Ehail looks up when she leaves - then goes back to the book.

An hour or so later, the elusive Kolya announces from the hallway, "There's a bar in the closet."

Ehail puts her book down and gets up and looks for the source of the voice.

"Hi."

"Hi. You must be Kolya?"

"Да. And you're Ehail, I heard."

"Да." (Her accent is perfect - in fact, it's exactly his.) "Would you rather speak Russian?"

He shrugs. "Not especially."

Lazarus enters the hallway, trailing Libby and a blonde woman who is presumably her aunt.

"Hi, Kolya," says Chris, to the seemingly empty air previously occupied by a visible Kolya. "Or not. As long as you've still got the door, I guess."

The narrow closet door remains open, with Milliways on the other side.

In goes Ehail, tightly clutching her pocket calculator.

"How many eights have you got?" inquires Libby as the rest of them follow her in. "We should divide them up equally, and then I'll safe them. It takes one coin to do one of the next level up, or one coin to do a batch of the same level - I haven't discovered a limit on batch size yet. Hmm, I should give the coin sorters a feature for passing directly to someone else's sorter, faster that way and with less chance of dropping any - spare me a six? It shouldn't take more than that to make the change for all four of us."

"Four hundred and twenty, now." Ehail makes her a six.

"All right. So - " (she wishes on the six) " - a hundred and five each to me, Chris, and Lazarus. Hopefully the extras I've got will be enough to safe them all."

"When I let us into my world where does it let us out? Where I came? That's in my house. I can teleport to one of the others but I've never been to the other two before."

"Yes, we'll come out exactly where you came in - likely to be exactly when, for that matter. I expect to be able to teleport to them, and if not I expect to be able to fix that very quickly with coins. The teleportation power I'm using doesn't require specification in much depth; if there's only four houses I don't think it will be hard to describe them uniquely."

"Mine's Keppine, I can teleport to Lator, and the others are Sansee and Priskta. Priskta's an iceberg in the middle of the ocean."

"Send the Canadian," Chris suggests.

Lazarus snrks. "Oh, if you must. But, er - if you don't mind - I would like a six to protect myself against potential icebergy discomforts. That's the right denomination for accumulating general magical attributes, isn't it?" he inquires of Libby.

"Yep."

"And I can take someone to Lator and then come back to Keppine myself?" hazards Ehail. "If you talk to any of the house leaders - speaking an offworld language and claiming offworld miracles will at least get you a test subject and once you have one of those you'll get the babies."

"Yes," says Libby. "I expect it'll be worth you making the introductions at Lator, but if you don't know anyone at the other two, I'm sure Chris and Lazarus can cope. Oh, hmm - if the other houses want to try adult test subjects first, they might not have room for test flights where they are, and if your common local version of teleportation requires actually having been to the place in question, it's likely to be much faster if I just give Chris and Lazarus the version I have in case no one has been to somewhere appropriately remote. Some sixes, please?"

"Okay," says Ehail, handing over sixes to appropriate recipients. "The bottom of the world - or a side or the moon - would be safe."