“For what it’s worth, I’ve imprinted the word also,” Valtteri admitted. “But I wanted you to focus on mastering Cel before you go off to Coral Bay. No distractions. And I knew the moment I mentioned Dā, it would be a distraction.”

“But how does it even work?” Liv asked, turning away from her father and leaning over the table toward her grandmother. By this point, her food was the last thing on her mind.

“It is exceedingly complicated, dangerous, exorbitantly expensive in terms of mana, and a shadow of what it was before the death of the Vædim,” Eila said. “But you’re already familiar with one use. The cold storage enchantments we sell to the human trading guilds are layered with an additional set of sigils that use Dā to alter the way items stored inside those chests and barrels experience the passage of time, slowing their degradation. We’ve never told that to the guilds, however.”

“It’s one of the reasons we waited as long as we did to license those enchantments,” Liv’s grandfather said. “Fear of what the humans would do if they knew about that particular brand of magic. But finally, practicality won out.” He waved his hand at the ice around them. “You’ve seen this environment, Livara. We don’t have the kind of natural resources of the southlands. We can’t grow crops this far north, or mine. The only reason we live here is to do our duty and watch over that rift. The gold we earn from that license allows us to import wood, cloth, food...”

“And my relatives aren’t in much better shape,” Eila added. “The death of Däivi was incredibly destructive. It devastated the surrounding area, as well as reducing our word of power to a shell of what it once was. Even now, the rift left behind is second only to Godsgrave in terms of how dangerous it is.”

“We accept the funds, and then quietly transfer a share of them to House Däivi, keeping their involvement a secret,” Liv’s father continued.

“A secret?” Liv looked between the three of them. “I’m surprised you told me.”

“You’re our granddaughter," Auris said. “Descended from both houses. If anyone deserves to know, it is you.”

“But I’m not teaching you!” Eila warned, raising a finger in front of her face to warn off any complaint or whining. “It’s far too easy to kill yourself with it. I like this plan of you learning everything the mage guild can teach you. Perhaps in a decade or two, when you’ve gained enough experience and confidence, we’ll come back to it. Until then, put it out of your mind.”

“You can’t just leave it at that,” Liv urged. “You have to at least show me how it works.”

“That response proves that I was correct not to tell you,” her father pointed out. “Your grandmother has just explained how dangerous and difficult this magic is - do not treat it like a new toy.”

“Hush, Val,” Eila said. “You were even worse. Besides, I’m permitted to spoil my only grandchild. Is there something of yours that you left home, Livara, that you would recognize? Something special to you, or unique, perhaps, that could not possibly be duplicated? Some object you would recognize in an instant?”

Liv thought about it for a moment. “Rosie,” she decided. “My rag-doll. I’ve had her for as long as I can remember, since I was a little girl. Mama had to patch her up more than once.”

“And you’re certain you didn’t bring your doll?”

“Absolutely,” Liv said. “Father said coming was dangerous, so I left her behind. Not that she does much more than sit by my pillow these days, anyway.”

“Go up to your room and look through your things,” her grandmother said, with a smile on her lips. “Look thoroughly.”

Liv pushed her chair back, turned, and headed for the stairs. Behind her, she heard another chair move, and turned back to see her father following her. Eila, in the meanwhile, was muttering quietly under her breath, eyes closed.

When she reached her room, Liv dug through the saddle bags she’d brought, while her father waited in the open doorway, leaning on the wooden frame with his arms crossed. At the bottom of the second saddle bag she opened, Liv found her girlhood doll.

“How?” she exclaimed, picking Rosie up and turning to her father. “I remember sitting her up on my pillow before I left the room.”

“Do you?” Valtteri said. “Think back, now.”

Liv felt a wave of vertigo come over her, and swayed on her feet. She remembered leaving the rag-doll on her bed, but she also remembered a last minute decision to stuff her into the saddle bag.

“My mother has caused you to have packed the doll this morning,” Liv’s father said. “The experience of holding two contradictory memories can be a bit sickening, so I would suggest you don’t dwell on it. I want to take you down to the armory, not put you to bed with an upset stomach.”

Liv closed her eyes, practiced her breathing, and waited for the moment to pass. When she was able to, she walked over to her bed and put Rosie on the pillow, in the doll’s accustomed place. “Could she have caused me to decide not to come, if I had been mauled by wolves?” she asked.

“This was a small change,” Valtteri said. “And I doubt you’ll see your grandmother all morning, as a result. She’ll be exhausted and lying down in her rooms. To do something like what you’re suggesting is beyond the power of anyone but the Vædim, and they’re gone. It’s one of the reasons Däivi was targeted so early in the war, from what I understand, and why he proved so difficult to kill. Come along.”

Liv followed her father through the icy halls of Kelthelis. “Why are we going to the armory?” she asked.

“To have you fitted,” he answered. “I spoke to Mistress Trafford. She thinks you’ve had your last growth spurt.”

“I still might get another inch or so!” Liv protested, as they walked back down the stairs. She’d only just that year reached the five foot mark, and didn’t even weigh eight stone.

Her father chuckled. “Perhaps, but girls often finish growing younger than boys, in my experience. I suspect you’re going to have to be happy with what you have.” He led her to a part of the palace she hadn’t seen before - not that she knew much of the place at all, yet. It had the look of a sort of barracks, and as they passed an open doorway, Liv noticed a pair of guards stripping off their armor.

“If I’d had the right food when I was younger, I wouldn’t be so small,” Liv complained. “Maybe when I learn Dā, I’ll fix that.”

Her father laughed, and led her through an open door set with a great metal lock. Inside, a woman with broad shoulders and burly arms waited near a bench in the center of the room. Along all four walls, armor stands held intricately tooled and stamped sets of boiled leather armor. “This is Kaija, our resident armorer, and your second cousin several times removed-”

“Four times, I believe,” the woman said. She reached out a hand, and Liv clasped her arm in the fashion of the eld. “Off with you then, Val. I’ll get her measured.”

“I’m not certain that I need armor,” Liv began, but found herself interrupted as easily as her father had been.

“Nonsense,” Kaija said. “I’ve heard about some of the trouble you’ve gotten up to. Your father may be silly enough to travel the shoals without protection, but rust it if I let you do the same. Now strip.” When Liv hesitated, the gruff woman only laughed. “You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before. Go on now!”

☙

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The strangest thing about the far north was that the sun never set during the entire time Liv was there. It dipped close to the horizon, but the closest to night she experienced was a sort of lingering twilight. If it hadn’t been for the heavy curtains she could close around her bed to block out the light, Liv wasn’t certain how she could have possibly slept through it.

Over the days that followed her arrival, Liv ate every meal with her grandparents and father; after that first meal, the table was often filled with extended relatives, as well, though she struggled to keep track of everyone - and sometimes even to talk to them. Not everyone spoke Lucanian, and Liv’s knowledge of Vædic was of limited utility when she was confronted with the Vakansa dialect. Practice with her father meant she could generally make herself understood when she needed to, but it was still a struggle.

One of the people who was fluent in Lucanian was Kaija, the armorer, who Liv saw on several occasions. She even began to grow fond of the woman’s gruff manner. Liv couldn’t see how a set of armor would possibly be finished before she left, but every day the fittings were further along.

In between meals, Liv continued her lessons with her father, though her grandfather now joined in, as well. Auris Ka Syvä’s skill with their family’s magic was simply astounding to Liv: he spent an afternoon demonstrating to her how to control the weather by heating and cooling masses of air in the sky above. As the hours passed, he called wind, summoned clouds, and set a light snowfall into motion. Her grandfather’s explanations made her head hurt.

“The trick is to cool a great amount of air, and then move it in so that it pushes the warmer air up, displacing it,” Auris told her, with a grin. “This is all far beyond you right now, but I wanted you to see the possibilities.” Liv grinned, stuck her tongue out, and caught a snowflake.

On several afternoons, she went out with a hunting party, and learned to track the caribou that made their home this far north. They were like the mule deer she knew in many ways, but adapted to survive in incredibly harsh conditions. Liv found it as satisfying as ever to bring food back for a meal, and the night after her last hunt she spent bothering the cooks to learn recipes she’d never experienced before coming.

And, true to her word, Kaija had a set of leather armor waiting for Liv on the morning that she and her father were to depart. “It needs to be oiled regularly,” the armorer warned her. “Bring it with you next summer when you come back, so I can see to it.”

“What do the enchantments do?” Liv asked, turning a shaped vambrace of caribou hide over in her hands. Vædic sigils were tooled into the hard leather, which had been stained so pale it was almost white, and there was a small plate of steel riveted to the inside chest. The buckles and rivets were of steel, and the edges of the piece were rounded and smooth.

“There are two enchantments,” Kaija said, “and it's the same for every piece. The first keeps the temperature of the individual pieces constant. Spend your time sweating in the southlands, and it’ll feel cool compared to the air around you. Wear it up here, and it’ll feel warm.”

“I like that,” Liv said, with a grin. “And the second?”

“An inscription using Ract,” the armorer explained. “It’ll clot your blood quickly, stop the bleeding from a wound. It won’t actually heal you, mind, but it should keep you alive long enough to get to a chirurgeon. Here, let me show you how to get it all on.”

The set of white boiled leather was nothing like the jack of plate that Baron Henry’s guards wore at Castle Whitehill. That was, in appearance, essentially a kind of doublet, with plates of steel sewn in between the layers of fabric. Liv’s new armor was designed to be worn over a dress.

There was a cuirass, in shape much like a bodice with attached faulds at the bottom, that buckled into a backplate. Pauldrons strapped on to those, and covered her shoulders, with two smaller spaulders that descended from them to protect her upper arms. The vambraces extended from her wrists to just below Liv’s elbows, while a skirt of stiff leather pieces, long and pointed, covered the upper part of her legs. For her shins, there were greaves that easily buckled over her wool stockings. Finally, there was a leather helm that covered most of her head, with a nosepiece and cheek guards, but left her eyes and mouth open for ease of casting. It had been decorated with a crest of white horse-hair.

Once the entire set was on, Liv felt both weighed down and strangely supported: the leather pieces were stiff, which Kaija explained was exactly how they were supposed to feel. “The point here is not for you to go wading into the middle of a battle, so don’t try it,” Liv’s distant cousin explained. “Your father told me you’re the sort of person who fights from a distance, so I designed most of this to be pieces you could wear over your everyday clothes, when you need to.”

“It’ll turn aside a glancing cut, but don’t count on it stopping a crossbow bolt. I’ve reinforced it with a bit of steel over your heart,” Kaija continued. She thumped the cuirass over Liv’s chest. Somewhat selfishly, Liv wished the older woman might have worked the shape to emphasize her modest bust a bit more. “Really, you shouldn’t be putting yourself in a position where you need all this, if you’re going to be sitting in back and casting.”

“Thank you,” Liv said. “Truly. I don’t know when I’ll actually use it, other than travelling here and back, but it’s beautiful. I love it.”

“If you never use it, I’ll be all the happier, but I doubt that will happen. When it gets damaged, bring it back to me, no one else,” Kaija chided her, and Liv nodded to show she understood.

☙

The trip back along the outskirts of the Tomb of Celris was easier than the journey in - not because they faced less danger, but simply because Liv and her father weren’t dropped into it instantly, and because they didn’t go alone.

Half a dozen of the hunters Liv had spent a few afternoons with rode along to the shoals, and with spear and bow they bought enough time for the waystone to be activated. When Liv found herself once again in the warm morning air of the Aspen Valley, she was grateful to be wearing her new armor, which immediately felt cool rather than warm. She tore off her heavy winter cloak and bundled it up before remounting Steria.

“Will they be able to get back alright?” Liv asked her father. They turned the two northern horses away from the waystone and back toward the mine road that ran south to Whitehill.

“They’re all veteran hunters,” Valtteri assured her. “They know what they’re doing. Let’s get you back to your mother before she begins to worry.”

As wonderful as it had been to meet her grandparents and see her father’s home, Liv also found that she was incredibly relieved to return to Whitehill. She had enthusiastic hugs from her mother, Gretta, and Duchess Julianne, and later that afternoon from Emma as well.

Liv made the journey with her father each year after that, visiting Kelthelis four times in total before the year she was to leave for Coral Bay. It was the most time she’d ever spent anywhere other than the Aspen River Valley, and the far north began to feel familiar to her. Not home, precisely, but somewhere comfortable all the same.

Creating adamant ice never got easier for her, but, as Master Grenfell told Liv, that was what practice was for. From creating spheres, she progressed to using the technique in her walls of ice. After she’d mastered that, she began to work on using it to make a sword that wouldn’t break during a fight. Every step of the process was exhausting and frustrating, taking months of practice before she felt like she made any progress at all. Nevertheless, by the time harvest season of her final year at Whitehill approached, Liv was able to shape needle-thin, dense shards of ice that could pierce jack of plate as easily as a crossbow bolt.

News came to her from the outside world in the form of letters, exchanged with the friends she’d made during her brief time at Freeport. Sidonie and Cade went to Coral Bay two years before Liv, and the pangs of jealousy that fact brought on were nearly unbearable. Matthew and Beatrice had finished their time at Coral Bay before she’d ever even gone, and Liv would only have two years with anyone at all that she knew.

Triss wrote that she’d determined to join the guild, and left the college as a journeyman with the intent of earning her rank as a full mage. Her older brothers left her father more than enough heirs to inherit the barony anyway, she confided to Liv in her letters.

Matthew went with her, and it became difficult to get letters to and from the pair as they journeyed the kingdom aiding culling teams at one eruption after another. While he hadn’t joined the guild like Triss had, no one would turn away one more hand during an eruption.

Julianne was only slightly mollified at her son’s failure to return to Whitehill when he wrote that he’d requested - and received - permission to wed Beatrice from her father. The date was arranged for the end of harvest season, so that Liv could attend before leaving for Coral Bay.

“I’m surprised they’re not coming in by the waystone,” Liv grumbled at the breakfast table, nearly exactly six years since she’d accompanied the Summersetts to Freeport. Her father had been right, it turned out: she hadn’t grown another inch since the first trip north to Kelthelis.

“Your sense of scale is ruined,” Master Grenfell remarked, “by all the time you’ve spent up north. Two human mages is rarely enough to activate a waystone.” The court mage’s hair was nearly entirely gray now, and thinning.

“I suppose it’s a good enough excuse for a day’s riding,” Liv decided. Her father had made a trip back to Kelthelis, supposedly to get a gift for the wedding, so she had free time.

“Bring a few of the guards with you,” Duchess Julianne told her. “The last time you went to that inn didn’t go so well.”

“I’m not a child anymore,” Liv told her, and pushed her plate aside. “But if it will make you feel better, that’s fine. It’ll give them time to get Steria saddled, anyway. I’ll have them back here by dinner.”

Half a bell later, Liv rode out of the city gates, trailed by Piers and Tobias. It was a warm day, the sun was bright, and the mountains cradled the valley like a mother’s arms. Once Steria had splashed through the river at Fairford, Liv gave the mare her head. She couldn’t help but laugh as the wind whipped back her hair.

It was good weather for a wedding.