her coat. Sloane saw the white trails of her breath in the moonlight.
Matt had managed to haul himself over the side and sat with water leaking from his pants legs. Esther made it to the edge and pushed her hair away from her face.
Sloane scanned the line of people now just a few feet away from her. Their styles of dress were varied, but they had one thing in common: a gold pin about the size of a mandarin orange fastened to their chests. Several of them also wore elaborate jewelry, somewhat mechanical in style, around their throats or on their hands. One woman had a piece covering her left ear, red-plated, like it was made of rubies.
“Where are we?” Matt asked them in the low voice he used when he meant business. He thought it was intimidating, but to the rest of them, it just sounded like a Batman impression. They had all agreed not to tease him about it, since he seemed to enjoy it.
“Which of you is the Chosen One?” the woman said, scanning each of them in turn.
They made a dignified bunch, Sloane thought. Esther was on the edge of the river now, rubbing her hands over her face to get rid of the mascara streaks. Matt was yanking off one of his soaked leather gloves with his teeth. And Sloane’s pants were so heavy with water, she was sure her ass was showing.
“You don’t get to ask questions until you answer some,” Sloane said, pulling her pants up by the belt loops.
Matt raised his hand. “Me. I’m the Chosen One.”
Esther snorted.
“What?” Matt shrugged. “She asked a simple question.”
“I mean, we were sort of all the Chosen One,” Esther clarified. She had managed to smear the mascara tracks sideways, toward her ears. Sloane realized that she hadn’t seen Esther without a thick layer of makeup on since the last battle. She looked . . . tired. As tired as Sloane felt.
“One of us is missing,” Sloane said. “Where’s Ines?”
The woman frowned at her. “We were expecting one of you, not three. And certainly not four. And to answer your previous question, you are in the exact same place you were a moment ago, with the notable difference that you are now . . . one dimension to the left. So to speak.”
“Like an alternate universe?” Esther said. “Are you high?”
A long time ago, Sloane had learned about parallel dimensions, about string theory and infinite possibilities branching off from one another into an eternity no human being could comprehend. Ever since, she had avoided thinking about it, not wanting to consider that for every decision she made, there was an identical Sloane on another Earth making the other decision, the universes branching off forever. Who was she, really, if there was no stability in her identity, if there were that many Sloanes walking that many paths, nudged this way and that by minor alterations in circumstance?
“Who are you?” Sloane said again.
In any universe, in any dimension, her first concern was always people.
“My name is Aelia,” the woman said. “I am praetor of Cordus and tribune of the Army of Flickering.”
“Did she just say words?” Esther asked Sloane. “Did you just say words, lady?”
They were old words, and strange ones, with the lights of a modern city glittering behind the woman’s head. But Sloane caught the meaning of them. “She’s Aelia, and she’s in charge,” she translated.
“Another dimension,” Matt said. “How is that possible?”
“Your people are not aware of other dimensions?” Aelia said, frowning. She wore stiff fabric draped around her shoulders, narrow trousers tapered at the ankle, and a shirt with a short, upright collar. Styles Sloane recognized, but also didn’t. The gold pin on her chest stood out against the gray and green of her clothes, and she wore an apparatus on her hand that looked like a mechanical, bejeweled glove.
“In the abstract only,” Matt replied.
Aelia looked again at the blond man, scorn in the scrunch of her nose. “Then this must be quite a shock,” Aelia said.
Sloane snorted.
“I know you have questions, and I promise to answer them,” Aelia said, narrowing her eyes at Sloane. “But in order for me to do that, you will have to trust us enough to come with us somewhere.”
Matt twisted the hem of his coat in both hands to squeeze out some of the water. He had the casual air of someone shaking out an umbrella after coming in from the rain. “Okay,” he said.