After we filled him in on what we learned, Mark offered his preferred strategy on how to interrogate Helena.

  “I have the spell ‘delve into mind’ prepared. I could just go fishing, and see what I find.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Wait,” Rachel offered, “why haven’t we used it before?”

  “Well, I didn’t have it prepared before,” Mark said, “and I’ve been very busy with my projects.”

  “rojects?” Bere asked.

  I vaguely recalled that there was something I was supposed to tell Mark that I hadn’t, that I had important information for him. But whatever it was could wait.

  “Well, I think I’ve found the location of what could be The Seam. I am this close,” he said, showing a small space between his fingers, “to proving that this pocket of reality is folded uhe Turkish steppes.”

  “Nobody knows what that means,” I said.

  “I don’t expect you to know what it means,” he said.

  I could feel my face sch up, and words e to my lips. I bit them back.

  “Boys,” Rachel cut in, “cool it. Are you saying you know where we are, and that it’s still oh?”

  “ly,” he responded.

  “What’s the downside of using this spell?” Bere asked, walkio me.

  “Well, it very well could damage her trust in us. It is not a subtle thing. Why tell us anything, if we’re just going to pry it from her skull? And we may not find anything helpful to us in the process. It’s possible to get me a memory of her childhood pet, and not what she was doing a week ago.”

  “Last resort, then,” Rachel said definitively.

  “I don’t like it,” I added.

  Braelyn walked up from the other dire and had a hushed versation with Mark about something. I just stared at the blue light of an are mp. Then we were off again.

  We turned a er, and suddenly we were in the dungeons. Just are mps, no natural light to be seen. The tral area had a desk with a single guard, and several chests — Hooks with rows of keys over it. Then ringed around this space stood a dozen iron barred cells.

  Helena, sitting on a generous cot reading a book, seemed to be its only inhabitant. Ay tray with a tin mug sat on the floor.

  “I thought we weren’t doing books,” I said.

  “Where did she get a book?” Mark asked the guard.

  He looked up from his game of solitaire and said, “someone else must have given it to her.”

  Helena stood, tossed the book on the bed, and walked to the bars of her cell.

  Her hair streamed long and ast her shoulders, greasy from six days of spohs. Her face was round, giving her a youthful look. And in pin cotton shorts and shirt, I was forced to admit that her figure was very appealing.

  Her arms were much bigger than I had ever seen on a girl, and she had some heft to her. Not enough that I’d know she had 21 strength, but certainly enough that I’d think she was a swimmer or a powerlifter.

  “Wasn’t a very good one,” Helena said, resting her arms on the bars casually. “I’m more into manga.”

  “One Piece?” I offered.

  “Hell yeah!” she responded, brightening a little. “I’m so upset that I’m missing the final chapters.”

  “They’re doing the final chapters?”

  “Yeah, Oda had to take a break for his health, but he’s babsp; Or at least he was. I’ve been here for a bit.”

  I must have been more out of the loop on manga than I thought.

  At this point, we were all around her cell, with me the closest. Her eyes lit up when she saw Rachel.

  “Raquel, dejas me pntado,” she said pyfully.

  “You knoe’re here,” Mark started.

  “Sure,” she said. “You wao tell you what I know, but give me very little reason to trust you.”

  “No,” I said, cutting in, “we just want to get to know you. I think they got us off on the wrong foot.”

  “Arre? Let me out, we grab some ches, then we’ll see what foot we’re really on.”

  Bere took a step closer to me.

  “Is ches food?” I asked Bere.

  “Beer,” she said.

  “Nice,” I turned back to Helena. “’t let you out, but maybe we could get some beer?”

  “No,” Mark said.

  “You’re not really helping.”

  “Trust works both ways,” Mark tinued. “And it’s on you to show us you’re trustworthy.”

  I turned away from Helena. So did Rachel.

  “This isn’t the game pn,” she said.

  “Yeah, you’re freaking scuttling it, dude.”

  Looking at both of us in turn, he seemed to realize that we were united against him.

  “Whatever,” Mark said. “Do what you like. Message me if you fail.”

  He teleported away.

  It was just me and the three girls on this side of the bars. I grabbed some chairs, Helena grabbed her own, a with the bars between us.

  “So beer is off the table,” I said.

  “Not surprising,” she shrugged.

  “What do you feel fortable sharing?” Bere asked.

  “Look, you guys are really bad at this. Just say stuff, if I like it, maybe I open up. It’s really not that hard.”

  Braelyn got up a.

  “My dad’s Puerto Ri?” Bere offered.

  “No manches,” Helena muttered. “Yeah that tracks.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  They had a bad forth in Spanish that I couldn’t really follow, but it ended with a big sigh from Bere.

  “What was that?” Rachel asked. “Something about a strawberry?”

  “She’s expeg solidarity,” Helena said, “but just because we both speak Spanish, doesn’t mea a lot in on. At this point, maybe I should just go bay book.”

  She stood. I stood up too, and walked toward the bars.

  “Look, the fact that you’re also from earth, America even, that’s kinda thrown us for a loop,” I said. “We’ve been forced to make some tough calls here, and fought really hard to try to get bae, and then you show up, and it makes us think that maybe we could have made different choices.”

  Helena smiled, her dark brown eyes just a shade lighter than bck gazing back at me with something like amusement. She responded with a “hmm.”

  “Look, most of us, whe here, we had nobody,” I said. “I was lucky. I had Bernie. And the two of us have gotten into some weird shit. We aren’t sure that what we’re doing is right, but we know we have each other.”

  Braelyn arrived with a wine sabsp; We poured wine for everyone. It was still maybe ten in the m, but nobody seemed to mind. This got Helena ba the chair.

  “So,” I tinued, “I have Bernie. You arrived with your dad?”

  “You’re trying to use social drinking on me,” she said, taking a sip of wine from her tin mug. “But damn if it ain’t w. Yeah. Papa took us through the blue dether, but I took my hand back at the st sed. I waited, what must have beey, thirty seds before jumping through. He’d been here for two years. It took me weeks to make it to him.”

  “And by then he’d already joined up with Inara?”

  Helena shrugged.

  “Damn,” I muttered to myself, taking another sip of wine. “See, we all had something simir happen to us. Sofia went through first, who you know as Queen Tenembria, Inara. She was here for thirty years before Caleb showed up. Then Mark.”

  “Pendejo,” Helena muttered.

  I just nodded and tinued.

  “Right. Then Rachel about five years ago, then us. You must have gotten here before me.”

  “Maybe,” she said, shrugging.

  “We’ve ended up on opposite sides of this stupid war Sofia — Inara I mean— and Caleb have been fighting just out of pure circumstanbsp; What’s even the point of it? Why should either side’s grudge matter?”

  “You’re into this güey?” Helena said, looking to Bere.

  “He has his charms,” she said coyly, then lifting her mug to her lips with both hands.

  “Look, I get it,” Helena said, waviin mug. “You’re mister nice guy. La ligue over here not so mubsp; And Raquel,” she wi Rachel, “she’s been pying with my heart all week.” Braelyn looked to Rachel, who just shrugged in response. “But,” Helena tinued, “it doesn’t matter how charming you are, I don’t get home unless I kill Caleb. I don’t see any other way.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” I said, pulling out my ste. “Take a look at this.”

  I swiped opee, pulled up my messages with the DM and hahe ste to her through the bars. Bere looked surprised. Braelyn looked fused.

  Helena just swiped through the messages, as she did, her face getting more and more ed. Then she swiped away from those messages and began reading others.

  “Hey!” I said, reag through the bars. Helena smiled wide, like a kid who’d gotten caught grabbing a sucker from their mom’s purse, then ha back.

  She was on the kill crew messages. Clever. But she probably hadn’t learoo much.

  “Nice going idiot,” Rachel said.

  Bere just gave me ahetic look.

  I put my ste back.

  “Thank you for trusting me,” Helena said. She raised her tin mug, “and the booze. But if we’re to take the DM at his word, he didn’t say that I had to join you. In fact, he implied that you could join me.”

  “If it’s all about ‘the story,’” She tinued, “whose story is better than mine? The heroiight and her father, who won new allies through her beauty and charm, who took down a tyrant with the help of a powerful sorceress? With Inara, she protected my father, helped me realize I could be a hero. What have you doher than lock me up?”

  “We’re trying to be better,” I said. “You won’t know what your story could be unless you give us a try.”

  “An appeal to the unknown. Attractive, were I not bound to my father’s choices. Look. I’m not gonna decide anything today. But I would like to talk to Raquel.”

  I looked to Rachel, whed. Braelyn walked up the stairs without a word. Ber on the guard desk, and fiddled with her ste. I sat o Bernie. Giving it a sed look, I saw that it wasn’t her ste, but Helena’s she was messing with. The lo the messages app was just a fit pin. And it didn’t seem to have a lockout for incorrect choices.

  Crude, and breakable with enough tries. It seemed like Bernie was using dates.

  “Why all the dates in April?” I whispered.

  “She’s an Aries,” Bernie said.

  “How do you know?”

  Bernie just gave me a sardonic look that implied that it should be obvious.

  I leaned against Bere, and eavesdropped on Rachel and Helena’s versation.

  “This isn’t gonna work,” Rachel said.

  “What is ‘this?’ I’m just talking. I’m bored, and you’re the most iing person here.”

  “Person, or woman?”

  “I’m about the person,” she said, lig her lips nervously. “Unless you mean I need a gold star to talk to you.”

  “Nah. I’m not about that. And is that what this is?”

  “It’s whatever you want it to be, baby girl.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  I retty sure this was flirting, but if it got us intel, I was all for it. I also couldn’t help but feel like I was missing something beyond that.

  “What happeo your shoulder?” Helena asked.

  “Oh. Got chopped off in Swordfall. Knight of the Word. My ex actually. Long story.”

  “Chica ma, you’re oough cookie. I give a great massage, if you need.”

  “e on.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I know we banter, but I got strong hands. Give a killer massage. Or you need me to be gentle, I be gentle.”

  Just then I got a message. I pulled up my ste. It was Braelyn. She had her own ste now.

  Braelyn: We have a problem at the front door.

  I messaged back.

  Breznik: What's up?

  Braelyn: Some gnome girl is here with two others saying that they know you, and that you’d want to talk to her. There are hundreds of miles of empty snow here, so if we kick them out, they have very few pces to stay otherwise. But I’ll do it if you need.

  Breznik: Keep them busy. I’ll be right there.