The church isn’t nearly as packed as it was at the dedication, but there’s enough nervous energy that it might as well be. Esther’s invited representatives from different groups, rather than whole populations, so what stands before me is a handful of the most powerful people in the wastes. Most I don’t recognize, but some hold power on every Earth I’ve ever been to.

Standing tallest, of course, is Exlee, who’s sporting a lush beard that appeared so suddenly it supports the theory that their body hair is as synthetic as their breasts. Beside them is Tatik. She used to be a runner for Senior back in the day, but now she’s the mistress of the deep wastes. She watches over those no one else cares about, and brings reports to the emperor when they have something they need or something to give. At least, that’s what she did on 22. I don’t know if Adra uses her here, where he’s paranoid enough to have a base even in the vastness beyond the river. Under Nik Nik’s reign Tatik is still called mister, even though she gave up the post, and she outranks everyone but him. This version is thinner than she should be, but she holds her head just as high.

Viet’s presence is a surprise, though I guess it shouldn’t be. As a deathkeeper, he’s supposed to be neutral in all things political, his calling transcending anything as petty as politics. But he does preside over life and death, so I suppose this concerns him too.

    Daniel, Esther, and Nik Nik round out the powerful people I recognize. A few of the strangers are runners, and I can read from their marks that they’re important. Esther is holy, but she’s not trusting or na?ve, so they must have shown their loyalty to her some way. Or maybe they’re just loyal to Mr. Cheeks. He spots me and starts walking over.

“You’re late,” he says.

“A bit.” Nik Nik wanted me here early, but I’d spent too long trying to disprove my fears…only to confirm them. “What are they fighting about?”

Mr. Cheeks shrugs. “You, I suppose. Or Adra. You’re both pretty sizable pains in the ass.”

Nik Nik is addressing the group, standing tall and calm. He’s changed clothes since we got back. His tunic is black, high-collared, with gold embroidery. It’s a little flash on the humble garment that marries him to the Nik Nik I used to know. He handles himself well, and I spend a little time watching him listen and respond to the concerns of people who are not yet his. I wait for rage, the indignation he always showed when people dared question him, but this Nik Nik is different from mine. He’s only just about to taste the power that would give him that kind of arrogance.

That is, if I don’t ruin his chances. If I don’t tell the whole truth.

“I would like you to trust me…” he says, answering some comment I didn’t hear. “But I don’t require it. I only require that you use common sense to know we can’t go on like this.”

“If you’d lived through the last civil wars, you’d know it can always get worse,” says Tatik, who was Senior’s right hand when he was nothing more than the son of a warlord.

She’s not wrong.

Eventually Esther sees me, and my time as spectator is over. “Here, here she is.”

The others turn to me, and their faces tell me everything. The ones who think I’m a stranger just distrust me. The ones who think I’m Nelline and know her, hate me. Judging by her pursed mouth and tightly crossed arms, Tatik is in the latter camp. But Viet only squints, trying to picture me as a baby so he can recall my name.

    Tatik spits at my feet as I approach. “If you’d told me this was your source, I wouldn’t have wasted the gas to get here.”

She starts to walk off but then Exlee snaps open a massive black fan and the sound stops her dead.

“Hang around, General. The Second Son has a trick up his sleeve.”

This stalls Tatik long enough for Mr. Cheeks to come back with Nelline. He drags her out and pushes her next to me. Her hands are tied. They can’t think she’s a threat right now, which means the restraints are just to shame her. It’s not working. Her chin is high and she’s smiling. It’s a cruel one, and I’m glad I rarely smile if that’s what I look like doing it. We share a look, she gives me a slight nod, and I know that if I don’t mention Adra’s advantage, neither will she.

“We’ve all heard about the visitors,” Esther says. “Tatik, your domain has the most sightings of them all. That’s what she is. She’s Nelline from another world.”

“Or the bitch has a twin,” Tatik says.

“No.” This, finally, from Viet. “Lorix delivered only one.”

He should know. A child hasn’t been born in Ash without his hands on it since his mother died.

“Then it’s a coincidence! You can’t expect me to believe…” She hesitates, her eyes landing first on Nelline and then darting to me. Eventually she shakes her head. “You can’t expect me to believe this.”

Tatik is the linchpin. If I can get her to believe me, the runners will follow. It can’t be that hard. She was so connected with Nik Nik, I must have enough of her secrets to leverage.

“Does he still call you Jadda, when no one else can hear?”

She looks at Nik Nik, half-amused and half-irritated. “He calls me Jadda where everyone can hear, the stupid boy. Always has.”

Shit. My Nik Nik hid his affection like a blight. All of the emperor’s secrets I held on 22 are poor currency in a place where Nik Nik doesn’t deal in shadows. There’s only one thing…I take a second, hoping I don’t look too nervous while I do the math. Nik Senior died when Nik Nik was seven here. The empress hadn’t been dead long. Was that enough time?

    “Your child, she was a girl, he made you”—I stop short of saying kill her, given what I now know happened to Adra—“send her to the city.”

There is a moment of silence, where the whole room watches us. At first, Tatik’s face doesn’t change. Then it softens.

“No,” she says. “My daughter was stillborn.”

I was wrong. Nik Senior didn’t live long enough here to father the child that only Nik Nik suspected was born in my Ashtown. I hear Esther’s disappointed sigh behind me, but before I can deflate too much Tatik continues.

“But if he’d lived longer, I would have had another,” she says. “And the plan was always to send her to the city.”

“Her? How did you know it’d be a girl?”

“Girls are all my family makes.” Now, she smiles. “Where you’re from, we had a daughter survive? Did it work? Her integration into the city?”

I know what I’m not going to tell her. I’m not going to tell her the theory of the birth was only corroborated by Tatik’s depression and withdrawal from the world. I’m not going to tell her that her child and any evidence of it disappeared so thoroughly, we talked about it as another floating corpse in the bog. She was so old by that point even that girl had been a miracle. Everyone knew she’d never have another.

I say, “She never came back to Ashtown,” because as far as I know that’s true and it’s the only thing any Ash parent wants to hear.

I thought I was protecting her, but her face goes hard enough for me to know I’ve somehow told her the whole truth.

“I’m not saying I believe you, but I’m listening,” Tatik says.

Esther speaks excitedly, taking advantage of the momentum. “The strangers don’t just come here. She’s been to many worlds, and learned from them.”

    “Always a spy, then?” Exlee asks, eyebrow raised in a perfect waxed arch.

“Not always,” I say, because Esther’s going pink from the interruptions and I’m probably the only one who knows she’s got a temper like a solar flare. “In some worlds I’m a provider. Some worlds a grower in the Rurals. In most that I know about, I’m dead.”

I hadn’t thought about it being the same—my traversing and Nelline’s spying—and I don’t like to think the reason we’ve both made it this far is that neither of us is bothered by stealing the facts of other people’s lives to secure our own. I activate the projector on my cuff.

“These are the mortality rates where Nik Nik rules.” I show them a graph that has an average of the worlds I’ve analyzed. I overlay it with another. “And this is here. You’re dying sooner and more often than you need to. Your quality of life is worse. On Earth Zero you grow your own food. You sell excess back to Wiley. Here, you only spend.”

I continue, highlighting other basic criteria that might matter to them. I’m not sure if they believe I am who I say I am, or if they are even following the numbers being projected in light against the wall, but they stay quiet.

Finally, I get to the more personal section.

“These are just a handful of people who are alive, right now, in ninety percent of the worlds where Nik Nik rules, but who are gone here.”

I hit a button on my cuff and turn the wall into a sea of faces. Mixxie is slightly larger, near the center. It’s cheap, manipulative propaganda, but it’s true.

Esther lets them marinate for a bit. She looks no less serene and ethereal than before, but I recognize her ruthlessness.

“You must see—”

“But there is a risk,” I say, turning off the wall of the dead. A new graph appears; it’s a steady line with a sharp spike settling eventually at a lower, stable point.

Nik Nik studies the graph with narrowed eyes, but Esther grabs my arm.