Fintan knew what RuTing was thinking as soon as Cherry opened the door to her sewing room. The librarian gave them the problem and the solution.

  They stayed in Bannerburg for the library. Despite the walls, he thought they could escape with illusion. The doctors could keep the mist out of buildings but not the city. He didn’t know what the serum was the doctors had forced on them. They tested the fluid. It had no smell or flavor. It felt denser than manifested water. It might be river water.

  Cherry told them the adversary demanded a million gilders to send a message to the real world. Not only were the scrolls in the library made from precious metals, but her sewing room also had gold and silver thread.

  The library was vast. Separating out all the gold would take an army. The gold thread was fine. They could probably steal a few hundred pounds, but it wouldn’t be worth making an enemy that would follow them into the afterlife. They were just beginning to understand what awaited them, but a few labels on maps and a few paragraphs weren’t a plan. They needed the library.

  Hopefully, RuTing would understand.

  She was smart, and he knew she had a vicious streak. Her desire to get back to her children was no less strong than his, and she lived a completely different life from him in the Union.

  “You have the wealth of the city,” Fintan said, but Cherry chortled.

  “Not at all,” Cherry said. “The doctors didn’t want to waste gold on books until I built the Swinger. Now they can’t get enough of me, but they use most of the gold on the serum.”

  “This must be a few hundred pounds of thread. Tens of thousands of gilders.”

  The mention of gilders caused Cherry to frown. She told them gilders were the currency of the Adversary.

  “How much of the city uses serum?” RuTing asked.

  “Everyone,” Cherry said, “but they aren’t all the same. Gold is a binding agent necessary for all serums except flying serum. I won’t tell you the formula; those are secrets, but most ingredients are common knowledge. We use serums to stay healthy and protect ourselves from our enemies.”

  “By turning people into bombs,” Fintan said.

  “They don’t die. I wouldn’t do it,” Cherry admitted. “I’ve talked to Bomb Midges. You lose all sense of self. The only thing you remember on the formula is hate or desire, but they say flying is a wonder.”

  “For a few hundred feet.”

  Fintan had seen the Bomb Midges launched from catapults mounted on the backs of the Ogres. They flew through the air, but not that far. The end was always the same. Severed body parts reappeared in the afterlife. The explosion blew them into pieces. They rematerialized as nearly dead bodies until they woke up to do the whole thing over again. That wasn’t a life.

  “They serve a purpose. When the first doctors came to the afterlife, they didn’t have weapons. They were subjugated and used for their knowledge. They combined witchcraft and science. Educated people who could build things were at the mercy of endless wars between the gods.”

  “There is only one god left,” RuTing said, “The Adversary.”

  Cherry nodded.

  “He is not a gentle god. He’s bent on the destruction of humanity. Enough doctors eventually came to the afterlife that they managed to gather together and fight to protect each other. They created the first serum to enhance their strength.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “That doesn’t explain the Bomb Midges,” Fintan said.

  “It’s a story of love, not persecution or defense,” Cherry replied. “Early serum made the doctors into Ogres. In those days, all the doctors fought. The city of Bannerburg wasn’t like what you see today. It was closer to the portals, and they tried to rescue as many people as they could from the Centaurs.”

  “What about the Adversary?” RuTing asked.

  “He was not as powerful then,” Cherry replied. “The other gods were close. The Centaurs were not the same as today. They were wild until they united under a single queen called the Head Mare. Her ambitions were still the same—to return people to nature by making them half-horse. The horse was considered the gentler of the two species amalgamated into one.”

  “Horses are dangerous. Whoever thinks that was never bitten by a horse.”

  Cherry nodded again before continuing. Sometimes, Fintan forgot Cherry was from the Union. Everyone in the Union knew that horses, along with all mammals, hated humankind. The Free People hunted horses to eat, not to ride. He’d only seen ridden horses in the afterlife.

  “The Head Mare brought the entire herd to destroy Bannerburg. The doctors voted for a leader, but no one wanted to lead an endless campaign, so in the end, they turned to the most accredited doctor to lead them, Robert the Brute. He was nominated King of Bannerburg. There is a statue of him in the center of town.”

  “Accreditation is very important in Bannerburg,” Fintan said. “Everything they’ve learned relies on the integrity of their institutions.”

  “People don’t die in the afterlife, so they fought for centuries. Robert the Brute used every weapon of chemistry at his disposal, and the Head Mare used her control of the portals to create an unending army. Everything was destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again.”

  “This doesn’t sound like a love story,” RuTing said.

  “Wait for it,” Cherry replied. “After hundreds of years of fighting, unable to bear the pain, their armies fled. On the battlefield, the Brute fought the Mare. He had a steel mace ten feet long, and she wielded an eight-foot spear of solid silver.”

  “Why silver?” Fintan interrupted. “Why not gold or an alloy like electrum.”

  “Gold is too soft and expensive, and electrum doesn’t have any unique properties. It’s less conductive than silver or copper.”

  “What happened?” RuTing asked.

  “The Brute crushed her hind quarters, “ Cherry said bluntly, “but as she lay on the ground, she thrust her spear into his body. The legend says the spear came out coated in gold, and when the Brute saw his own blood, and what he had done to the Mare, he took pity on her. He brought her to Bannerburg, where he worked he worked on a cure to reduce her mass and turn her back into a woman.”

  “From that cure, the doctors created Flying Serum,” Fintan said. He leapt ahead in the story.

  “Sounds like a rape drug,” RuTing said. “He took her back and drugged her.”

  “That’s not how the story goes,” Cherry said. Her giggle had disappeared, and her mouth turned into a hard line.

  Fintan realized they’d crossed a boundary. Cherry might be from the Union, and she welcomed them into Bannerburg, but they were not equals. The Union had equality, but Bannerburg worked on a different system, and Cherry had status while they had none.

  He stumbled over his tongue, trying to figure out what to say to get them out of trouble.

  “I’m sorry,” RuTing said. “I don’t want to offend you. My transition to the afterlife hasn’t been a pleasant experience.”

  The hard lines around Cherry’s mouth softened, and she took RuTing’s hand.

  “Of course it wasn’t,” Cherry said. “The afterlife isn’t like the Union, and the portals can be a bad place. Bannerburg is as close to the Union as you will find. You are right; the history is probably inaccurate, but the people of Bannerburg choose to remember the good. When the Brute fell in love with the Mare, he turned away from his brutish ways and remembered he was a doctor. He created a serum that restored her humanity. She lost weight and forgot about being a horse. She fell in love with the doctor, and for a time, there was peace with the Centaurs.”

  Fintan couldn’t imagine how stealing a sovereign resulted in peace, but it was Cherry's story. They needed to understand the history of the afterlife if they were going to devise a plan, and the library was the best place to do it. If Cherry wanted to believe the story her way, he wouldn’t stop her.

  “We should study the scrolls,” Fintan said.

  “If you read the scrolls about Bannerburg, you will understand us better,” Cherry said, “but if you spend all your time in the library, people might start to think you are doing witchcraft instead of eating dinner.” She tittered nervously at the end of the statement.

  “Of course,” RuTing said. “I was just getting hungry. We will return in a day or two. We can’t miss every meal for the library.”