Codespell by Kelly McCullough

bitter. “Unless, of course, you entertain illusions about the inherent righteousness of Atropos’s sisters.”

    My laugh was as bitter as her smile. “Not after my own grandmother agreed to cut my thread for defying her. That’s not a lesson I’ll ever forget. If Atropos is part of this, Clotho and Lachesis are as well.”

    The idea of Fate and Death controlling Necessity filled my bones with ice. A multiverse ruled by them would pretty much look like a forced-labor camp, with its inmates constrained to do exactly what the guards wanted in the brief period between birth and early death. I might not always like the way Necessity ran things now, but at least she enforced a balance that kept the gods arguing among themselves most of the time instead of . . . well, playing god.

    “Do you really think they’re moving in on Necessity?” I asked.

    “It makes sense,” said Eris. “Fate has never liked to have constraints placed on its power. None of us do. But just because something makes sense, that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

    “So,” said Melchior, “is that ‘yes,’ with a side of ‘no’ or just a flat ‘maybe’?”

    “Call it a suggestion that you find out,” said Eris. “It’ll give you something to do when you aren’t dodging bullets.”

    I nodded. “Can we borrow your connection? I might as well get started as soon as possible.”

    “Absolutely, if you promise to tell me what you’ve learned when you’re done. If Fate and Death are making a move to replace Necessity, I’d like to get ahead of them. Hang on a moment while I hook us up to the mweb.”

    I would have to find out how she managed that sometime. Castle Discord was only in contact with the mweb when Eris wanted it that way, making her much less vulnerable to hacking and cracking. It was a feature I wanted to add to Raven House.

    I was just going to ask her about it when our surroundings changed again. The mall was gone, replaced by an ancient library of the sort with deep pigeonholes for all the scrolls. My flimsy food-service table had become a heavy wooden desk with a small inkpot and quill stand.

    “It’s a little retro, isn’t it?” I asked Eris.

    “Think of it as a case mod for my entire server farm.”

    She reached a hand into one of the pigeonholes and grabbed a wrapped scroll. As she pulled it out, I saw that the golden cap on the nearer end was an apple inscribed with “for the fairest.” The other end was actually a multipin connector of a sort I’d never seen.

    “Each of these is a thirty-two-core server with maxed-out RAM and overclocked processors, all configured as part of a distributed supercomputer running my own custom OS.”

    I nodded. She’d been running one form or another of the system for some time, a Grendel group in answer to the more traditional Beowulf cluster.

    “Slick,” I said. “Where do I jack in?”

    “Take a close look at the writing quill.”

    I reached for the quill and found it surprisingly heavy and firm. The feathery portion of the feather was actually some sort of high-density plastic acting as a hilt for the long narrow blade concealed by the stand—a very fancy athame.

    “And the cable?”

    “Check the inkpot.”

    The little black knob on the top of the cap was actually a flip-up cover for a networking plug, and the pot concealed a good yard of cable. It was a gorgeous little setup.

    “You’ll understand if I prefer my own gateway, right?” I put the quill back into its holder.

    “Where’s your sense of trust?” she asked, but with a smile.

    “I left it beside my youthful idealism on top of a tower in this very castle a bit over a year ago when I figured out my grandmother had betrayed me to Atropos.” I shifted my attention away from Eris. “Melchior. Laptop. Please.”

    “I live to obey.” He grinned and sat down cross-legged on the desk in front of me as his body began to flow and twist.

    When he’d finished the transition, I plugged the