Saul rolled over on the sheets, cold, aching. Sunlight blazed through the gap in the shades of his bedroom. He groaned and sat up, still wearing his clothes and the bandages from the previous day, even the smock from sculpting. The covers were spotted with gray clay. Just perfect. He would have to launder them when he had more time, and hopefully, until then, nobody else would be moving in with him however temporarily.

  He climbed off the rumpled mess of the comforter and walked to the door. He had left it ajar. Careless, tired.

  A shadowy form stood beyond the door, mostly concealed by the frame. He recognized the shape, for he had worked in that shadow, built that form, over the past few weeks.

  “Bantos,” he said with a dry throat. “What are you doing there?”

  “The sun is up, Saul. Your friends are waiting for you.”

  “I’m awake. Give me a minute.”

  He checked around the bed and found an oven rod on the wide stone nightstand beside an old clock with its big on ten and its small hand pointed toward five. Saul shook himself. The completion of this newest child had taken a lot of him. Hopefully, the investment would bear out.

  He picked up the oven rod from his nightstand and lurched around the bed on his way back to the door, then into the hall.

  Bantos stepped back a step and bowed his head slightly to Saul. “They are in the ballroom.”

  “Thank you. Bantos, follow me.”

  “I was planning on it, Saul. We have much to do.”

  Saul nodded, but could not help the oddness of the sensation in his stomach. This child was so eager to serve and seemed on top of the situation despite being newly born. Perhaps more than just Saul’s energy had entered the clay in those dark hours.

  “Do you know what our mission is?” Saul asked.

  “To defeat the god-enemy, Apahar.”

  “Rult used the same term for a while, but don’t call him a god. He’s nowhere near omnipotent.”

  “With respect, Saul. He is the most powerful being known for certain to exist. Nat read me a bit of the history this morning.”

  Saul grunted. “Maybe he was, once. He must be diminished as he is.”

  Bantos nodded. His single eye flashed. “I think I understand. The human frame can only contain so much.”

  “Indeed.” Saul shook his head. “Follow me.” He walked past Bantos and continued to the grand staircase. He ran a clay-streaked hand through his hair. Flakes of gray material cracked from his fingers and fell to the floor.

  He descended the stairs and took the right turn toward the workshop. Irene stood by the front door, wearing her coat and scarf. Her hands moved nimbly across the hinges testing them with a push here, and a tap there.

  “You fixed my door?” he said, not really intending it as a question.

  “I did what I could.” Irene motioned to the cracks in the wood where Crow’s blade had broken through. “Too bad it’s winter.”

  “My heating bill is going up, certainly.” Saul shrugged. “I can afford it.”

  Irene wrinkled her nose. “Earth-born are all so interdependent. I suppose they don’t have options like we do on Hidria.”

  Even a passable maker could construct a furnace child, though most parents would not want their sons and daughters attempting that too young. Fire was dangerous, no matter the form. Saul nodded to Irene. Her parents had not stopped her from making Hush, her firebird when she had been only twelve.

  “They do what they can. I’ve begun to appreciate their ingenuity.”

  Irene turned from the doorway, arms folded. “Saul, you could find the good in anything.”

  “Not in being devoured by a gern.”

  “What about leaving the world you just made behind you?”

  Their gazes met. He sighed as if a weight had just pressed down on his chest. “Irene, I’m sorry.”

  “The world we made needs us. Saul, we have no idea what is happening there.”

  “I wish I could have stayed.” Saul shook his head. “But I made a promise that I would help Olivia get home.”

  “Well, now she’s here. Once Apahar is beaten, we need to find our world.”

  Our world. They had crafted it together. Even when Saul had been in love with Irene, he would not have chosen that end. “I agree,” he said. “There’s nothing else to it.”

  “I’ll help you drive Apahar back, but Saul, he was the only aleph-gern ever thought dead.”

  “He wasn’t dead.”

  “Precisely. He is a mighty beast, an abomination beyond the powers of all the ancient makers combined. We will not win if we don’t get assistance.”

  “Irene, please. I know that. But I’ve been in exile for almost five years. If I had a friend on Hidria who could help me before, I doubt I do now.” He walked to her side.

  She looked up at his face, breath misting in the chill from the broken door. “You may not have friends. But I do.” She turned toward him and eased closer. She took his clay-streaked hands in her cold ones.

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  He looked down at their fingers, locked together between them. Her scent reminded him of his father’s grove of Temper Trees, of times in warm cities in Hayk, of a sweet embrace that once followed the touch of gentle hands. He turned his head and coughed to clear his throat. “Irene—”

  “Saul, you really haven’t changed since the challenges.”

  He frowned at their hands, growing warmer together. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I hope I’ve grown… kinder.”

  “You’ll never be soft, Saul.” She stepped up on her toes and brushed his chin with her dark hair. “And that’s fine.”

  Her touch and smell were intoxicating in the late morning chill.

  Saul stepped backward and slipped his hands from hers. “We had better talk to the others. We need a plan.”

  “I suppose you are correct. At this moment, we need every ally, no matter how small.”

  “Speaking of small, have you seen Nat?”

  “Not this morning,” said Irene.

  “Damn. I wonder where he’s gotten off to so early. It’s not like him.”

  “When Hush returns from his morning hunt, I’ll have him compare.”

  Comparators like Nat and Hush could connect to each other over large distances using their powers. Such art-children were so common on Hidria that picking one out of the population could sometimes be difficult, but on Earth, such a task would be simple.

  “Thanks,” Saul said.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs behind him, made him turn. Bantos approached Saul with a small smile and his eye alight. He bowed his massive frame toward Irene. “I woke him like you suggested.”

  She glanced at Saul’s big art-child. “I can see that. Thank you, Bantos.”

  Uncharacteristic of her interactions with humans, Irene used a light touch with art-children. Saul had witnessed her tactfulness enough times to guess Bantos may have annoyed her with his reminder. But he was young, and he needed reinforcement to root good behaviors like reporting to a maker. In his exile, Saul had not often been in a situation for that concern, as only two of his recent art-children, Rult and Bantos, were designed to use language.

  “Indeed.” Saul stifled a yawn with his hand over his mouth. “Well done.”

  Irene giggled, then turned and walked away into the workshop. Bantos raised an eyebrow at Saul.

  “Irene seems familiar.”

  “Perhaps she might. She and I have a long history.”

  “What kind of history, Saul?”

  “Friends. Lovers. Enemies.”

  Bantos frowned. “Enemies? What are you now?”

  Saul shrugged his shoulders. “Allies, I think. I’m not sure if I can trust her.”

  “I will watch her for you.”

  “While she’s here perhaps. But you have a different purpose, Bantos.”

  “The god-enemy. I must defeat him and take his power.”

  “Yes. Indeed.” Saul motioned for Bantos to follow him as he went after Irene into the workshop. The cyclops obeyed.

  Except for Nat, the others were already in the room. Saul looked to where Olivia stood beside Cecilia and Morrie. Rult lay curled around her feet, but his head perked up and he looked toward Saul as he entered the room. Irene stopped pacing by the curtained window at the front of the house. Her fingers rested on a broad-shouldered sculpture Saul had left incomplete.

  She and Olivia turned toward him at the same moment, just after Rult noticed his appearance.

  “Looks like you crashed,” said Olivia.

  He grunted. “Indeed. What time is it?”

  “Almost eleven,” said Morrie. “Good thing it’s Sunday, or we’d both be missing class.”

  Cecilia nodded toward him. “No one else knows what’s going on, do they?”

  “Not here on Earth,” said Saul. He looked at Irene. “But judging by the appearance of Apahar, and his willingness to retreat last night, the gern have a staging area close to the edge of this realm.”

  Irene’s fingers trailed in the air as she walked toward the others. “Apahar could be using the wandering world Saul and I created as a staging area. It reeks of his essence, and could attract countless gern of his lineage.”

  “Of his lineage?” Morrie scowled. “There’s even more you didn’t tell us yesterday?”

  “Quite a lot more.” Saul shrugged. Bantos stepped into the ballroom behind him and stopped at his side. “With any luck, this new art-child will help us simplify the problem of Apahar.”

  Morrie took a step back in apprehension. “That—He isn’t human?”

  “I told you before,” Bantos said in a deep voice. “I am here to fight the god-enemy.”

  “Apahar,” Saul said to correct the art-child, “Is no god.”

  “Aleph-gern,” said Morrie. “Right?”

  “Correct.” Saul nodded to the students and Olivia. “Aleph-gern create lesser gern, in a way like a maker does an art-child, but those lesser ones, abei-gern, also have the ability to create new gern like themselves. They exist in the gaps between worlds most of the time. They rob humans of their taphs during transition from one life to the next.”

  Morrie’s shook his head. “Alright, so how many of these things are there?”

  Saul glanced at Olivia. She met his eyes and then clapped a hand on Morrie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about that.”

  Irene folded her arms. “We estimate that nearly every taph passing between worlds is stolen, and not just of humans, but of everything that lives. If each of these is used to make a gern, then math will not assist you in figuring out the final numbers.”

  Morrie put a hand to his forehead. “Damn it. This is insane. That’s like an infinite number of freaks.”

  “Monsters,” Saul nodded to Irene, then turned and walked over to Olivia, Morrie, and Cecilia. “But not all of them will fight for Apahar, of that I am certain.”

  “Well, let’s take an infinite number and divide it by five,” Morrie said with a groan. “That is still an infinite number, Saul.”

  Saul shot a glare at Morrie. “Their numbers are finite at any moment. Take courage. We only need to defeat Apahar, and the rest will flee.”

  Olivia folded her arms. “Easier said than done, and you know it. You makers thought he was dead for all of our history, but he still came back. The more I think about it, the more I’m certain we need a plan.”

  “Or an army,” said Irene.

  “We should tell someone,” said Cecilia. “The military. The National Guard. Someone.”

  Irene laughed. “Inadvisable. The earth-born authorities have been living the lie that they are in power for so long, they will not see the truth.”

  “You can’t be sure about that!” Cecilia marched toward Irene, fists clenched. She looked on the verge of tears, from frustration and rage in equal measure. “Besides, I thought you said we needed an army? Where in the goddamn universe are you going to find one if not here?”

  “Is your anger meant to impress me?”

  “Screw you,” Cecilia said. “You act all high and mighty, but what can you do to help?”

  “I came here. That is more than any other makers except for Saul.”

  The doorbell rang. The sound echoed in the ballroom.

  “That had better not be Simon,” said Olivia with grimace.

  Rult bounced to his feet. “It’s Nat! I can smell him.”

  Saul raised his eyebrows at Irene. “Please, don’t start a fight while I let him in.” He turned and walked back through the entrance hall. He opened the door on its newly repaired hinges. Nat dropped onto his shoulder, shivering. An envelope fell from his grip. Saul caught the rough white paper before it hit the floor.

  He turned it over in his hands. The seal of the Worldmaker Council had been stamped into the yellow wax that sealed the envelope. He frowned at the circle within a circle that made up the simple seal.

  “Nat, what was that about?” Saul shut the door. “You know it’s too cold for you to fly outside for long.”

  “I heard you’d gotten a message.” Nat bobbed up and down on Saul’s shoulder. “Abigail Creek’s comparator contacted me this morning.”

  “So you went to the passage house to get it?”

  “She said it was important. And for your eyes only.”

  Olivia followed him into the entrance hall. Saul turned toward her.

  “What is that?” She pointed at the envelope in his hands.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But it can’t make this situation any worse.” He hoped he spoke true because that was all he could do at this point.

  “You may be right about that. Where’s it from?” She walked to his side and frowned down at the seal. “A message?”

  “From the council.” Saul frowned at the envelope, then broke the seal.