Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Streets of Summer

My marriage with Calivar hadn't gone off without a hitch but, I had to admit, the hitch that it had come with was an entirely agreeable one - I'd been married to Meliswe and hadn't even known it, and now nobody could complain if I gave my best and most beautiful advisor a healthy chunk of the affection that might otherwise be devoted to her newlywed prince. Meliswe made a point of doting on Calivar in public, too, to cement her status as a much-appreciated consort.

For my part, I would have been walking on clouds at all hours if it hadn't been for one particular fly in the ointment: my best friend, Ben, had been captured by whoever had seen it fit to ambush us. Or, rather, whoever had sent twenty-odd mixed French and Italian infantry to kill the royal procession. It didn't take Queen Alathea to piece together what had probably happened: somebody had managed to find a weak spot in the barrier between Earth and Alfheim and was recruiting Earth humans to their cause. They'd managed to steal an artifact that could deliberately breach that barrier between worlds and now they'd kidnapped the only man who could unlock the thing. Somebody planned on an awful lot of mischief, and they'd no doubt get up to it pretty soon if we couldn't recover Ben.

"Why haven't we scoured the wilderness to find him?" I asked.

I asked this to Captain Delcotha, the human-faun who commanded the Estival king's guard. Twenty of his men and twenty of Vittoro's had each been sent out to search for Ben. Vittoro’s men had returned to Vernal and Delcotha's men had marched back to Estival the night before with a handful of prisoners but no Ben. The prisoners consisted of a Frenchman and an Italian who'd been injured in the fighting and left behind by their retreating comrades, as well as two wilderness raiders who'd been in cahoots with the attackers.

One of the raiders I recognized as a lieutenant of 'Lord' Kurzalvik from my brief stint in the raider harem, and I will admit to feeling considerable satisfaction when I arranged for him to be shackled in the nastiest dungeon in Estivalia for two years before getting transferred to work in the mines. Though, I am sad to say, the nastiest dungeon in Estivalia is fairly tidy and prison laborers are rarely mistreated. By Earth standards, the fae realms are incredibly civil to prisoners. And, desire for revenge aside, I hoped they'd stay that way.

"Yes, of course I'm glad you've caught one of the raiders who mistreated me. But your men have returned without my friend… am I to assume you'll send another group out to continue the search?"

"My princess," Captain Delcotha sighed. "The wilderness is twelve miles wide and shrinking by the day. What we've found in there thus far is all we're going to find, and soon enough there may be no wilderness to search. If these enemy riflers…"

"Infantry or riflemen," I corrected him.

"These enemy infantreer rifle-men…” he mis-corrected. “They've escaped to parts unknown, most likely to Wisthelm. And if they pass through Wisthelm unmolested, they could soon sail to anywhere else in the world. We'll resume our search for your friend and for the fiends who attacked the royal procession as soon as we've got actionable information. Until then, anything else we can do is just chasing pixies."

I nodded. "Thank you for being honest with me, captain. If you hear any other rumor about the whereabouts of these Earth-men, please let me know. I've studied Earth extensively and may have insight into the matter."

"Of course, princess."

Delcotha would run my request by Alvaelic, no doubt, but the king would then ask the prince, who would then affirm my right to know these things. For his part, Calivar had no interest in returning to Earth, but he did want to get to the bottom of whoever was shaking things up by transporting Earth soldiers into Alfheim, because this could only destabilize a situation that he found very much to his liking. Even before getting wed to two beautiful fae maidens, Calivar had been enjoying his sojourn as the prince of a fairy-tale kingdom.

If there was information to be had, my husband would relay it to me, either in bed or in public. In the meanwhile, though, that didn't give me much to do beyond questioning the two Earth prisoners, currently being kept in the Jungle's Edge Prison near the outskirts of Estivalia.

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Estivalia is a large city, perhaps five times the size of Vernal City, long and narrow and stretching seven miles from its southern outskirts up to its strip of harbor along the peninsula, which jutted out another two miles. It was just over three miles across at its broadest point near the city center, though most of the city was considerably narrower. Dense jungle pressed in to either side of the city, though large swaths had been cleared for farmland and fruit plantations. Mountains rose twenty miles to the southeast, beyond which stretched mile upon mile of scraggly badland and searing desert. The Jungle's Edge Prison sat atop a cliff overlooking the eastern jungle, the white-capped Serpentine Mountains looming hazy in the distance. As the human walks, it was a four mile walk from the palace to the prison - and I insisted that we walk because I wasn't about to take the royal carriage and its requisite procession for a four-mile trip.

"We could just ride horses incognito, princess," Lieutenant Ro said. "You like traveling in disguise, right?"

I shrugged. "You hate riding and I want to get a feel for the city. And, as you yourself admit, it's a very safe city. Besides, I've got a reason to hoof it today…" I glanced down to his cloven-hooved feet. "I hope that's not insensitive."

He clopped a cloven foot against the pavement. "Finest way to travel, your majesty."

It was Lieutenant Ro and myself with Master Dhyr and Alfina, my half-fae half-human guard and sparring partner. Estival was a very safe city and I was very well-protected. The union between Calivar and myself (and, completely accidentally, Meliswe) had instigated a strange fae magic that was merging and expanding the two realms over a period that might last several months. The assassination of either of us might pause or even reverse the changes - nobody was really sure - and so we weren't quite out of the woods yet. But the reason for foreign powers to cause us harm diminished by the day.

At the moment, it was just me walking through the city’s boroughs with my guard. Calivar and Meliswe were spending the day up at the harbor, relaxing upon the Blacksand Beach. Meliswe had never seen the ocean before and my horse sense told me I should give my spouses some alone time to bond. We might be married for a thousand years, so it was important that we were all fully-committed.

It was nice having some personal time, too, even if it a princess is never quite alone. The four of us walked through the spice- and flower-scented streets of Estivalia. I was not incognito, per se, but neither did I have a flapping pennant announcing Royal Princess Here, and so I got no more attention than any other lady of means with a small and oddly diverse retinue.

Neighborhood-for-neighborhood, Estivalia was as prosperous a city as Vernal City but substantially larger. It made up the bulk of the realm's people, to the tune of nine-tenths of all Estivalian citizens, whereas Vernal was much more distributed in its population. Each Estivalic neighborhood had its own mercantile row, with horses and scaly desert charobs clopping in the broad yellow-stone streets, salespeople hawking their wares from the walkways. Great awnings brimmed with greenery and jungle flowers, and just about every block had a bubbling fountain deep enough for children to frolic. They generally sported a sculpture of some monarch, present or past, or of Gaia, of jungle beasts, or even of gods worshipped by other folk.

Yes, other religions are tolerated in the fae realms, insofar as they play well with others. Even foreign missionaries are tolerated, though fanatics are generally expelled at the first hint of trouble. Gaia was the patron goddess of the fae, but she was not a jealous goddess. Fae theologians generally hold that the other gods (or at least the ones that aren’t explicitly evil) are extensions of the same godhead and that Gaia is simply their embodied primarch. Calivar tells me this is called henotheism. I just call it good, old-fashioned pragmatism.

A bit past the halfway mark to the prison, I made a detour into a dusty and relatively run-down quarter of the city. I'd told Lieutenant Ro we were stopping here - he got testy about impromptu destinations - but hadn't told him why. Here, the merchants were sluggish under the summer sun, their fruits and meats a bit less fresh, and laborers lazed about on porches and in the shade of grassy courtyards, perhaps overstaying their midday siestas. Eventually I stopped, standing in the middle of the white cobblestone road, the sparse foot traffic veering about me like flowing molasses. To my left was a modest monastery, now abandoned, and to my right was the Old East Market, a large, if slightly run-down courtyard flanked by a great U of shops and galleries, some of them enclosed and some open to the air. Half or fewer of the shops were occupied and the commerce at those shops was sluggish.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Are we shopping?" Alfina asked.

"I've already shopped," I said. "I made a purchase here recently… the building to the left belonged to the almost-defunct Silent Order of Abbis, devotees of a god called 'The Watcher'. I purchased the building from the monks for a very reasonable price and suggested that they relocate to one of Estival's more remote towns. Across the way is the Old East Market, run-down and waning now that Orvalaeis Square is drawing so many merchants from abroad. I've purchased the market, too…"

"Where did you acquire the funds for such a thing?" Master Dhyr asked.

I indicated my necklace - woven blackwood bursting with tiny aquamarine flowers. "I sold a third of my jewelry collection… and not even one of the more valuable thirds."

"But you do not wear jewelry, princess."

I nodded. "A very good reason to sell it, don't you think?"

"What interest do you have in an old monastery and a run-down market, princess?" Alfina asked.

I shrugged. "None. But I think this neighborhood could use some help. Tell me, Master Dhyr, what would you do with this place?"

"I would not want to displace the merchants here," they said carefully. They turned and spotted a stretch along the street that had obviously been cleared - the stones were scrubbed clean and the workers had left building supplies in the little yard just behind it. "I suppose they would not object too strenuously if their stalls were moved out to streetside. Not if there were the promise of more commerce in the area. The monastery is already set up as housing, so I would use is for that… students, teachers, and honored guests alike could inhabit the building, and to get our supplies, we need only wander out to the merchants selling their wares at our doorstep. And the market has the bones of a great academy… the courtyard is perfect for outdoors exercises and exhibition, and the stalls can easily be converted into classrooms, offices, and contemplative chambers. If these were mine to do with as I pleased."

I bowed to Master Dhyr and held out the deeds to the buildings. "I devised this gift on my wedding day, but it took some time to arrange the specifics. Master Dhyr, please accept this gift. May it bring our dreams to fruition."

Master Dhyr let out a little yowl and it took me a moment to realize that they were crying, little feline tears dribbling down either side of their snout. With trembling hands, they accepted the scrolls of the two building deeds - I would have to formally sign them over with a witness present, but in Pispistrian tradition, a simple hand-off is all that's required. They pulled me into a hug - and this is, to my best knowledge, the only time that Dhyr has ever hugged anybody. They pulled me close and stated: "This is a proper gift. I humbly accept," before whispering: "You are not my first Mentor, but you shall be my finest."

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I guess somebody told the two soldiers from Earth about the proper etiquette toward a princess and that they knew enough to suck up to VIPs because they had their act down with the standing and bowing and your-majesties. And I suppose the longer you're a very VIP, the more you get used to it - I was starting to expect that treatment in the palace and had started going out incognito when time allowed to keep myself from getting a big head.

Of course, most folks in Estival were savvy enough to recognize a beautiful fae woman with Estival and Hibernal heritage when they saw one, and so I also started studying disguise magic for when I truly wanted to be incognito. But it was best for me to be myself and wield my authority in the Jungle's Edge Prison. Honestly I'd never been to a prison before and this one looked pretty much like an old fortress made in the same pink marble and red sandstone that most sturdy structures in Estivalia were made of.

“The prisoners have been well-behaved?”

"Well-behaved and well-occupied. Prince Calivar has them working on the Boomstick Project, my lady," the warden stated. "He's promised to reduce their sentence if they help us manufacture their strange alchemical sticks."

The Boomstick Project (formally, the Rifle Project) was Calivar's attempt to build rifles right here in Estivalia. The human machinists had most of the gun mechanics down pat but were still working on how to make bullets in a cost-effective manner and nobody could quite make gunpowder. Gunpowder from Earth worked fine, but using the same chemical processes to make it in Alfheim didn't work quite right - apparently, our chemistry was just different enough from Earth's to give local gunpowder a lot less punch. Calivar had showed me one of the Lebel rifles we'd captured in the wake of the attack. He loaded a locally-made bullet into the breech and fired - the bullet shot out at maybe two hundred miles per hour. I could barely catch sight of it with my eye and the thing zipped about a hundred feet before skittering across the ground. It would probably hurt like the dickens to be hit with, but you'd be a lot better off shooting a foe with a bow and arrow. We needed something alchemical if we wanted our bullets to work well.

"And how is the Rifle Project going?" I asked.

"I hear they've come up with a system for making a decent number of bullets, but still none of the blasting potion that they require, princess," the warden said. "Not my department… these two are working on…" he searched for the word. "Stocks and ranges, I believe. Shall I have the prisoners shackled?"

"That won't be necessary. My companions and I can handle ourselves."

Whenever I met an Earth man, I expected to see something different. A different bearing, a squaring of the jaw, a cast of the eye… but humans in Alfheim were indistinguishable form Earth humans and vice-versa. Humans lived a bit longer here, where eighty-five was the average lifespan, and had an inch or two on Earth people in average stature, but that might have been due to a healthier lifestyle or exposure to magic, which often has subtle effects on living beings.

These two men could have been picked right off the street and I couldn't have told you the Frenchman from the Italian if I tried. The moment I entered, both of them leapt to their feet and bowed. The warden had set a fancy chair in the room, still warm from one of them sitting their keisters in it when they damn well knew they weren’t supposed to. Oh well - I probably would have done the same thing.

"At ease," I said.

Neither man could really sit anyway - Master Dhyr had perched on the table and Alfina set herself in one of the two chairs. Lieutenant Ro stood by the door, arms crossed. Fauns didn't care for fae chairs (the same as human chairs), though they could manage them if decorum demanded it.

"How are they treating you in prison?" I asked. "Is the food good?"

The curly-haired man nodded. "Yes, your majesty. Better than what they fed us in the army."

I nodded. "And what army is that?"

"Erm… you've never heard of it, your majesty. It's… um, it's a kingdom called France."

"France is a republic, not a kingdom," I said, and I sang the beginning of La Marseillaise. "Allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé!"

"Do you know the Marcia Reale?" the Italian asked.

"That's 'Do you know the Marcia Reale, princess?' And I'm afraid not, though I’ve heard it before, and nor am I here to speak of music. Don't forget - you and your comrades opened fire on me and the rest of the royal procession, and as they left you to die or be captured, they made off with my friend, the American Ben Boyd. I want to know where I can find him."

"Truthfully, princess, I cannot say. The King in the South promised us gold and jewels to join his cause, to fight in his war and then return to Earth… which is our world… with our riches, once our own world’s war had ended. We were told we'd be fighting against primitives with arrows and swords, not…"

"Not sorcerers and witches," the Frenchman said. "I agree… it doesn't seem like such a good deal in hindsight. But the gold was real enough, ten times what I would have made in the army, and so many of us joined up, thinking this war on Earth to be a mad proposition…"

I nodded. "Tell me how this King in the South recruited you and how you came to be shooting at me and my friends out in the wilderness. If I feel you're being truthful, I will suggest to my husband that your efforts would be more fruitful under house arrest." My husband… I wasn't going to get used to that any time soon.

Thierry Charpentier and Jacopo Ricci had been recruited in different instances and hundreds of miles apart, but their tales were similar: amidst a furious battle, a strange and luminous storm had rolled in, and parts of their units found themselves far from any fighting - indeed, they couldn't find men who had been only a few yards away just moments before. Out of the maelstrom came a tall man with pale skin, pointed ears, and strangely green hair, dressed in finery and ornate armor, and he offered the unit an escape from the war and riches for easy work… and those men who refused his offer, he simply let walk away, though their screams could be heard from beyond the veil of luminous mist… something horrible must have befallen them.

But those who joined this man, who called himself Vizier to the King in the South, they soon found themselves in a lush forest. A forest teeming with life, but life that feared this Vizier and did not encroach upon their formation. The soldiers found themselves back in a teeming and growing camp… Jacopo's was the first group to arrive and Thierry's the third. Soon, they had fifty-three Earth men in the king's employ. He paid them in gold - three golden coins each week, without fail, with promise of jewels and more upon their victory. The vizier was unable to journey to Earth at will and seemed unable to predict when the luminous storms would occur. But when his scouts reported them, they galloped off on strange scaled mounts and sometimes returned with more soldiers, or with supplies or weapons. After three weeks, the King in the South had use for his newfound Earth troops and half their number sailed up the coast, sailed for weeks over calm seas, their passage aided by a magical wind that the ship's magister could summon out of nothing. Eventually, they reached an uninhabited wilderness… one not populated by such strange and dangerous creatures as the Kingdom in the South. There, they marched for another week before setting up camp by the fae road and waiting two more days for the royal procession to pass…

Thierry scratched at his stubble. "King Alvaelic's procession passed once, at which point we readied ourselves… a dozen men on each side of the road, staggered so we wouldn't shoot one another in the crossfire. We were to capture the American and kill you and the prince… we were to kill everybody except the American if possible, but those were are three main objectives. I know they took the American because I saw them carrying him off as I collapsed… I took an arrow to the knee, you see…"

"I… well, my capture was less glorious. I looked into the blinding magical light, became dazed, and stumbled right into a tree, which is where I was convalescing when they found me," Jacopo said. "But, it goes without saying, we hadn't counted on magical bulletproof plants or spell flares. As strange as it may sound to you, there is no magic on Earth."

"So I'd heard," I said. "I thank you gentlemen for your time. My horse sense tells me you're telling the truth, and so I'll talk with Prince Calivar about moving you elsewhere. But I'll expect your continued cooperation, should I require it."

"Of course, your majesty!" Jacopo blurted, and both men bowed as I left the room. They'd just given me a lot to think and worry about.