“I don’t have a lot of experience in this world, and I’m not especially wise. I’ve spent my whole life watching people and trying to understand why they do what they do. I thought there were deep secrets to their behavior that I would need to learn to mimic in order to blend in with them.

Turns out though, people aren’t that complex.

We think we do what we do for a lot of reasons, but, mostly, what it comes down to choosing to value something and then protecting it.

For the longest time, I thought that what I valued was my own life above all else. It wasn’t until I understood the family I had that I saw there was something I valued a whole lot more.”

– Kati Riverbond, in a note to her housemates which was never sent.

No one reacted all that much to my request for the Empress’s crown. There had been too many other shocks to their system for a simple thing like that to raise many alarms in any one.

Anyone except Doxle.

He turned to me, eyes narrowed in suspicion, and was about to ask the kind of questions he really didn’t want the answers to before the Empress held out a hand to bid him to silence.

“You have a suitable army assembled to have made that request as a threat,” she said, and I saw exactly what everyone else was seeing. 

As coups went, it wasn’t the best one ever planned but it was one that at least half of the Great Houses might have tried. Lure the Empress out of her castle (after overcoming the obvious problem that it was impossible for her to leave it), surround her with as many assassins as you could get your hands on and then start making demands. Perfect plan. Nothing could wrong with it.

Well nothing aside from the sheer havoc Doxle and Enika could wreck. Or the fact that all of the other House Speakers present would immediately side with the Empress. Or, and it was important not to overlook this, the fact that the Empress herself was in command of enough raw magic to reduce the planet we were standing on to an ever expanding cloud of dust.

So, like I said, half the Great House, at a minimum would have tried it.

House Riverbond however was not one of them, and, this was something for which the Empress won my undying love and admiration, the Empress knew it.

“You are trying render us aid though?” She understood that I wanted to help her, and I couldn’t fault her for not understanding how.

“I am,” I said. “To be clear, I do not need your title, your office, or any aspect of your life. All I need is the physical symbol of your position.”

Doxle’s eyes were alight with opposition to the conversation going any further, but the Empress’s gesture held him silent – not physically or magically, he simply respected her and she understood the limits of his reasonability.

“As a symbol, it’s purpose it somewhat diminished should another bear it,” the Empress said. “To what end would you make us of it?”

“You’re planning to recast the freezing spell, aren’t you?” I asked and she smiled.

“The thought had crossed our mind,” she said. “The two realms which have shifted are only a small corner of the Transcendent Realms. Even now the others who bear the Eternal Ice maintain the greater spell. We were very lucky that the shifting realms did not trigger a greater cascade, and we thank you for this brief reprieve from our duty, even though it comes with the certainty that it must end before another hour passes.”

“Realms?” Doxle said. “There was only supposed to be one realm which changed, and it was supposed to be rigid enough that there was no danger of its collapse?”

“Your calculations were off my dear Advisor,” the Empress said. “Though not by much. To your credit, it was only a small part of one other realm, and a naturally changing one at that, which escaped the limits imposed by the Eternal Ice. Likely due to your protege.”

“That’s not possible,” Doxle said, his voice flat. “You know my work. I did not make a mistake. There should only have been one realm which shifted. I would never have risked forcing you to carry two of them at once.”

“And yet…,” she waved her hand and a trail of tiny gears formed in the air stretching and shrinking dynamically as she pushed and spun them.

It was finally Doxle’s turn to look surprised.

And worried.

Or terrified. That might have been what terrified looked like on Doxle.

“You’re both correct,” I said, knowing that what I was going to say next wasn’t going to reduce the chance that Doxle would have an heart attack but they deserved the truth.

Now that it was too late to do anything about it.

“And how might that be?” Doxle said, the frost in his tone indicating that he was genuinely upset with me.

For which I couldn’t blame him.

“Your calculations were not wrong,” I said. “And the Empress is correct that two realms have shifted. What won’t be clear yet is the change to the Clockwork Cosmos is will not remain limited to that realm. Or to mine.”

“Explain,” Doxle said, his hands trembling for the first time in centuries.

“The Clockwork Cosmos was going to destroy itself to accommodate us. It was willing to do that because it absolutely loathed the idea that its nature allowed people like Ironbriar to control what it was,” I said. “It was willing to annihilate it’s core essence and because nothing more than a dead world for the dead. It was careful not to express that because it understood how we would perceive that.”

“And you were able to see past its deception how?” the Empress asked.

“I became it,” I said. “What you see me do is more than a transformation of shape. When I become something, or someone, I change fragments of my essence to match the form I’m taking. I know what the Clockwork Cosmos was thinking because I thought its thoughts while I was within it. Then, once I was back to myself, the me you see here and now, I confirmed what I’d learned by asking  it directly.”

“And how did you manage that?” the Empress asked.

“Your instructors showed me how to tear a rift between the realms,” I said. “It takes a lot of effort, and is remarkably unpleasant, but even one the size of a thread is another allow conversation with something like the Clockwork Cosmos.”

“And what did you tell the Clockwork Cosmos?” Doxle asked.

“That there was another way,” I said, confessing to a crime against the world itself. “I asked if it truly wanted to change, and whether it would accept my help in doing so.”

“Oh, I see,” the Empress said the delight of understanding lighting her eyes. “You gave it access to your magic.”

“Mine wouldn’t have been anywhere near enough,” I said. “Alone, we’re far too limited. To change a cosmos, you need another cosmos. So I introduced it to one.”

“How?” Doxle said, already knowing the answer and desperately not wanted to believe it was true.

“I spoke with the Dwellers Below from my home realm, I asked if they desired to become something more than they ever could be alone, and, when they agreed, I taught them what I knew,”

“Quite clever,” the Empress said. “And yes, you are correct. We are all doomed.”

“You don’t believe that,” Doxle said. “You’re too happy to believe that.”

“There’s still the Eternal Ice,” I said. “It worked before, and I know that’s a comforting thought, but it won’t work again.”

“People didn’t believe it would work the first time either,” the Empress said.

“I know. And I know you’re a good enough caster to tailor it to the changes in the realms, but last time they were crashing downwards all unaware. They were far happier to caught by the Ice than they were with falling to oblivion. This is different. They’re not falling. Not yet. They’re changing, or trying to learn how. If you freeze them again, they’ll work to become something that can melt free, or flow around, or pass through.  They need someone to guide them though. Otherwise they’re going to fall before they can understand what else is possible.”

“We dare not grant you the crown then,” the Empress said. “That is a task which must fall on us. We cannot ask anyone else to bear it.”

“You can,” I said. “You have to. Letting that much magic flow through you will destroy you, even if you can show the realms the path to the future.”

“Then I shall be destroyed. After all this time do you think I would do less for my Empire?”

“Of course not,” I said. “What I’m asking is that you think of what the Empire will need from you tomorrow. The sun is going rise on a new world, whatever happens next. There are people who will want to share that world with you, and an Empire full of people who will look to you for guidance and the stability that you alone can offer.”

I probably wasn’t allowed to take her hands in mine. Touching the Empress was likely a capital offense against the demands of etiquette. I didn’t really care though. Not with what lay ahead of me.

“I can do this for you,” I said. “For everyone.” I could help but cast a glance over at Idrina, and the rest of my housemates, and Grammy. “You didn’t ask for this. You would never have risked everyone like this. It was stupid and irresponsible and…”

“And the only hope that things will truly change,” the Empress said, offering me a sad smile, and the crown from her head.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling the weight of the world bound in a circlet of ornamented iron.

“Are you sure of this?” Grammy asked.

“We can find another way,” Idrina said.

“There’s time,” Doxle said. “All I need is an hour and a chalkboard. No. A half hour.”

“Don’t lie to her,” Enika said. “Tell her the truth. You know what the other way is already.”

“I could take her place,” Doxle said, dejection coloring his words because the admission meant there was no chance I would go for it.

“Hey,” I said. “You deserve to see tomorrow too.”

His face hardened in exactly the manner of someone forcing back tears. But he couldn’t have been crying for me. I think.

“We are leaving the our fate, no, the fate of our entire world in the hands of an inhuman child?” Lightstone said. “Forget what she said. If the Eternal Ice can be renewed, then recast the spell. It is the Empress’s duty to save us, not this lying changeling. I demand…”

I never got to hear what his demands where.

The snap of Enika’s fingers ricocheted off ceiling of the Council Chamber and in its wake, snow fell within the hall.

Lightstone had gotten his wish.

Behind the Head Speaker’s podium a block of Eternal Ice stood. It wasn’t so broad or cosmically all encompassing as the Empress’s version of the spell, but it was every bit as permanent from what I could smell. I wondered if Lightstone would dream, or if he was trapped forever in that moment of outrage and terror.

“I am sure,” I said, to Grammy, to Idrina, to the Empress, and to Doxle. “If we got to this point, I knew this is what I would need to do, and I know it’s worth it.”

Idrina squeezed my hand.

“I’m not saying goodbye. I’m not going to give up on this life. Not easily,” I said.

Idrina, pulled me in close and kissed me without an instant’s hesitation.

“Don’t give up at all,” she said.

“Never!” I agreed, and placed the Imperial Crown on my head.