to actually undergo the inspection.

“This match was organized by a third party?” asked the Inspector.

“It was,” nodded Perry. “A man named Wyatt Blackwood, back in Grabler’s Gulch, though he’s not a part of the Society.”

This information was also entered into the form, and once it was, Inspector Lain capped her fountain pen. “Now we’ve reached the part where I’m going to confirm that what you’ve said is true. Have you undergone an inspection before?”

“Now hold on,” said Perry, raising a hand. “I was told you don’t do it all the time?”

“It’s at the discretion of the Inspector,” said Inspector Lain. “Is there any reason you wouldn’t be able to pass inspection, keeping in mind that failure to answer questions is considered proof of malfeasance?”

“There’s a … hiccup,” said Perry. “It just doesn’t work on me.”

The Inspector watched Perry’s face. The look he was going for was guilty and embarrassed, a look that he was in theory fully in control over.

“What does that mean?” asked the Inspector.

“It means that when you try to use the, er, inspection on me, you’ll get glimpses of other times and places,” said Perry. “It doesn’t work properly, as much as I try to show you whatever it is you’d like. I had an incident with the Inspectors some years back, and I was told there’s still a file in a basement somewhere, or something of that nature. They filed it away as a curiosity, I believe. I’d swallowed a butterfly as part of a treatment for a disorder of the mind, which they surmised was what caused the difficulty.”

He had adopted a slightly affected way of speaking, and the translation powers of the second sphere were coming in handy, allowing him to shape the intent of what he was saying before it left his lips. It was a technique that he would have to hone later, but it was something that got much easier now that he understood the shape of intent in these parts, the concepts that would and would not play. He was in the role of a religious zealot engaged in ‘progressive’ arranged marriage, and that was odd enough that it would paradoxically attract less attention.

The only question was whether the Inspector would go for it.

“I’ll need to see the ways in which it doesn’t work,” said Inspector Lain. “You know I can’t take your word for it.”

“I understand,” said Perry. “There’s one other thing, which is that if you show me anything, I won’t be able to see it, sorry.”

She leaned forward. “And the Inspectors are aware of this?” she asked. “It does happen, from time to time, with the insane, that the inspection doesn’t work correctly, but I’ve never heard of it happening with someone who was so … lucid.”

“Sorry,” said Perry, giving her a nervous grin.

If things went south, he might have to kill her, or at least rough her up. You couldn’t safely knock someone out for long, but you could injure them badly enough that they were incapacitated.

“Then let’s start,” said the Inspector. “Show me when and where you bought your ticket. Visualize the moment.” With the glowing eyes, it was hard to tell where she was looking.

Perry did his best to bring, to his mind’s eye, the view of Teaguewater from the air.

The interior of the train car fell away around them, replaced, in an instant, by a perfect recreation of Teaguewater as seen from the sky, in better detail than Perry could possibly have recalled it. They were both still seated, but the cushioned benches they were seated on had disappeared entirely, leaving just the two of them and their clothing. They appeared to be floating over the scene, and Perry didn’t see any trace of himself in his power armor, which was something of a relief, since that would be harder to explain.

For her part, Inspector Lain’s eyes went wide, and she rapidly looked around her, patting the seat beneath her to make sure that it was still there.

“We’re … flying,” she said.

“Are we?” asked Perry with polite curiosity. “I can only see it vaguely.”

Once shown, there didn’t seem to be much need to keep Teaguewater at the forefront of his mind, which was how Anaksi had said it worked. He wished that he had a way to take a snapshot of the city below, to see how accurate it was to the maps and scans that Marchand had created. Certainly the mental image seemed more detailed than it actually existed in his mind.

“Where is this?” asked Inspector Lain.

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “There’s a recurring theme to the scenes, no matter what I’m trying to picture. Or, that’s what I was told, anyway.”

“It’s always like this?” asked Inspector Lain.

“No,” said Perry. “Not like … whatever it is you’re seeing.” He looked around. “A city from above, I think?”

“Show me more,” said Inspector Lain. “Your childhood home.”

Perry summoned up a small fishing village he’d briefly stopped in along a coast in Markat. It was a sleepy place, with few people out, and again, in more rich detail than it existed within his own mind. He was fairly sure that it was utterly alien to someone who had spent their whole life in the Dusklands.

There was a bit of an issue, which was that the Dusklands didn’t have a sun, and their moons were weird. The sun obviously held some religious significance given how much they mentioned the Light, but Perry didn’t have a full understanding of. He was keeping the scenes he showed to nighttime and cloudy days, obscuring the sun as much as possible. Given he could select from his entire time moving between worlds, it wasn’t too much of an issue, but the night sky didn’t look like the Dusklands either, and across all the worlds he had been to, there was some regularity that certainly suggested something that wasn’t true here.

Inspector Lain got up from her seat and looked around. They were still physically in the train car, so she couldn’t move around very much, but she leaned forward to peer at a fisherwoman who was in the midst of pulling in a net. At first it seemed as though she actually would pull the net in, but she kept pulling at it, hand over hand, and it sloshed in the waves, staying where it was even as the net seemed to move. There was a dreamlike quality to it, perpetual motion that should have been impossible.

Perry was keeping his eyes forward, trying to seem slightly nervous about the inspection, which wasn’t too hard to fake. He looked over to where Anaksi was sitting from time to time, though his vision was entirely obscured. If he ever had to fight against one of these people, he was going to almost entirely depend on what he’d memorized about the world around him, because he couldn’t see anything, only what he’d elected to show. He could easily see how this could be used to attack, if Inspector Lain could pick a scene to put them in. The scene brought in some ambient noise too, and it was possible to listen to conversations, if those were what was presented.

If you could look at someone and put the both of you in a scene that was the equivalent of a flashbang, even if it was symmetrical — which it wouldn’t need to be — then it would be a huge tactical advantage.

And this was another reason that Perry had taken this risk: it was a power he wanted for himself.

It was very clear that Inspector Lain wasn’t prepared for any of this. She had almost certainly had training in being presented with scenes and conversations that didn’t fit what she had asked for, whether intentionally or not — you ask to see someone purchasing their ticket and they show you the time before, for example. But Perry was showing her the multiverse from what must have seemed like impossible perspectives.

She asked to see Perry writing one of the letters to Wyatt, and Perry showed her the space station over Esperide.

It took her longer than he’d thought for her to become bewildered by it, but maybe it wasn’t immediately obvious the scale of the planet below them or the space station above them. She had no context for any of it, and the fact that there were stars in unfamiliar configurations was maybe the least of it.

Her glowing eyes went to the sun, and stayed there for a long time. Perry wondered whether someone could go blind that way, but he kept his gaze ahead and his face blank, trying not to give away anything.

“Excuse me,” said Inspector Lain. She stood up, and the view of space fell away. Anaksi was watching the two of them, but she’d stayed silent through the whole thing. “I need to go get my superior.”

“Alright,” said Perry. “Hope it’s not too much trouble for you.”

She quickly left their private room, closing the door behind her.

“That went well, I think,” said Perry.

“Did it?” asked Anaksi.

“I think, yes,” said Perry. “It’s something that she can’t explain, but there are all kinds of things you can’t explain. I’ll happily agree to have a discussion with someone academically minded once we get to Charlonion.”

“You said you were worried that they would strap you down and jail you,” said Anaksi.

“I’ll have a better understanding of them and how they operate when we get to Charlonion,” said Perry. “If I have to fight them here, I’ll do that.”

“You have a lot of self-confidence,” said Anaksi.

Perry shrugged. “You’ve seen how I dealt with a bullet to the chest.”

Anaksi slowly nodded. “And these things you showed them. They’re real, aren’t they?”

Perry shrugged.

While they waited, Perry thought about what he’d seen. There were still open questions about how the power worked, and the biggest one was what kind of range it had. Anaksi didn’t have any idea. How you got the power was also an open question, and Perry was hoping that it was transmissible or giftable. One of the obvious things to do with it was to get a confederate, someone that would be invisible to the victim. If the Farfinder did eventually show up, they could have someone manning a gun while Perry was subsuming their entire field of view.

Perry wasn’t quite so arrogant as to walk into Inspector Headquarters in Charlonion, but he was hoping to get an invitation of some kind. And at that point, claiming that there was already a file on him might become problematic, but that was an issue for the future, and relatively easy to reverse on, particularly if he could spy on the place using Marchand beforehand.

Eventually a bearded man came to their compartment and sat down without speaking. He was in the same uniform as the man on horseback, with a similar closely trimmed beard, but he had a scar across his face, and one of the eyes was milky instead of glowing. It wasn’t clear whether this would impact his ability, but Perry supposed not if he was in charge of this operation. Inspector Lain sat down beside Perry.

The scene change was sudden, but Perry was prepared for it. There was a deafening caterwauling and a blaring of sirens, combined with a strobing effect that illuminated zigzagging black and white shapes on walls that were irregular and spinning around them. It was offensive and disorienting, but Perry stayed still, as though nothing were happening. The only thing you could describe it as was an assault, and as the room spun around them, it was clear there were mirrors too, throwing off all sense of position. He’d have thrown up, but he was second sphere, and being demure came with the territory. It was a test of his control, and he was pleased to feel himself passing as he kept everything clamped down.

The man got up from his seat and came closer to Perry, who moved back slightly as their faces came within an inch of each other.

“Not even a pupillary reflex,” said the Inspector.

Three different scenes were attempted in quick succession, all designed to disorient and assault in different ways. One was fire and brimstone, one was arctic, and the third was a dirty room filled with rotting animal carcasses. Thankfully, there was no particular smell.

Perry looked the man up and down. “Are you doing it?” he asked.

“Fascinating,” said the Inspector.

The room full of rot faded away to reveal the room with its four occupants. Perry waited to see whether there would be other tests. They could falsify whether he could see beyond their illusion fairly easily — just have Anaksi hold up some number of fingers and test whether he could tell. He was prepared for that though, with the alternate explanation that he was hallucinating reality or some such. He mostly just didn’t want to be repeatedly subjected to whatever methods they had of projecting their memories on him, as had just been done.

“You said that this had happened before,” said the Inspector.

“Three years ago,” said Perry. “Going south, that time.”

“Show me,” said the Inspector.

Perry picked the Great Arc, a time when the temple was mostly empty. He had a bit better sense of the power now, and how it worked, what it would show. He hadn’t yet generated a scene that he was in, and would refrain from doing so. It was the easiest way to slip up, but for every scene he’d chosen to bring forward, it had been a time he’d been fully armored, face obscured.

The Inspector looked around, taking a moment to glance along the Great Arc in both directions. He showed interest in the people and what they were doing. This went on for some time, until eventually he asked Perry for a memory of a painful moment.

Perry instead showed him a battlefield at Seraphinus, not in the moments when the battle was fought, but after the battle was done, and bodies were being carted off the field for resurrection.

“Impossible,” the Inspector muttered under his breath.

“Sorry,” said Perry again. “I was told, last time, that it’s not really a problem, just that I should expect a little extra scrutiny. I’m not even really sure what you’re looking for. I’d be happy to answer any questions.”

“And you can see nothing?” asked the Inspector. He let the illusion fall away, placing them back in the train, which they hadn’t actually moved from.

“Bits and pieces,” said Perry. “Inconsistently.”

“Then I have one more for you,” said the Inspector. “You’re not in trouble, it’s only a test.”

“Alright,” said Perry.

The Inspector placed a hand over his glowing eye, covering it completely, and there was something in how much pressure he was putting on it that was cause for alarm. He was making very, very certain that he couldn’t see anything from it.

The train car fell away, and a creature that could have swallowed the train stood on a cracked plateau. It was looking intently at Perry with a single eye, one that took up most of its body. If there was a mouth, it was hidden in folds. Its mass was supported by arms, each of them only at the scale of a human arm, and it needed hundreds of them beneath it, all of them straining. A single long tentacle came out from behind its body and went toward Perry, moving slowly, tentatively.

Perry stayed where he was. He betrayed no emotion or awareness of the monster. He didn’t look at it, didn’t so much as glance.

In his head, there was a real worry that something was completely fucked up here.

The fire, ice, and rot had all likely been real places. The strobing, disorienting room was probably a real place too, because he’d been able to see some brushstrokes where some of the lines were, and the mirrors had fingerprints on them. The power, at least according to Anaksi’s understanding, only showed things that people had actually experienced, you couldn’t show a red barn if the barn was green, you couldn’t mix and match memories, that was what made it useful. An Inspector could confirm your story, and the only way around that was to have something to show them that match exactly what they were looking for.

Which meant that this monster, whose tentacle was now coming close to Perry, was something the Inspector had actually seen.

Perry had a choice between waiting and allowing the monster to touch him, or breaking. What breaking would mean was probably attacking the Inspector, maybe both of them, then fleeing from the train. But the monster was only a memory, wasn’t it, something that had happened, and been pulled from the Inspector’s mind, but not real, just an illusion of a real thing.

The tentacle moved more like a snake than an octopus’ arm. It was sinuous and had an internal rigidity.

It touched Perry, and for the first time in any of this, Perry felt a physical sensation. The tentacle pressed against his shoulder, and almost at once, started draining energy from him. It was a light touch, just energy moving down the meridians to a spot on his shoulder, only a minor but noticeable draw from his vessels. Perry could feel all this happening internally, his sense of his power was rather acute from years of practice, and with a slight shift he was able to move all the internal energy away from the shoulder that the tentacle was gripping.

It felt weak, like a child tugging on his hand, not anything like what he’d expected from the enormous monster. The tentacle, finding nothing to drain, groped around, finally wrapping itself around Perry’s neck. That was more difficult to stop the energy drain to, so Perry allowed it, keeping perfectly still, trying to look worried and bored by the whole thing, which he had said he wasn’t capable of seeing. The monster was watching him with its oversized eyeball, tiny movements of it focusing on different parts of his body. Perry only saw this in the periphery of his vision, as he was still politely looking at the Inspector’s covered face.

By Perry’s best estimates, he could go twenty minutes before he was completely tapped. What a normal person was supposed to be experiencing, he had no idea, but he had to imagine that being sucked dry wouldn’t be good. How long the Inspector was going to let this continue was unclear, but Perry was obviously missing something about their power and how it worked, or what the Inspectors even were. Would they kill him in the train car, just as a test? Was this a test?

The monster and its tendril disappeared, and the train car reappeared around them. Inspector Lain was gripping the seat tightly, and Anaksi looked nauseous with anxiety or fear.

“Are we good?” asked Perry.

The Inspector lowered the hand that had been covering his eye. “He’s immune,” he said with a low breath. He turned to Lain. “Movement?”

“Around the shirt, yes,” said Lain. “He didn’t notice, didn’t flinch.”

The Inspector turned to Perry. “This happened before?”

“I don’t know what ‘this’ is,” said Perry. “I had an Inspector stop me going south, and he’s the one that found out there was something odd about me. That’s all I really know.”

“Odd,” said the Inspector. He was watching Perry’s face. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get you on your way, and when you get to Charlonion, you’re going to report to Inspector Headquarters. Until then I’m going to mark you.”

“Mark me?” asked Perry with a frown.

“Hold out your hand,” said the Inspector as he drew something from his pocket. It was a brand with a mechanical design that allowed it to lay flat, though it locked into place as an implement.

Perry held out his hand, palm up, and the Inspector turned it so that it was palm down. He placed the implement firmly against Perry’s skin, and a black mark appeared there, one that matched the face of the brand, though no ink had been used.

Perry looked at it. It didn’t hurt at all, though it did itch slightly. He refrained from itching it.

“This will stay with you,” said the Inspector. “They can remove it at Headquarters. Until then, you’ll be marked for special interest. Understand?”

“Yes,” said Perry. He finally gave in and itched at the mark. It didn’t smudge or go away, and he supposed that it was natural to have that reaction to it, because the Inspector didn’t so much as blink.

“Good,” said the Inspector. “That’s you sorted then. Lain, come on, we’ve kept these people long enough.”

“I could stay with them,” said Lain. “Ride the train back to Charlonion.”

“No,” said the Inspector. “He’ll find his own way, easy enough.” He looked over at Anaksi. “You interrogated her?”

“Doesn’t speak the language,” said Lain.

“Ah,” said the Inspector. He looked over at Perry. “Fourth Phalanx?”

“Yes,” said Lain.

“Very well then,” said the Inspector. He rapped his knuckles against the bench, as though he’d accomplished what he needed to, then left the compartment. Inspector Lain followed after him.

Perry was silent. He looked at the mark on his hand. That would be inconvenient, to be sure, if it would raise him to the attention of other Inspectors and mean that he wouldn’t be able to move freely in Charlonion.

The danger had passed though, which was something. He’d fooled them, mostly, though he didn’t know the importance of the monster, and really wished that he did.

Eventually, the train started moving again, and Anaksi let out a sigh of relief.

“It worked,” she said.

“Yes,” said Perry, looking down at the mark on his hand. “Is there anything that stops me from just wearing gloves?”

“Do you have gloves?” asked Anaksi.

“No,” said Perry. “But I could certainly buy some in Charlonion.”

“What did they show you?” asked Anaksi. “You lied, you could see it all, couldn’t you?”

“I could,” said Perry. “Some kind of monster that was mostly an eyeball, supported by hundreds of arms with their palms pressed against the ground, and a tentacle that was very definitely touching me, even though that should have been impossible.”

“I don’t know what that would have been,” said Anaksi.

“Me either,” said Perry. “But I didn’t know about the Inspectors until an hour ago.”

“You took a risk,” said Anaksi. “What would you have done if they had trapped you in your lies? If they had tried to take you in?”

“We’d have left out the window,” said Perry.

“And the Inspectors?” asked Anaksi.

“I’d have tried to incapacitate them gently,” said Perry.

“You think you’re stronger than them,” said Anaksi.

“I think I’m probably stronger than almost everyone,” said Perry.

“I don’t know whether you’re cocky or just stronger than I think you are,” said Anaksi.

“Probably both,” said Perry. “Now, you might want to look away, I’m going to peel my skin off.”

Perry reached into the gunny sack and pulled out a knife he’d bought from the general store. It wasn’t terribly high quality, and it was certainly in need of sharpening, but it would do in a pinch. He started by figuring out how much skin he would need to cut away from the back of his hand, then took a steadying breath and began making the cuts. It was painful, but Perry did his best to master the pain, keeping his face still even as the dull knife cut deep into his skin.

Anaksi, to her credit, watched the entire thing.

But when Perry peeled the flap of skin off, he saw more of the black mark below it, and some exploratory digging with the knife showed that it went bone deep.

“Well, shit,” said Perry as he moved everything back into place. “Looks like it’ll have to be gloves.”