Phelim’s expression hardened as he struggled to restrain himself. “I assure you we did everything that we could to-”

He was moving with her now, ambling in an awkward sideways gait. She’d won. “When I sit in the Orchard Palace, I will order a full and open inquiry into your part in this aggression,” she said dismissively.

“Wha-” Phelim managed to blurt.

“Violence was something the Waterwalker strove to eradicate. He devoted his lives to it. The cause almost broke him, but he succeeded. That is his true inspiration to us. And this monstrous invasion is the antithesis of everything Living Dream stands for. To believe you will go unpunished for such an atrocity is arrogant beyond belief.”

Cheering broke out all across the docks as Phelim abruptly stood still, watching with an open jaw as Araminta carried on to the wormhole. A lot of the enthusiastic jeering voices were rising from the protesters just outside the entrance.

Araminta smiled proudly, savoring the victory. The wormhole was directly ahead of her now, guarded by tall metal pillars studded with weapons and sensors. The Ellezelin forces parted before her. Helmets were discarded, showing grinning faces. The true believers were delighted she was here, was going to lead them onward just as the movement had always promised. She was cheered and applauded.

“Thank you,” she told them. “Thank you so much.” It was hard not to laugh outright. She’d accessed politicians working the crowds enough times, always hating the smug cynical bastards putting on a human persona whenever elections were due. Now she understood how they did it; puppeting the crowds was apparently an inbuilt ability.

Just as she reached the wormhole, she slowed and gripped Mareble’s hands. The woman looked at her with an alarming degree of adoration, eyes bright above the dried blood staining her face and dress. “You can go home now,” Araminta told the overwhelmed woman. “I will lead us on Pilgrimage shortly, once the ships are ready.”

Mareble’s lower lip trembled as she began to cry.

“It’s all right,” Araminta assured her. “Everything is all right now.” That was a lie on the grandest scale possible. She was rather pleased with herself for carrying it off with such panache.

Araminta raised a hand to her newfound friends and walked into the mouth of the wormhole, where she was engulfed by Ellezelin’s warmer, yellower sunlight.

“Holy crap!” Oscar muttered.

“That’s not her,” Tomansio said.

“She’s fucked us,” Beckia grunted. “Totally fucked us. She’s killed the whole galaxy.”

On the other side of the starship’s cabin, Liatris shook his head, his mouth raised in a lopsided smile of admiration. “Smart lady. They kept pushing her and pushing her, backing her into an impossible corner. There were only ever two options. Cave in or come out fighting. They never expected her to do that.”

“Because that’s not her,” Tomansio said confidently.

“Looked like her,” Oscar said. His u-shadow was still accessing the unisphere news feeds, showing the mouth of the wormhole not half a kilometer from the Bootle amp; Leicester warehouse where the Elvin’s Payback was secreted. It had taken a great deal of willpower not to run out of the starship and take a look at events for himself. The unisphere feed showed him hundreds of joyous people following their newfound messiah through the wormhole to Ellezelin. Unisphere coverage ended there. The other end of the wormhole was in a security zone.

The gaiafield, however, was still gifting Araminta’s sight and emotions as she walked across the nearly empty staging field. Capsules rushed through the air toward her. People were breaking off from their tasks on the acres of machinery scattered about to cheer her arrival in Greater Makkathran. And how is dear old Cleric Conservator Ethan going to react to this? he wondered.

“So that’s it,” Beckia said. She was still cranky at having to wear the medical sleeve on her arm, which was busy knitting the deep-tissue repairs she’d undergone after the fight in Francola Wood. Three other enriched agents had swarmed her, and her integral force field had temporarily overloaded down her left side. Oscar had pulled her out of the fray just before the capsules landed. He considered her lucky. Tomansio had managed to extract them, and the medical capsule that had repaired her had performed a minor miracle.

“Maybe,” Oscar said. “She must have a plan.”

“That’s a dangerous assumption,” Tomansio said. “Liatris got it right; she’s been forced into this act simply to survive.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t her,” Oscar countered.

Tomansio’s handsome face shone with a bright smile. “Touche.”

“It’s her,” Oscar said.

“Still not convinced,” Tomansio said. “This … empress isn’t the same girl we’ve been chasing after. Facing down Living Dream simply isn’t in her psychology.”

“What, then?” Beckia demanded.

“Double bluff,” Tomansio said. “They got to her; they broke into her mind and installed their own operating routines. This is a puppet of Living Dream, one that’s been pushed out center stage to focus everyone’s attention. Big bonus that she’ll do what every follower wants and lead them to Pilgrimage. It makes perfect sense for Ethan to do this; he gets everything he ever wanted.”

“Except lead Living Dream,” Oscar said. “That’s her next step. It has to be; she can’t do anything else but claim the throne now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tomansio said. “He still gets what he wants, which is a ticket into the Void, and at the same time he doesn’t get any of the blame if it all goes belly-up.”

“Which it will,” Beckia said.

“I still don’t buy it,” Oscar said. He remembered the expression of fear and determination he’d seen on Araminta’s face when they met oh so briefly in Bodant Park. Her magnificent run eluding not just his team but the entire complement of agents from every power player in the Commonwealth. Besides, she was descended from Mellanie, and that meant trouble on a level these modern Greater Commonwealth citizens couldn’t comprehend. His lips registered a slight smile. Something about the whole situation wasn’t quite right-Tomansio had the truth of that-but he had absolutely no idea what.

“Then what is she doing?” Beckia asked. “She might have come out fighting from the corner they’d backed her into, but she’s burned any options. She has to take Living Dream on Pilgrimage now. That’s what her whole tenuous authority is based on.”

“Suicide?” Liatris suggested. “She leads them into the Gulf, and the Pilgrimage ships get blasted apart by the warrior Raiel.”

“That’d work for me,” Beckia grunted.

Oscar grinned from the strength of his own conviction. “Have a little faith,” he told the Knights Guardian. “After all, she is a messiah now.”

Tomansio groaned. “You mean you want us to stay on?”

“You’ve seen what’s going on in the docks right now. Every Living Dream follower on the planet is going to come running to the wormhole, and Phelim will have to shut off the weather dome to let them in. If we left now, we’d definitely be seen; we’d blow our cover.”

“We don’t need cover if the operation is over.”

“Give her a few days. She is rather busy right now, after all. And she has my number.”

“Don’t we all,” Beckia muttered.

Araminta stood at the front of the big passenger capsule, looking through the transparent fuselage that wrapped around her. Five hundred meters below, Greater Makkathran was laid out across the ground, a phenomenal urban sprawl that stretched to the horizon in every direction. Sunlight glinted and flashed off the crystal towers rising from lush parks; lower buildings shone with implausible colors. It was, she acknowledged, a beautiful city. However, her vision of the capital was slightly obscured by the sheer number of capsules rising up out of the designated traffic streams to wait for her to pass. Then they curved around to join the festive armada already flying along behind her. There were so many packed together like a smoke cloud, she could actually see the hazy shadow they splashed over the ground.