1
It was not easy to tell where the line of the southwestern border went by only looking. A visitor from another planet was bound to find the security lacking, in least terms. There were no checkpoints to mark the location, no gates, walls, or even shabbiest fences. No border patrols, no flag. One slightly larger rock with a chalked top by the highway marked the point beyond which the land changed owner, and that was all. Another rock a quarter mile southward in the middle of the plain made for the second anchor point on this vector and in this lackadaisical fashion, from rock to another, from rock to hill, hill to river, employing only the naturally available landmarks, sovereign territories were parted.
Guarding uninhabited expanses of grass and dirt had no meaning. Building walls and stations, only to have them be torn down, binding manpower and resources to oversee a curvature that only existed on paper, was in no one’s best interests. It was only in the closest inhabited towns along the road, where the first instances of proper border security could be found. In those towns were also the customs offices for traveling merchants to declare their goods, and so forth. Passports were an unknown concept, asking for identifying documents futile. The only comprehensive register of citizens in existence which to refer to was in the capital’s tax office, updated once a decade if not more seldom—and without helpful portraits.
Travelers had virtually unrestricted freedom of movement—at least when it was peace time. Wars were bound to change things, but such threats had now moved elsewhere.
Like on her previous trip, Izumi wouldn’t have even noticed when they crossed the border, if Waramoti hadn’t kindly pointed out the chalked rock for her.
By noon, the entire cavalcade had crossed far over to the Principality’s side and were barely a week’s ride off from the halfway mark of their trip. For the past few days, the highway had aligned with the limit of the evergreen forest of Felorn, and following that nature’s breathtaking wall brought the crew to the town of Varnam in the late afternoon.
Pigeons had borne their notes and the town guard knew to expect the guests this time. The riders proceeded through the gates and down the widely curving main street, which the familiar line of white-painted, half-timbered houses decorated.
“I didn’t need these flashbacks,” Izumi mumbled to herself with unease as she gazed around. On the surface, nothing about this drowsy town seemed changed. But that was only on the surface.
That night, the company set camp on the same broad field south of the town as on the fateful quest for the spring of youth so many months ago. While the tents were being raised, the group of leaders took the chance to go greet the elder in town. There they learned that the previous town elder had passed away of an illness only two months prior, and had been replaced by a new (old) face, who knew little about the unlucky expedition, or the fate of its participants. It was not a topic the locals enjoyed discussing.
Holms, the headsman of the woodcutters who had gone with the Imperials, was nowhere to be found. Perhaps dreading the repercussions, he had left with his family soon after his return, somewhere westward, though no one could tell precisely where. He hadn’t shared his plans with a soul. Yuliana would’ve liked to thank Holms and the other volunteers for their self-sacrificing labor in the woods, yet only managed to identify a few carpenters, who didn’t know how to appreciate her thanks. They dreaded the Imperials like dryads and her majesty could hardly get a word out of any of them, and begrudgingly gave up on looking for others.
The group went next to visit Varnam’s graveyard, to pay their respects to the Imperial knights who had fallen in action and were buried there. Small graves had been made for each of them, although the earthly remains of most had been left behind in the woods, too risky to retrieve.
There was even one such marker made for old Yornwahl. They had placed the remains of his staff on the grave at the time, but the broken sticks were now gone and grass covered the spot.
Yuliana thought she should say a few words in the memory of the deceased, but inspiration failed to find her. Empress or not, she was still a foreigner, and anything she could have said about these fallen men and women in front of their compatriots would have rang hopelessly hollow.
At the time they had met in spring, she had been but a reluctant prisoner, a hostage. Fate had made her their ruler, but did that justify looking at the past as if the memories were good ones? Was she being too presumptuous to think they were on the same side now, even if working for a common goal? Could nationality and camaraderie be treated so casually? What could be flippantly won was lost just as soon. So her father had once taught her.
General Monterey regarded Yornwahl’s grave with a somber sigh. “Rest in peace, old friend.”
Court Wizard Laukan wore the same regretful face.
“I never would’ve thought you’d leave this life before me,” he told the marker. “We weren’t friends; we were magicians. But I hope you found what you were looking for.”
Margitte stood a few steps behind the group.
“Did you ever meet Master Yornwahl?” Yuliana came to ask her.
The girl shook her head. “No.”
“Are you curious what kind of a person he was?”
“No.” The girl replied again with forced aloofness and turned to leave. “There is no need for me to know.”
2
By the time the leaders returned from their town tour, the campsite was already made. Almost. The big red command pavilion was proudly standing, a large Imperial flag fluttering above it, but a short distance from there, her majesty’s personal shelter remained a work in progress. Its assembly had been assigned to new hands today.
“What are these?” Tilfa pondered, examining the bundle of steely tent stakes. “Weapons to defend against wild animals that may attack at night? Does that sort of thing happen a lot? Are you supposed to stash one under your pillow for ease of access?”
“Why won’t it keep standing?” Hila asked, holding up a lone corner pole. When she let go, it fell on the ground, not supported by anything. “Looking at how prim and proper the other tents appear, I am beginning to think ours might be a faulty product. I’m going to file a complaint to the manufacturer after we get back.”
The Empress had told the maids to learn the tricks of tent-making in her absence, but not even the Sovereign’s chosen servants could be good at everything.
“How about I lend you a hand?” Millanueve offered, observing the two’s fruitless struggle from the side. She had been expressly prohibited from helping, but her patience was nearing its limits. “If this takes much longer, it’ll get dark and we’ll be left to sleep under the stars!”
The maids answered the offer with blank looks.
Then…
“—Kill me, right now!” Hila exclaimed and attempted to pry the stake from Tilfa’s hands.
“Endure it!” Tilfa told her, refusing to let go. “Her majesty hasn’t given us the permission to die yet!”
“That’s why I’m telling you to kill me! I can’t be held responsible for failing my duty, if you do it!”
“I’m not going to become a murderer only to help you skip work!”
“Then give me the stake, I’ll kill myself! Being laid to grave incompetent is still better than having to live through such a time! Pirates had nothing on this! No, I must already be dead and this is Hel! That must be it!”
“This is my stake! I need it or a raccoon might eat my face while I sleep! Get your own!”
“And you call yourself my colleague, you self-centered serpent!”
“It’s the survival of the fittest out here in the wild!”
Seeing (and hearing) the commotion already from a distance, Yuliana decided to postpone her return by an hour or two. She slipped away from the company and went to look for the summoned champion.
She found the woman soon too, at the tent reserved for lower-ranking female officers of the crew. Izumi knew no one there, but had no idea where else to go either. Sleeping with her majesty and the others had seemed like a recipe for a disaster. The officers’ tent was half-empty, as it was, and they welcomed her without complaints.
Her majesty’s appearance in the doorway gave everyone quite the start.
“Sorry to trouble you!” Yuliana cheerfully greeted the company and waved at Izumi. “Hey! Come with me for a bit! Let’s go for a walk, just the two of us!”
“Eh?” In the middle of unpacking her sleeping bag, Izumi left her belongings without a word, and followed.
The two women went marching out of the camp and northward along the central street, with no particular goal in mind. There was nothing much to look at in the little town, no special attractions, but her majesty kept gazing from side to side with a wide smile, as if it were terribly interesting. The sun was setting and darkness around them deepened by the moment, but the fires lit along the sidewalk kept their path easy to see.
Izumi walked next to her majesty in silence.
“Brings back memories, doesn’t it?” Yuliana asked her. “It seems like a small lifetime ago when we were here last. Back then, there were no princesses, or empresses, or wars. It was just the three of us, a company of simple travelers. You, me, Riswelze. How broad the world seemed back then. Look! There’s the tavern where we stayed! I remember that night so well. I was so nervous I could hardly sleep. I had no idea what was to become of us. What was the right path to take. When I left home, I thought I could just ride to the nearest harbor, take a ship and sail across the sea, and...save the world. Everything will take care of itself if only you earnestly try. How little I knew. So much has changed in so short a time. What do you suppose Riswelze would say, were she here to see us now?”
“Ah, who knows?” Izumi remarked, to be polite.
As nonchalant as she tried to sound, Yuliana’s expression grew apologetic and she turned to the woman. “I’m sorry. It’s still painful to talk about, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” Izumi denied and stopped. “I’ve made peace with it.”
“You have? I suppose that’s a good thing…”
Though she said so, her majesty’s face remained remorseful and she aimed her stare down at her boots. Did she think it was an act, denying her grief? Izumi thought she should fix the impression a little.
“Rise was the type to live in the moment,” she said and gazed west towards the woods. “The best way for us to pay our respects is by doing the same. That’s what I think. So don’t worry about pointless things you can do nothing about, or wallow in the past. Only focus on what you can do, here and now. The time to reminisce comes when it’s all said and done. I couldn’t face her with a clear conscience in the afterlife if I left the job unfinished.”
Yuliana looked back at the woman, unable to hide her surprise.
“You’ve really changed, Izumi.”
“I wonder about that.” Izumi looked away and scratched her head. “I was suddenly snatched from my daily life with magic and dropped in the middle of this semi-medieval fantasy land, not knowing left from right. What else could I do in such an outrageous situation, but treat it as a bad joke? No, I was sure I was only seeing a crazy dream and would soon wake up in my own bed again. ‘Gotta make the most of it while the fun lasts’—that’s all I could think about. I might’ve been in some kind of shock, really. Rather than saying I’ve changed, I suppose I just calmed down and started to take this place a little more seriously. It’s nothing more profound than that.”
But as much as she hoped Yuliana would leave the topic at that and carry on with the stroll, she wouldn’t. Instead, a strange, slightly pained look appeared in her bright, lavender eyes.
“Is it only the world you began to take seriously?” she asked. “Or the people too?”
“They’re both part of the same package, aren’t they?”
“And am I included? Have you now begun to see me more as a person too?”
Izumi heard the wavering tension in the young woman’s voice and glanced at her. She saw the hopeful glint in Yuliana’s gaze, and averted her face with a dejected sigh.
“You sure have a lot of downtime in your hands, to be thinking about pointless stuff like that.”
“Perhaps it’s not meaningless to me,” Yuliana replied, offended for being brushed off, and turned away.
“You sure haven’t changed one bit,” Izumi told her. “Always taking everything so personally. You get wrinkles early if you don’t lighten up a little.”
“Oh, will I?” her majesty replied in an icy tone, arms defiantly folded. “I should take your words to heart then, coming from the wrinkle expert!”
“Oww…!” Izumi grimaced and bent, as though hit. “That was under the belt. A free ippon for me.”
“Do you have any idea how worried I was?” Yuliana continued to complain, now that she had gotten started. “Why did you take off all of a sudden, without a word, without so much as goodbye? I thought you called us friends, yet you had no trouble leaving me behind like, like—something completely irrelevant and unwanted.”
“I couldn’t exactly drag an empress with me to such a place, could I? There was no choice. I had to go.”
“You ‘had to’? I see! But coming back was not part of the plan, it seems. What was that about ‘retiring’, anyway? I can’t believe I had to hear about your life, the life of a person dear to me, from a stranger! You could’ve said something!”
“There was no big plan to share!” Izumi argued. “Things just sort of developed that way. Besides, weren’t you telling me to do that all along? I actually tried my best to give up the sword, as you said, and not hurt a fly anymore. Live and let live. Shouldn’t you be happy I tried? And I was going to write a letter afterwards.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The Empress turned back to the woman with an ironic laugh. “Why, a letter, even? How awfully considerate of you! Well, how did your retirement work out for you? Not too smoothly, it seems. Can you imagine how shocked I was to see you out there at sea, fighting a dragon? A dragon, which was my friend, by the way. And you almost killed the Prince of Luctretz, who also happens to be my childhood friend, on top of being—you know, a prince! What a comeback! Perhaps I spoke too soon when I said ‘changed’!”
“Come on!” Izumi protested. “How was I supposed to know the giant monster making a mess of everything was your ‘friend’? It didn’t seem very friendly to me, when it nearly made chop suey out of me a dozen times over—Wait, prince who...?”
“—Ah, there we go!” Yuliana exclaimed. “There is the Izumi I know. Always with the higher ground! Always a snappy answer ready. Much better! Now this is the very definition of nostalgia.”
“Oh please! What do you want me to say?”
“‘Sorry’, might be a fine start! Admitting you did wrong! But that’s physically impossible for you!”
“Sorry. I was wrong,” Izumi said, spreading her arms. “There. What do I win?”
“You win the midnight watch,” Yuliana answered and started back towards the camp. “I shall have a word with the General and arrange it. Maybe standing out there, looking at how normal people live their lives, will help get your feet back on the ground level, o’ champion!”
“Give me a break! You’re such a child.”
“Call me, ‘your majesty’.”
“Fine! Run back to your knights for backup! Since you have no idea what it’s like to stand alone, without anybody to hold your hand.”
Yuliana froze mid-step.
Very slowly, she turned to look back, a mixture of anger, disbelief, and pain in her wide-open eyes.
“...I’m sorry,” Izumi apologized and looked down. “I went too far.”
“...What else could I do but learn to stand on my own?” Yuliana asked. “Since you weren’t there!”
“I had my own dreams too,” Izumi murmured.
Yuliana likewise bent her gaze down to the street. The kindled anger in her simmered down to an expression of reluctance and regret.
“Maybe I wanted to be part of that dream,” she mouthed.
The overbearing guilt made it difficult to breathe.
“Look—” Izumi started.
——“Your majesty.”
Before Izumi could finish her sentence, a firm voice interrupted them. Coming down the street from the camp’s way was a tall knight, his armor sparkling in the light of the torches, and his blue cape swayed in the cool evening breeze. It was Arnwahl.
“Yes…?” Yuliana turned to the man.
“My apologies for disturbing your evening stroll,” the champion said with a bow. “But the Marshal was asking to see you. As were your maids. I believe it would be best if you returned to the camp now. The night grows dark and we are not in homeland anymore.”
Giving one last frustrated look to Izumi, her majesty turned to follow after Arnwahl. “Let’s go.”
Izumi followed after the two, her downcast face burned by the heat of shame and various bitter feelings. She saw Yuliana to the camp and the field command, and left then to return to her own resting place.
Or, she tried to.
After only a step outside the pavilion, she lifted her nose to see Arnwahl’s metal-coated figure blocking her path. The young man made no effort to step aside, but only stared at the woman with that perpetual, vague smile on his lips. Despite his handsome looks, she felt rather uneasy at being confronted by such a shady character.
“What?” she asked him with a suspicious frown. “Don’t tell me you’re looking for a rematch? This sure isn’t the time or the place.”
“Not really,” Arnwahl replied. “I do have another type of proposal on my mind, if you’d be willing to hear it.”
“Ehhh…?” Her frown turned even more crooked.
The man closed his eyes—and suddenly bowed his head.
“Would you have me as your disciple, Lady Izumi?”
“Ha…?” Izumi recoiled, dumbstruck. “The heck are you talking about?”
“Only the literal meaning of the words,” he said and straightened his back. “I’d very much like to become your student in the ways of the sword.”
“Oi, are you messing with me?” she asked, as if she couldn’t be sure. The knight always carried that sort of ironic air about him. “Why so suddenly…?”
“I am being quite serious,” he insisted. “I’ve considered this for a good while now, but never had the opportunity to present my request before. This seemed as good a moment as any.”
Izumi spent the whole of 0.001 seconds thinking about it.
“No way!”
“No, is it?” he commented. “May I ask why?”
“You’re actually asking me? To begin with, what do you even need a teacher for? Aren’t you stupid strong as you are? A champion of the Guild with a magic sword and all that.”
Arnwahl’s answer came ready,
“The search for true strength is never-ending, as I’m sure you’re aware. Our fight the other day was not perhaps a very serious one, but the fact remains that you could have killed me, had you wished to. The gap in our abilities was made at once apparent. I have things to learn from you, we wield similar weaponry—therefore, you are someone suited to be my teacher. That is all there is to it.”
“That’s still a no,” she told him with a sigh. “I’ve never been any good at teaching others. And even if it were otherwise, I’d only take cute girls as disciples! I’m afraid you don’t fit the bill by any means. Find somebody else.”
“There is no way I could change your mind?”
“Nope.” Having given her answer, with no intention to reconsider it, Izumi departed past the knight. “To begin with, there’s nothing I get from this deal, is there? If I had my own dojo, I could have you sweep the floors and cook, but since we already get free food and lodging, there’s no need for an uchi-deshi either. Tough luck, buddy.”
“I see,” Arnwahl commented as he saw her off. Even now, there was no sign of disappointment, or general humanity in his expression. He watched her go with a smile. “I shall give you a day to think about it then.”
“Hey! Don’t act like it’s already decided!” she spun back to retort. “How easy do you think I am!? No means no! Forget it!”
Having made the answer undeniably clear, she kept going without waiting for another word.
That should have been the end of it. It should have been.
Yet, Izumi couldn’t shake off the unpleasant feeling that the matter was far from settled.
“What’s his deal, anyway?” she grumbled on the way to the tent. “I really can’t stand that guy…”
3
The day had been clouded throughout and the night fell early. In another hour, the darkness outside the camp had become impenetrable. Izumi felt uneasy in the tent with the foreign soldiers, who kept on chattering about things she knew nothing about, and it was too early to sleep, so she went outside to clean her sword and treat the harness.
She took a seat on a tent supply crate and got to work in lamplight, thinking about nothing in particular. The disc of magnetite was putting on some rust. She scraped the color carefully off with a rough cloth and opened a jar of wax to treat the leather parts.
While at it, she suddenly sensed another person’s presence and looked up.
In the limit of the lamp’s golden glow stood Millanueve.
Izumi hadn’t imagined the girl would willingly approach her and froze altogether. For a time, she only stared at the maiden, unable to make a sound, petrified—terrified, feeling like teetering on the verge of a bottomless cliff. The girl stared back at her and the look in the blue eyes was intense, her brow slightly furrowed, lips firmly shut.
Then…
“Um,” Millanueve mumbled and held out a cup in her hands. “I...If you would like...It’s to warm you up.”
“Huh?” Izumi recovered from her paralysis and turned her eyes to the army grade steel cup. “This is…?”
“It’s coffee,” the girl timidly explained. “I heard you like it, so...The provisions squad had packed it along, and I tried to make some by myself...Well, I hope you enjoy it!”
The girl thrust the cup forward and Izumi hurried to receive it.
“Thanks,” she mouthed and brought the cup to her nose. It didn’t smell like coffee at all, but it was hot, steaming. Maybe it was only her sense of smell acting up.
Millanueve kept close by, likely waiting for her assessment of the result. It was better to not let her down. Cautiously blowing the steam away, Izumi took a sip—
“——PFFFFFFFT—!”
And blew out the mouthful right after in a reflexive burst.
Certainly, the liquid in the cup didn’t taste like coffee any more than it smelled of such, being closer to dirty, warmed-up dishwater in likeness.
“The heck is this!?” she exclaimed, stunned. “Are you trying to poison me now!? Why can’t you stab me in the back like normal people!”
“W-what are you talking about!?” Millanueve defiantly retorted. “Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? This is real coffee, no mistake about it! The Corporal told me so! He wasn’t lying, was he!?”
“Really…? This world’s stuff may be no Blue Mountain, that’s for sure, but I’ve never had anything this terrible in my life! What exactly did you do to it?”
“Why do you immediately assume it’s somehow my fault? It’s made of those beans, right? So I put them in a pot and boiled for an hour! They wouldn’t get any softer, but I think a good deal of flavor came out. Why, how else would you do it?”
Izumi exhaled deep, suddenly feeling very, very tired.
“Listen here…” she began to say and poured the cup empty on the ground. But then her hand stilled. As though together with the failed coffee attempt, all her agitation had poured away, and the incoming barrage of complaints never made it to her lips.
What am I doing…?
She got up from the crate and put the blade harness and the wax jar away. Then she turned back to Millanueve, and asked,
“Would you like me to show you how it’s done?”
The day’s meals were served. The field kitchen tent was vacant and quiet at this hour, but in the dark of the night, a solitary lantern’s light continued to burn inside, smoke rose from the thin chimney, and fire was in the stove.
“You grind the beans to powder with a hand mill, or a mortar, to better get the flavor out,” Izumi explained, her voice calm, even as her hands did the work.
“I see,” Millanueve commented, following the woman’s work closely past her shoulder.
“Weigh them beforehand and only use the amount you need. It’s a rare product, so you don’t want to waste any of it. We have fifteen ounces of water or thereabout in the pot, so it takes only five or six tablespoons like this of the powder. But the roast quality’s all over the place. If you spot any beans that are of a distinctly lighter color than the others, pick them out and throw them away, so they won’t ruin the flavor.”
“Okay.”
“Leaving it coarse like this is fine, since we’re making pot coffee. If we used a filter, it would have to be a little smoother. It looks like the water’s boiling now. You mustn’t leave it there. As soon as it starts bubbling, you pour in the powder, remove the pot from the fire, close the lid, and let it sit for five minutes.”
“Five...minutes?”
“Count to three hundred or something. It’s not that precise. Just don’t take off somewhere and forget about it. If it sits for too long, it turns too bitter.”
“It’s so complicated,” Millanueve said but there was a smile on her face. “Wherever did you learn to make something like this? You’re like an alchemist.”
“It’s daily life where I’m from,” Izumi said with a shrug. “Nothing so special.”
“’Nothing so special’,” the girl quietly repeated with an incredulous look.
Izumi glanced at Millanueve’s face, at the faint, a bit apologetic but heartfelt smile on her lips, at the open admiration in her eyes, and quickly looked away.
“Got a spare cup?” she asked.
Once the coffee was ready, Izumi poured herself a cup, Millanueve another, and they sat down on a large chest in front of the stove, blowing at their drinks, and listened to the hum of the fading fire. Izumi hadn’t expected much, but she thought the coffee tasted a lot better than usual tonight. It was perhaps the best cup she’d had since coming to this world. A job well done.
“It is...rather bitter,” Millanueve remarked next to her, and stuck out her tongue. “Was it on too long?”
“No, this is how it should be,” Izumi said. “You can add some cream and sugar, if you want to make it milder.”
“Really?” Her curiosity piqued, Millanueve left to look for the additional ingredients and soon returned to her seat, cautiously sampling anew. At once, her face brightened up.
“It’s like a different thing altogether!” she exclaimed, delighted. “I don’t believe it! It’s so good!”
“Ha. I knew it,” Izumi remarked with a cynical smile. “You have such a child’s palate.”
“Mmm. I’m not a child!” Millanueve retorted with a pout.
“Yes, yes. Now you’re talking like the bard.”
They laughed and then sat quietly, and savored the drinks. From somewhere on the edge of the camp carried the sound of lute, evoking impressions of eastern exoticism.
“It’s so nice,” Millanueve whispered with a relieved smile, the light of fire dancing on her eyes. “If only every day could be like this…”
Izumi jumped a little at those words. Her pulse picked up the pace again and a warm, sweet sensation flowed through her, like liquid honey. She did her best to suppress it. Millanueve sensed her unease and sudden self-awareness hit the girl. She looked back at the woman with a startled look and hurried to explain herself,
“No, what I’m saying is—i-it’s not like I want to be with you every day, specifically! That’s not it! D-don’t get me wrong…!”
“Ah…” Not even Izumi could keep her face from turning red now.
It was only in the effort to correct her supposed mistake that she had truly committed it—realizing this, Millanueve swiftly grew even more panicked. Words fled the girl and she sat stiff with her blue eyes rounded, her lip quivering. Izumi tried to think of something to say, to dismantle the awkward tension, anything. Not that she could put a coherent sentence together any better herself. She felt her face burn and the flow of blood hummed in her ears.
Then Millanueve bounced up on her feet. She squeezed her eyes shut, raised the cup to her mouth and emptied it all in a few quick gulps. She swallowed badly in the process and started frantically coughing.
“Hey—” Izumi reached out to her, but the girl quickly stepped away.
“—I-I ought to get going now!” she stiffly declared to the tent wall. “S-someone has to inspect the campsite before the night! I should do it! Since I’m a knight…!”
Her words were barely connected, their contrived nature painfully audible. Terrified of making the damage yet worse, Millanueve ran away without another word, and Izumi was left to sit by herself.
“…”
Having nowhere to be and nothing to do, the champion continued her coffee, her heart beating quick and heavy in her for a long time after. It was as if the sun had only just now left this side of the world and the darkness seemed twice as deep as before. Despite the heat of the stove in front of her, Izumi felt cold and pulled her coat tighter on, and tried hard not to think about the future or anything.
A distance away on the road, her imperial majesty was on her way back to the camp with her retainers, after taking a bath at the tavern in Varnam. Along the way, she happened to see the two figures in the open-front field kitchen tent a stone’s throw from the road, and her feet unwittingly stopped.
Waramoti was seated on a barrel by the road close by, practicing with his lute, and Yuliana absentmindedly directed her words to him,
“Hey…You told me they were friends. But is that all they were?”
“I wonder,” the bard replied with a modest shrug. “I wouldn’t presume to know the heart of a maiden.”