Uzmala waited her out, not pressuring her to answer, just patiently poking around in the FINNA. Ava watched her careful, precise movements with a sort of distant focus, thinking about Nouresh’s question.

“I want to know if they’re okay,” Ava answered finally. “Everything after that is negotiable.”

Uzmala nodded. She worked in silence on the FINNA, examining it with steady, sure movements, for a few moments before asking, “You know what I loved about traveling by marejii?”

It took Ava a second to catch up with the conversation. “No, what?”

“It showed me that there were infinite possibilities, at all times. After I made captain of the Anahita, I worried over every decision, doubted whether I was brave or smart or strong enough to pull my mission off and protect my crew. I could remind myself that somewhere in the multiverse of possibility, there existed a world where I was all of those things. Maybe it was the world that I already lived in.”

She bent her head closer to the FINNA, then used a delicate pair of pliers to yank something out: it looked like a cross between a computer chip and a spider, and Ava pushed back in her chair as it gave a weak twitch. It had the LitenVärld logo on it.

“There you are, you bastard,” Uzmala said, smiling grimly at it. She dropped it on the bedside table. The thing tried to skitter away, pulling itself along with its two front legs, though it didn’t get far. Uzmala stabbed it with the pliers still in her hand, cracking it into pieces. There was a wisp of bright, sky-blue dust, which dispersed almost instantly.

“That should make things easier,” Uzmala said. She slid the cover back onto the FINNA and screwed it shut.

“What did you do?” Ava asked.

“I freed it to call up marejii in any labyrinth, not just ones that are analogous to your former job. Anywhere that gets you disoriented enough so that the walls between universes are not so firm can hide a marejii.” She gestured to the room around them. “This hospital would probably work. I almost perished of hunger just trying to find the damned toilet down the hall.”

She held the FINNA out to Ava, who reached cautiously for it. At the last second, Uzmala pulled it back.

“Now the way I see it,” she said, “there are infinite universes where Jules died. And infinite universes where they’re alive. Similarly, there are worlds where you are too much of a coward to find out, and worlds where you are brave enough. So. It’s up to you: which of those worlds do we exist in right now?”

* * *