“That was significantly more terrible than I thought it would be.” I said. “And I even knew you were lying.”
I laid against the deck of the Of Sombre Tide, reflecting on the battle behind. Andril stood a few metres away towards the bow with his officers and Captain Gelarin, and a tired looking Amelia stood by his side. Andril had looked most surprised to see her come aboard after the battle, though I couldn’t tell if that had been because he’d suspected her dead or he’d simply forgotten about her. For my amusement I hoped it was the latter, and my empathy the former.
On the other side of me sat Gideon, or rather a childish drake that sometimes pretended to be him. He turned his head away from me.
“You can’t exactly blame me, it’s not like I was trying to get aboard.” I said, tactically avoiding the word ‘captured’. “And it worked out well, didn’t it? Got two ships! Highest count in the fleet. Probably a world record, in fact.”
He jerked his snout even further away to gaze at the other ships, and I sighed. It’d been two days since the battle and he still refused to speak to me unless it was necessary. He always made sure to stay by me, of course, to let me know that he was pointedly refusing me and not doing it by accident. All the pleading in the world wouldn’t please him when he was like this, and though this particular spell had gone on longer than most I was determined to not be fazed. The perfect counterspell to pettiness was an equal and opposite amount of stubborness.
Though it was quite lonely without another Earthling to talk to. The soldiers didn’t exactly treat me as an equal, and the nobles were always of few words. Nor could I talk to the prince, because speaking to Andril was irritating and slightly confusing at the best of times. Even Captain Gelarin and his nephew were strange about it, and besides the initial shouting match between him and Andril over the shields he’d been reverential and just a little depressing.
More than anything, I found myself missing the twins and Auro. I’d been gone for over a week since I last met up with them, and even the twin’s arguing was preferable to the quality of conversation here.
It disturbed me just a little that I thought of them now as close friends, because I knew that the day of our permanent estrangement could potentially not be far off. One day in the coming few weeks I would simply walk away to Fangpeak, only for Saphry faln Astrian to return. And she of course would have no ties to them; she had no memories of battles, of their jokes, or of the times we spent waiting around the training room or sleeping on freezing bumpy wagons. Perhaps she wouldn’t even get the memory transfers I’d had when I arrived, and their friendship would be permanently severed. I found myself almost feeling worse for the others than I did Saphry.
After all, I knew Saphry. I’d seen her read, and laze around, and dream. I’d walked in her room, read her books, and lived her life, and I knew she would be alright in the long run. She would return to the academy frightened and overwhelmed, or go back to Andorlin and try to pretend it had all never happened. Silst would help, and Summark was politically stable enough to resist sending her to trial if Andril ended up losing anyway, something which sounded more likely as time went on.
But if I really thought about it, was I really that important to the others? We’d gone through some trials, yes, but they spent more time at the academy than with me. All three of them probably didn’t even think of me nearly as much as I did of them. The twins were fine serving their father in Cice, and Auro probably only came down once each week to keep up appearances. They wouldn’t mourn a loss like me too much.
I nodded to myself.
That meant I could leave without regret, right? I didn’t have to worry about someone else’s feelings before I went. Memory was a short and fickle thing, and the bonds of friendship broke with enough distance. They would be fine. They had to be.
“Saphry?” Amelia asked.
Looking up, I found the noble officers were leaving just Amelia and Andril, and the former was motioning for me to join them. Having nothing better to do, I pushed myself off the deck and walked over. Gideon plodded behind me for a few steps before taking to the air. I rolled my eyes as he landed on Andril’s head.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I always wonder when you’ll pick up a polite greeting.” Andril said.
“I seem to recall rejecting that lesson.”
“I seem to recall you ignored it.” Amelia said.
“Is that not a polite rejection?”
Andril chuckled softly.
“I suppose it is. But why are you just laying on the deck?” Andril asked. “Officers have called it immodest.”
I blinked in confusion.
Immodest? Lying on the ground? I could see it looking like I was homeless, or maybe like I was crazy, but immodest? Where the hell were they pulling that from?
“Well I would sit on a chair, but those have mysteriously disappeared recently.” I gestured blithely to the other ships.
After the battle, we’d been forced to scavenge some of the wrecks and tear apart the furniture to patch up some of the salvageable ships, though I still wasn’t exactly sure how chair legs were supposed to float a ship. Still, beside us in a tight pod we had a count of twelve ships among us. That was far better than I had feared after that battle.
And so, we had no chairs. Only the bunks had been saved from the carpenter’s hands, and only because it was too cold to sleep on the top deck.
A dark expression flashed over Andril’s face as he beheld the fleet again, but it passed within a moment.
“Ah, of course. But that brings me to what we wanted to talk about.” The prince said. “I have rethought it, and I have concluded that you were correct. I cannot win this war without the help of the other duchies.”
Amelia and Gelarin both looked as though they wanted to inject some biting comment, and it came to my mind that this decision was probably not made because of me at all. The Mistren had always seemed like the diplomatic type, and she’d probably been more insistant on rallying the other dukes than even I, and Gelarin had obviously come up with a strong opinion after the latest battle. But it was only after witnessing the carnage himself that Andril had finally seen the danger.
“Did the battle not go as expected?” I asked quietly.
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Gelarin chuckled darkly.
“To agree would be an understatement.” Andril said. “It was foolish, but I had expected that our force’s cause and purpose might inspire actions beyond our number. That we would not have to risk the pains my father and the Burgund faced. But to win in this situation would be impossible.”
The prince gestured to the other ships in the fleet again. All of them flew the flags and banners of Minua.
“And I had hoped that I might convince some of my errant subjects of my righteousness after the battle. That… did not happen.”
I grimaced. I’d barely been lucid for the last part of the battle, but from the soldiers I had heard of what Andril had tried to do. Unfortunately, not a single Ostiper ship had crossed the lines, nor had more than a small handful of captured prisoners pledged themselves to Andril’s cause. His offer had fallen on deaf ears.
Amelia placed a hand on her fiance’s shoulder.
“It was never to be.” She said. “I have no doubt the senate has weaved countless lies about you in the last months. It will take more than a single speech to change that.”
“The Ostipers have always been the treasonous sort.” Gelarin agreed. “How could they not see the stars in your brow? The kindness in Lady Astrian’s?”
I suppressed a sudden desire to whistle nervously. Of course, I had very little memory of whatever had happened after I’d smashed through the signalling office, and this bastard of a prince hadn’t seen fit to sober me up until after the battle was already won. Andril himself had been light on the details, but from what I could gather from the soldiers he just ‘spoke’ to the Ostipers and I summoned some birds and they all the enemy went home. That didn’t make any sense to me, but the story had been fairly consistent so far so I had little choice but to believe it. I could only hope I didn’t get any embarrassing reputation from it.
“Of course, of course, I see that now. They were the ones who started the rebellion against my father all those years ago. It just makes me all the more-” Andril paused. “But nevermind all that. We were talking about Fangpeak.”
For some reason, I found my eyes drawn to the hand on his shoulder, and a strange feeling welled up inside me. But just as quickly as it had come, I pushed it out of my mind.
“And so you’ll send me?” I asked, eager to change the subject. “When do you think I can leave?”
“Leave? We haven’t even gotten back yet!” Andril said. “There have been horrors in the last few days, would it not be best for you to stay and practise for some weeks more?”
“So you are sending me!” I grinned. “And while I won’t correct you on the ‘horrors’ thing… I also don’t think we really have the time to wait any more. Besides, there’s not much better for the psyche than a stroll through the forest.”
“Nor do we have the luxury of time.” Amelia added. “Fangpeak and perhaps Fanula must be ours before the end of winter, and Fanula hovers on the knife’s edge. With Mistre on our side to their west, an allied Fangpeak on their north might be just the coin that balances the scale. We must make haste.”
I blinked in surprise.
Amelia was agreeing with me? Had I dimension shifted again? The drake must’ve brewed something in my sleep, because I was pretty sure she disliked me just as much as I did her. She must’ve felt strongly about this.
Andril looked between Amelia and me.
“I fail to understand how the two of you continue to shrug off events that would hobble the average lady. Could it be that you are both secretly men in disguise?”
I snorted.
“I’ve always thought I’ve had a little boyishness. It’s part of my charm, I think.”
Gelarin frowned at that, as if he thought of something strange.
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Andril said. “But I suppose a part of nothing is still nothing.”
I resisted the urge to pull out my wand and start casting. Amelia cleared her throat, and Andril nodded in acknowledgement.
“I suppose you can leave as soon as we have assembled the diplomatic team then.” Andril said. “That might take a few days, but you will need that time to get supplies together anyway.”
“Diplomatic team? Is Silst and I not enough?”
It made sense now that he said it, but I hadn’t been thinking of him sending a team before. Silst and I wanted to search for skysteel in the mountains, after all, and having more people than necessary was certain to obstruct that. We wouldn’t be able to search the village markets and towns for it if we had bodyguards or other nobles steering us straight to the capital and back. In fact, that might end up being worse than if we hadn't gone at all.
Wait, Gideon and I. Gideon. Gid… eh, did it really matter if I knew who I was talking about?
“Now I know you’re insane.” Andril said. “What could’ve made you believe I would send you by yourself to the most isolated and depopulated duchy in the middle of winter while we lie at war? How many casualties did you think we took that we can’t spare a couple dozen for a task as important as this?”
“Nor would such a path be safe!” Gelarin cried. “I still don’t think you should go. The Markee and your brother were worried sick about you, and they hadn’t even known about what you’d done since! If it wasn’t for the prince, why I’d…”
“You cannot take her now.” Andril interrupted. “She’s too important now. Lord Astrian would understand.”
“No, Lord Astrian would demand she be taken home as soon as possible.” He shook is head. “Lady Astrian is kind, but it’s obvious some kind of change happened while she was in the capital. You and Marcolo have placed reckless ideas in her head, and turned her from her normally soft-spoken self. And this is too far! War is the domain of her brother and father, not for someone like her.”
Suddenly, I understood why he’d looked so confused every time I talked to him in the last few days. He’d known Saphry before I’d taken over! Hadn’t Corto said as much in his letter? How could I have forgotten?
“If she is changed, it was before I properly met her.” Andril argued. “And it certainly isn’t to the loss of Verol! She has felled demon and ship with more bravery than one would expect from looking at her.”
Gelarin crossed his arms.
“And is that not strange? I’ll admit, our girls in Summark are not the court scions of the west, but to have her actually wield a weapon? Only Cice would be so queer. So what did you-”
“I am right here, you know.” I interrupted. “Can’t I speak for myself?”
Gelarin and the prince both looked at me, and Andril started chuckling.
“I… I apologise, my lady.” Gelarin said, embarrassed. “The girl I met in Andorlin would not have offered much.”
I nodded in acknowledgement.
Thankfully, it sounded like it had been quite a while since Gelarin had seen Saphry, so it wouldn’t be too hard to explain the change in attitude. Hopefully the same was true of her brother and father too, but really an even better strategy would be avoiding them as long as possible. Them and Marcolo would be the only ones who were likely to get worried at the change in attitude, so I needed time to justify the change, or maybe just until I could go and give them their daughter back.
“I’ve simply found a good cause.” I lied. “The Star has blessed me with a gift, and I found that while helping Prince Andril and by extension all of Verol. Would it not be treasonous to turn my back now? Heretical, even? That’s why I can’t return to Andorlin. Not until Verol is secure.”
Gelarin looked away, chastened, and Andril nodded appreciatively.
“And with that out of the way…” The prince said. “We return to your escort. It will require a couple dozen, of course.”
I sighed.
“Dozens? Really? Are we asking for help or invading them?” I shook my head. “Come on, if we need a group for safety from trees and a spot of snow, at least let me pick the group.”
“Luis, Roland, Hosi, the Belvan, Fredrick and his sister?” Andril guessed.
I nodded enthusiastically.
“Exactly! Well, maybe not Hosi, she only has the one arm now, and”
“Everyone besides Hosi and Fredrick are liabilities on that list.” Andril said. “Not to mention, none of them besides maybe Fredrick have any experience in diplomacy. This isn’t a country trip, Saphry.”
I frowned. I knew that wasn’t true, that thing about them being liabilities. Before the last month or so, I would’ve no doubt agreed with him, but the twins and Hosi had given a lot of effort to form the basis of a competent fighter in each of us. Luis, Roland, and Auro wouldn’t be beating professional soldiers one on one, not yet, but even I could tell that we had picked it all up quickly. If we were all transported back to that chamber under the capital again, it probably would’ve gone very differently.
And why was he singling out Hosi and Fredrick, anyway? Wasn’t he forgetting someone?
“If Fredrick has experience, shouldn’t Breale have it as well?” I asked. “I’m fairly sure they’ve done the same things as each other for years at this point.”
“Bre…?” He looked momentarily confused. “Don’t dodge the main point. I’ll be picking the group among Duke Belvan’s more gregarious vassals. You’ll be there as support.”
Support? I supposed that fit my purposes more than being an actual diplomat. I didn’t have any experience in the role anyway, so it was probably for the better.
Still, the thought of leaving everyone behind saddened me. What kind of person just abandoned their friends to sit in school while you went off on forest adventures with a bunch of snobby diplomats? The least I could do was vouch for them. They could always decline it if they didn’t want to.
“Would it be possible to have them go as well, though?” I asked. “Not by ourselves, but at least Auro and the twins would be fine. Auro’s Duke Belvan’s daughter, right? Shouldn’t she be getting some experience with stuff like this? And the twins are my subjects! They’re basically my retainers, so of course I’d want to bring them. You wouldn’t begrudge me that, would you?”
It was a bit of a stretch, but Andril looked to think about it for a moment. He glanced towards Amelia, but she only shrugged. Finally, he turned back around.
“Fine. But only them. And the Duke’s daughter only if Lord Belvan will release her. I have no say in that.”
I pumped a fist into the air, drawing an eye of disapproval from Amelia.
“Perfect. I’ll bring your word to Fangpeak.” I said with a smile. “Even if it’s the last thing I do in Elys.”