Fintan wasn’t like her husband. He was a Union man, not just in concept but in spirit. RuTing’s husband would have saved her by charging the priest and his malformed flock. He was a bear of a man. Fintan was taller than she was by over a foot. That wasn’t unusual. If anything, he was too average. Average height, average appearance. Her husband had giantism. He was over seven feet tall and could have pounded the priest into the dirt and tossed the villagers into the river all by himself.

  Fintan wasn’t a coward. RuTing gave him credit. Most people in the Union fled violence. She didn’t have a choice of companions, but she could have done far worse. Her brief time in the village summed up the cautionary tale of arriving without family or friends to the afterlife.

  He thought they were dead, and RuTing remembered dying, but this land bespoke of advanced technology. The Guannei didn’t have implants. The only technologies they were allowed to use in service to the People were Shadow Cloaks and Vibraswords. Those were weapons they could use on robots.

  The Free People and the Guannei held deep suspicion of all technology. In a way, their cultures were a perfect fit.

  Fintan wasn’t part of that culture. He lived in a Western city and he used the Net for answers. Learning would be more difficult for him because he never had to learn the hard way through trial and error and bitter defeat.

  She didn’t hold that against him either. The People were part of the Union, and the Guannei served the People. He was at least a decade younger than she was and skilled. In another life, she’d trained warriors. She could train him.

  That was two lives ago.

  She could train him.

  He didn’t believe her. He stood in the middle of the road where a slave caravan ran on bloodied feet. The trail they left behind them had disappeared. They healed quickly in the afterlife, but the pain was real. If she’d been doused in the river, she would have been changed forever if she had gotten out at all. She owed him, and the debt would be paid by making him a better man.

  He had a smug satisfaction that he knew more than she did. Ever since Clyde and Hector, he’d been more sure of himself. She didn’t want to see that face anymore.

  She disappeared.

  He gawked at the empty space where she used to be, but her stealth was near perfect. Her heart beat a thump, and her breathing was slow and even—barely a whisper.

  He walked toward her, but as he moved, she moved. Her motion was disguised by his own movement, and to add even more delight, she manifested a few distractions.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  By the time Fintan reached where she was before, she was already behind him. She manifested a stick. She wanted to give him a light tap on the back, but when her stick hit him, it disintegrated into splinters as if he was more solid than the wood.

  He jumped and spun around. She’d dropped her manifestation so he could see her.

  “You have another Skill?” he asked.

  “Disappearing isn’t a skill,” she said. “It’s a state. Even more so here than in the living world.” She manifested a small mirror and held it in her hand. “What do you see in the mirror?”

  “Myself,” Fintan said. “By manifesting a mirror in front of me, I can hide my appearance.”

  “That would be a good start,” she said, “Mirrors reflect light. They reflect the light of the sun.”

  “But there is no sun,” Fintan replied.

  Exactly. She’d realized almost immediately what that meant.

  “There’s no sun, but there is still light during the day. The world doesn’t glow, so how do we see? Everything about the afterlife is affected by belief. We don’t see the reflection. We are seeing ideas.”

  “You are changing what I see?” he asked, but he shook his head. “You can’t change what other people believe.”

  She nodded, not so much that it was a bad concept, but that he thought of controlling other people's minds. It was a very non-Union supposition, and at times, he demonstrated thinking in contrast to a typical Union man. Perhaps it was more striking because it happened infrequently.

  “Instead of a mirror, I manifest the idea of everything around me, in front of me.”

  “You can’t see behind your head,” he protested. “How do you make the image.”

  “It’s not an image. It’s an idea,” she said. “It’s like your seeming. You manifest the idea of you. I am manifesting the appearance of other ideas.”

  “Manifesting takes effort—the less dense and complicated, the less effort,” he mused. “If the scenery isn’t moving, then manifesting the idea of the scenery would be easy. If we were on a train or carriage, it might be harder.”

  His mind was in the clouds if he thought they would see any trains in the afterlife. These people were one step above the stone age, but he was right that in a village, it would be a skill best used sparingly. The most valuable skills were the ones that helped you in tight places. This was just one aspect of stealth, but if she could teach this one, he could learn others.

  “I’m sorry for doubting you,” Fintan said. “I know you could tell. You aren’t like other people from the Union.”

  “The Guannei don’t think of themselves as part of the Union,” she replied. “The People are part of the Union, and the Guannei serve the People. In that service, I was trained in stealth and combat, but I left the Guannei after I was married. I moved West. You know the rest.”

  Fintan brought out his bag of gilders, and she froze. Was he thinking of buying his way out? Was he ready to give up with just the intimation of what she could do?

  “I saved these for you,” Fintan said. “I can manifest gilders if I have to, although it would take me weeks to make this many. There are fifty gilders here. That is fifty levels.”

  “Levels?” she asked.

  “You are right about ideas, and gilders were made to create ideas. Hector showed me that when you absorb a gilder, you go up a level. Let me show you. Fintan placed the gilder on his forehead as she watched, and the gilder sank in as if it had been accepted into him. A moment before, they’d climbed through the brush, and his exosuit was still damaged in places. When he absorbed the gilder, the damage disappeared, and he seemed refreshed as if he just woken up. “The circuitry in the gilder magnifies our connection to the prison, and it makes the temptation of the water stronger.”

  “You magnified the connection to your mind. Did you try putting it anywhere else?”