Saul’s first knock rattled the white screen door of the passage house. He hit the door twice more with equal force. No one responded.

  Olivia stood with her arms folded, off to one side of the doorway. “Are you sure you hit it hard enough?”

  He glanced at her. “Jackal knows we’re here. If he doesn’t open the door, we’ll just have to find another way in.”

  “Is this the only way to Hidria?”

  “There are other passage houses, but not in Kerenger.” Saul hit the door again. “Jackal, let me in. I know you can hear me.”

  The main door, behind the screen, opened a crack. Saul couldn’t see inside, but knew it must be Jackal or one of Jackal’s art-children. He stepped back from the doorway. A buzzing voice spoke from behind the door. “Who is with you?”

  “Someone who asked to see Jackal.” Saul nodded to Olivia to punctuate the lie.

  “I need to see the guardian of this passage house,” she said with a pleading tone unlike what Saul had heard her use before. “Please.”

  “It is late,” said the buzzing voice, “Saul you know better than to come here after midnight.”

  “Precisely why we need to see Jackal. This is important.”

  The door creaked open a little wider. “Let me get a look at you.” The voice from within sounded like a bumblebee if a bumblebee had vocal cords. A pair of eyes peered out from the darkness, set a head higher than Saul’s, black and glittering in the streetlights. The hand that held the heavy inner door open was yellow and reflective.

  Saul wondered who the maker of this art-child had been. Another guardian might be present though Saul only knew Jackal’s presence for certain. Makers who made children so obviously devised as human and animal hybrids did not often become guardians, especially on Earth. Most art-children made for the Earth would be animalistic rather than humanoid.

  The voice that accompanied the eyes of the art-child buzzed. “What is your name, woman?”

  “Olivia Jordan.”

  “Olivia Jordan. I will have to check the records.”

  “Don’t bother.” Olivia stepped forward to the doorway. One of her hands raised, palm out. The eyes of the humanoid bee child narrowed. A rod shot from the sleeve of Olivia’s coat, two prongs on its end. The rod broke through the screen door window with a crash of glass.

  The nearly two-foot cattle prod extended and struck the bee child on the carapace with a clunk. Olivia closed her grip around the handle of the prod and squeezed the trigger on its end. A jolt of electricity knocked the bee-child to the floor. The creature groaned and tried to rise, but failed and fell onto its back.

  Olivia pulled the cattle prod back out of the broken window. Saul stepped forward and reached through the window to keep the inner door from closing. He tried the screen door and found it locked. He reached down and hit the lock’s inside trigger. He withdrew his arm. The screen door swung open.

  “After you,” Olivia said.

  Saul nodded and then unhooked the sword and its sheath from his backpack, just in case. He hoped to get to the passage to Mortressa without more violence, but he had a lot of doubt that would happen. Saul stepped through the doorway, sword in hand, and then walked carefully past the unconscious child on the floor.

  The beam of Olivia’s flashlight sliced through the darkness but lingered on the fallen child. Saul glanced down at the creature and took in its mandibles, yellow armor, and generally nonhuman visage, paralyzed in silent pain.

  “You could have told me you were going to do that,” Saul said.

  Olivia followed him inside and closed the door softly behind her. “And you could have told me a bug man might answer the door. What is it with you people and giant bugs?”

  Nat’s fur bristled against Saul’s neck.

  “Most art-children are built for a specific purpose. This one-” Saul nudged the fallen bee child. “Is a sentry. Simple mind, tough body. Good thing his maker didn’t cover electrical resistance.”

  Her flashlight beam fell at Saul’s feet, leaving her face in shadow. “Can you do that?”

  “There are ways to do that, but they lose priority to ways to stop bullets.” Saul walked further into the passage house.

  She followed him, footsteps soft. “So you don’t use guns?”

  “A lot of art-children are nullifiers, make gunpowder inert. I can tell you later. Right now we need to find the passage to Mortressa.”

  “Mortressa.” Olivia caught up with Saul, a smile in her voice. “Pretty name.”

  “It’s an old city, even for Hidria.” Saul followed the beam of Olivia’s flashlight to a bookshelf on one wall. He felt his way along the shelf until he came to a counter further into the room. He had been to the passage house enough times that he knew the index of destinations was located on that counter. “Bring the light.”

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  Olivia approached the counter with the flashlight. The beam fell across a polished gray counter and illuminated a wooden container of index cards in the center of it. Saul grinned.

  He rifled through the index cards in the dim light. Olivia stood beside him, holding the light steady. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m looking for the door number.” He skimmed past destination markers from Escala to Goriat. He found the marker for destinations in Hayk, where Mortressa was located and began to pluck out different cards under that one. “Almost there,” he murmured. “Come on.”

  Olivia touched his shoulder.

  “Almost done,” he said.

  “Saul, I heard something.”

  Saul pulled the card for Mortressa’s passage from the index box. “There, got it.”

  The lights in the front room of the passage house flickered on. Saul blinked and turned around, the card in his hand, and the room key dangling from the card. Olivia shielded her eyes with one arm. A pair of hands clapped. Saul’s vision became clear. He stared at the viper-thin face of Jackal Reed, the chief guardian of Kerenger County.

  “Do you really want to go back to Hidria that bad,” said Jackal with a sigh, “nephew?”

  Saul tucked the key and the card with the door number for Mortressa into his jeans pocket. “Uncle, this isn’t about me.”

  “Oh, I think I know what this is about,” said Jackal.

  “You’re wrong. But I do need to get to Hidria tonight.”

  “I can’t let you do that, nephew.”

  “I thought you’d say something like that.” Saul drew the sword from its sheath. The blade rasped as it emerged. “Stand aside.”

  Olivia glanced at him. “Wait a minute, he’s your uncle?”

  “Never mind that.” Saul took the hilt of his sword in both hands. He faced Jackal. A low rattle issued from the hallway behind the guardian. Sirrush, Jackal’s most powerful art-child, prowled into the room.

  The child was a monstrous cat the size of a lion, but Saul knew he could disguise himself as a far smaller animal. His tail was that of a rattlesnake, and his coat was speckled with blue-gray patches. He hissed at Saul.

  Jackal flexed his hand. A flutter of wings announced the arrival of his sword. The blade glided into the room on white bird’s wings that extended from the cross guard. Olivia stepped back toward Saul in surprise. The sword’s wings shrank to silver nubs and Jackal snatched it out of the air.

  “Try me, nephew. I’m not about to let an exile through my house.”

  “They’ve taken a piece of Apahar,” Saul said. “Don’t stand in my way.”

  Jackal shook his head. “You lost your mind when you failed to become a worldmaker. It’d be a mercy if I put you down.”

  Saul felt his lips draw back in a snarl. He lunged at Jackal. Their blades clashed. Saul circled to keep a distance from Sirrush, smelling the beginnings of his own adrenaline and sweat. He parried a surprisingly strong blow from Jackal. Shock ran through his arm all the way to his shoulder.

  Saul tested his uncle’s strength with a shove, blade against blade. Jackal almost matched his force but slipped back an inch. The blades locked, leaving their faces inches apart.

  “You’ve become a decent fencer,” said Jackal.

  Sirrush leaped toward Saul from his right side. Saul tried to force Jackal backward so he could avoid the cat child, but Jackal held. A roar issued from Sirrush’s mouth and the leonine cat went rigid. Rather than Sirrush’s claws or teeth, Saul took the cat’s head-first impact to the shoulder.

  He staggered to the side, managed to keep his grip on his sword in spite of his grip slipping. Blade up, his eyes flicked to Sirrush. The cat shuddered and fell to the floor. Two wires protruded from Sirrush’s side, leading back to the taser Olivia gripped in one hand. With her other hand, she trained a second taser on Jackal.

  “Looks like you’re out of luck.”

  Saul dived to one side. Olivia squeezed the trigger on the taser. Two prongs flew at Jackal. Saul’s uncle was quick. He released his sword and the wings expanded from its cross guard to hold the blade aloft. Saul whirled to face Jackal as the sword took the jolt of electricity from the taser. The sword began to shake, then fell to the ground with a clatter.

  Jackal glared at Saul while his hand went for the pocketknife at his hip. Saul stepped forward, sword held between him and Jackal. “Unless that knife turns into another longsword, I think you’re done.”

  “You haven’t beaten me yet.” Jackal fumbled to flip the pocket knife open.

  The point of Saul’s blade took the knife out of Jackal’s hand without cutting the skin. The knife skittered to the head of the fallen child by the front door. Olivia detached the electric barbs from Sirrush and smirked at Saul and Jackal. “I swear, does no one in the world you two are from know how electricity works?”

  “Earth born?” Jackal gaped. “How dare you do this, Saul.”

  Saul shook his head. “The people who stole that piece of Apahar in that sword hilt made me do it. You can go on and tell everyone I’m a criminal. But what else is new?”

  Olivia retrieved the rest of her taser tines. She looked past Sirrush’s fallen form to the hall. “Is it this way?”

  Saul glanced down the hallway Jackal had been defending. The darkened corridor was lined with doors, doors that led to places Saul had not walked in four years. Each one was labeled at the top with a golden number, the most important of the affectations of the passage house’s interior.

  Saul breathed in and halfway fancied he could smell the place between worlds. “Looks like I am going home.”

  Jackal glowered at him but backed away from the point of Saul’s sword. “You won’t get far.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Saul motioned down the hallway with his free hand. He turned to Olivia. “Let’s see how far we can go.”

  She nodded and started into the corridor. Jackal’s eyes were dark and filled with rage. “I’ll make you pay for this, Saul.”

  “I bet you will. Just like last time.” Saul turned his back on his uncle. He stepped over Sirrush and followed Olivia into the passage house’s interior. He fished the card from his jeans pocket and checked the number. It bore the numeral ninety-one. He stuffed the card back into his pocket, deciding it wouldn’t do to make Jackal’s pursuit any easier.

  He caught up with Olivia.

  “Good job back there,” she said.

  He sheathed his sword. “You did well yourself.”

  They stepped into a stairwell past door forty and began to climb the steps.

  “You should have told me he was your uncle.”

  Earth-born are always so sentimental. Saul had learned not to put too much importance on family from his father. “Why?”

  She frowned. “This kind of thing is important.”

  “He and I haven’t been friends in some time. Family is an accident.”

  Olivia shook her head. “You are an odd guy, you know that?”

  “Or maybe it’s this world that’s odd.”

  She smiled at him. “No. It’s definitely just you.”

  They stepped onto the second floor and walked down the hall. They passed room sixty, then seventy. Eighty. Saul stopped before the ninety-first door. “Wait until you see where I come from.”

  He retrieved the key from his pocket. The smooth metal felt warm in his hand. He unlocked the door.