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.”

“What projects?” Bernadette 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 under the 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 scrunch up, and words come 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 on earth?”

“Not exactly,” he responded.

“What’s the downside of using this spell?” Bernadette asked, walking next to 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 direction and had a hushed conversation with Mark about something. I just stared at the blue light of an arcane lamp. Then we were off again.

We turned a corner, and suddenly we were in the dungeons. Just arcane lamps, no natural light to be seen. The central 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. An empty 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 wavy past her shoulders, greasy from six days of sponge baths. Her face was round, giving her a youthful look. And in plain 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 back! 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 plantado,” she said playfully.

“You know why we’re here,” Mark started.

“Sure,” she said. “You want me to 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 chelas, then we’ll see what foot we’re really on.”

Bernadette took a step closer to me.

“Is chelas food?” I asked Bernadette.

“Beer,” she said.

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

“No,” Mark said.

“You’re not really helping.”

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

I turned away from Helena. So did Rachel.

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“This isn’t the game plan,” 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, and we sat with the bars between us.

“So beer is off the table,” I said.

“Not surprising,” she shrugged.

“What do you feel comfortable sharing?” Bernadette 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 and left.

“My dad’s Puerto Rican?” Bernadette offered.

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

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

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

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

“She’s expecting solidarity,” Helena said, “but just because we both speak Spanish, doesn’t mean we got a lot in common. At this point, maybe I should just go back to my 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 back home, 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 black gazing back at me with something like amusement. She responded with a “hmm.”

“Look, most of us, when we got 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 sack. We poured wine for everyone. It was still maybe ten in the morning, but nobody seemed to mind. This got Helena back in the chair.

“So,” I continued, “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 working. Yeah. Papa took us through the blue door together, but I took my hand back at the last second. I waited, what must have been twenty, thirty seconds 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 similar 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 continued.

“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 circumstance. What’s even the point of it? Why should either side’s grudge matter?”

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

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

“Look, I get it,” Helena said, waving her tin mug. “You’re mister nice guy. La ligue over here not so much. And Raquel,” she winked at Rachel, “she’s been playing with my heart all week.” Braelyn looked to Rachel, who just shrugged in response. “But,” Helena continued, “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 slate. “Take a look at this.”

I swiped open the slate, pulled up my messages with the DM and handed the slate to her through the bars. Bernadette looked surprised. Braelyn looked confused.

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

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

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

“Nice going idiot,” Rachel said.

Bernadette just gave me an empathetic look.

I put my slate 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 continued, “whose story is better than mine? The heroic knight 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 done, other 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, who shrugged. Braelyn walked up the stairs without a word. Bernie sat on the guard desk, and fiddled with her slate. I sat next to Bernie. Giving it a second look, I saw that it wasn’t her slate, but Helena’s she was messing with. The lock on the messages app was just a four digit 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 Bernadette, and eavesdropped on Rachel and Helena’s conversation.

“This isn’t gonna work,” Rachel said.

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

“Person, or woman?”

“I’m about the person,” she said, licking 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 was pretty 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 happened to your shoulder?” Helena asked.

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

“Chica mala, you’re one tough cookie. I give a great massage, if you need.”

“Come 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 can be gentle.”

Just then I got a message. I pulled up my slate. It was Braelyn. She had her own slate 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 places to stay otherwise. But I’ll do it if you need.

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