highwaymen. Traders breathe easily once their caravans reach the Blue. The road to Aandor City is the safest and most profitable in the Twelve Kingdoms.”
“Is that where all centaurs live?”
“It is now. We numbered in the millions, once.”
“What happened?”
“War. But nature, too. Our females need twelve months to carry a foal to term and almost two years before they can have another. Beyond a few hundred residents, our villages become burdened. Humans build sewers and aqueducts. They farm and produce enough goods to support large cities. My people cannot-or will not-adapt to a faster pace of life. Without treaties like the Blue Forest Accord and leaders like Athelstan, centaurs will fade from Aandor as they did from this world.”
“Centaurs lived here?”
“Many races lived here who now no longer exist.”
“Why?”
“No one is sure. Fear. Racism. I suspect peace was tenuous. Perhaps I’ll research it and write a thesis one day.”
“Is that what’s happening on your world… why you came here? To escape?”
“Many are in jeopardy, not just centaurs, not just Aandor. Aandor is the anchor that steadies the ships of state in the Twelve Kingdoms. Our courts are fair, our economy strong, and the rights of minorities are protected. Through trade and diplomacy, we maintain peace with, and between, the kingdoms around us. Coming here was a desperate attempt to keep Archduke Athelstan’s claim to Aandor viable. Both the captain and I stand to lose everything if we fail.”
The word “everything” unsettled Cat. She and Bree had once been Cal’s everything. Her place in his life had diminished overnight.
“Ain’t it funny?” Seth said from the hall. “Laws of physics might change from universe to universe, but the laws of human nature are exactly the same.”
Cat didn’t realize he had come into the room to eavesdrop. She poured more tea into both their cups and offered some to Seth.
“Thanks, I’ll stick with beer,” he said. “So what exactly happened on your world?”
“The concord between the kingdoms had loopholes,” Lelani explained. “Many chose to exploit them.”
“The fine print-another constant across multiple universes,” Seth snorted. He sat down and put his feet on the coffee table. “Notice how charity and goodwill toward men are in short supply everywhere in creation? And people wonder why I’m a cynic.”
“Let her finish,” Cat said. “Get your feet off the table.”
“In Aandor, titles are passed through sons,” Lelani continued. “Women are valued for their pedigree and dowries. All the ruling families conspired to breed a boy with the blood of twelve kings, who, according to the continental treaty, would have the rightful claim to the title of emperor. A race began.”
“A race?” Cat asked.
Seth shook his head and laughed. “A breeding contest. A royal fuckfest. ‘Think of England’ and all that.”
“Because of his pedigree, and the bylaws of the continental accord, the boy who was your husband’s charge is the rightful prince regent of the Twelve Kingdoms. He will have more ruling powers than his father Duke Athelstan, the first regent, and he will most likely father the next true emperor of the Twelve Kingdoms. There isn’t a family on the continent with the right lineage who would deny him a daughter for marriage. The boy is the penultimate step to House Athelstan reclaiming its empire.”
“See, this is what happens when a society doesn’t have soap operas,” Seth said. “All this aristocratic sperm flying around, trying to find the right hole like a golf ball at the PGA Masters…”
“Please, shut up! I want to know what my husband is mixed up in.”
“There’s not much else,” Lelani continued. “Certain factions had lost the breeding race. The most powerful of them, Farrenheil, became desperate, and rejected the treaty. Aandor was caught off guard. The castle was under siege. Magnus Proust, the court mage, devised a plan to spirit the child here, away from his enemies. A dozen guardians were sent along to care for the boy until he reached manhood. But he was lost. The archduke himself may already be dead. There are neutral kingdoms among the twelve that are staying out of the fight until they are sure Aandor’s claim is still viable. There’s no point in making war with Farrenheil over a dead prince. Everything in Aandor depends on finding this boy.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Seth said. “This is why I’m homeless? Why Joe’s dead? Our lives are turned inside out because of a handful of privileged brats with supercharged family trees playing pass-the-chromosomes. Who else bought the farm so these creeps can act like the Kennedys of Tolkien land? I ought to wring the little freak’s neck if we ever find him.”
Lelani vaulted the couch, a blur of rapidity, and hurled Seth against the wall. She braced him with her forearm pressed against his throat. Seth’s feet dangled as he gasped for air.
Cat sprang up, unsure of what to do. How did one stop a four-hundred-pound angry horse-woman?
“You insignificant flea,” Lelani hissed. “Proust picked you for the mission out of an unreasonable fondness, not because of your skills. My people have one haven left to them on our world and it exists by the grace of Duke Athelstan. Returning his child safe and unharmed means more to me than words can convey, so I’ll give you this warning out of respect for our teacher-should you make any attempt to harm the boy, ever, I will burn you alive. That is not an exaggeration.”
Cat put her hand on Lelani’s arm. “Please, aren’t we in enough of a mess without fighting among ourselves?” she said gently.
Lelani let go. Seth tumbled to the floor. His breath came in rasps.
“Is there a problem?” Cal asked, from the front door.
Cat rushed to give Cal a warm hug. “How’d it go?”
“Like spending four hours with the Spanish Inquisition. Thank God for my PBA representative… and for this,” he said, holding up Lelani’s silver pin. “Everyone’s glad I’m okay, but the dazed-and-confused story has stretched my credibility to its limit. If I didn’t have that pin, even my reputation couldn’t have helped me square things with the brass. I arranged to have police stationed at your mother’s house around the clock. I’m also scheduled to report for bereavement counseling in a few days. My PBA rep got me a few days to grieve for Erin before my next round of questioning.” Cal stopped a second. “I haven’t… I haven’t had a second to think about Erin since… since she…”
Pride struggled to dam Cal’s tears. Cat gave him another hug and found herself unable to let go.
“I need to call her life partner and offer condolences,” he said. “God, so much to do.”
He pulled away from her, took out a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket, and picked up the phone. “I’m hoping that since Seth and I kept our actual names, the rest of the guardians will also have kept theirs. Someone at the station looked up Tristan McLeod for me while I was being debriefed. He was my lieutenant in Aandor. We found one in Brooklyn that was the right age. If we can get Tristan back, it’ll help with the search for the rest. Heck, maybe we’ll catch a break and he’s raising the prince himself.”
The phone on the other end rang, and a woman picked up. Another wife that was about to have her world turned upside down, Cat thought. Cal introduced himself and asked to speak to Tristan. Then her husband’s face went ashen. “How?” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he concluded, and hung up the phone.
Cal sat at the kitchen table in a daze, unaware that everyone was hanging on his next word.
“Cal?” Cat said, and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Tristan was murdered two days ago,” Cal said. “A mugging gone bad.”
Cat looked to Lelani. The centaur was sad. She shook her head to say It wasn’t a mugging.
“I was alone before today,” Lelani said to Cal. “I had to make finding you and Seth my priorities.”
Cal looked at Seth with disgust. Cat was sure he’d trade him for this Tristan in a heartbeat.
“My God,” Cal said. “None of the others even know they’re being hunted by these psychopaths. They’re helpless. We’ve got to find them. Where do we even start?”
Lelani approached with a handful of maps. “Perhaps at the beginning,” she said. She opened a map of New York State. Notes, circles, equations, and runes were drawn throughout it. “The only way to travel between Branes is through lay lines, the rivers of magical energy that emanate from the core of the multiverse. In Aandor, magical energy moves similar to radio waves here. It’s in the air and everywhere where people attuned to it can access it.
