James looked over the marks scratched onto the rolled-out strip of clay. “This is completely wrong, Scaglia,” he told his student. “Not only is it wrong, but you tried to copy the answer from your seatmate.”

“But, but,” the young beetle-boy stammered. Other than an extra pair of arms and his large mandibles, his pale, nearly translucent skin, and he his bald, orange head, the boy looked far more human than his beetle parents. The mandibles growing from the sides of his mouth made James want to look away in discomfort, but he forced himself to stay calm as the young boy’s mouth parts waggled around.

“But I copied it perfectly,” the boy finally asserted with self-righteous indignation. “The answers are right!”

“Sure,” James agreed, “but not for your questions. If you copy things then you won’t learn anything.” James sighed. “At least learn to copy from someone doing the same questions, this is just sad.”

The boy crossed his two pairs of arms. “Why would I need this math stuff anyway? Once I pupate, I’ll be big and strong like my father.” His voice took on a tone of awe as he clearly thought about turning into the same large, powerful stag-beetle-person as his father. “Then I’ll just go and fight the Satrapians, like everyone else.”

James sighed. Scaglia’s father had already told James that the matchmakers thought it likely that the child would end up being much smaller than him, with strength only slightly greater than a typical human’s. It was a success from a matchmaking point of view – he was much closer to a human than to a beetle after all – but for a young boy who obviously idolized his father it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“And what if you see a group of people approaching and you need to report back how many there are?” James reasoned. “There are times when numbers become more powerful than the swinging of any sword.”

The boy paused to think for a moment before he held his hand close together. “A few.”

He spread his hands apart. “A bunch.”

His arms moved as far as he could spread them. “A lot. That’s all you need.”

James ran his head through his hair as he resisted the urge to scream. He was saved by the sweet sound of his wife’s voice from the entranceway.

“Husband?” Daran called to him. “Are you almost finished?”

He looked up with relief, gazing into her eyes with longing. His gaze dropped to their child, who she was carrying on a strap across her chest. “Almost. I’m just trying to convince Scaglia here that numbers aren’t his enemy.”

Daran laughed, showing off her pretty smile. “Yes, we have enough to fight since Technis lowered his Barrier. We do not want to add numbers to our list of enemies. They are… hm, what is it you say? Numbers are infinite?”

James grinned at his wife and she smiled back.

Then she gave Scaglia a stern glare while her antennae beat the air with mock-agitation. “I can help with this grub – managing a growing hive full of the young and injured has taught me the values of your numbers and record-keeping.”

She pointed at James. “You should return home, though. Your device is beeping; that means that Bel is reachable again, yes?”

James clapped his hands with excitement and whooped with delight. “Yes! Thank god – or gods, or Lempo or Kjar or whoever,” he finished awkwardly.

He pushed himself to his feet and rushed forward, pausing to give his wive a kiss before leaving the room. “And make sure that Scaglia knows that copying work is wrong!” he shouted as he ran down the hallway.

At a full sprint, he covered the five minute walk in less than a minute, before bursting breathlessly into his laboratory and record-keeping room. Realizing that calling his sister without being able to breathe would be pointless, so he paused to take a few deep breaths, his hands clenched around his knees as he bent over and sucked in deep breaths. Then he nearly leaped out of his skin when Beth silently slipped into the room behind him and prodded him in the back.

“Holy shit, Beth, don’t do that.” He waved his hands at her, shooing her back with irritation as sweat trickled down his face. “Go practice your shadow skills somewhere else.”

She smiled brightly as she took in his discomfort. “Perfection takes practice,” she laughed, “and I’ve got to train you to be on your guard.” Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. “You’re not planning on being careless, are you? You have a family to protect, don’t you?”

Stolen novel; please report.

James grit his teeth. On the one hand, Beth was absolutely making fun of him. On the other hand, she wasn’t wrong. He really did want to keep his family safe.

“Look,” he said, as calmly as he could muster, “Bel’s speaking stone is back online. Let me call her while I still have signal.”

Beth’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh? Is that what’s been making the annoying beeping?”

“Yes,” James shouted, exasperated. “If you’d ever stop to listen to my explanations, then you would already know that!”

“Wow, you’re so on edge. Fatherhood must be really stressful.”

She stared at him for a few moments. “Well? Are you going to call her?”

“I was hoping for some privacy,” he grumbled. “If you’re here, you’re going to waste her battery stressing her out about how Technis’ priests are kicking our asses.”

Beth shrugged. “Well, it’s kind of important, don’t you think?”

“Maybe if you hadn’t gone around hunting down all of his agents–”

“Hey,” Beth cut him off, clearly angry at the implication. “That was Hanti.” She hooked a thumb into her chest. “I brought back the warning from Dutcha. It’s not my fault that Hanti ignored it.”

James tiredly waved his hands, tired of rehashing the same thing. Instead of responding, he went to his communication setup and started connecting the different wires that would initiate contact with his sister. Beth came closer and leaned over his shoulder as he moved things into position.

“Bel?” he spoke into a diaphragm of stretched hide. “Bel, can you hear me?”

“Wow, it works!” Bel shouted back. Her voice was far louder than it had been in the past, and was much clearer as well.

“Bel, where are you? You sound really clear?”

“I’m in the underworld. Some engineer improved you–”

She paused for a moment, clearly talking to someone else.

“Sorry, an engineer named Martinus fixed it. He wants me to tell you that your work is shoddy and that you should really be using a cipher code. Or something like that.”

James’ eyebrows went up. “Do you mean encryption?”

“Maybe. Sure. I don’t know, nobody else speaks English so I’m going through a few other languages.” She sighed and James could picture her snakes flicking out their tongues as her faced scrunched with displeasure. “Really, I’m amazed that we’re talking at all.”

“Bel, we probably don’t have that long to talk, so let’s focus on getting anything important across before we chitchat.”

“Oh,” she replied with a bright, cheerful voice. “Martinus also improved the battery. We should be good for three or four times as long. I think his changes also make the earring look better too.”

“That’s not fair, Bel. People here don’t even know how to make wire.”

“Yeah, sure, sounds like more excuses. Anyway, I’ll give you a quick summary of stuff down here. Let’s see…”

She paused for a moment. “Well, the world is hollow and there’s a big glowing ball called the Heart of Olympos at the center. We’re currently in a gigantic walking city headed by some kind of democratically elected dictator who also happens to be a t-rex I think, at least based upon your descriptions of dinosaurs. He’s making us go to dinner with someone who may have a problem with our being here.”

“Hey Bel,” James interrupted the moment she paused for a breath. “Let me update you on our side first.”

“Yeah, kid,” Beth cut in, “things have gotten really serious down here.”

“Hey Beth!” Bel shouted.

“No, stop interrupting,” James hissed.

“Guess what, kid?” Beth continued.

“Uh, what?”

“Your mom gave me my own personal spirit that follows me around! He’s hiding in my shadow right now!”

“Oh, that’s… why? And where did you find here?”

“So I could learn more about shadow stuff,” Beth answered. “She was busy eating a mountain or something strange, so we didn’t talk much.”

“Get to the point, Beth,” James seethed.

“Yeah, so, Dutcha warned me that Technis has spies outside of Satrap. She also said that Technis has a way of knowing when they die, but guess what?”

Beth paused and waited for Bel to answer.

“People didn’t listen to your warning?”

“You got it,” Beth shouted with sarcastic glee. “So they went crazy sniffing them out and poof! Down goes the Barrier and out come his inquisitors and patchwork people.”

“Oh,” Bel breathed. “Oh, that’s really terrible.”

“Yeah,” James butted in, “at first everyone in the Golden Plains was excited to meet the humans, but the delvers and the people from the Points have mostly retreated into the Labyrinthos. We’ve only been able to talk to a few stragglers, but from what they’ve told us it seems like Technis was messing around until recently.”

“Messing around?” Bel asked.

Beth snorted. “Yeah, he was sending out his – what does James call it? His B team.”

“More like his C team,” James continued. “When he got serious he wiped out the opposition in a day. I don’t know if he’s even serious now, or just keeping us out of his hair.”

“Damn,” Bel cursed. “It sounds like I really need to speed things up down here. And right now I’m stuck going to dinner with a dinosaur.”

There was a muffled noise and then Bel spoke to someone else. “What’s a dinosaur? I don’t know, actually. What are… okay, but it isn’t that important. Ow! Let me finish talking, and then I’ll pay attention, I promise.”

“Look, Bel,” Beth said seriously, “do whatever you need to do down there, shake people’s hands, lick their faces, whatever weird shit is the custom down there, but you need to figure out Lempo’s plans fast. Things are going up in smoke up here, and we don’t know where all of his inquisitors have gone. Some of them could be surrounding us, or going to other islands to gather strength there, or they could even be going after you.”

“Oh,” Bel said, her voice dropping.

“Oh,” she repeated her voice barely louder than a whisper. “I just found one. An inquisitor. He’s who I’m meeting for dinner.”

Beth and James looked at one another, their expressions grim.

“It’s Clark,” Bel whispered. “The same one we knew in Technis’ prison. He says to send his regards.”

There was a long pause as James and Beth exchanged nervous glances.

“I’m gonna disconnect,” Bel said. “I’ve got to pay attention.”