Kessa sat blearily at her workstation, jotting notes as she played voicemail after voicemail. Most former slaves were in the process of learning how to read and write, so reports tended to be audio recordings. Fayfer’s fleet had won a victory. But according to Kessa’s lieutenants on Nuss, a mess of penitents could no longer be trusted, because—

“Wise one?” Yanyashta rapped on the doorframe of Kessa’s spacious office.

“What is it?” Kessa barely glanced up.

“Commissioner Gojal wants you at the spaceport,” Yanyashta said. “Immediately.”

Kessa yawned. Didn’t anyone realize how late at night it was? Whatever this was, it wasn’t Thomas. Kessa expected jubilant celebrations and rage-fueled riots when he returned. This was probably a non-emergency that could wait until morning.

“What does the commissioner want?” she asked.

“Two unknown streamships have landed.” Yanyashta looked unnerved. Her albino cheeks were pinker than usual. “He says there are slaves aboard, and three Torth who want to claim our amnesty.”

Amnesty?

Kessa needed a moment to remember the standing orders which she had issued to spaceport officials. Any Torth who showed up and willingly surrendered—who gave up their weapons and asked to join Thomas—was to be held for questioning rather than killed.

It had never happened before.

Kessa blinked her sleepiness away. A lot of questions materialized inside her mind.

“They say they want to meet Thomas,” Yanyashta said. “They don’t appear to know that he’s, uh, missing.”

“Tell me about these newly arrived Torth.” Kessa grabbed a coat to wear over her tunic. “We can talk on the way.” She hurried towards the front door.

Yanyashta trotted to keep up. “I don’t think you should go. It might be dangerous!”

The spaceport did not have enough mirrored surfaces to keep teleporters away. It was too vast and open. So it was possible that the Torth Empire might try to lure someone important—like Kessa, the face of the war—to a place where Torth champions could teleport in and bomb her to death.

“You said there are three Torth?” Kessa asked.

“Yes,” Yanyashta said.

“So if this is a trap,” Kessa said, “three Torth are acting as bait, not just one. They would all risk dying in the crossfire.”

“I suppose.” Yanyashta hesitated, perhaps unsure how to explain the threat. “But you’re a valuable target.”

Kessa understood. Torth might send suicide bombers just to get rid of her. Still. Three kamikaze emissaries seemed excessive, when one would work just as well.

“How many soldiers are watching them?” Kessa asked.

“An army.” Yanyashta made that sound obvious. “And Ariock is probably on his way, if he isn’t there already.”

“Have these Torth done anything to prove their goodwill?” Kessa asked. “What are their claims? How many slaves did they bring with them?”

Yanyashta explained as they went to the curbside pickup zone, where Kessa signaled for a valet to bring her personal hovercart. “Their slaves vouch for them. There are at least twenty, all ummins and govki. They say these Torth are truly unique, and kindhearted, and so forth. But…” The shani shrugged. “Slaves will say anything they’re commanded to say.”

Kessa ignored the unintentional insult. Many people, Yanyashta included, overlooked the collar scar around Kessa’s neck. They forgot that she had suffered most of her life as a slave.

Unlike people born in freedom, Kessa knew that slaves were not all automatons. Sure, a handful of slaves might obey evil commands. Some slaves might deliberately feed deadly misinformation to friendly soldiers. But a group of twenty?

It was hard to imagine that a group of slaves—twenty who had traveled together for while—would be uniformly depraved enough to tell deadly lies which would get innocent people killed. Being called a liar was one of the worst insults a slave could hurl at a fellow slave. Some of them would stick to moral principles, even under torture and threats and death.

Kessa’s long-dead mate had been like that.

She jumped behind the control panel of her hovercart, more curious than ever. Yanyashta reluctantly joined her. Soon they peeled away from the war palace and sped uphill, towards the spaceport.

“What else can you tell me?” Kessa shouted over the wind. “Do any of those recently arrived slaves make unusual claims about their owners?”

“I’d say so.” Yanyashta leaned on the railing, close to Kessa. Her tone became disparaging. “They gush about how lenient their owners are.”

Kessa steered up a major boulevard, past boutique shops and apartments. “What are their owners like? Can you describe them?”

“I did not see them,” Yanyashta admitted. “I learned about this through a call with Gojal.”

“That’s all right.” Kessa figured she would see the alleged supplicants soon enough.

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“But they were described to me. One is athletic, and she has purple eyes.” Yanyashta blinked her own eyes, as if to hide her own purple color.

“She removed her optical implants,” Kessa guessed. “Or had them removed. She wants to prove that she is a renegade.” Thomas had done something similar, although not on purpose. His eyes had lost the iridescent yellow lenses and gotten restored to their natural violet hue during his regeneration healing.

“The other two are Blue Ranks,” Yanyashta went on. “They’re extremely sickly, small and disabled.”

Kessa gaped.

“They float in hoverchairs,” Yanyashta went on, oblivious. “Their slaves say they are very smart. They claim to be a pair of super-geniuses known as the Twins, even though they do not look even remotely related to each other.” She noticed Kessa’s wide-eyed stare, and said, “What?”

“The Twins?” Kessa wondered if her secretary ever bothered to learn anything about Torth culture. “The Twins are actually here? This is real?” Maybe there had been a misunderstanding. “Are you sure?”

“I am just telling you what I heard,” Yanyashta said. “Does it matter? Isn’t one Torth the same as another?”

Kessa figured there was no point in arguing with her secretary. She focused on driving. “Call Gojal,” she ordered. “Right now. Tell him not to kill the Twins unless they make a majorly threatening move. They should be protected. Have him station a perimeter of soldiers. It is vital that the Twins are defended from threats.”

Yanyashta looked as if she thought Kessa had lost her mind. She had not seen the Upward Governess get assassinated.

But she pulled out her tablet and made the call.

As Kessa steered past launch pads, she saw other people rushing towards the cordon of soldiers. News spread fast.

Kessa had to park along with other hovercarts and scooters. She allowed soldiers to escort her down a hill, beneath levitating rings of light. Messengers rushed up and down a makeshift pathway between soldiers. Beyond all the bustle and lights, two unfamiliar space vessels loomed against the night sky.

Scrawny ummins sat amidst the hubbub, sipping hot beverages or soup. Their collar scars looked freshly exposed.

“Kessa the Wise!” An official greeted her. “Thank goodness you’re here.”

Kessa looked past him, towards the brightly lit cleared area in front of the space vessels. Sure enough, three Torth faced the crowd. Their huddled isolation reminded Kessa of her first encounter with humans.

Vy, Cherise, and Delia had grouped together like that.

These three looked nothing like those three, of course. The Twins floated in ornate hoverchairs. Other than their rumpled robes, they looked just like the holographs which Thomas had projected in order to distribute illustrations of them. The girl Twin was particularly malformed and pallid. The boy Twin was fat, with very dark coloring.

A third Torth stood behind their chairs, her athletic poise hinting that she used to be a military rank; either a Red or a Servant of All. There was no way to judge by her eyes. A streak of white in her black hair made her distinctive.

“What have they said?” Kessa inquired.

“Not much,” the official said. “Only one of the three has spoken, uh, out loud. He’s asked to see the, uh…” The official reconsidered whatever he had almost said. “The, uh, Thomas. But obviously, we don’t want to give them any hints that the, uh, Thomas is gone.”

“Good thinking.” Kessa patted the official’s arm reassuringly.

The officials must be shaken up, terrified of making a mistake that might condemn Freedomland. Commissioner Gojal and everyone who sat on the war council must suspect what the Twins were capable of. They would be wary about holding any sort of dialogue with super-geniuses. Clearly, nobody was allowed to go anywhere near their range of telepathy.

“May I please speak with Kessa?”

Kessa turned, startled to hear her name from the distant clearing. The speaker was the fat Torth; the boy Twin. He looked and sounded deferential.

But Kessa wondered about the timing of his arrival. These three supplicants had shown up only when Thomas was missing. Was that a strategic move? Might the Twins have something to do with Thomas’s recent hardships and disappearance?

In any case, Kessa was not obedient to Torth. She wanted to make that clear. She turned her back on the Twins.

“Let them wait,” she told the official. “First, I wish to speak with their slaves.”

“Very good.” The official seemed happy to let Kessa take charge of the situation. He ushered her towards crates and trunks; makeshift benches where the newly released slaves sat.

Kessa sat in their midst.

The ragged ummins and govki gawked at her in awe.

“Kessa the Wise?” an ummin asked, eying her neck scar. “The runaway who enslaves Torth? I thought you were a myth.”

“I am sure you’ve heard plenty about me,” Kessa said gently. Her spies purposely spread tales throughout Torth-ruled cities. “I would like to hear about you. Will you be so kind as to tell me about your journey here? Was it a hardship?”

“No, not at all,” the ummin said. “But it was very strange for us.”

He explained that he and his companions had been cooped up inside a laboratory vessel. Their environment had been unpleasant, and they had all felt bored and depressed, at first—until their owner broke away from his guardians.

After his escape from the gunship and military ranks, the boy Twin had begun to get talkative; even chatty.

“He says he is not a Torth,” one ummin said with wonder. “I know it sounds incredible. But I actually believe him!” His gaze begged for Kessa to believe.

“He told us all kinds of things,” a govki said. “Not just the legends. He told us how to pilot a space vessel!”

“And all kinds of things about how the Torth function,” an ummin said, leaning into the conversation. “He described their Megacosm.”

“Really?” Another ummin was wide-eyed. “Your owner told you all that? Our owner said not a word.”

“He said there is an Academy here!” another ummin said with fervent yearning. “A place for former slaves to learn the knowledge of the gods?”

“That is correct,” Kessa affirmed.

“Wow!” Several of the liberated slaves exchanged wide-eyed glances of awe. “So this is Freedomland? It’s real?”

“What’s Freedomland?”

Kessa realized that one contingent of liberated slaves was puzzled. They stared at the spaceport in wonder, eying streamships stolen from Torth cities, and the crowd of well-dressed aliens. Since they were so enthralled, they did less talking.

“He gave us high quality food,” one of the talkative govki was saying. “Torth feasting food. He allowed us to eat from his own rations.”

“That’s right.” Others joined in, all striving to assure Kessa that the boy Twins was friendly.

“He has a name,” an ummin said. “Mondoyo.”

Kessa raised her brow ridges. Some penitents did adopt spoken names, when urged repeatedly, but she had never heard of a Torth who preemptively chose a name before even meeting one of her lieutenants.

“What about your journey?” Kessa focused on the quieter contingent. “What is the girl Twin like?”

“You mean the tall Torth with a streak in her hair?” a chatty ummin said. “She traveled with the boy and us, but she hardly ever speaks.”

“What about the girl who uses a hoverchair?” Kessa said pointedly. “What is she like?”

The liberated slaves exchanged glances.

“I’ve never heard her say a word.”

“She’s scary.” One govki shivered.

Kessa kept probing. The ones who had traveled in the girl Twin’s vessel said that she was unfriendly. She had not punished anyone with a pain seizure, but people feared her. They could not articulate why.

“But Mondoyo is talkative?” Kessa circled back to the topic of the one renegade who sounded promising. “What do you think of him? What sort of person is he?”

The former slaves considered her question with gravitas.

“It’s hard to trust a mind reader,” one finally admitted. “But I would trust this one.”