The rifts I pried open were short-lived, but the flashes of realspace I could see through them were encouraging. From what I could tell, the other side of the rift led to somewhere in the House of Warp and Weft, so I started running some tests. After placing a rock the size of a person (I wanted to use one of the gold bars, but Tanryn wouldn't let me touch any of House Tanryn's riches) in the middle of the room, I willed my liquid-mirror insecurity to surge from my soul into the rock all at once. With a little pop and a flash, the boulder disappeared; a short rest later, I pried open another rift and confirmed that the boulder had made it into realspace unharmed.

I had a way home. After everything Odin had thrown at me, after every trick and trap of the Plane of Insecurity had to offer, I was coming home.

To my surprise, Tanryn's smile was tainted with rue. "I suppose this is where we say our farewells, commoner."

I blinked. "What? There's no reason to think that I can't take the two of you with me. I mean, we've already confirmed it works on boulders, and you're about as likeable and intelligent."

Tanryn rolled her eyes. "Har-dee-har-har. No, I'm afraid that here is where I shall stay." Her gaze flickered to one side, and I got the feeling she was looking at another place, another time. "My charge, given to me by the lord of House Tanryn, was to stay here and protect our wealth until he returned to bring our house to greatness. And even though... even if he will never return, I will fulfill that obligation until the bitter end." She paused, then whispered, "Even if it means saying farewell to the two of you."

"I haven't told you that I'm leaving yet," Meloai pointed out.

Tanryn scoffed. "Meloai. You've spent your entire life wanting nothing more than to blend in and be a normal human. And while your particular brand of peculiarity might take some time to get used to... you'll get what you want out there. Not in here." Tanryn leaned back on a rack of gold bars, throwing her arms in the air. "So rejoice! The two of you bear witness to the last of House Tanryn—the last of the nobility in the Silent Peaks, if your account is to be believed—and the principles we stood for. Remember me well, for we shall never meet again."

I swatted her on the shoulder, and she yelped as her dramatic posture overbalanced. "Cool, except every single word of what you just said is stupid. Look, I'm sure I'm not the only witch in the Silent Peaks capable of opening a rift back into the Plane of Insecurity. You want to stay here and play noble guardian until the end of time? Fine, some people get off on that. But I'm not leaving you." I waggled a finger at her. "You'll have visitors. You'll have friends. And you won't have to be alone."

Tanryn stood up and looked away, hiding her expression behind a hand. "Well. I suppose it would be nice to have company every once in a while. The library will get stale eventually."

"And hey, if you'd let me take a couple of those gold bars—"

"Those are the treasures of House Tanryn!"

"Yeah, I figured. Alright, Meloai. Let's go home." I grabbed onto Tanryn's arm, pulling the liquid-mirror insecurity from her soul—she had plenty to spare—and readied myself to open the momentary rift into realspace that would take us home.

With two quick spells and a whumph of air, the safe room blurred into the familiar, space-bending halls of the House of Warp and Weft. And just like that, we were free.

###

"Albin?" I called. "Buddy. You there?"

Meloai was busy analyzing the metal of a doorhinge, but straightened up when I spoke. "Who's Albin?" she asked.

I waved my hand. "Soulspace... angel... thing. Runs the house. I'm not sure why... hm. Maybe they're busy with the rifts." I'd already checked the monkey room, and someone had taken the entire apparatus down without leaving so much as a note. I suppose I had vanished for three days without warning; for all I knew, nobody was expecting me to come back alive. But it was only three days—I'd gone longer than that without seeing Lucet or Jiaola.

Maybe one of them would know what was going on.

I walked out of the House of Warp and Weft, accidentally ended up back inside of it, and walked out again, this time for real. Meloai seemed to take the bizarre space-warping properties of the House of Warp and Weft in stride. I suppose that she'd grown up in the area of thoughtspace corresponding to the eddies of space that surrounded the House of Warp and Weft; she was probably used to it.

The wide, snowy streets were empty of passerby; the houses were shuttered and locked. I did see flickers of light from the nearby windows, which at least told me that the Silent Peaks weren't completely deserted, but other than that, there was nobody on the roads.

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"Creepy," I muttered. "C'mon, let's go find Uncle Jiaola."

"I thought you said you didn't have any blood relatives," Meloai said.

"I don't," I said, shrugging. "He's family anyway."

Jiaola's house was still scarred from the Battle of Silentfall, but it was clearly still inhabited. After knocking produced no answer, I shrugged and took the key Jiaola had given me off from around my neck, unlocking the door. Meloai gave it a fascinated look as it opened, and I hesitated. Jiaola and Sansen were capable witches, and I didn't want them freaking out about Meloai's soullessness.

"If an old man comes up to you and asks what you're doing here, just tell them you're with Cienne," I said.

Meloai nodded, distracted by the door. "Do you mind if I...?"

Huh. Come to think of it, this would be the only real door outside of Tanryn's vault that she'd ever seen, wouldn't it? I smiled. "Knock yourself out."

She took that to mean that she could pore over the door in its every detail, which I suppose worked. I wandered into Jiaola's house, calling out, "Jiaola? Sansen?" I paused, then added in Sansen's mother's name for good measure. She lived in the attic and insisted on being called Grandma, although I barely knew her. "Grandma?" I called.

From upstairs, something went clunk.

I walked up towards the open attic door, frowning. Where was everyone? "Grandma?" I repeated. "You the—"

A wooden slipper flew at my head, and I ducked as "Grandma" chased me out of the room. "I'm changing, you pumpernickel pie! Get out of my room!"

I hadn't caught a good look at the blur of fur and fluffy dresses that had hidden behind the nearby dresser, but something sounded off about her voice. Did she get into Jiaola's brandy again? "Okay, Grandma, but everyone else in the house is gone, and I really need to know where they went—"

"You can ask someone else! Anyone else! Just don't come in here for the next—" I heard some rustling, and a window popped open. "Four hours, six minutes," the voice from inside the room said.

I rubbed my forehead. "Grandma, the moon's going to be practically set by then. Come on. Throw me a bone. I—"

"No!" I heard a frenzied yelp from inside. "No bones! No moons! Go away!"

"Come on, Grandma! I can't find Uncle Sansen or Uncle Jiaola anywhere, and—" I paused as a realization struck me, gentle as the rising dawn.

Then I snickered to myself as the outlines of the situation presented themselves. It was a bit of an open secret that Sansen was a werewolf—I wasn't sure of all the details of Sansen and Jiaola's marriage, but I'd gathered that they'd broken more or less every taboo from both of their respective home cultures. So it was understandable that Uncle Sansen would still be a bit secretive about the whole thing.

I, on the other hand, had been born and raised in the generation after theirs, and the world they'd fought to live in was one in which I could just have a good laugh about the whole situation and then move on. So I decided my questions about where everyone was would have to wait. "Alright, alright. I'll be downstairs. Just howl if you need me," I said.

"ACK!" I heard Sansen yelp from inside the closed room. "What did you say?"

"Sorry, Grandma, are you having some hearing loss? You know what's great for that? Take the hair of the dog that bit you," I said, elbowing the air. Man, I should become a comedian.

"WHY? WHY???" After the stress of the past few days, I just had to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Finally, the door creaked open, and a very sheepish, very much a wolf in a dress poked his snout outside. "That's not funny, you know."

I grinned at him. "Hey, you really had me going there for a moment. I didn't want to call you out on it if I was wrong. After all, I didn't want to be—"

"Don't you fucking dare," Sansen barked.

"—the boy who cried wolf," I finished, eyes sparkling with mirth.

Sansen gave me a long look. "You done yet? Because seriously, I would've been hanged in my childhood if someone knew I was dating a human, much less a human man."

I sobered up, a bit of remorse creeping into my expression. Maybe the boy who cried wolf one was one pun too far. "I know. I just... things are different nowadays, you know? You've been married to Uncle Jiaola my entire life; you don't have to hide it. Although..." I gave the lacy dress he was wearing—with exactly nothing else—and raised an eyebrow. "I do find this entire situation immensely amusing."

Sansen sighed, a whuff of air puffing out from his nostrils. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Alright, let me change into something less sexy and I'll see you in." Sansen pulled his head back, then paused. "Thanks," he said. "For... being accepting."

I heard something deeper in his words, an echo of a memory sharp and thin, and I nodded in response. "Least I could do," I said. I paused, then smirked as one last remark made its way to my mind. "Besides," I added, "what were you worried about? It wasn't like I was going to... throw you to the wolves."

Sansen rolled his eyes, and I laughed until my belly hurt, and the idiosyncratic little family I'd found for myself felt safe and accepting and warm.

###

"So Odin got you stuck offworld for the past three days, huh?" Sansen asked, eyeing Meloai from over a cup of hot brandy. The werewolf transformation had worn off, restoring him to his normal, weathered form. "Guess you left at a bad time."

I sighed. "I don't think there's ever a good time to get tricked by a Demon of Empathy, but yeah, I gathered something happened while I was away. Where'd Albin go? And Grandma? And Jiaola?"

Sansen frowned. "Albin?"

"The Angel of Arrogance in the House of Warp and Weft," I explained.

"Ah. Yeah. They got drafted," Sansen said. "I was supposed to have one last night with Jiaola, but... seems like they've upped the schedule and I wasn't in the loop."

...What? "Drafted?" I asked. "To what?"

Sansen gave me an odd look. "To war, of course. The Silent Parliament has officially declared war on Odin and the Redlands. Every combat-capable adult witch and soulspace entity is being sent to the front lines."

My stomach dropped.

"Odin doesn't get to rampage around our city and steal our citizens without consequences," Sansen continued, sipping from his brandy. "This is war, Cienne. And the first mobilization's just begun."