Ari had just opened her mouth to ask who was being burned today when the chambermaids burst in and swarmed over her, tugging at her dress. She breathed in for five and out for ten. Soft movements. No punches. Pull that glare into a smile.

‘My lady, you need to eat your biscuits.’

~Ugh. Tell me, do you throw up when faced with gruesome sights?~

~That must be the one benefit of having you control my body. For once, I’d like to come across as calm and collected at a burning.~

‘Have you taken your medicine yet, my lady?’

‘Here you are, my lady.’

Lucy stuffed a round black lump into her mouth that felt like expired chewing gum.

‘Chew, my lady, chew, chew.’

A pinch of turmeric and a punch of ginger had been kneaded into the willow-bark bitter of the medicine. Ari tried to swallow it in one go, but bits of it stuck to her teeth.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

‘I brought you some pork pie. You need to eat, my lady.’

‘I hope you are feeling better, my lady.’

Patricia stuck a piece of pork pie into her mouth, which diluted the taste of the medicine, but ruined a good bit of the pie at the same time. Hadn’t there been an idiom she’d found when she was trying to connect with her roots, roots that must have stretched beyond the banks of the River Lea?

Good medicine tastes bitter, but it will improve your health; good advice sounds hurtful, but it will improve your character.

Someone come improve her character now, because she could really do with some good advice. She should have been crouching behind a truck in a high-security military base, but instead, here she was, staring down at the back of a chambermaid’s neck as she attempted to act as unwary of the sharpness of those pins as a normal young lady would. No, no one was going to press one into her eye instead of her silks.

For her own sanity, she ran through all the things she had to do, like the guide up above would when she was back in the real world.

===Mission: Return of the Child. Locate Miri and bring her back to her family.===

===Quest: Bonds of Friendship. Locate Agent Natalie Thomas. [Complete]===

===Quest: Reverse the Blue. Locate Agent Hannah Temple.===

===Quest: Second Lead. Talk to Tristram, no, Duke Taur at the port-side tavern of an unknown name.===

===Side Quest: Claribel’s Wardrobe. Change your outfit. [3/???]===

For the third time that day, the chambermaids pinned a richly embroidered front panel to her dress and adjusted a new set of ribbons and sleeves to match it. This time, the colour that was to accompany the blue silks was an ashen grey that bordered on black, yet on the ribbon, a splash of washed-out purple peeked through, showing a lone star-shaped sunflower.

~It’s bitter nightshade. I thought about using rosemary for remembrance or pansy to display my thoughts, but neither felt right. Bitter nightshade is supposed to protect us against the Creator’s magic, but it also means truth.~

‘You still seem a little… unwell, my lady,’ said Lucy, unclipping Ari’s earrings and necklace and fastening a new set of onyx ones cut into teardrops. ‘If you are not well enough to attend today’s ceremony, then I am sure the Church will understand. His Grace will be there. That will be enough.’

‘No, I must go. We have become used to the way that the Church bows to Her Grace in Aquilon. Today’s ceremony is a reminder that it no longer works like that elsewhere in Ventinon. If the Church wants to send us a message, we must show them that it has been received, and it is not my place to phrase them a response; my mother, Her Grace, will do so in due course. So today, I will be there. I must be there.’

*

Children scrubbed clean trailed after their parents, bobbing along in a sea of linen with a smattering of wool and leather. Tunics and hooded coats from rustic reds to summertime greens were neatly stitched at the sleeves and, at times, trimmed with lace. Several lobbed deformed paper aeroplanes at Ari, which was unlikely to be made from paper and could not be aeroplanes in the world she was in now. Sir Dagon’s squire promptly swept them up and placed them in the knight’s saddlebag.

As crowded as the streets were, it was a far cry from boarding the Central Line at rush hour.

‘Make way! Make way!’ The cries of desperate coachmen from other noble families echoed down the narrow lanes.

Duke Aquilon had made the wise decision of having his household travel by horseback all the way from Claribel’s manor, Wingshill House, to the centre of Eirene. Sir Beren and Sir Dagon made up the vanguard alongside Sir Irriforth: another new face and new name that Ari was sure to forget by tomorrow. Claribel had explained that the knight was her Marshal, as if that would in turn make Ari understand why he was bearing a blue flag depicting the eye-eating raven alongside a smaller flag with a four-pointed star that matched Claribel’s guild medallion.

Clip-clop. Clip-clop. The masses on foot turned their heads at the sound of hooves, gazes hovering momentarily on their flags, then sought out their faces one by one: Duke Aquilon, now draped in a cloak of blue and gold, fastened with a golden raven clasp over his armour; the lady whom they believed to be Lady Claribel, astride a brown horse that Claribel insisted was a chestnut palfrey called Steps – completely different from the brown horse that Duke Aquilon rode, as that was a blood-bay charger called Blood; lastly, before their party of four guards who brought up the rear, the Aquilon family’s fool, with her jingling hat tucked under her arm as a mark of respect.

Unlike the lessons that the Institute had taught her on using animals in desperate circumstances, where they’d had to mount a cow – for transport reasons – without a saddle, riding Steps felt like gliding. Steps trotted over the cobbled streets as if–

~She’s not trotting.~

~I said, she’s not trotting.~

~No, no, no. Look at her hooves. No no no no no, actually look ahead. You’re going to fall off! I told you Steps is a palfrey. They don’t trot. They amble. That’s what makes them so wonderful to ride.~

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

~But they do it with both hooves on the left, then both hooves on the right. Don’t you see? Look at father’s Blood. It’s doing diagonal hooves. That’s what you call a trot.~

Ari fought the urge to clutch her head. There they were, clipping and clopping right in front of her eyes. The only thing she’d noticed before was that Claribel’s palfrey had the same name as a 90s pop band. Why hadn’t she noticed the obvious?

~Yes.~

~Actually, he rides a destrier. It is taller than the others. Can’t you see? Blood’s ears reach River’s eye. How do you categorise horses where you’re from then?~

<… Shetland? Pony? Small and cute, or big and fast. Probably.>

It wasn’t easy to answer without her phone.

Smiles broke out at their approach, and many of the women waved at them enthusiastically. Their loud pretend-whispers reached her ears.

‘It really is the Duke! He’s as handsome as they say…’

‘Which Duke?’

‘The handsome one, you shit for brains. Do you think I’m talking about Duke Parime? Everyone knows he’s got a face sour enough to make your mouth pucker up like your arsehole.’

Clip-clop, clip-clop.

‘Ahhh… It’s Sir Dagon! It’s really Sir Dagon! Do you think his horse will step on me?’

‘Stop it, Edith. You’ll die.’

‘I’ll die happy. Don’t try to stop me.’

Clip-clop, clip-clop.

‘Look! Sir Beren’s looking at me. He’s looking at–’

‘He’s looking at the bloody cathedral, Bertha. You’re not near as wide as that, and your teeth don’t come near to looking as white.’

Clip-clop, clip-clop. Another family with no man in sight.

Together, they flowed downstream towards the Cathedral of Eirene, unmistakeable even to Ari, who’d never seen it before, because it was very wide and very white.

She counted ten main spires in this behemoth of a triangle that loomed over all neighbouring buildings, its only rival being a set of yellow-bricked towers peeking out from behind on its right. Yet the carvings within the spires looked like they were tatted from lace instead of carved from marble.

From the very top of the cathedral, a low-sounding horn blared out a mournful note. Another from behind them answered, perhaps from the manor they’d left behind: one among a choir of others.

She’d heard of something like that.

~You ring the church bells for death knells. The summoning horn calls for the Fated One’s loyal followers to the nearest cathedral. Someone from every family must go, no matter what family they are from.~

They turned a corner, and a gust of wind brought the salt air of the sea to them. The crowd gathered thicker here, now that the whole square was laid out beneath them. The sea sparkled behind the cathedral, and gulls circled the spires, leisurely calling out to each other. It would have been a nice day for a festival.

Instead, the black gates of the cathedral stood open, and a platform had been built in front of it. A golden carriage stood near the centre, within a clearing nearest to the platform where a circle of seats had been constructed out of wood.

A few puffs of colour already occupied the seats: other noble ladies in their opulent dresses, balancing on the narrow wooden seats they’d been squashed into, taking the prime, unobstructed view of a pole in the middle of a pile of wood that dominated the platform.

A scatter of guards held back the heaving crowd. Some of the guards were dressed in green and white over their suits of armour, while others, outnumbering the green guards two to one, wore white trimmed with gold. A jagged black circle that looked like an inverted sun decorated their capes.

~It’s a mouth, a symbol of the Fated One, may he savour us all.~

She thought she’d misheard before, but here it was again.

Mouths gaped at her from the capes that flapped in the wind, and more mouths stood empty and waiting from their shields. Mouths ushered them towards their seats, where the biggest of them all yawned at them from the carvings on the black gates to the cathedral, as tall as three men Sir Dagon’s size.

Duke Aquilon dismounted with a landing as soft as a gymnast’s, and offered her a hand for her to clamber off Steps. Nobles bobbed their heads at them as they passed, awkwardly rising from their makeshift seats.

As they approached the golden carriage, a lady in a red dress fixed Ari with a haughty smile. Her fur-lined sleeves trailed to the ground, and her intricate braids peeked through a hairnet littered with diamonds. She remained seated, and merely acknowledged them with a quick, ‘Your Grace, and my lady. I believe you are to be seated next to me.’

The lady’s face looked oddly familiar, but Claribel offered no answers this time, so Ari merely said ‘my lady’ in return and sat down.

‘Lady Oriana,’ said Duke Aquilon, taking his seat next to Ari as Sir Beren and Sir Dagon took up their positions to stand behind them, ‘has your father decided not to make his way to Eirene for the ceremony today?’

‘His Grace is preoccupied with matters of Auster. A Duchy does not run itself, as I am sure Her Grace Duchess Aquilon understands,’ said Lady Oriana, not sparing a single glance for Sir Beren or Sir Dagon, though Sir Beren had been so sure of his charm just this morning. ‘He will come for the tournament, as he has been summoned by His Majesty to do so, but he does not have the luxury of taking weeks and months away from his Duchy to attend the roasting of a Khurammian and play at being a knight. I am enough to represent House Auster today.’

‘I know of His Grace’s business,’ said Duke Aquilon. ‘I was with him discussing the matters of the mana stone mines just last month.’

‘And you were last in your own Duchy… how long ago exactly?’

It was a good thing that she was sandwiched between Lady Oriana and Duke Aquilon, because she could use Claribel’s skills at small talk to steer the conversation from certain disaster. She poked at Claribel.

And poked again.

Why nothing now?

She went for the tried and tested method of insulting her father to see something, anything within Claribel’s mind.

And there went a flash gushing out from Claribel’s heart with a blend of hot red… hatred? Lady Oriana’s face, hair tousled and wild – oh, the milkmaid from the last vision – faded next to the face of a man in the green and white guard uniform, back turned to Claribel, holding a lady in his arms, whose hair glinted gold in the sun.

~They’re definitely not like that!~

~Did you… did you provoke me?~

~I just…~

Was lost in thoughts when Lady Oriana lobbed grenades at Duke Aquilon over her head? But that wasn’t what today was about. She felt Claribel shudder at the kindling on the platform: something deeper than a fear of burning.

~Lady Malory. Sister to Duke Taur. That’s Tristram to you.~

Ari discarded the thought of testing out her portal-near-Eirene theory and asking Claribel to scream into the crowd to see if anyone would notice, if anyone would mark themselves out as members of the real world.

~If I say yes, what will you do? Magically make her invisible so they can’t find her and drag her out here? Stop time and extract her from this mess? By the way, those types of magic don’t exist. Or are you going to overpower the Royal Guards and the Holy Army by yourself? Or even better, should you have broken her out of the cathedral’s dungeons yesterday, or the day before, and have her evade capture forever? Even if you could, how do you know it’s still Lady Malory in that body? How? Because Fabia’s gone, isn’t she? There’s only your friend left.~

There it was. The truth: a thing that Claribel took such pains to symbolise with her choice of clothing. Bitter nightshade. Her and Claribel, this was no symbiosis; Ari was a parasite, sucking away at the host’s understanding of this world, tucking away nuggets of knowledge, waiting for the day when the host would become disposable.

Horns blared from the gates of the cathedral. Ari instinctively reached for her boots, where her razorblade used to be.

At the signal, two figures stepped out of the golden carriage: a baby-faced man with hair that rivalled the gold of his crown, draped in a golden cloak too big for his shoulders, and a woman who held herself with the poise of a dancer. She floated onto the stage, faintly glowing, arm tucked into his, commanding attention.

Ari didn’t need to check for the platinum hair, cherry lips or violet eyes to know that she was in the presence of the main character. Rosalind. The love of Leolin’s life.

The crowd cheered, hooted, waved.

This time, Lady Oriana rose to her feet too, and bowed deeply to the King and Queen.

The horns blared once more, followed by a fanfare of something that looked like giant trumpets.

A man walked out of the black cathedral gates, dressed in a robe of mulberry purple and gold. His close-cropped hair was tucked away under a simple black hat. Though there were smile lines etched into his face, he took a dead-eyed glance at the King and Queen, and received their bows.

Four Holy Guards with white feathers on their helms trailed in behind him and took their places by his side, letting the royals step to the back of the stage. The man raised his hands, and the crowd hushed at once.

~You want important knowledge? Remember well: that is Cardinal Octavus, the most powerful man in Eirene.~