"Raafi."

"He didn't believe me about my name!" Sweetheart whispers to Raafi. "And then he just assumes you are not called Mister Bus right on the heels of that mistake."

"Anyway," says Lucas, "boss says New Laramie wins their bid, the tracks will curve 'north' around them rather than 'south' by the Hang Shen reckoning. Also, do fork at Evermeadow."

"All righty!" says Sweetheart. "I can go lay track now! You wanna point Raafi to whoever he should talk to about bringing the dead back to life?"

"Pardon?"

"Bringing people to Mars."

"Huh," says Lucas. "I'm not sure we have anybody working here who was Martian when alive." (Sweetheart lets herself out the door.)

"It's going to be a while before we have enough people available to do much of that, our magic isn't free to use as often as we like like daevas' is. But they're starting to think about how they want things done now, and it seemed to me that someone who knows what things are like here should be involved - I don't think they need to be Martian in particular."

"Well, they need to speak the language," says Lucas. "We can't pick it up by summoning. Martians speak... what was it, some Portuguese some English, both branched off in the last 200 years?"

"Mmhmm. I'm working on getting more magic items for translation, though, too."

"So we don't need to filter for language at all? Most people can't keep more than five or six straight, so that makes it a lot easier."

"Mmhmm. It might speed things up a little if you come up with someone who doesn't need one, but I'll have one sooner or later."

"Mm. What things specifically do they need to know about?"

"Well, that's the question, really. None of us knew that Limbo existed before a week or two ago; we don't even know what to ask. I do know that they're going to be interested in plans for handling criminals, to start with - there was a bit of an incident, the new world has gods and mine in particular doesn't allow people to be kept prisoner without recourse, so they've had to change how they were handling dangerous daeva, and it's on everyone's mind."

"...uh?"

"Where did I lose you?"

"I think I followed but that sort of implies people hadn't ought to talk to you."

"Well, if something's going on that Fharlanghn doesn't approve of he'll notice it eventually whether I find out about it or not; it's better to figure out what to do about it before someone decides to solve the problem for you."

"Yeah, that's what I used to say when I was a tax collector, but I was lying."

"Well, if you'd rather hear it from the last people who thought that was what was going on, going to Mars will get you that, too."

"Uh-huh. Well. I can send you Jian, she speaks probably-close-enough English and her department is one of the only ones less busy today and it's even loosely relevant to your thing. I'll go get her."

He waits.

Lucas goes up the ladder and comes down with Jian a few minutes later. "Hi there," she says. "I'm going to Mars?"

"That's what I hear. Not immediately; I'll need to prepare another casting of Plane Shift in the morning."

"What does... that mean?" Jian asks, as Lucas goes back up the ladder.

"My magic is more limited than daeva magic, in some ways - I can do more things overall but I can't do them as often as I want, I have to prepare specific spells ahead of time and once I use them they're gone until I prepare more. Plane Shift is the one that moves me between realms; I had two today but I used them going to hell for the new batch of demons and then bringing them here. I won't be able to prepare more until morning, by the schedule I've been sleeping on."

"Okay... so you don't need me right now at all, you need me in, what, twelve hours?"

"More like eighteen. I can answer questions now if you have any, though."

"Lucas was saying not to tell you stuff I didn't have to tell you and I don't know if questions count."

"Only if I learn things from them. If you want to know what Mars is like, or how my magic works, or anything, that's perfectly safe."