-7 years prior-

The flower vase that Iris sent shattering against the wall of her audience chamber created a most satisfying sound, a crash followed by the plinking of the porcelain shards on the floor. The messenger who had come bearing the unsatisfactory news cringed back as if struck, then stood there motionless and uncertain. After a moment, she bent and began picking up the broken pieces. Normally, Iris would have told the messenger not to bother, that the servants of the manor would see to that. But that was for messengers who brought favorable news. Let this one bow her head and bruise her knees.

“When you are finished with that,” Iris said. “Take yourself out of my castle. And don’t dally returning to the capital to conduct my disappointment to the king.”

Iris swept from the room, her intricate skirts trailing her. She cared not at all that it was customary to give a messenger a meal and a room for the night, nor that she had not furnished a proper return message to His Majesty. Let the messenger woman find a ratty inn in town and concoct whatever meaningless formal words she wished to conduct back. Even those would likely never reach any of the king’s advisors, let alone the king himself.

Iris’s temples throbbed as she went up the stairs to the tower sitting chamber. How dare he? How dare the king postpone his plans to visit Black Crux due to illness? As if Iris herself wasn’t ill. Ill from the years of living in the shadow of her deceased husband. Ill from the complaints of the townsfolk and farmers. Ill from the restlessness in the lake region, where a small town had decided it no longer wished to be a part of Hold Draffor and declared itself part of Hold Pasanhal instead. As if peasants could decide where the borders lay. How did the crown expect Iris to deal with such vexations if her rule of Draffor was not legitimized in the eyes of her people by an in-person endorsement from King Caiside? It had been years since her husband’s death and the crown still continued to spurn her. And always through the most convenient of excuses.

She lifted her hand as she passed down a corridor, neatly tipping another vase off its pedestal. The violence of its breaking was an insufficient balm against the insult that had been dealt to her with this latest postponement.

The man awaiting her arrival in the sitting room flinched when she threw open the door and entered. She appraised him at a glance. Short and skinny, as if he’d not been fed sufficiently as a child. He wore a beard, though it was the thin and patchy beard of a man only newly able to grow one. His traveler’s clothes were clean and cut to fit him well, in fabrics of light brown and blood red that complimented his dark skin and eyes. It lent him a mysterious air. A proper mage in appearance, at least.

Only ...

Iris sighed. “You aren’t powerful enough.”

“My lady?”

“I had you summoned here to teach me the trick of Intent. But I can feel it—or the lack of it. You’re not strong enough in magic for what I want.”

The man took a step forward, smiling disarmingly. He had a charming smile, she had to admit. “Lady Iris, firstly, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. And ... I am only a Journeyer Barrier-Caster ...” He went into a pocket of his vest and pulled out the folded summons she had sent out. He perused it as if to refresh himself of its words before saying, “You have been looking for Barrier-Casters to train with, and so here I have arrived, but there was no mention of Intent in your letter.”

Iris regarded the man. One disappointment this day had been enough. Now another stood before her. Another disappointment, another Journeyer mage who’d answered her call, only to turn out to be less powerful than she, despite being more advanced in rank. The old bile rose. How was it that Mage-Matron Marigold had never promoted her to Journeyer? Try as she might, Iris had been unable to locate Marigold in all the years she’d searched, so she could finally—rightfully—be raised above apprentice. It was an outrage. She had missed out on years of training and advancement. She could do more with Barrier-Casting than any of these roving teachers, yet she languished beneath them in rank. She resented Marigold for forcing her to settle for bits and snippets of instruction in magic like this. Resented her, yet needed her.

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She had the impulse to simply walk out of the room and tell one of her servants to send this mage away. He wasn’t the one she needed. But, then, he had come a very long way, from the lands over the mountains, where Marigold herself had come from originally. She might as well prod what information she could out of him before sending him on his way.

“Journeyers do begin learning Intent, do they not?” she questioned him.

The man’s nice smile returned. “Indeed, my lady, and I have had some training in it. It is an advanced technique, however, and one I am not close to mastering yet.” He paused to regard her and there was something of his own appraisal in that glance. Confidence. His next words also revealed his honesty. “Much as I would like to take the very generous coin you advertised and teach you what I know, if it’s Intent you’re after, you are better off finding and training with a master Barrier-Caster.”

“Who is your Mage-Master?” Iris asked.

“My Mage-Master likes his anonymity,” he answered smoothly.

Iris exhaled through her nostrils. What a waste of time this had been. “I shall have one of my people show you out,” she declared and turned to go.

“Very well,” he returned. “Sorry we couldn’t come to an accord. Barrier-Casting is not a commonly practiced magic, but there are masters out there you may have better luck with. There is one who resides in the town of Moonfane Forge you might petition. She has quite the reputation. She can cast a Barrier around an entire city.”

“That would be Mage-Matron Mantis, and I am already aware of her,” Iris said distractedly, pausing in the doorway. “She no longer teaches. And she is a master of only moderate skill. The idea that she, of all mages, could cast a Barrier around an entire city is laughable. No one is that powerful.”

The young man’s smile returned. She no longer liked it. It seemed to mock her now, though she could not say why. “Actually, Mage-Matron Mantis died a few years ago,” he informed her. “It is a different master Barrier-Caster who resides in Moonfane Forge now.”

“Who?” Though she asked the question, Iris already knew the answer.

“The people there refer to her as The Maiden of Moonfane Forge.”

*

Watching Vetch pull on his undershirt, Lily couldn’t help but focus on the conspicuous bandaging he’d wrapped around his chest. Freshly changed that morning, it nevertheless already oozed some wet foulness from underneath, where the reddened puncture wound persisted. In another moment, it was hidden from view. Next came the heavy, padded shirt. Overtop that, chainmail that he had been able to track down and buy second-hand before they had departed Pasanhal. He went about the routine of putting on the gear with a soldier’s stone-faced fortitude.

Finally, he donned the hardened leather armor he had purchased in Pasanhal’s leatherworking district. He drew the buckles snug, checked and re-checked the fit and ease of motion until he was satisfied.

“Do you really expect to have to fight?” Lily asked. She surprised herself with how even her voice came out. She didn’t want to burden him with the fear and concern roiling within her.

“I’m not planning on it,” he replied, buckling on his sword belt. “But I’d be a fool not to be ready for it.”

She took in, and let out, a shaky breath. He looked up and favored her with a confident smile.

“I’ll be fine. I will be in and out before anyone even notes me. As Siegert said, none of the serving folk will question another swordsman roaming the halls. The sellswords are mostly stationed on the walls, not inside the manor.”

The sun was setting outside their inn room window, its reddish light casting Vetch’s auburn hair in hues of flame. Lily looked upon this man—her lifelong friend, her beau, the man she wished to spend all her days with. In his new armor, he cut the figure she had fallen in love with. The colors of Moonfane Forge were not present, not the black with silver she associated with him and his fellows, but emerging here again was the soldier—Vetch, standing on the perch above the town gate scanning the horizon. Vetch, sitting tall on his horse leading his fellow soldiers across the pastures. Vetch, locking eyes with her in the markets and smiling as he was smiling now.

A girl’s romanticizing of a warrior, she realized. She now saw the mail and armor and blade for what they really were. They were not Vetch the man. They only represented his responsibilities, responsibilities that pressed him into danger every day he donned them. Being a soldier was his magic. Wounds, and possibly death, his Slumber. Two edges of the same blade. A trade-off that fueled conflict in her. Here, he looked the part, the soldier he had wanted to be since they were children, the soldier she had desired to be with. The soldier could not be separated from the risk, just as the mage could not escape Slumber.

Pulling on his riding gloves, he asked, “Are you ready?”

Lily stood. “I’m ready. I know you will find her and bring her out of there back to me.”

He took her hand.