“You’ve got her scowl down; I can tell you that much.”

Lady Aliana was likely trying to be encouraging but Mertle only felt a growing sense of terror. She dared a look in the tiny mirror hidden among the priestesses bottles of tinctures and ointments. The face that glared back was alien and the sight of it knifed deep through the centre of her forehead.

“I don’t think you’re ready for that just yet,” the priestess said.

She wrapped up tight the silver staff and hid it once again in the secret hollow of the root passing through what would charitably be called an office. Mertle thought of the place as some kind of mad laboratory of a deranged witch. An elend healer wouldn’t have half of the things on display, and would never stoop to some of the ingredients she’d seen Aliana mixing. Wax root? Crow’s tongue? Mint? Repulsive!

“I’m not unravelling, am I?” She massaged her hornless temples. No bone ridges poked out. A minor victory in that.

“Just flustered. Drink this.”

“I don’t need a drink, lady Aliana. I need—”

She threw up her hands and bit her lip. The words got lost somewhere along the way. She needed Sil to tell her how far she should go with the Tianna masquerade. She had agreed to help during the first night and had hoped to disappear into the dark to somewhere she wouldn’t be followed. That had been the plan.

Tallah got what she needed. Her plans remained safe. Tianna could simply disappear into the night. That had been the extent of the plan.

But things changed.

Storm Guards were always watching her. The moment she showed up as Tianna, anywhere, there were eyes on her. Always watching. Always bloody probing for a mistake. People constantly came to the Meadow seeking audiences that Verti had been instructed to turn away, but she could only hide for so long before suspicion would dawn.

“What you need is a drink,” lady Aliana insisted. “And to stop pacing before you wear a trench in my floor.”

She took the proffered glass and downed it without thinking. Not bad, as human spirits went, but did little to quiet down her thoughts. Aliana replenished the glass. It went down just as easily, warmed her up well, enough that she could feel her hands and face again.

“Thank you. I’m sorry. Just… I wish they’d left me with some more instructions.” She sat down heavily on the one free chair in the room and pressed fists into her eyes. “I was supposed to preserve this disguise and then get her out of the city. But they’re always there. I feel that if I’d gone with the caravan, at least one of the Guard would’ve come with me.”

Then she would’ve needed to kill whoever that was and she really didn’t want to kill anyone again.

“We do this until the sorceress gets back. She’ll call in when she does.” In her Sister’s gown, leaning against an overladen desk, lady Aliana looked every bit her imposing station. Of course she was immune to anything the Storm Guards could muster, so Mertle’s worries likely did not impress anything on her. “Fail or quit, and she might return to a waiting trap. You heard what the princeling did to her?”

Mertle nodded. Even with the surprising appearance of the Goddess of Healing that very night, the whole of Valen was talking about Cinder getting destroyed in fair combat by the Lord Commander of the Storm Guard. They’d been toasting to his health nightly at the Gooseberry. She could hear them from across the Agora.

If that monster got the drop on Tallah the next time, she might not survive the encounter. Mertle’s part-to-play pressed down on her with the weight of a lodestone.

“Here. This should help you.”

Mertle caught the object thrown at her and studied it. A silver armlet engraved with a smattering of runes she’d never seen before. Sil’s work. She recognized the style at a glance, even if not the runes themselves. Probably something off that wand she’d been studying?

“What’s this?”

“What you’ve delivered from your lover. I had one of my girls follow her instructions and finish the engraving.”

“This is half of a twin.” Mertle followed the logic of the runes, feeling herself settling better into her disguise. A blush crept up her cheeks at Aliana’s words. Touching the silver provided something, though she couldn’t quite say what. Skin-contact activated. Not an immediately obvious effect, so likely a passive engraving. Yes, there was the rune arrangement for that. “It’s got a complex effect,” she surmised.

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“Good eye. Second part is on the staff. Your disguise should take a longer time to dispel now. Silestra wasn’t very clear on the inner workings of the enchantment, but it seems to do what she said it would.”

It fit her arm snugly and the glamour stopped fighting her. It settled in her bones like a contended, lulled beast.

“How far can I be from the staff before it starts waning?”

“Test and find out. Feels better?”

“Much.”

“Good. Now get out. I do have other business to tend to.”

Sil had asked her to trust the priestess of the Dryad. She hadn’t asked for Mertle to like the woman, and the feeling seemed mutual. Still, she’d tarried for long enough and time was short.

Back straight. Chin up. Expression like an itch somewhere unpleasant. She walked out of the small office daring any of those waiting in line to challenge her preferential treatment. None did.

Her handlers would find her soon after walking out. They usually did. After the descent confrontation with that Captain woman, the Guard had stopped watching her as overtly as Sil had described before. There weren’t any soldiers watching the Meadow, but there didn’t need to be. They watched the gates and the Guild. Sometimes they started after her when she passed, and sometimes ignored her.

Miserable bastards and their human games. Some days she could almost believe that it was all in her head, imagining patterns where there weren’t any. But long service to her aelir’matar’s crop had taught her much about patterns, enough that a lifetime away from Nen couldn’t erase.

She adjusted the brim of her hat, tightened her cloak, and stepped out into cold midday light. There would be some more storms left to this Winter, but not on this day. Cares was high up and the sky a perfect blue, stretching to the inky shadows of the mountains and beyond them. From up high on the steps of the Sisters of Mercy, she could see beyond Valen’s walls to the snow-capped ridges of the Valen-Drack range, and all the dotting villages up to there. Dark lines of caravans braved the high snows to reach some of these places and deliver food and medicine where it would be most needed.

They always help one another in hardship times. The aelir had only cared for themselves. If their thralls froze to death in Winter there would only be fewer mouths to feed come Thaw. This human gentleness, even after five years living among them, still struck her as unimaginably odd.

“Lady Aieni?”

She froze halfway down the steps, recognising the voice with terrible certainty. Terror, white hot, ignited in the pit of her stomach. Swinging her gaze from the mountains back to her path showed her exactly who she dreaded worse. Lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed Captain Quistis just off the side of the path leading down from the hospital. She was talking to a one-armed beggar woman huddled into a nook in the side of the building. The Sisters rarely minded beggars by their steps, but the city’s council did not approve of the practice. There was a whole cluster of them gathered around the Storm Guard.

“I’m sorry. I will be back soon,” the captain said and passed the woman a small pouch before rushing in Mertle’s direction. She nearly slipped in the late-Winter sludge of ice, mud and salt.

Mertle wondered for the briefest moment if her surprise was as etched on her face as the shock in her soul. She had gone to great lengths to discourage this woman from seeking her out for her apology and, now, here she was, dressed in the civilian garb of a healer, rushing through the muddy snow to greet her.

For a heartbeat she considered fleeing. It would’ve been easy to turn her back on the woman, quicken her pace, and shoulder away through the crowd.

Captain Quistis reached the bottom of the stairs before her mind was made up and smiled up at her in just such a way that negated any hope of getting away from at least acknowledging her presence.

“Captain Quistis,” Mertle returned the greeting, carefully constructing her tone into a mixture of suspicion, cold displeasure, and heartfelt loathing. “I’d say it’s a pleasure seeing you again, but you might try to arrest me for lying to your face.” She made the words cold enough to sting. To very little effect.

“You make it terribly hard to reach you,” Captain Quistis said, still barring her way with that infuriating smile. “Can I please, now, offer my apology? I don’t want to resort to battering down your door for it.”

“I don’t want or care for your apology. I need you and your men to leave me alone.”

She tried to move past but couldn’t. The woman moved in exact step to her to bar her way. Any closer and they’d be chest to chest.

“Then allow me to treat you to a cup of coffee and something sweet. Please. At least that for all the discomfort I’ve caused you?”

Mertle stared, caught half-way between baffled incredulity and suspicion. Was this a joke? The woman would’ve had her turned into an arrow-ridden pin cushion at a word, and she was offering her apology… in pastries?!

“There-there’s a very nice place close-by,” she went on. “I know you like to sample the finer things. I can guarantee you haven’t been to this place yet. It’s my treat. No strings. Nothing.” She tapped her breast where the usual insignia of the fist wreathed in lighting would be emblazoned. “I’m off-duty and it was pure chance to run into you. My honest word for it.”

“I… err… fine?” Hard to say no, politely or impolitely, to an invitation like that. Tianna did have a ravenous sweet-tooth, and the woman was clearly informed about her habits and preferences. “Lead the way, then. Maybe after this you might just leave me be.”