Without looking away from her, Ember pointed at her feet. The left one wiggled an inch, and that was it. “It’s a hell of a lot more movement than I had yesterday.”
“Well, that’s cool.” Despite her frustration, the halfling couldn’t help but smile. “The healer healing herself. No wonder Cazerel didn’t want to let you go anywhere alone.”
“Yeah, he’s probably freaking out right now,” Ember said, “Maybe. I don’t know. Do raugs freak out?”
“Not unless they’re in rage and with a lot of exploding magic. Or prophecies, I guess.”
“Yeesh.” Ember lifted the remote toward the TV. Her show clicked off, and a low hum filled the apartment as the flatscreen lowered itself into the long entry table until it disappeared. “So.” The remote clattered onto the coffee table. “Now what?”
“Well, we’re Earthside again, so I guess we’re focusing on Earthside problems for now.”
“Right.” Ember grimaced and wrinkled her nose. “Like ‘Matthew Thomas’ uncle in the FRoE’ problems, huh?”
“Pretty much.” Cheyenne snorted and pulled her phone from her pocket to drop it in her lap. “I kind of outsourced that one.”
“To whom?”
“My students.”
“Ha!” Ember rolled her eyes. “Seriously, though. You find some new hacker friends or something?”
“Seriously, though.” Cheyenne grinned. “This is how I’ll find them. And whoever digs up the most dirt on our friendly neighbor across the hall and his scumbag uncle gets a passing grade no matter what.”
“Oh, my God.” The girl laughed. “You put your students up to that?”
“As an assignment, yeah.”
“You know what? I’m not as surprised as I thought I’d be.”
“So, I’m predictable now. Good to know.”
Ember clicked her tongue. “Yeah, that’s totally what I meant.”
“Hey, if my students, which is still weird to say, can find Matthew’s uncle, it gives Matthew one less reason to come after us.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“You don’t think so?” Cheyenne pushed out of the armchair and headed toward the iron stairs to the mini-loft. “The dude lied to us twice to keep this secret, Em. I had to record Maleshi fighting a war machine for him to take us seriously.”
“I don’t wanna talk about Matthew right now.”
“Why?” Cheyenne stopped halfway up the stairs and stared at her roommate. “Did you talk to him while I was gone?”
“What? No.” Ember rolled her eyes. “I don’t wanna think about him or talk to him. Not until we find out who his uncle is. Oh, shit. You think it’s Sir?”
Cheyenne snorted and continued up the stairs. “Think about both their faces for a second, Em, then tell me you think that’s even remotely a possibility.”
“I don’t know what he looks like.”
“Oh.” With a shrug, Cheyenne sat in her spinning desk chair and powered up her computer. “Well, they don’t look anything like each other.”
“Could be his uncle by marriage or something.”
“Huh.”
“And not everyone looks like the rest of their family members, either.”
No, just drow apparently. Creepy-weird how much Neros looks like L’zar. “I guess you have a point.”
“Of course I do.”
“I’ll keep it in mind when I’m digging through the vast world of information at my fingertips.” Cheyenne touched the activator behind her ear to reassure herself it was still there, then Glen’s monitor turned on, and her vision filled with the scrolling lines of code telling her everything she needed to know about the system she’d built. “I don’t know how long this is gonna take.”
“Totally fine.” Ember grabbed the remote again, and the flatscreen rose from its slot one more time. “I’ll go back to what I was doing before you stormed in here, ready to rip General Hi’et’s head off.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Sounds good.” I’m gonna focus all this pissed-off energy into something useful.
When Glen finished powering up, Cheyenne pulled up her VPN and dove into the dark web to look for things she knew none of her students would be able to find.
The Borderlands forum under Third Quarter Projections was as active as normal, but none of the new topic threads mentioned anything about Ambar’ogúl, a new Cycle, the Crown, loyalists, or anything remotely related to L’zar’s rebels storming the Heart at Hangivol.
Weird. Every O’gúleesh on the other side knew the second I slapped that coin down on the altar, and no one over here has a clue.
She scrolled down the main page to check the topic titles over the last three days and found nothing. Sitting back, she frowned at the screen and drummed her fingers on the armrests. I guess that means information isn’t getting across the Border. Makes sense if the Crown suddenly had all her magical assets frozen—no way for the loyalists over here to get a whiff of what happened.
“Shit.”
“Found something already?” Ember called up to her.
“It’s what I’m not finding. I don’t think anyone over here knows what we did.”
“Huh. You’re not usually upset about your secrets staying secret.”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t a secret.” Cheyenne wheeled her chair toward the iron railing to peer through the bars at her friend. “I’m mostly talking about the Crown loyalists, Em. If they think Ba’rael’s still living’ it up in Hangivol with all her magic intact, it’s business as usual for them over here.”
Ember’s eyes widened. “Meaning all the war machines are still up and running.”
“Or about to be, yeah.”
“Shit.”
“Yep.” Cheyenne took a deep breath and rolled back toward the wobbly office desk to get back to work. It all starts and ends with this uncle, doesn’t it? Find him, and we find a way to cut out the rest of the war machines.
Her monitor quacked, and a notification for a new email rose on the bottom corner of her screen.
“Did your computer just quack at you?”
“Yep. Best way to interrupt my focus, other than everyone else’s questions.” Cheyenne shrugged. “I didn’t mean you. Sorry.”
“No problem. I won’t keep distracting you.”
Frowning, Cheyenne opened her personal email and found a new message from [email protected] titled: ‘Is This Enough?’
Who the hell is that?
She clicked the email and laughed as she read the message.
I figured you’re more likely to check your personal email, so I sent this to
