Vivitha hands over her scroll case, and the Lord eyes it a moment with distaste before opening it. He reads enough to determine the language then drops it on the desk.
“Guard?”
“I’ve already sent for the translator, sir,” Meredith says. “And coffee.”
“Yes. Yes.” He rubs his face, then flaps a hand at them all to sit down. Meredith and Vivitha take the two chairs, while Leah sits awkwardly on a pile of books. “Miss Chevin, good to have you back.” He gives a nod to Vivitha. “Miss Talesh. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
All eyes fix on her. Leah sits frozen on the pile of books.
“I figured I could answer some of your questions, sir, about what exactly is happening with the war.”
“Oh did you, how kind of you.” He waves a hand to Meredith; she hands him a pile of papers from a nearby shelf. “Our intelligence places you in Seffon’s keep, accompanied by an escaped prisoner accused of desecrating the goddesses.” Vivitha shoots her a startled look but does not interrupt. “You have not been seen outside of the keep’s walls for the past two and a half weeks, other than your one visit to our city, where you freed the self-professed murderer of my son, duelled an enemy soldier, and sent my country into war.” He drops the papers on the desk. “Where would you like to begin filling the gaps?”
The translator arrives, stumbling through the door followed by a page carrying a pot of coffee and five mugs. The tension in the room is broken, and Leah breathes a sigh of relief for the temporary respite.
The Lord hands him the missive and asks him to read and translate. The translator rubs his eyes and begins fumbling through it while the page pours everyone a mug of coffee.
“Uh, ‘The Interlands, in the…wake of the war declared by Volst, and concerned deeply for the welfare of their neighbours and cousins to the east, hereby declare themselves for…for Valerin.’” The translator looks around, but does not stop. “Uh, ‘The Lord of the Interlands, rejecting Devad’s dark inter…cession,’” He narrows his eyes and reads on, “‘Promises whatever aid may be necessary to free Valerin’s capital city from Cheden’s onslaught. The Baron’s stance on magic is known, but this leader politely requests that his lordship consider that blood-ties are more than the paper on which they are recorded.’”
No-one looks up or makes even the slightest sound. “How is it signed?” Lord Valerid finally asks.
“Lord Seffon,” the translator says, handing the paper back. Meredith sneaks a peek at the one still in her hands. Leah can just barely see the sigil stamped at the bottom, black and dark red and green.
The Lord lays the missive down on the desk between them all. He leaves a hand on it, and stares at Leah. “Start by explaining this.”
Leah’s mind races. She takes a steadying breath, and grabs a cup of coffee from the page’s tray. “Most of the forces sent against your city a month ago were not from Lord Seffon. They were blood-pardons from Devad – criminals, sent on suicide missions to pardon their debts.”
“How do you know this?”
“They were outfitted with gear from Devad, and the scrolls they carried were not written in real Olues – Old West Volsti. A similar group was even sent against Seffonshold; they were outfitted by both Devad and Cheden.”
“Jun province was conquered by Devad; surely they are supplied by Devad?”
“Devad hasn’t properly ruled Jun since they first got it. Lord Seffon’s family has been leading that corner of the Enterlan for three generations with minimal input from Devad.”
“We are aware,” Lord Valerid says icily.
“He is not with Devad. Hell, after the Jonkheer came to commandeer his forces Seffon called him an ass.”
The Lord’s eyebrow raises marginally. Meredith grins and smothers it quickly. The page gasps, and the Lord turns on him curtly and dismisses him; the child puts the tray of coffee on the desk and leaves with a short bow.
“He did, sir,” Vivitha puts in softly. “Lord Seffon – Thane, or whatever you want to think of him as – he’s not with Devad.”
“Well.” The Lord looks back at the scroll. “How does that lead to him declaring for Valerin? And why did he phrase it that way, as opposed to Volst?”
Leah shrugs. “I can’t pretend to know his meaning, but his motives I know very well. He suspects there is something at play between Devad and Cheden, and it has something to do with Valerin.”
“So you said during the execution. Why us?”
“We don’t know exactly, sir.” Leah takes a sip of the coffee and winces – unsweetened. “But he does intend to send a small army to your aid, magically reinforced – and, speaking frankly, sir, he’ll send them whether or not you want him to.”
The Lord’s eyes narrow. “Don’t presume to know my mind, Miss Talesh.” He picks up a piece of scroll paper from the desk. “Valerin has seen more magic in the past month than in the rest of my life combined. Our fields are burnt, our rivers polluted, and just recently they have diverted the hot spring which feeds our bath waters to – I suppose – freeze us out?” He starts scribbling. “If a pretender-lord wishes to rid us of this thorn, and face the consequences for joining a war that far outmatches his capabilities, then he is free to do so. You will carry our response to him – ”
“No need, sir,” Leah says, finding the plain charm on her bracelet and pressing it to her palm. She can feel a slight bead of warmth and a tingle of something, and assumes it’s on. “Leah here. Scroll delivered, and offer accepted. Be advised the fields are utterly charred and they have no safe water, so they will need supplies almost as quickly as they will need soldiers.”
A faint voice comes through. “Something tells me those aren’t his exact words.”
“No sir, I didn’t think you’d care to hear his exact words,” Leah says, staring Lord Valerid down as she says it. Colour mounts higher in his face.
“Understood.” The link goes dead.
Vivitha is the only one not even remotely unnerved. The translator seems ready to run, Meredith is staring at Leah as though she were a sea monster, and the Lord seems to be debating calling for another execution.
“How convenient,” he finally says, instead. Leah inclines her head politely. “When should we expect – ”
The door bursts open from the outside. Meredith yelps, Vivitha reaches for her bow, and the translator jumps up then scampers to the far wall, spilling coffee over himself in his haste. The Lord sits up straight and purses his lips.
“Where is she?” Iris asks, looking around and finally seeing Leah. Leah has just enough time to set her cup down before she is lifted off her feet in a hug that crushes her ribs, reawakening the old ache from her early days in this world. “Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again,” Iris whispers into her ear, still squeezing. “Ever.”
“Miss Ilbrin,” the Lord says, pointedly.
Iris does not let go, but does turn to the Lord and give a quick nod. “Sir,” she says.
The Lord waits, and then waits impatiently, and then glares impatiently, before Iris finally lets go and stands straight. “Right.”
Leah gives Iris’s arm a reassuring squeeze and sits back down. “Sir, to answer your question, they’ll be here in about a day, maybe a bit longer. More than that I can’t say.”
“No other information?”
Leah thinks. “When the Jonkheer came, he mentioned a tithe…six hundred and seventy mounted fighters, I think. I imagine that’s a good baseline for what you can expect.”
The Lord’s face is unreadable, but Meredith’s shows a flicker of surprise, possibly hope. Even the translator stands a little straighter at that number.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“All of them magically…inclined?” the Lord asks.
“No, but most of them equipped with magic boons. The spells that let the Cheden forces attack for hour after hour and never rest, Seffon can also give to his forces, among other effects.”
The Lord nods, pulling the missive towards him once again. “Miss Talesh, I am fascinated by you.” Leah blinks in surprise. “You have been the most astoundingly troublesome woman I have had to deal with in my life, time and time again. I can never decide if you are a fool or a plague.”
“I like to think I’m a person, sir,” Leah says tetchily. The Lord raises his eyes to look at her, but not his head.
“I don’t have the time to talk with you just now, not if we are to expect nearly seven hundred magically reinforced cavalry at our shore tomorrow morning. We will keep you in your usual quarters, until we have the time to deal with you – and triple guards this time, so we don’t have a repeat of your previous escape; we don’t have the manpower to spare to repair another set of bars. Captain?” The Lord gestures Meredith towards Leah.
“Thank you sir, but I have things to accomplish here,” Leah says.
The Lord tenses for a moment, then nods. “Of course you do. Of course.” He drops the missive and rubs both hands over his face. “Go. You’re dismissed, all of you.” Breathing deeply and pulling a coffee mug towards him, the Lord slumps at his desk while his office empties in a flurry. “Since I no longer seem to be in command here…” he mutters, and Leah cannot hear the last of it before Vivitha pulls her out and closes the door behind her.
“What in sanity’s sake were you thinking?” Meredith hisses at her, pulling her down the hallway. “You’re marked for dead here, by both sides!”
“Nice to see you too,” Leah says sarcastically, wishing she had kept her coffee mug. “Life’s been awful lately, how about you?”
“Oh, well, I haven’t bathed in three days, the only things left to eat in the keep are turnips and grain, the youngest member of my team is a prisoner of war if she’s even alive at all, and I’ve got to bring you back to jail again. How are things awful for you?”
“I had a dagger pierce through my arm, I found out my body sort-of died a month ago without my realising it, I tried to commit semi-suicide a few days ago, my mind is in the wrong body and I have no way of getting back home, I’m trapped in a war zone and I don’t know how to fight, and I forgot my coffee in the office of a man who wants me dead.”
Meredith stares at her blankly. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Leah smiles briefly. “By the way, my name’s fake Leah now.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I need to find Kimry, because she might know something about real Leah’s family.”
“What the fuck is she talking about?” Meredith turns to the other two as Leah sets off down the halls, looking for a servant’s passage.
“I couldn’t begin to explain it,” Vivitha says, turning to follow Leah, “But suffice to say, she’s definitely not under Seffon’s control, and she’s definitely not Leah.”
“How is she not – ” Meredith follows next, and then Iris, who is busy asking for the definition of a “semi-suicide.”
Leah finds a familiar false-door and ducks inside, jogging down the winding stairs. The servant’s passages are a rat-den, but she finds she remembers them well; even just thinking Kimry’s name guides her feet around the tight corners and forks in the path. She loses her followers, their calls getting more distant and echo-y until they stop entirely. Leah slows down, and continues the rest of the way at a walk.
She knocks on the door to Kimry’s quarters, but there is no answer. She pushes the door open slightly, and finds the tiny cubby dark and empty.
Continuing on, she reaches the kitchen. True to Meredith’s word, there is precious little to eat besides large bags of grain and turnips, with a few potatoes and carrots for variety. The cook looks up at Leah’s entry, brandishing a spoon, looking ready to beat off a hungry guard looking for an extra serving of breakfast.
Instead she freezes up, recognising Leah. Her grip on the spoon tightens but she does not swing or lower it.
“Is Kimry around?” Leah asks, not caring about subtlety or curious minds.
“The Nentish girl?” the cook mumbles, frowning. “Serving the night-shift guards. She’ll be down in a few minutes, so don’t go interrupting her in her tasks.”
Leah dashes back up and into the dining hall; the long table has been packed away, and a cluster of exhausted-looking guards sit on blankets on the ground, eating from bowls of porridge, drinking cups of water or thin coffee. At the far end of the hall, by the large fireplace, Kimry is tending a cauldron of boiling water.
Heads turn as Leah makes her way along the edge of the hall. Some guards reach for their weapons, but Leah does not even acknowledge them. Kimry is distracted, and does not notice Leah’s arrival until she is standing a few feet away.
The blonde woman’s face is drawn, and she wears a brown cloth wrapped around one arm like bandages, though Leah can see no blood. She looks up at Leah’s approach, and drops the ladle she is holding. The metal clangs across the stone floor, and all eyes turn to them.
“Kimry, I need your help,” Leah says.
Kimry stares, unbelieving. “How…”
“As soon as you can,” Leah says, reaching out to take her hand. “The rookery.”
Leah turns and leaves, going back the way she came. Kimry had tightened her grip on her hand for just a moment before letting her go, and Leah feels her heart flutter a bit.
It takes a bit longer for her to find the rookery. She keeps expecting to hear birdsong to help guide her way, but even standing outside the door she finds it silent.
Within, it is empty. A pair of falcons chirp at her, turning hooded heads blindly toward the warm air from the passage. A single messenger crow is left, from a fleet that Leah remembers as being at least ten strong. The songbirds were presumably all released at Jeno and Samson’s wedding.
Leah sits down on the bench and looks out the window, down at the keep spread out below. Guards are clustered at the tops of turrets, under turtle shells made of shields. The bridges are all crowded with activity, soldiers in Ben-Lia’s colours. Looking out over the city streets beyond, Leah can just faintly see soldiers walking along, passing from cluster to cluster. She can’t remember enough of the skyline to know if it has changed.
Within the courtyard, the training grounds are empty. Almost every soldier she sees is on duty, and those she sees at rest are sleeping on any open patch of dirt they can find. A servant passes from person to person, offering something to drink.
The gardens look lovely from above, varying shades of green with little stone paths sneaking through. Song birds call from the bushes, faint and muddled amidst the noise of horns blowing and arrows clattering off stone.
Leah looks to the source of the horns, and sees through another window a spot of movement on the mainland. The shapes move like horses, carrying riders. Leah wonders how Cheden could have gotten horses here so quickly – Do they tolerate being on ships? I guess they must, I mean they would have been brought on ships overseas to the Americas. How many could they possibly fit? I don’t see many, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t just elsewhere.
She reflects on the number she gave Lord Valerid – Baron? That must have been what Seffon meant, in the missive, but…anyway. Seven hundred mounted fighters against a whole army of only foot soldiers. Well, ‘whole army;’ I don’t actually know how many, and I can’t count from up here.
Eventually, Kimry arrives, out of breath and hair tousled. Leah stands to greet her and Kimry knocks her off her feet with a hug. The two of them tumble into the far wall, hands and elbows scratched and full of dirt in seconds. The nearby falcon shrieks crossly, its cage rattling where they’d knocked into it.
Kimry kisses Leah and does not let up. Leah lets it continue, a mounting feeling of guilt every second, mingling with the relief at finding Kimry safe and the dread of her reaction when Leah has said what she came to say.
When finally Kimry pulls away for air, Leah starts talking before another kiss can distract them. “I’ve been at Seffonshold. I found out what happened to my memory, and I think you might be able to help.”
“Anything,” Kimry says, pulling Leah over and sitting with her on the bench. “I’ve been wishing for your safety every night, if the Gods can even hear us in such far-off, awful places.”
“One of my team-members remembers a song, one I used to hum every night, apparently. We think it’s from Algi, and I hoped you might recognise it, and be able to say what it was.”
“Will it help you recover your memories?” Kimry asks, uncertain.
Leah bites her lip. “Kimry, I…my memories are gone, because…” She inches further away from Kimry. “I am not Leah. Something happened, and my mind is in her body, and her mind is…somewhere, possibly in my body. We don’t know for sure, and we don’t even know how it happened, but I’m hoping that there’s some clue in her past – ”
Kimry slaps her. A solid slap, Leah thinks through the shock. Kimry’s got a good arm on her.
“Kimry, I know this is strange, I know this is confusing. I’ve been living that confusion for a month now. I want to go home to my life, but I can’t do that if I don’t know why Leah’s mind and mine switched.”
“Na tiev Divouure da…da haik…” Kimry shakes her head, tears welling. “Die av Naikal!”
“Kimry, please,” Leah says, holding her hands out calmingly. Kimry rubs her lips on the back of her sleeve as though to clean them. “I need your help – ”
“Ieva dai hoeet,” Kimry spits back.
“Tabarnak, ta gueule et m’écoutez!” Leah snaps, and Kimry sits a bit straighter. “J’en ai assez d’choses qui vont mal dans ma vie, je’n’veux pas ajouter une autre. Please, listen.”
Kimry nods, though still shaken.
“I want to get the real Leah’s mind back in her body, and my mind in my body. It was some sort of magical mistake that did it, but we don’t know how to fix it. I’m hoping there might be some clue in Leah’s past that could explain how she ended up leaving her body.”
“Why do you think it’s even possible to fix it?”
Leah tenses up. “God, Kimry, can you realise how scary the past month has been for me? I had a family back home, I had an apartment of my own, I had a future, I had a career path. I had crushes on cute girls, and ex-girlfriends I cried over and still owe apologies to.” Leah’s breathing shakes. “I don’t want that to fade away and be replaced by…”
Leah gestures broadly, and Kimry looks around at the rookery, the sounds of occasional arrows flying outside, shouting at the gates, and horns blowing.
“And for some reason, I get these feelings in my gut. Impulses that I want to follow, things I think are important. I believe the real Leah guessed at some of what was happening, knew some of the missing pieces – and somehow, there’s a song that plays into all this.”
Kimry looks at her uncertainly, then nods. “Leah used to say…she thought something was wrong. She never said what, but she was so sure…okay. I’ll help if I can.”
Leah begins humming the song that Vivitha had hummed. She wishes she had paid more attention to Solace’s lyrics, but they were incomplete and in the wrong language anyway.
As she thinks this, she realises Kimry is singing along, very gently. “Hai da Davrou ieda daina / Lebroi Da kavatsed naida / Laivetta dobair ev houure…”
Leah stops humming. Kimry stops singing, her eyes watering slightly.
“You know it?”
“She escaped without me. I can’t believe she did it, she escaped without me.”