Margo didn't appear to be home when Aelia returned, and Samual was locked fast away in his study. Aelia pushed her ear against the grainy walnut door and listened to the clinks and clank and occasional swears that leaped energetically from the frustrated inventor's mouth. The swearing was as at least as inventive as anything else Samuel created, and Aelia had to stifle a laugh at "Demon God of Breast Cogs!"

She took her ear away and walked into the kitchen.

Most of her day had been whittled away in center of Rhodes, exploring side-streets with their little shops and their many taverns. This way, she was able to keep the Church of the Transformation always in sight (looming as it did above all the houses), and never need to worry about becoming lost. But exploration had only been a part of the reason for wasting the hours; she'd couldn't have gone straight home without giving away her failure at the Academy. "Only there an hour?" Margo would ask suspiciously. And Aelia would have to lie her way out of that and deepen the hole she'd already dug.

There would be lies anyway, of course. Answers to "What did you get up to there today? Isn't it all a bit stuffy there? Do you like it much? What did you eat for lunch?" But those lies would be easier for her to construct.

Mostly, she hated the lying and saw it only as a necessary evil, so that Margo didn't worry (both about getting her rent in the future and about Aelia herself). But Aelia, if being truthful to herself, would have had to admit there was a nugget of pleasure mingled in. The fun of creating this second persona. During the day she had thrice found herself idly wondering what else she could add. Perhaps lie-Aelia could have a suitor, and she could gossip with Margo late into the night about his wicked (but enchanting) ways. Maybe she could be top of her class and skip a year, and Margo would be proud as anything to have such a talent staying with her.

The letters home to Mother would be more difficult. The lies would falter when they came to paper.

Aelia nosed around the empty kitchen and entertained herself for a while by trying to work out what a spiraling metal device that sat tall on a sideboard, could possibly be for. There was, as every contraption here seemed to have, a key in the side of it. Three eggs rested in a bowl nearby, so perhaps it had something to do with it all. She contemplated turning the key, and might have even done so if it hadn't been for a yell that came from out the kitchen's second door.

Not a loud yell, not of someone in pain. A yell she knew better. Frustration.

The second door led her to a small garden enclosed by high brick walls. A few plants and weeds struggled in an unkempt border that followed the wall's perimeter. Propped up against the far wall was a rounded board with three colored rings painted onto it, each ring to the side of another. Scattered all over the ground by the far wall (except for below the board, Aelia noted) were piles of crudely pointed sticks.

By the house, a young boy was stamping his feet on a stick. It had already splintered in half, but that wasn't enough to satisfy Margo and Samuel's young son.

"Hello, Damien," she ventured as she stepped out onto the dried-out lawn. "I heard you yelling and... Is everything okay?"

He looked at her then shook his head. His sandy hair was cropped short and didn't move a whisker out of place. "Oh. It's you, witch."

"Mage," she said. "Or I will be eventually. What's happened out here?"

"My bow's broken again."

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Ah. So that was the long stick beneath his shoes. She hadn't noticed the length of string that had been half-stomped into the earth. "It looks very broken. It must have been an awful bow if it could just snap like that."

"Yes," he agreed. "It was a terrible bow. Just broke when I wasn't barely touchin' it. The next one needs to be ten times stronger."

He was as good a liar as she, Aelia thought, amused. "Your mother told me that your papa had made you a special bow. One that lets you wind the string up instead of hauling it back. She said it was very accurate."

"I wouldn't know," he huffed. "I'd never use anything that wasn't a proper bow. I'm going to be a solider, see? So I need to use what soldiers use."

She sat herself down on the step. "That's good. The kingdom needs more brave archers like you."

He nodded and smiled. "I'll be a right hero."

"And where will you be warring, young hero?"

"Mmm," he considered. "With my brother. 'Gainst the augmented. All the way in the west."

The battles with the Godless Kingdom were not quite a war, at least not yet. Both kingdoms were scoping each other out, exchanging border villages and partaking in minor skirmishes. No full invasion so far, thank the Gods. "East is where the augmented are," she said, correcting him.

He frowned. "Huh?"

"East. Where the sun rises in the sky. That's where the augmented are." She got up and said, "Can I borrow part of your bow?"

"What for?"

"I'll draw you a map."

The boy's eyes gleamed. He bent down and took the longer half of the snapped twig and handed it over.

Aelia found the dustiest patch of ground in the garden and scratched out a long thick 'J'. "That's our kingdom -- the Stone God's -- at the very south of the world. Rhodes is at the top of the long bit, just there." She drew in a circle at the tip. "The first builders created the walled city here as it's the best and easiest place to defend. Most of the kingdom is protected naturally, by the dark forests and mountains. But here, we're squashed between the augmented, and the Necromancer." She drew two huge circles, one either side of Rhodes.

Damien looked a little agitated, his feet clopping like a horse. "Didn't know they were that close to us."

"It's not to scale," she said, drawing two more marks into the dust. "There's a lot more distance than it seems. Now, the Necromancer is further bordered by the Dark Elf, and the augmented by the Dragon God. Each kingdom being bordered by two others helps create a kind of parity."

"Parroty?"

"An evenness."

"Oh. Mmm, what's beyond the forests and mountains?" he asked, his mind already moving on.

Aelia frowned. "Has your mother not talked to you about all this?"

"She doesn't like to talk about anything to do with war."

"Well, geography is not all about war." She drew a huge circle that encapsulated all five kingdoms. "Outside of the land is an endless sea. And it's said that a sixth kingdom -- that of the Water God -- is somewhere on an island in that sea."

"The Water God?"

Aelia laughed. "No one's ever even seen a person from the Water Kingdom and most don't think it exists, so I understand not being taught that. But the sea is very real"

"I bet the kingdom does exist," he said.

"Maybe! What did once exist, and is well documented, was a further ancient kingdom next to the Dark Elf. Look, do you see how His kingdom is much larger than any other?"

The boy looked at the Dark Elf's land curiously. "Why's it so much bigger? Isn't that unfair?"

"Well long ago, there was another kingdom next to His. But it was conquered completely, its God slew, and the land taken by the Dark Elf himself."

Curiosity went to terror. "Gods can't die! They can't. Jimmy's mum told me that, so I know it's true."

Oh dear, she hadn't meant to scare him, just to distract him from the archery. "Well our God can't die, of course! Because no other God can enter our kingdom, thanks to the mages here and the shield they generate. So only people may pass. And what person could slay a God? That sounds impossible to me."

That seemed to reassure him, at least a little. "And if another God did get in," he said, "The Stone God would stamp on their heads anyway!" As if to demonstrate, he found one of his arrows and stomped on its neck until it split.

"I'm sure He would. He's by far the greatest of the Gods, after all, and we're blessed to be in His kingdom."

"He's the best!"

She patted the boy's hair then left him to his stomping. "Nice to talk to you Damien, but I've got to go in now."

The boy ignored her and continued his task of boot-into-wood.

Aelia needed to have a nap, she decided, if she was going to catch Henry tonight. She didn't know where he lived exactly (silly not to have asked!) but she knew how to catch him.