Their next move would be to actually travel across the bridge; then, they’d go down along the river and try to take out the Kuro forts on their way south. Should things go wrong, they’d make a retreat back to the Hiroki fort and go back on the defensive. Rei did what he could do to avoid that, even if it wasn’t much.

They moved in groups—the Sólstaðuric soldiers opted to stay outside, leaving Gin’s soldiers and all of the non-combat people to stay near the middle. It helped that Sólstaður’s forces roughly doubled Gin’s, considering their previous losses and the soldiers that remained on the other side of the bridge.

Rei would’ve tried to sightsee to keep his mind off of things, but there wasn’t much to look at; the border-river on one side, patches of trees on the other, walking down a somewhat-muddy road. He knew that his friends who had decided to fight were kept in the fort; Sorai tried again to give Rei the choice of staying behind, to no avail.

There were six forts along the river—if everything went well, it wouldn’t take much more than two weeks to walk through them. When most of the groups moved further ahead to start attacking the first fort, Rei stayed behind as per his parents’ requests. That left him to worry about things.

Kasper didn’t seem to stray very far; he was the one who tried to entertain conversation, scribbling on a piece of scrap paper Andreas had offered before he left.

“When do you want the campaign to be over?” Kasper asked, only looking up from his drawing for a second.

“July,” Rei replied simply, turning towards him. “Then Kyoumi won’t be stuck fighting on the day Taiyo left.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “You?”

“May, for a similar reason,” Kasper said simply. He frowned at his work, sighed, then carried on with a dissatisfied look. “Although considering it’s April now, that’s more of a distant hope. This could very well be the first year my father didn’t do anything for my mother’s birthday.”

Rei stopped what he had been doing earlier—reading a copy of Kinjo Asahi’s records of the first queen, mostly out of curiosity and since he brought it with him—and focused on the conversation. The Roken boy didn’t look to give quite the same attention, but his responses sounded interested enough.

“Is your father the sentimental type?” Rei asked curiously.

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“Not…necessarily,” Kasper replied evenly. “For him, it’s just how he honors her memory—the Roken family didn’t get her body, so maintaining the traditions he kept while including us kids is his way of keeping her alive. The whole reason we came to Gin at all was so me and Emelie could see why she left; ‘just a short trip to see Toru,’ apparently.”

Rei sighed. “It’s scenarios like those that make my family half as strange as it is. My mother doesn’t like to make promises, since they have a dangerous tendency to be broken.”

Kasper held out his drawing for a moment, scowled, and put it next to him. “I don’t blame her,” he said. “Gin’s family history seems…complicated. Keep in mind my uncle leads the Masaaki household, but the legends and stories aren’t quite flattering.”

“We don’t have the best record,” Rei agreed. “Plenty of rulers are theorized to have killed themselves, and there’s a history of migraines, ill thoughts, and some…questionable accounts about sanity.”

“I’m surprised you’re allowed to say it so casually,” Kasper noted, looking at Rei.

“It’s public knowledge,” Rei replied simply. “As far as I’m aware, we’re not trying to hide it—it just doesn’t always come up in general conversation.” He glanced at the book he brought with him, then back at Kasper. “Actually, if you’re curious, I brought some books with me—copies of the late ruler’s memoirs. Anything ‘sensitive’—as in, anything that could harm Gin, like a description of a fort’s layout or other secrets—has mostly been edited out. I have things written by First Queen Tsujihara Seiko’s husband, if you’re interested.”

“I do hear quite a bit of horror stories about Gin’s first queen,” Kasper mused with some interest. “Masaaki Sonoru—the first Masaaki to live in Kuro—wrote down some of his experiences with Tsujihara, passed down similarly to the ruler’s books. It would be interesting to see the differences.” He seemed to consider it for another moment, then frowned. “It’s…probably in Gin and Kuro’s traditional language though, huh?”

“Can’t read?” Rei guessed.

Kasper shook his head. “Not the traditional language and barely the modern one; Sólstaður’s trying to forget Kuro was ever there, which makes it a pain for people to get resources in different languages.”

“I know there are some copies in the shared language,” Rei said. “From there, I’m sure someone could translate it into Sólstaður’s native tongue. It wouldn’t be ‘official,’ but it’d be readable.”

“I’ll just have to make due with swapping stories,” Kasper decided. “Now that I’m thinking on it, I want to fact-check a few things that my uncle told me about the first queen. Mind entertaining conversation?”

“Not at all,” Rei replied.

The two continued chatting, talking for most of the time the others were battling. With enough daylight left, they continued traveling for a few hours once the battle ended. Fortunately, there weren’t a lot of casualties—once again, it seemed Kuro retreated after their general had been killed. Thanks to Sólstaður’s help, Gin didn’t lose as much soldiers; then again, they were running out of soldiers to lose in the first place.

It wouldn’t be very long until they were at the next fort.