As we came out of the room, none of us looked nearly as sullen as we felt. In my and Mharra's case, that was because we were both experienced, and, more importantly, skilled liars. Why was skill more important? Because I had a feeling Three had been lying for longer than I'd been alive, but was worse at it than I'd be on my worst day.

There is a certain breed of dissemblers, mostly represented by card players, in my experience, who have a tendency to express the opposite of what they feel through their faces and gestures. You might think there is no problem with that-after all, it's not like you're being honest, right?-but there is. Coming back to playing cards, nobody who grins like a moron the whole match is actually experiencing good hand after good hand. They're either horrendously unlucky at both playing and lying, or, somehow, as lucky as their faces suggest, in which case you should be very, very worried, and very, very far away. Midworld does not abide such quantities of luck concentrated within a single culture, never mind a single person, which likely means your island or ship is going to be torn apart in a particularly spectacular manner.

How, then, should you mislead others? Certainly not as Three was trying to do. Seeing his faces, you'd have thought he was going to marry Mharra, rather than help try out whatever insane contraption the Free Fleet had built. If even they would rather use a stranger to try it out first, rather than resort to their usual callousness...well. Either they suddenly cared about the Freed, or believed Three was worth less than them.

And if anyone even looked ready to suggest the latter, I'd remember the worst deaths I'd ever witnessed, in quick enough succession they'd get to experience all of them.

No, to mislead, one should show nothing, nothing at all. Don't show you're happy, don't show you're sad, don't show you're confident or scared. Appear as neutral as possible. This method is beloved by fence-sitters, opportunists and politicians everywhere, but I repeat myself.

As for Ib...Libertas...usually, my friend was more expressive than most humans, for all it was faceless. Even when not actively changing its shape, its body responded to its mood, resulting in smiles, frowns and the like. Now...now, if anything, it seemed like it was following my advice without knowing it was. Like it was actively trying not to change its shape or reveal what it had on its mind.

It was...unsettling. Was this how people felt when I played things close to my chest?

Our escorts intercepted us as soon as we left the impromptu meeting room, and led the way back to the Council without even a word or gesture. Not that I knew if they could even speak.

The Councilors turned to us, stone-faced, as we entered. It was only Raymond who betrayed any kind of emotion, and even then, only with his eyes. I could see the expectation, though I would have been hard-pressed to tell if he was excited, bored, or dreading the experiment's failure. Perhaps a mix of two, or all three. He definitely did not seem like he expected us to refuse.

'Right,' Three snickered with the fakest smiles I had ever seen on their faces. 'How do we start?'

***

'And...there.' The androgynous engineer Ib said had created it rose from their crouch before the glass sphere Three had been placed into. It was thicker and darker than any glass I had ever seen, almost opaque, and I wondered if it was actually a kind of metal, whether natural or created in the Fleet's laboratories. 'Now, just be sure to stand...er, float...still. Hover?' they gave Three a sheepish smile as they walked to the edge of the testing area, where they were teleported hundreds of metres above. Save for the glass sphere, which didn't appear to be connected to any machine, the circular testing area was a flat, featureless metal floor, ending in thick, steep metal walls that moved to cover it. Around and above it rose a series of rings filled with seats, like a tiered theatre gallery. Through the use of certain devices-a pair of opaque glass spheres mounted on a metal band, which covered the eyes, like some sort of nightmarish glasses-we could see inside the covered testing area.

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So useful, these "glasses", if they could let you see through walls. Even my magic wouldn't have allowed me to do that, for, while I could enhance my senses, I only had mine to work with, and no matter-piercing vision or the like. If the Free Fleet had been open to sharing their technology with the rest of Midworld, these could have saved countless lives, letting people see through fog, or even underwater, thus avoiding sea monsters, sea geysers, and the like. They would have been just as useful on land, not only while exploring unknown or newly-created islands covered in forests or other obstructions, but on populated ones, too, letting people find things with more ease, letting law enforcement catch thieves or protect rulers from assassins...

Tch. Perhaps that was why they didn't share them. Being rivalled when it came to exploration was hardly in the Fleet's interests, but making small powers stronger, more stable? What if they banded together to the point they could match or surpass the Fleet?

My musing was cut off by a sharp sound, something between water boiling in a kettle and that time during my lonely travels when, at a festival on a long-gone island, I had seen an octopus-like seafolk spin eight crystals on the tips of knives.

Ah, nostalgia...just when I was about to decide whether I had the mindset to be a Fleet member or not.

Instead of dredging up more memories or thinking about switching my allegiance like an arsehole(something I had an extensive history of, though I'd never had better reasons to stay loyal than I did at the moment), I focused my arcane sense on Three. I could feel him burning under the cold metal and glass, like a candle with three ends. Without flesh to trammel his spirit and pollute the flow of mana, I could see him, shining brightly enough to be visible through the layers of metal.

And then...

I-

***

Bindings. Chains. Shackles. Cages. All beings, alive, dead and otherwise, have them. As do objects. As do places. Thought itself is not unbound, despite what some philosophies may suggest.

(Those philosophers are more and less than dead now. This is not coincidence)

People are bound to each other by thoughts, by oaths, by obligations. Places are bound to their past and future, and, physically, to locations, and so on.

Ghosts are exempt to many things, and barred from many more. But unbound, they are not.

Three was shackled by his past, by his loyalty to and friendship with his crew. By his love for his captain. His selves were bound to each other by thought, spell and death.

Exposed to freedom itself, in its rawest form, is it a surprise that this threefold soul, already wanting to liberate himself from so many things, the truth of his death first among them, would come apart?

It is not a surprise at all.

Or, rather, it would not be, if it happened.

But the truth, as it always is, is that-

***

-couldn't perceive Three anymore. Not only was his metaphysical imprint gone, the place where he had been felt more devoid of life and mana than anything I had ever witnessed. A shudder, born of wrongness as much as my friend's disappearance, ran through my body, any I gripped the railing as my knees buckled. I had not sat down, both because I had been too stressed for that and to be as close to Three to help as possible, but...

Useless. Useless. Can never protect anything you love, can you Ryzhan? So much good you did, being ready to help, but-

Before I could pull myself together to demand answers, or search for Three if none were forthcoming, a roar that shook my bones filled the chamber, nearly making me fall down again.

To my surprise, it did not come from Ib, however inhuman it had sounded.

...It was a sign of what a great friend I was, I supposed, that, upon seeing Mharra's devastated face, my first thought was that I'd never really seen him angry, and was almost as grateful for that as I wanted to never see it again.