One didn't crash Collector's estate in any old thing. Mercer recommended a new three-piece suit or three-petticoat dress made just for the occasion. I had something far more useful in mind. So, four countries, three express trains, and two omnibuses later, I arrived back in my home country of Ceildore and made a beeline for my favorite market outside Picker's Park, as I called it.

Not too many places cared to remain so close to "THIS CAN'T-BE-MISSED ATTRACTION IN THE HEART OF THE CAPITAL." Generally, only the insane, desperate, or predatory lasted long near this once-public property that "BOASTS FIVE ACRES OF NEATLY MANICURED TREES, IMMACULATE STONE WALKS, AND CRYSTAL-CLEAR PONDS GUARANTEED TO MAKE THE HEART BEAT FAST AND THE MIND LINGER LONG AFTER EXITING."

Not Mercer's words. "What exit?" she had written in her guide. "Nothing ever leaves there."

And the response in that strange, bold, block print? "WHO WOULD CARE TO? ITS ATTRACTIONS CANNOT BE MATCHED. WHY NOT SEE FOR YOURSELF?"

"Not my words," Mercer had written. "Visitor beware."

"OR BE WELCOME. ALL ARE WELCOME IN THE PARK. BRING A FRIEND."

There was likely some more content intended on that topic, for the rest of the page was blank, but as it was, one of the guide's claims to fame was that it held the strongest warning existent on the Park, save for the barricade itself.

The foot-thick iron walls, topped with spikes and rotating warn-lights, were a welcome sight after my long trip. Less so were the sheer number of holes and beckoning advertisements riddling that barricade. I had never known the city to be so behind on repairs or censoring.

Nor for my first destination, three blocks west of it, to be so light on offerings and vendors.

Thieves were always inventing something or improving on the original. Thiever's Row sold the best in new skeleton keys, warning systems hooked up to voice-boxes, lockpicking kits, and pickpocket primers. Every once in a while, a green police officer would be sent on an arresting and appropriating raid; that rarely did any lasting good. Rowers were of a different breed. Half their innovations came their unique relationship with the Park. They would leave a caged bird, a boxed cat, a leashed dog, or a handcuffed cop just inside the barricade. In turn, something new would be waiting for them just outside one of the holes.

Emilita had a close call with the Park when she was twenty-one. What better way to get the better of the bane of her existence than studying their worst aid? After one hour of sitting outside the six-foot tall metal walls, beneath the red glow of warn-lights, she staggered home, headed straight to the wine cellar, and poured herself her first drink, a three-hundred-and-fifty-one-year-old Genovie wine, and most certainly not the bubbly nonalcoholic ones mother favored. Em stuck with studying the more common type of thief rampant in Dolma City after that.

Two years after her encounter, I snuck through one of the gaps in the wall that the city hadn't repaired and made a home away from home in the abandoned lodge.

Today, I been expecting something other than the same ol' same ol' from the Row. The hacker's voice-boxes featured minimal improvements, the any-files wouldn't cut it against the latest magical alloys from Harrandu, and the facsimilator? I had seen better forgery-makers at the art guilds while away. Even so, while I was here, I might as well pick up some basics: a new lockpick kit, a collapsible hand-telescope and a few lenses, and some lightsticks. Last of all, I added an outfit to my backpack.

Then I turned toward the Park, toyed with dropping the effort of visibility, decided it was worth seeing what keeping it up would get me, and ducked through a great rend in the wall.

##

Little had changed within the Park itself since I was twelve. Trees never shook a leaf out of place, the gold-like flagstones shone in the afternoon light (or any light, really), and the ponds were still as glass. My shortcut led me shortly to the main path, and I took the northern fork, heading for my lodge.

As expected, my presence had set off some internal tripwire of the place, like the fine hairs in a gaping Lekkan mantrap's mouth. A mere boot brushing against them made the plant's jaws snap shut with silent, swift efficiency. The Park was more sensitive and noisier, and a soft rumble like distant thunder emitted from no less than three spots.

It must have stirred the goddess out of her languor (long trips tended to put her to sleep), for she gave a rustle from within my pants pocket.

"Menace, we have many fields to go before we reach the Sphinx. Why are we here? To steal something else?"

"Ah, ah, ah, Your Vileness. They don't use that word here." I slowed as we neared the large sign mounted on posts that arched over the end of the path. "It gets the Park all excited. It might mistake you for something worth picking."

"To be free from you, menace? I would welcome more thievery. Especially from those who live in upon such rich soil!" Her seeds scraped like nails tracing along the rim of a wineglass. "It smells absolutely wonderful. Is that water down the hill? So clean! And--what is that sound!"

Not a cricket chirped, not a bird rustled in a tree, and most certainly no other human stirred here, but nearby the terrible footsteps started growing louder and louder as they scampered this way.

"The welcoming party."

"The--"

I never did know what gods got from this place. I had asked a priest once what their masters thought it. Was it a deity? An ether drop? Something stranger? The man had shuddered on his deity's behalf and ushered me out of the temple so speedily he had no opportunity to forget me.

Whatever the goddess sensed now, she was not in a sharing mood at the moment.

The steps had divided, coming from three sides now, to cut me off from the courtyard and buildings beyond the archway.

"That was rather fast."

They came together in clash. It blazed across the eyes like lightning.

"They must be rather hungry."

Heavy panting filled the air.

"They're not actually invisible, you know. That's too rare a trait even for them."

There was another step, more tentative this time.

"Best guess: it's just a semi-sentient land with a flair for the dramatic. You must have noticed its self-promotion attempts."

Heavy silence.

"Their reach is almost as wide as yours is. Was, I mean."

More silence.

"Not much of a wordsmith, though."

With a frustrated growl that would echo well past the Row, the Park turned on the abandoned lodge, rattled the archway sign, and ripped off the last of the old paint. It had defaced its name a long time, leaving only the "Welcome to" behind.

Now not even that much remained on the worn boards.

"Like you, they also show a marked disinclination for disappointment."

The roof of the building shattered, spewing brick and shingle, like some giant fist had cloved it in. Fortunately, not over the area I intended to go.

"And--"

With a sudden pop of released air pressure, it--they--were gone. Done. And we were alone again.

"--not usually that impatient." I looked about at the still trees, listened to the still wind, breathed in the still dampness wafting off the waters of the predatory land. "Hey, did they sound, I dunno, lean to you?"

"no"

Her voice was faint. I didn't bother offering her a tour. There was not much left to show off. Most of the lodge had caved in--or been caved in--since I was gone. I had to pick my way over rubble, reorient myself in the lodgekeeper's personal quarters, and then pry up a certain loose floorboard.

My lockbox rested snug on my bedroll, both untouched by dust or time. Not a speck of rust showed anywhere. The lid lifted smoothly and silently, its hinges never needing a drop of oil. Inside everything was as I left it five years ago. Immaculate.

My most amusing sister, Rufene, after seeing the state Emilita was in, started buying the face cream promised to "keep one as ageless at the Park." In the newspapers, it was advertised as, "NEXT BEST TO THE REAL THING. YOU SHOULD REALLY CHECK OUT THE REAL THING IF YOU LIKE THIS CREAM." It smelled remarkably like the quiet woods on the property.

Em had nightmares for a month. Rufie, per usual, tired of that taunt long before then.

In general, I could be a bit more stubborn.

I stuffed my backpack into the hole. I didn’t know why I had expected anything different. They had trailed me for an hour the first day I had arrived here. By the end of that week, I could barely get them to rumble. I yanked my belt out of the box. Absence fostered fondness? I dumped the box back inside. Not even for hungry eldritch entities that put the fear of ether into the gods, it seemed. I kicked the board back over my cache.

My gear could not be safer. Even if I hung it from the archway with a note saying, "Lookee here! New stuff to steal!", nothing would go missing.

I yanked off my shirt.

The goddess rocked her vial of seeds closer to my boot (that was a first) while I donned my new outfit. The long-sleeved white top was riddled with subtle slits that gave access to the wealth of hidden pockets in the undershirt. That style--functional pickpocket chic--went well with my belt. Six pockets lined its underside. Tucked inside were some of my original tools from my visible light-fingered days.

I caressed the fabric--no longer quite so white--and dipped my finger in to pull out a sewing needle. I turned it in light of the afternoon pouring down from the fallen wall and admired the gleam of the rose-pink metal.

"Never leave home for any overly magical, overly protected mantrap without it. Of the nonfloral kind, of course. Though I wouldn't put it past the Collector to truly have a 'pit full of the man-eating menaces from the Lekkan jungles, for which to drop his most persistent trespassers into,' as Mercer claims. What do you think?"

The goddess did not think much on anything at all the moment. Too busy quivering in shock.

Probably wouldn't until recover until we left these grounds. Too bad that effect couldn't be packaged and sold. The market would be smaller than that for the cream, but I'd keep them in business.

I tucked my needle back into its pocket. Then fastened the belt around my waist, giving it one final, unnecessary pat.

One could never have too many pockets.

I lifted my cuff to my nose and sniffed.

If only the seamster could have done without the leathery-smelling Tavers Wash, my outfit would have been perfect. Why would anyone make laundry soap out of potato byproducts? Why would anyone be dumb enough to use it? It didn't actually protect against the Pickers of the Park; it did repel (most) human noses, however.

From my view through the renovated--a.k.a. violently removed--wall, a pond down the hill shone with unnatural luster.

Tavers products--from noxious soaps to supper dishes of the same flavor--wore off fast around me, but a dip would take care of it in a trice.

It would also rile the Park up all over again.

You would have thought, given the obvious slim pickings of late, it--they--the Park would have given me a little more notice. Maybe it was time to see what rubbing salt in their wounds would earn me.

##

Evening was threatening by the time I clambered off Madfrey's Grey Man Tours omnibus and onto the highway outside Collector's estate.

"Finally, dawdling menace. Finally." The goddess tinked her venom in the lull between blowhorn announcements. "Now hurry to the Edifice of Many White Paths. I sense the Sphinx's presence there, but I cannot reach her."

"Dawdler I may be, but--" I sniffed my wrist. "--the best smelling one, you must admit."

In response, the vial shuddered from its new home in an underside pocket of my belt.

Riding on the top had done wonders to dry up the last signs of my Park mischief. More so did time away from the Park. My collar was barely damp still; my boots didn't even squish on the pavement. Made me wonder about the Park's health. Usually, its gifts lasted a week before disappearing unexpectedly on the thief. Maybe like the gods, it was fading back to where it came from. It hadn't even bothered to trundle around the pond, no matter how loudly and widely I splashed. Too busy sulking somewhere, licking its wounds of emotional letdown.

I most certainly was not so petty. Didn't matter that I had exerted visibility the whole way here, to the point I was nursing a headache. Didn't matter that no one had asked for my ticket, that the only space left for me was practically astride a roof-mounted blowhorn, or that none of the passengers could place the odd, super-clean smell that raised hairs on their arms, curdled their stomachs, and made the children cry. I was here, at last.

And the world was about to be tonight's entertainment, starring me. But first, the opening act.

I leant an elbow against the shiny withers of omnibus's mech-horse, which was fake lipping at grass in the ditch. Adjusted my elbow so it didn't rest against a sharp join. And awaited the pending confrontation between the tourists and guard. I wished I had brought popcorn.

The guard was stationed on a new grey cobblestone sideroad. He had no gate, no seat, no booth. He did, however, have a shock-stick in the holster on his waist.

He drew it out as he approached.

"Move on," he said. "This is private property."

The woman guide took up a portable blowhorn and bellowed to her crowd of two dozen. "And this is a guard of Collector. Note the typical grey uniform, unchanged since thirty-six years ago when the equipment underwent an upgrade from long shock-sticks to short."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Several people lifted their cameras.

"No pictures," he said. "This is private property. Move on."

One young idiot, with big eyes and frumpy country clothes, approached with a pen and the tour pamphlet.

The guard approached with a sparking shock-stick.

It was never a proper tour without someone losing control of their bladder or bowels--or the scrambling of the last few hours in their brain. This teen managed all three, but there was usually more back and forth first.

More bellows, more sparkly threats.

The guard seemed as patient as a starving Picker. Wonder if the reason was large, furry, and hard to come by.

As the attendant medic carted the kid's twitching, mumbling form into the bed at the back of the bus, the tour guide advised her customers to take in the guard towers with their binoculars, the kennels of Lekkan sawtooths a little further on, and in the distance, the house and most interesting outbuilding of all, the Labyrinth. All this, of course, she suggested they do from within the safe confines of her vehicle. Her bus had no more vacant beds to accommodate injured tourists.

The guard sent them on their way before she could render a history of any of these attractions. He did so with end of the stick applied to the flank of the mech.

Normally, this part a mech much anticipated. It would roll its eyes, grimace, and shiver all over with pleasure.

This time the rust-bucket let out a warble and lurched forward, leaving the slower customers stampeding after the rattling vehicle and tumbling myself into the road. I narrowly missed death by wheel and heel.

The goddess snickered.

Now that was not an upgrade I appreciated.

The guard stepped out into the highway, kicked some loose bolts with his steel-tipped boot, and for one heart-tripping moment, met my eyes.

"Hello." I waved. "We haven't met. I'm here to rob you."

"Fool," the goddess tinked.

"Or rather, not you, but your employer."

Unchecked sparks dribbled onto the road.

"And maybe not so much as rob as incite a revolution. Care to join me?"

But the guard's eyes were already turning blank. My fault. Earlier, I should have done something other than smirk boldly from beside the mech he had goaded.

It was already too late before it had begun.

So, it was this fine specimen of sentry sentiment scratched his nose as he cast about the highway for a clue of what he had been about. He poked at a washer. He poked longer up his nose. Then at slight buzz, his head snapped up. His hand tapped the grey disc sealed below his ear and said, "I'm fine. Just Madfrey's tour on schedule. Nothing unusual."

That was a voice-box? I was used to the kind with ear phalanges. Must be very new.

Ten feet down the highway, a woman in a grey uniform touched her neck by her ear and said something else.

"I'm going. I'm going." He stomped back onto the mouth of the grey sideroad. "No need to put it in the report."

First this new egress; now these technological upgrades? Perhaps I should have taken the goddess up on her advice to get a newer guide. These wouldn't have been as much as a surprise then.

But they weren't anything I couldn’t handle.

I got up, dusted off my pride and my pants, and pulled out from my belt pocket my new scope. I screwed on the lens that saw through walls and made every bit of magic bloom like flames. Then with a flick of the wrist, I extended it the full three feet. The guard started. Looked about. Stared at strange spot in the road where his vision was mysteriously blocked. Then with a shake of his head, he resumed his scan of his territory, head on a slow swivel.

I lifted my tool to peer at the property. Half considered resting it on his shoulder as a makeshift stand. Settled for the less disappointing path of putting my eye to the cushioned eyepiece.

The lens turned up black.

I tucked it under my arm, spat on my sleeve, and scrubbed it.

No change.

I changed out to the one that showed hidden people. Black. The one that assayed hidden traps. Black. The plain lens for really long-seeing. Black.

Interesting.

I turned it to the road.

The dust looked like cobblestones. So that was functioning fine.

The trees on the opposite side of the highway? Veins popped out on the leaves. Also fine.

I twisted the refiner to show less detail and turned it on the lady guard.

Very fine.

On the ugly mug of the nearest guard. The lens nearly touched a pocked cheek, yet he did not flinch at seeing it or me behind it.

Hmm, was that a bit of blood on his cheek? A violent fence post? I twisted the refiner again.

Nope. Sauce. No doubt from one of brother Bredt’s many restaurants. They rivaled the Virulent One in speed of their spread throughout the Secunum Empire.

I lowered the scope. Twirled it. Then made it invisible--unlike me.

The guard didn’t even blink.

Back in my pre-invisible days, I couldn’t quite sneak past all of Collector’s men and women. Not while atop a ton-and-a-half, four-tusked juvenile elephant with flatulence that busted folk’s noses bloody. Stupid calf. Despite that masterpiece of thievery, I had never got the chance to visit the inner sanctum: Collector’s mansion. Neither had Collector’s four-tusked purchase, which was too bad: fumigating and repainting peeling walls might have kept me in mind longer than the week he spent sampling the foodstuffs my parents imported/exported.

That was then. But now?

I used to joke I was born forgettable, but it had never been quite that bad--or ever quite this bad. I should have committed herbicide three years ago, but I kept prolonging the satisfaction of slowly squeezing the life out her just like my memorability had been slowly squeezed to death in me.

I snapped shut the scope (no reaction), and I slipped the disc through a slit into my special shirt. It dropped inside into one of the hidden rows of pockets (the fifth row, to be exact), thus joining other unnecessary tools ported along for this adventure. Then, I brushed past the guard onto Collector property.

Reaction at last.

The man snorted loudly.

Looked around.

Then after a moment discovered an interest in picking his nose and inspecting the result closely.

I sighed. It was just going to be more of the same, wasn't it?

Not worth the concentration to maintain an invisible state, I let invisibility wash over me like a cold shower, and the steady throb in my skull slowly faded to the background.

##

For the next forty minutes, I stalked through territory virgin to me. But I could hardly care. Not a dog (or that toothy Lekkan cat-dog-weasel that sister Em specialized in) barked from the hundreds of kennels that dotted the estate. Not a spell descended from a carefully manicured tree. Not a minion stirred from various evening lawn, mansion, and estate duties, busy little ants toiling all day long under a king instead of a queen.

Then there it was, the Labyrinth; hard to miss, given it dwarfed the actual mansion it loomed before.

Since long before the first edition of her guide hit the shelves to a barely a peep, Mercer had been piecing together clues on this Edifice of Many White Paths. Most of her life had been spent "digging in dusty archives, knocking on countless doors, tipping prognosticators most egregiously, and bearing more shocks than the original test specimens had ever borne in their short life."

The most reliable--and least painfully gained--tidbit she had unearthed dated more than a century back, coming from its famous builders who had famously disappeared from the public scene--and, as Mercer breathlessly speculated, from life--afterwards. The bits and pieces described the monstrosity as thus: a labyrinth open to the sky; built of unidentified white stone; smooth-walled and solid once completed; and rising approximately four-stories high. Mercer credited it "the ultimate in displays of industrious virility," whatever that meant. Probably served as a ringing endorsement against seeking frequent run-ins with overzealous guards.

Truth was, the Labyrinth was roofless, towering, stony, and white. A real attention-getter, not that Collector allowed visitors.

Not that he had allowed this one.

Not that he made it hard to breach, either. Its single opening loomed before me. Doorless. Guardless. Unprotected. So easy, I almost exerted visibility now for laughs. No. I’d amuse myself inside, disarraying things along the way to my mark, and I’d take my thrill in departing with a little something for my past trouble and to give Collector some new.

For fleeting kicks, however, I took a page out of Collector’s book and strolled up to the Lab’s entrance.

Less leisurely, a presence gathered before me.

This former invisible was feline. Ish. Her face was somewhat human, mostly not, with washed-out features of leopard spots on pale fur, long whiskers, and blue catlike eyes. Not to neglect the fact the feline herself was huge. Reposing, her shoulders measured almost as high as a Margonian ox's wooly head (which incidentally contributed a great deal to Bredt sausages), and Margonian oxen often snacked on their owners’ straw rooftops. I had seen such a head and shoulders--and only those features--on Isle Island once. A ruin much replicated and repeated elsewhere by the native aborigines who expressed their enthusiastic exuberance of all things extraneously redundant in artistic art. Such as in Sphinx statues. They called them something else in their own tongue, which when cut down in Secunum meant: Sphinx.

So, this was what their myth looked like with rear quarters: haze and blurs. Hard to replicate, that. No wonder they had never tried.

I took a step closer.

She lowered her face twelve feet so it was near my level, reminding me of a cat ready to pounce on a mouse. Not an easy thought.

“Halt,” came a voice, speaking Secunum Advanced Trade Tongue. “Who approaches the Labyrinth?”

I jerked back. She had heard me? Sensed me? Invisible, forgettable me?

I peered at her and realized something else: her lips--jaws--fangs--had not moved. If they had, I’d have been observing, quickly, from an immeasurable distance away. But I had heard a voice with a distinct air of femininity.

If I hadn’t known she were alive, I would have mistaken her for a living gargoyle statue, designed to chase away bad spirits, set at the mouth of the symbolic vehicle of transformation. A very detailed and well-magicked statue that hailed and originated from Isle Island, where art often doubled as functionals and functionals doubled as art.

But she was alive, and speaking of being functional, it was time to start wheedling an impressively well-sighted former myth. I opened my mouth.

“Destroyer of my final field,” popped the voice of a goddess inside my head. “She is bound by her master to guard this entrance. You must find a way past her to introduce me, or she will not speak anything of import.”

“Why don’t you open up a three-way convo-channel inside her head? Do your own dirty work for once.”

“. . . fool . . . ”

Oops. Said the “d” word around her. Filled her with impotent longing for green pastures churning to upset and ruin under her noxious graces. Filled her so full with anger that her mouths had only room for one type of manipulation: insult.

But if there were a potent spell on this oversized creature before me, I would feel it. Or rather, my needle, which resided in an underside pocket on my belt and sensitized to magics of all forms, would be making me feel it. With many a prick.

It wasn’t dubbed Old Reliable for nothing.

I was feeling nothing.

Sadly, my head could not claim the same. The insults were clinking out as fast as the clank of her seeds in her vial, making the glass vibrate with frustration. An unwelcome sensation, considering her current location in an underside belt-pocket. Clapping a hand over and tuning out the weed, I watched the still Sphinx practice her silent immobility without a leash or lord in sight, and I began thinking that maybe Ol’ Reliable had spent too long in the neighborhood of a vial of goddess on the journey over. After all, that which was bad for humans, earth, beasts, pets, pests, trees, weeds, and germs was bad for the viability of magics, too.

I relocated my needle to a chest pocket.

Nope, no change. Nothing magical here, boss.

Not since a certain overtusked pachyderm “picked its own cage” and made its own exit through the shopkeeper’s wall had Collector skimped on any overextravagance regarding the safekeeping of his property. That meant it was time to reacquaint Ol’ Reliable with some new, better grade of magics. Plenty to try it on in here--I took in the unblinking, whiskered muzzle above me--just not of the monumental feline persuasion.

Yet.

So, I swallowed down my annoyance, flicked a pocketed vial into silence, and eyed my option at getting past a myth and the binding spell on her tongue.

A rather slender option it was, a snug fit between white wall and fur-covered muscle and hazy strangeness beyond. But I could do it. I glanced at the pale-spotted side and vapors. Hope you aren't ticklish, I thought. I stepped forward.

The Sphinx slowly angled her head toward me, claws flexing in those paws tucked beneath her chin. The pose was casual.

I doubted her regard was.

I stopped.

Could she only see invisible-me while I was moving? Toward her?

Then the Sphinx got around to speaking. Slowly. “I,” she said, “am the Soul, and the Flesh, and the Guardian of the Labyrinth. None shall pass without permission.”

“Funny,” I said, looking her up and down far more causally than I felt. “You look like a Sphinx to me.” What would she say to that? How good were the spells on her tongue? “And I have an invitation. From one otherworldly visitor to another.” I plucked out the vial and waved it noisily to test the extent of Sphinxish visual and aural capacities. “See? Your turn.” I ignored the whisper of “filth” in my head, returned the vial to safety, and I squinted at the felinish face.

She had not blinked nor followed my hand. That suggested low sensitivity to my presence, and what remained must be fading fast.

Yet, she somehow drawled, “I am the Labyrinth,” through her still muzzle. “Those who do not heed the warning trespass.”

“Oh, come on, even prisoners have a right to visitors.”

“Trespassers,” the Sphinx recited, “forfeit their souls.”

No movement. Anywhere. Anytime. Just that goddess-like voice on a not-so-private channel, since her Weediness had revealed earlier that she could hear her, too.

“Hmm,” I drawled out over vial tinks. “Ventriloquism.” And bluffs. I might know little about Sphinxes, but I knew plenty about Collector. If he had actually managed to rummage up a soul-snatching spell from anywhere, I’d eat my needle. So, what else had he programmed her to lie about? “Well, Sphinx, being tall, stony, and geometrical is quite the feat for any feline. Do you have any other talents I should know about?”

“I,” she replied, “am the Soul, and the Flesh, and the Guardian of the Labyrinth. None shall pass without permission.”

“Ah, redundancy, apparently.” Poor programming, that. For shame, Collector. “Your Lowliness, she doesn’t seem to be listening. Did you two have a falling out?” I snapped my fingers. “You tried to leach onto her graven images, didn’t you! You lichen fiend!”

“Fool!” she exploded, though sadly not literally, only two seeds clanking ineffectually against glass. “Coward fool. It is a trick. Circumvent her and break the spell binding her tongue.”

While reducing a virulent goddess to forty-one musty seeds had an improving effect upon said divinity's memory, what could be said about other "otherworldly” creatures? I considered my one of two rather narrow routes of circumvention, between wall and limb and other wall and other limb. Did leaping past sheathed claws kin to scythes improve anything but the goddess’s state of oppression? Standing here certainly didn’t improve Sphinxish conversation any. Nor did it seem to make her forget me, either.

Interesting.

Worth exploring in detail further.

But from the other side of the entryway.

That required a trick of my own. Actually, a trick within a trick, not that it mattered in this case. I reached inside bottom-row, shirt-pocket number six and pulled out a heat spell hiding in a lightstick. Been holding onto that since the last time I was here. Now that I needed a diversion, I hoped it hadn’t forgotten to work. The heat didn't matter here, but the lightshow did. After all, if I were to be foolhardy, best to be foolhardy and quick rather than just foolhardy and filleted by giant Sphinx.

I gathered my weight, rocking on my heels. Swift. Easy. Moving in line with my goal, I cracked the trick lightstick’s spine and tossed it near the opposite paw. For a moment, it sat there, leaving me an idiotic litterbug.

Then it flared to life with pale orange light, rotating in place like a drunken firework. Not quite the right color or speed, but . . . .

The Sphinx slowly shifted her massive head in its direction.

Yes, swift and easy. I pushed off, leaping over the ledge of a paw with a hand of my own to help. The paw was warm, furry, and firm of muscle.

I landed on the other side, the impact jarring. The half-anticipated displacement of air--from a swipe of a paw or snap of jaw--never came. I didn’t perceive any movement; had no time to check. I rolled ahead, between the squeeze of limb and white wall before that turned into squish of my body between both. I held my breath, darted past the short, spotted ribcage into equally spotted haze beyond.

When I skidded free onto white sand, I was ready to doff my success to Collector’s so-called enforcement-bespelled femme-cat--that was, once she managed to turn around in that tight space.

But when I turned, I was face to chest with the Sphinx, and the haze rested behind her this time. She had not moved.

But she was facing me. Without moving. Somehow.

“Impossible,” I whispered as my stomach sank.

The Sphinx dipped her head and said, “So be it, trespasser.”

This time, she swiped her paw.