> “The Proper Way informs every aspect of Yunei life. There is the proper way to scrub the floor, the proper way to dress, the proper way to wrap a gift, the proper way to marry, and even the proper way to die. Conforming to these, in Yunei tradition, guarantees reincarnation in a higher caste: failure guarantees rebirth among a lower caste or even (whisper it) as a foreigner.”

>

> —Prince Ruber of Valai, My Travels.

AULDENHEIGH

Enerlend, Garanhir Earthmote 09.05.15.12.03

There was smoke over the city.

Well, there was always smoke over the city, from the industrial quarter, from the bakeries, from people’s log burning stoves and fireplaces at home, and so on. Auldenheigh was a city of a million tiny columns of faint whispy grey ascending from the rooftops. On still days, the smoke lingered and the air became thick with it.

This, though, was the smoke that said a number of buildings had come down. A large, black column rooted in…Ellaenie squinted and frowned…in Whitten, one of the poorer districts.

There were horses on the road, too. The cavalry, riding out to meet her and escort her into the city. Riding alongside them she recognized Lord Gilber Drevin, holding his hat on with one hand while he bent over his horse Jasper's neck and urged him to gallop harder.

“…Oh dear.”

On the horse alongside her, Lisze fidgeted anxiously with her necklace. “What could have happened?”

“Let us hope it was just a fire…” Ellaenie replied. But…no. She had a feeling. Gilber wouldn’t be riding out to meet her so urgently if it was just a case of a bakery going up. She gestured for her entourage to follow, set Rosewild into a canter with a twitch of her heels and the reins, and met him halfway.

“Your Grace.” Gilber took off his hat respectfully when they reined in next to each other, then swept his hand across his head in a pointless attempt to tidy up a shock of red hair that had long since been reduced to an expanse of scalp. “I trust your trip was…enjoyable?”

“It was wonderful,” Ellaenie nodded, and allowed the Craft to carry much more than the mere three words could. She saw him understand, too. Of course he did: he’d been the one to send to Rheannach in the first place. He was a practitioner of the Craft himself.

But that was a conversation for later, in private. She pointed toward the smoke column with a look. “Tell me what’s happened.”

His expression turned from pleased to somber. “There was an…altercation last night, back in the city. At the Oneists’ soup kitchen. An agitator stirred up the poor who were there for a meal.”

“Against who?”

“Against you, your grace. And against the entire structure of the nobility, landownership, the Dukesmoot and the Parliament of Barons.”

Ellaenie nodded, seeing the problem. “How much damage?”

“A few shops were burned, but Lord Manewill’s infantry contained it. He dispersed the rioters with a cavalry charge after they tried to break into the Blueheddle fabric mill to assault the owner. I’m afraid four men were rather badly trampled in the charge. Two of them died, one’s lost his leg, and the last is paralyzed if he survives.”

Ellaenie scowled. “The shops. Small local businesses?”

“Quite so.”

“I want to see it in person.”

She saw some of the cavalrymen glance at each other uncertainly, but Gilber just nodded. “I should warn you, the mood is still quite…unsettled.”

“Noted. Thank you.” He wasn’t actually advising her not to go, after all.

His dark blue eyes glinted shrewdly as he nodded again. “Very good, your grace.”

Lisze leaned over to whisper frantically. “Ellie, if you’re going to appear in public you really need some cleaner clothes, and—”

“No, Lisze. I need to show up as I am. Trail-dirty and unbrushed hair and all. Right now they need me to be human, not ideal.”

“I…yes. Okay. Um.” Lisze cleared her throat and glanced anxiously at the smoke, looking quite nervous at the prospect of going so close to such violence. Sweetheart that she was, though, Ellaenie could clearly see she’d follow her anyway. But…

No need. Let her off the hook. She touched her friend reassuringly on the hand. “I promised you’ll get to make me perfect later, and I mean it. Why don’t you head up to the palace and get things ready?”

Lisze’s nod was more like an eager, tiny vibration of her head. Ellaenie glanced at the cavalrymen and recognized one of them, a young officer…what was his name again? She summoned the Craft and interrogated her memory…

Ah, yes. “Mister Dremmond, if you would be so kind as to escort my lady-in-waiting safely back to the palace?”

He blinked, clearly surprised at being remembered, then slapped his fist to his chest in a salute. “Of course, Your Grace.”

Ellaenie twisted in the saddle to look behind at the rest of her entourage. “That goes for everyone. Head back and make ready for me.”

In minutes, she was alone except for Gilber, the cavalrymen, Saoirse, Rheannach and her equerry Major Droles. Good.

The cavalrymen formed an escort before and behind, and they set off at a trot. Whitten was outside the old walls which separated the ancient elvish inner city from the younger urban sprawl outside. Still, the name alone hinted it was one of the oldest districts: Wight Town. Wight being the least derogatory Feydh word for a human.

There were several more unpleasant ones. Wansuul, which meant something like “shattersoul.” Kine, which implied that humans were livestock…

The elves had been such a cruel people, once. Some still were.

Whitten had never been an affluent part of the city. Too far from the river for the merchants, too awkwardly far around the wall from Vathelan’s gates to interest the wealthy professionals. The Parliament of Barons had heard motions a few times to raze the whole thing and turn it into a park. Parliament had, wisely, rejected this as a stupid move that would achieve nothing but spend public money on a project driven by pure spite which would do nothing more than displace and anger the poor folk who lived there.

And it seemed they were angry enough already.

A tickle in the back of her head was Saoirse’s mind, touching hers. Careful, lass. The common folk can get right vicious when the mood is wrong.

They’re my people. I can’t hide in my palace and ignore them… Ellaenie replied.

That ye cannot. Still: Have a care.

Ellaenie nodded, and they rode the rest of the way in both physical and psychic silence.

Sure enough, word spread faster than horses could trot, and by the time they reached Whitten the people were out on the streets to see her. There was a lot of pointing and whispering, and most of the crowd dropped curtseys or bows as she passed, or waved and called out greetings like “Bless you for comin’, your grace!”

But only most. There were definitely some stony faces and folded arms toward the back, who watched her pass in silent thought. And no small amount of the gestures of respect were insincere, she felt. What was expected, not what was felt.

The infantry and firefighters had pulled down a number of buildings around the burning ones, to keep the blaze contained. Exactly the right thing to do of course, as half the poor districts could have gone up without that measure. But it still left several people picking over their homes and businesses and wondering what came next. They were so understandably distracted that when the ducal party arrived, several of them had to be nudged quite hard several times by their friends to stop digging in the rubble.

“Nobody’s still missing are they?” Ellaenie asked Gilber, as the horses halted.

“Not that I know of.”

“Good.” Ellaenie looked around at the dirty, exhausted faces, and slid down off Rosewild’s back rather than remain mounted.

…Now what?

A young girl of four years at most was staring at her, holding a rather badly fire-damaged stuffed pony. But it was the woman behind her who caught Ellaenie’s eye: clearly the child’s mother. The poor woman looked like the last ember of hope in her life had just flickered and gone out. And she was holding her arm awkwardly.

Still, she dropped a curtsey as Ellaenie approached. “Y-your grace…”

“Are you alright?”

The woman hesitated. “I’ve…I got all that matters, your grace…” she ventured, and rubbed her daughter’s hair. But the word no was screaming out of her, writ large in the lines of her face, the invisible tears and the tension in her shoulders. She had no idea what she was going to do next.

“I take it one of these was your home…” Ellaenie turned and looked to the pile of rubble.

“And my livin’. The family business. We been bakers goin’ back forever, and now….” The woman cast a forlorn look at her ruined livelihood.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re too kind, ma’am. We’ll make do. Won’t we, Trishy?”

The child nodded, still staring up at Ellaenie with wide-eyed fascination. Ellaenie squatted down in front of her. “Trishy, eh? And who’s this?”

“Sh’s Squeaks, y’grass,” the child offered, in the half-formed tones of one still getting the hang of speech.

“Is Squeaks alright?”

“She go’ all burned up…” Trishy pointed out, sadly.

“Oh, that’s a shame. I hope somebody can repair her…” Ellaenie gave the child a smile, then stood up again. “Speaking of which, madame, I can’t help but notice…” she gestured to the baker’s arm. “Are you hurt?”

“Oh…just a touch flame-licked, ma’am,” she forced a brave smile. “Nothin’ to trouble yourself over.”

“I know a little healing magic,” Ellaenie offered.

“Oh, I, I couldn’t, your grace—”

“Please.” Ellaenie took her hand, gently. She focused the Craft as she did so, feeling it come even easier now. Well, King Eärrach had said he’d…unlocked some things for her, somehow.

She didn’t need to fake the warmth and concern she projected, but she did concentrate it. Let it radiate out of her in what Saoirse had taught her was called a glamer by the Craenen. A subtle bit of psychic magic, empowering her own natural presence and charisma.

It worked. Tears sprung into the baker’s eyes and she nodded miserably. “I…thank you.”

Ellaenie nodded and unwrapped her arm a bit. The flesh beneath was more than just flame-licked: Ellaenie found herself staring at an expanse of angry red and blisters. She didn’t even notice the sympathetic “oh!” that fell out of her mouth as she touched her fingertips to the burns and…

No magestone. Of course. She’d given it away as a sacrifice at that altar in the woods, and she hadn’t had time to prepare a new one or a witchly fetish. Oh well. She focused, and…

And healed.

It was so easy, suddenly! The energy seemed to flow from her fingertips in a cool, soothing torrent and the baker sighed—sobbed, almost—as the burns along her arm faded, the blisters receded and the pain condensed down into an intangible knot that Ellaenie seized in her fingertips and drew out of her body. She held it for a second, then smiled down at the awestruck little girl and blew on the tiny spark of agony so that it disintegrated and blew away like a dandelion clock.

“Oh, Crowns…” The baker rubbed her now unmarked skin. “A little healing magic, is that?”

“I have good teachers,” Ellaenie demurred. She looked around. “Have there been no doctors come to help?”

“I heard there was these Oneists offering healing but they ran out of magic ‘fore I could see ‘em, ma’am.” The woman cast another forlorn look at her ruined home. “I were at th’ bank, but they said my insurance don’t cover bein’ torn down unless the building is actually on fire.”

“Did they, now.” Ellaenie’s sympathetic mood darkened into anger on her behalf. “I see. Well. I…forgive me my manners, may I ask your name?”

“Oh! Mury, your grace. Uh, Muriel Baker. Baker the baker, that’s…that’s us.” She ventured a small, lame and terribly sad impression of a smile at what was obviously a long-running joke.

Ellaenie clasped the woman’s flour-roughened hands in hers and gave them a reassuring squeeze to go with her reassuring smile. “Well, Mury Baker the baker…if you need work, you come up to the palace kitchens. You wouldn’t believe the amount of bread we get through, I’m sure.”

“Your Gr—?”

“I mean it. They will know to expect you. I only wish I could make the same offer to everyone.” Ellaenie looked around at the circle of people who were standing back and watching them. Time to speak to the crowd. “I cannot put everything right. I wish I could. If it were in my power I would magic every brick back on top of each other and bring the dead back to their families. Instead what I can do is pay heed. And I can heal. So if there is anybody here with more wounds that need tending, please come forward. I’ll do what I can.”

Somebody at the back of the crowd slipped away while others came forward. She saw it: so did the others. Gilber took a step back and vanished from sight behind his horse.

Trust him. He had his role to play in this moment, and Ellaenie had hers. Hers was burns, broken bones and bleeding wounds, hands scraped raw from digging through smouldering rubble and lungs weakened from smoke inhalation. She knit them all, and didn’t allow her smile and her warmth to flicker for an instant even as she burned through all the energy she had, as the fatigue and the hunger started to creep in from the edges and start sinking into her bones.

Rheannach tried to step forward and grant her a reserve, tried to channel some of her own limitless energies, but Ellaenie refused. This was important: She needed to bleed for them, and be seen bleeding for them. They didn’t need effortless divine intervention right now, they needed her. As she was, in her riding clothes, imperfect and dirty. And they needed to see her struggling for them, because what had been attacked last night was an angry man’s mental effigy of power, and she could feel the dark tendrils of bitterness still trying to wrap themselves around the roots of this community. If she remained something ethereal, better, other and beyond them, she would only feed the rot.

So she healed even as she felt it start to harm her, as her limbs and mind ached and her flesh grew lean and spent, until finally an old man took her hands and shook his head, and looked her in the eye.

“You’ve done enough, your grace.”

Ellaenie looked around, holding a tense thread of power and letting the witch-sight resonate. There were nods, to be sure, but nods alone were superficial. She needed to look deeper than that…

…He was right. She’d done enough. The dark tendrils were still there, but they’d receded, weakened.

Crowns, she was so tired. She gave the old man a grateful look and then, with Droles’ assistance, rose to her feet and staggered away, too exhausted to even say a polite farewell.

A voice said “Put her on my horse.” Rheannach. She nodded, reached out for her friend, mentor, mother and angel, and was somehow up on the horse’s back without really noticing how. Rheannach rode behind her, holding her close to make sure she couldn’t fall off.

She was safe, again. She could relax. She could rest.

She didn’t remember the trip back to the palace at all.

----------------------------------------

> “Fanciful myths about the Wychwethel abound, chief among them being that only an elf can master it, as mastery requires hundreds of years and a few accidental deaths just to grasp the basics. This claim is laughable to any knowledgeable student of arms, as such an intricate and arcane weapon would in truth be hopelessly impractical. Indeed, on the contrary the Wychwethel is rather an easy weapon to grasp, being well-balanced, sturdy, and with a cutting profile quite forgiving of sloppy edge alignment. Those few elves who have truly devoted themselves over lifetimes to its study undeniably prove there may be no ceiling to the skill one can demonstrate with a Wychwethel, but the legends of its difficulty are cultivated by the Fey themselves for the same reason the weapon is designed to emit its signature howling sound: to intimidate the unlearned and break their fighting spirit before the battle has even begun. This philosophy of bluff and terror is ubiquitous in the elven approach to warfare.” -Denrick Roth, Elves.

BIDING TIME

Wandering Isle, somewhere in the cloud sea 09.06.03.06.09

To those who used the Navigators’ Guild date system, palindrome days were something of a holiday. They only came around once a year, and they were traditionally a day when crews got a special treat from their captain.

This year, it seemed, Jerl didn’t have to do anything more for them. The Islemen were taking care of them wonderfully. They made it a point of pride to pamper their guests with good music, drink and food...and frankly a surprising amount of prostitution considering they were all one extended family.

Maybe that was why it was such a big family…

Jerl had politely declined to take part in that aspect of things, but he certainly wasn’t going to waste a chance to lie around, bask in the sun, drink apple brandy and relax. For the first time in a subjective week, nobody was trying to kill him.

Bliss.

His basking was inevitably going to be interrupted, though. Such was a captain’s life. But Amir was a welcome interruption, and Jerl waved him to sit before the navigator even opened his mouth. “Hey. Happy P-day.”

“And to you,” Amir settled onto the lounging couch next to him and sampled a honey cake. “You’ll be pleased to know we are still heading in more or less the right direction to pass quite close to Ilẹyede. It may even be the isle’s destination.”

“You could have taken today off work, you know…” Jerl pointed out, handing him a fruit platter but not even bothering to offer him a glass of the brandy. Amir didn’t drink alcohol.

“You forget how much I enjoy my work,” Amir retorted. He popped a grape in his mouth and sat back. “I find it quite soothing. Far more so than being shot at.”

Jerl chuckled. “I was just thinking that. Still, we got out of the manor pretty much in one piece. Whisker’s wound notwithstanding…how is he today?”

“Breathing more easily, his lungs sound better and the fever is gone. With a few days more to recover his strength, I daresay he’ll be out of that bed and looking to get started on his revenge.”

“Good. We can relax today, but there’s still a big fuckin’ problem out there in the worlds to deal with.”

Amir nodded solemnly, and poured himself a glass of water. They sat in companionable silence for a while before he broached the question weighing on his mind.

“Do we…actually have a plan?”

Jerl shrugged.

“Shouldn’t we?” Amir asked.

“I mean I don’t know,” Jerl clarified. “It’s no accident we’re here on this isle, I’m sure of that. I left myself enough premonitions and foresight to get us here. But for whatever reason, I only left myself enough power to see a little way into the future.”

“And what do you see now?”

“I haven’t actually tried.”

“Shouldn’t you?”

Jerl sighed, shrugged, admitted silently that Amir was right, and concentrated.

He hadn’t told the crew much about what he’d left himself of Time. For the most part, the breadcrumbs and half-memories were enough. But he did remember the two powers he’d kept for himself beside those, and he had to acknowledge that he must have done so for a reason. He was going to need them.

So far, his powers of premonition had been as simple as doing whatever felt right, accepting however the future seemed to want to flow. But here and now did, in fact, feel like the right time to try something a little more active, so he set his drink down and closed his eyes. He reached inward, to where a fragment of the word’s power still lingered deep inside him.

Time. He’d been both amazed and unsurprised to learn just how flexible it really was. Sure, he was used to the idea of a boring ten minutes dragging out forever while enjoyable hours seemed to vanish, but that was just perspective and distraction, right?

Well…yes. But also no.

Jerl had grown up on the tredmothfa, the long elf-built highway that ran the full length of Garanhir’s leading edge, in the duchy of Cantre, where his family had owned an inn near the shipyard town of Antage, not dissimilar to Cerkos’ family’s. Eventually it had passed to his uncle Baris, who still ran the place to this day: Jerl and his dad had commissioned the Cavalier Queen and struck out on their own in large part because otherwise they’d have been working for Baris the rest of their lives.

Not that Jerl begrudged his uncle. He was very fond of the old man, and missed him terribly. But the choice between serving in his uncle’s inn or captaining his own airship was no choice at all.

In any case, Jerl had a vivid memory from when he was young of a circus troupe from Enerlend who’d stayed at the inn while touring along the tredmothfa, and set up for ten days in Antage before moving on. That had been a good and profitable week, but Jerl had been lucky enough to get some time off to actually visit the circus and enjoy their delights.

Among the many curiosities in their wagon train had been a sweets vendor from Auldenheigh, whose cart had a peculiar machine for making a chewy candy by stretching and pulling the mixture over and over again on a set of rotating arms. Now, the mental image of that coil of gummy, merging, stretching, folding, looping candy was a close fit for how Jerl understood time. Time was no longer a trail through the woods with the past behind him and the undiscovered future ahead, but an ever-distorting, ever-changing mass being pulled and pushed, kneaded and stretched over and over again by every human, fey and divine decision. Everyone could stretch time, everyone did stretch time, all the time.

But Jerl could stretch it more than most. And he could see it partially from the outside too, if he wanted.

Now seemed like the right moment to try, at least. So what was around the next bend?

…

He surged to his feet, grabbed Amir by the arm and pointed out over the edge and up toward a bank of cloud. Just as Amir followed his finger, a dark shape loomed, wallowed through a fold in the otherwise unblemished white vapor, and was gone again.

“Shit. Oneists?”

“No.” Jerl looked around. The inn had a lookout tower, but its occupant was facing the wrong way, playing his telescope over the sky in front of them and above, watching out for eclipse rather than airships. “Hey! You! Lookout!”

The man turned to frown at him. Jerl guessed he probably didn’t speak Garanese, as most of the Islemen didn’t. So instead he turned and pointed fervently then mimed ringing the bell. The man’s frown deepened, and he turned to raise his telescope to his eye.

“Crowns damn it, he doesn’t believe me…” Jerl spat, and broke into a run back toward the inn. “Come on!”

“Who are they? Pirates?”

“Worse!”

They were barely halfway back before the watchman rang the bell, the ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding double tap that meant hostile airship to any airfarer. Usually, that would be enough. Pirates preferred soft, unprepared targets, and today was absolutely a day for finding those. If they saw armed militia waiting for them they’d probably turn their attention elsewhere.

But these weren’t pirates.

Premonition made Jerl twist and look over his shoulder as he ran, just in time to see the airship burst from the clouds and turn, its gondola swinging wide under the bag as it banked sharply around. She was slim, as murderously beautiful as a knife with a hull made of dark wood and her bag draped lavishly in purple cloth edged in large, golden embroidered lettering.

Jerl’s grasp of elfish was basic, but he could read enough to recognize the syllable ord among the looping, sharp letters, and that was all he needed to see. Amir, who was much better versed in scholarly matters, could read a lot more and whatever he saw made him hitch up the skirts of his robe so he could run faster.

“Fuck! Not them!”

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

The watchbell had done its work, at least, and Cerkos’ family were clearly no strangers to defending themselves. They were swarming out of the inn and farm buildings, grabbing rifles and forming up into squads while the women scooped up the children and bundled them into the inn’s stone core where they could bunker down in the cellars.

Jerl’s men were Johnny on the spot, too. Especially with Sin and Derghan leading them: Jerl could see them forming up on the airship jetty.

The airship swooped low overhead, so close Jerl could hear the wind thrumming through its rigging, and figures leapt suicidally over its gunwale, twisting acrobatically through the air as they fell. No human would ever have done something so insane, but an elf could fall from any height and land safely if they so chose.

One of them, his arms tucked close to his chest, corkscrewed down from the ship’s deck to land on the path in front of Jerl with a slam that broke the flagstones. Smoothly, gleefully, he pivoted on his toes as he drew his Wychwethel with a dramatic flourish: the blade howled menacingly, a sound its owner clearly intended would terrorize his victim into cowering before the killing blow.

Jerl punched him in the face.

It was a perfect punch, too, the kind that didn’t feel like he’d hit anything at all. The elf’s eyes widened comically in the shaved instant before Jerl’s knuckles slammed into that perfect jaw and continued along their arc without slowing, hammering the fey raider down in a spray of blood and teeth.

Elves could be like that. You would never face a deadlier opponent in your life, but they got arrogant if they went a lifetime or two without being humbled. They fell into the bad habit of trusting that humans would hesitate, or assumed that any human they ran across had no idea how to fight them.

But Jerl had trained with Sin for twenty years, and the trick when confronted with an elf was to never give them an opportunity. Close and attack, instantly and remorselessly, and overwhelm them with a human's naturally superior size, strength and reach. Fail to do that, and the last experience of your life would be a streak of magically accelerated steel moving far too fast for the eye to follow. He scooped up the wychwethel, which wailed briefly as he used it to confiscate its former owner’s head, stole the hapless fey’s vamdraech as well, and barelled on past the corpse before it had even finished flopping into the dirt.

A flash of motion from his left made him turn, and time slowed as the Word still lingering deep in his mind reacted on instinct.

Another elf, clearly enraged by her crewmate’s fall, was charging him at speeds no human could ever match. Her limbs glowed with terrible light as she infused them with magical power, and her expression was pure hatred. And the markings of her war paint confirmed what he’d already known: these were Ordsiwat.

Patient-Throne, the most notorious elf-tribe. The last remnant of the Ordfey, who still answered and pledged loyalty to that ancient empire’s king, Ekve. Even pirates looked down on them: pirates, after all, were just out to run a business and earn some treasure by taking stuff that didn’t belong to them. It was in their interests to take a ship without bloodshed and leave its crew alive to spread the word that surrender was the better option. Ordsiwat marauders, though, butchered anyone with blunt ears on sight, as a matter of principle, and didn’t do it quickly or kindly. Thank the Crowns there were only a few dozen of them in all the worlds.

Jerl could guess what this elf was thinking right now: her mind was full of raw indignation at how dare an upstart mayfly steal the weapon of his betters? How dare he have the hubris to strike down his natural masters?

No matter. Time stretched and bent at the word’s bidding, and Jerl flowed into it. He parried a killing blow that no ordinary man would have even seen coming, stepped, turned, slashed. The elf dropped to her knees, her expression aghast: clearly being bested by a ‘wight’ was more of a shock to her than suddenly having to hold in her guts.

“Ke…?” she croaked. Jerl sent her to limbo without reply.

Amir was at his side a moment later. “How did you—?”

“Time. Now stop thinking and run!”

From up ahead, he heard the rippling thunder of a rifle line firing. His crew, or the Islemen, he wasn’t sure.

Another blur rounded the corner, but this one was Sinikka, her own wychwethel gory to the hilt and her face splashed with wide streaks of red. She was breathing heavily, panting, grinning.

“Bo fa, mellwan! But don’t drop your guard!” she barked, and handed him his gun belt.

“How’s it going out there?”

“These Islers are sharp. Shot ‘em while they were jumping down, I got the rest. But that ship’s coming around for another pass. They won’t be stupid enough to jump down where we can see ‘em, next time.”

“Why are they here?!” Amir asked, leaning on his knees to pant for breath.

Sin looked to Jerl. “…I see two possibilities, nay?”

Jerl nodded grimly as he finished buckling on his belt. “We’ll figure it out later. You think Ekve’s on that ship?”

“Maybe.”

“Alright. The Queen’s got engines, the Ordsiwat have sails. We can outrun ‘em against the wind. If they’re here for us, we can lure ‘em away from the Isle.”

“And if they’re not, we’re just abandoning these people when they need us,” Amir pointed out while shaking his head. “Besides, didn’t you see that keel of theirs? It’s a blade. We try and start the ship up, they’ll just slice her bag from end to end before we can get up any speed.”

Jerl glanced up at the elfen ship, which was slowing as it looped lazily out among the clouds to line its nose toward the isle’s far end. Sure enough, the elegant, curved keel along its underbelly gleamed wickedly in the light as it banked. Amir was right, that thing looked like an oversized gut hook. It’d unzip the Queen’s bag like cleaning a fish. “Shit…alright. Sin, you’re with me. Amir, get Marren and the lads and bring the bag all the way in in case they decide to slash us anyway.”

“Aye aye.” He nodded, and darted away.

Sin considered the two corpses Jerl had left on the lawn. “Y’know, you’re about the best human student I ever had, but I’m impressed you managed to get two of ‘em…”

“Time. At the moment I needed it, it…sped me up, I guess. I’m as fast as you are, now. Faster, maybe.”

“Nice. We’re gonna need that, too, ‘cuz if they land properly and come in force they’ll sweep the Islers and the crew away.”

“You think we can handle that lot by ourselves?” Jerl asked.

“Not if we fight fair. Which is why I borrowed this off Derghan.” She reached behind her, unslung his favorite lever-action carbine, and grinned.

A rictus of his own spread across Jerl’s face. “…Right. Where’s Mouse in all this?”

She blinked at him, clearly drawing a blank for a moment before remembering. “Oh! Uh…shit, I wasn’t keeping track of him.”

“That’s probably good. Means Mind is still doing work for him.”

“It sure is,” a new voice interjected, and Jerl jumped at a touch on the arm. Mouse gave him a cheeky look. “Being a sneaky fucker helps, too.”

“…We could use that,” Jerl said aloud. And I want you close, he added, mentally.

“Yup. That’s what I thought.”

“Time to put both your powers to the test then, nay?” Sin commented.

“Absolutely.” Jerl discarded the wychwethel and drew his pistols to check they were loaded. “Let’s fuck ‘em up. Or is Ekve yours?”

“Oh, shit no. We see him, we put him down hard. I’ve nothing to prove to that bastard. Besides—” Sin’s grin got even wider, and slightly more manic. “We’ve had that dance a few times before. I know how it goes, nay?”

“Good.” The Ordsiwat ship was coming in low over the isle’s far end, now. Jerl could see more of its crew diving overboard, dozens of them this time. Clearly the marauders were unhappy and intent on punishing these human upstarts. There was nothing more to say. They checked their weapons one last time, and set off running. It was like Sin said:

Time to put their powers to the test.

----------------------------------------

> “There are a minimum of twelve steps in the most basic Yunei tea ceremony, and twice as many in the proper form a barber must follow when shaving a customer. Odd though this ritualization of every aspect of life may seem to a Garanese traveler, the result is a sublime cup of tea, and the smoothest cheeks you will ever have.”

>

> —Prince Ruber of Valai, My Travels.

A WELL-EARNED MEAL

Dining room, Auldenheigh, Garanhir Earthmote 09.05.15.12.03

“’Twas the right thing to do, but ye really did push yersel’ too hard, lass.”

Ellaenie nodded, still too tired to actually hold a discussion, but she knew well the danger she’d put herself in. A mage—or witch—who cast too much and too aggressively without proper use of a magestone or fetish was draining their own body’s reserves. Too much, too hard, too carelessly and, Art or Craft, a practitioner could starve themselves to death in minutes or seconds.

So, even though she wanted nothing more than to sleep, probably in the same bath that Lisze was having prepared for her…first, she had to eat well.

Spring soup, good cheese, a sausage fritter, eggs…she was sure Mrs. Omiger the cook was grinding her teeth at serving such a mismatched selection of leftovers to top table rather than a proper dinner, but right now they were everything Ellaenie needed.

“Mmf…had’doo.”

“Ach, there’s the passion o’ youth…” Saoirse sighed, and sipped from the large glass of whisky she’d had brought to table for her. “Everything’s the crisis o’ crises when ye’re young.”

Ellaenie paused, her mouth too full of fritter to actually speak, and gave her a questioning look. Am I wrong?

Saoirse sighed again and drained most of the whisky all in one go. “No, you’re no’ wrong,” she replied, aloud. “This morning ye did’nae really exist tae those folks. The duchess was just a name an’ a palace on the horizon. Now, tae the people who were there you’re a real young lady, a powerful healer, and willin’ tae suffer for them. ‘Tis a powerful bit o’ witchcraft.”

“It was still reckless, though,” Rheannach chided gently, and tidied a little of Ellaenie’s hair out of her face.

“….I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“You did a bit, love.” She rose to fetch more soup. “You should have had time to rest after your initiation and encountering my husband. Instead, you’re thrown into…all this.”

“All this is why Gilber reached out to you in the first place,” Ellaenie pointed out. “How do you know him, anyway? Will you finally tell me?”

“Isn’t it obvious? He’s initiated in the Craft too.”

“You mean you’re Mother to him as well?”

“No, no. Gender matters, love. The rules are different for men, especially when they come to the Craft in their late thirties as he did. But I was there to witness his rites, and I count him as a friend.”

Ellaenie nodded. “Gilber was the one who broke the news to me about my mother and father. He rode all the way from here to Lendwick as soon as the eclipse brightened to tell me…” She stared into her soup, forgetting her hunger for a moment. “I think it would have been so much worse to hear it from anybody else. He…somehow, he softened the blow. As much has anyone could.”

“Aye. ‘Tis a pain we all must share, dear,” Saoirse nudged the soup bowl, reminding her to eat. “Tumors took my mother when I was thirty, an’ my father followed her not long after. I miss ‘em terribly. Old as I am, far older than they lived tae be, I still sometimes wish they were here so I could ask ‘em for advice.”

Ellaenie sipped a spoonful, nodding. “I don’t think mine would approve of my learning the Craft,” she admitted.

“Aye, an’ that’s the other half. Ye must be yer own person. We all must hear what our parents want ‘fer us, then choose how much of it tae keep an’ abide by, but it cannae be all of it. Not if ye’re to be yer own self.”

Ellaenie nodded thoughtfully, then frowned as the sound of voices outside the door grew loud enough to intrude on their conversation. Droles, arguing that she was to be left in peace to recover, and Gilber Drevin insisting he understood but needed to speak with her. She finished the last of her soup in a hurry and called out “It’s alright, Tomos! Let him in!”

There was a pause, then the door opened and Gilber Drevin entered, tucking his hat under his arm. He was dressed down, wearing the clothes of a modest gentleman, somebody whose budget stretched to well-made clothing but not excessive finery. A good disguise for a noble trying to blend in among the public.

“Lord Drevin,” Ellaenie greeted him with an exhausted smile and gestured for him to sit. “How have you fared?”

“Less strenuously than you, your grace,” he replied as he took a seat. “I’m glad to see you looking so recovered already. Your efforts caused quite a stir.”

“Oh, believe me, I don’t feel recovered at all. I think I shall sleep for a week after this…” Ellaenie replied.

“In any case, it seems to have paid off. The public are talking about you, gossiping. Not just about your efforts healing the injured, either. I gather you returned from your hunting expedition in the company of His Majesty?” He shot Rheannach an intrigued look.

“It’s true,” Rheannach said. “My husband decided Ellaenie needed to make quite an entrance…”

“Yes, they’re saying your landing left a crater. Now I wonder if His Majesty already knew what was happening in Auldenheigh and decided our duchess’ legend needed a little extra.”

“Och, o’ course he did!” Saoirse cackled. “Ye don’t think aught misses his gaze, do ye?”

“I suppose not…” Gilber turned back to Ellaenie. “In any case your grace, the Oneists are clearly fuming. We’ve been tracking the known circle members, and they are…quite frantic with activity. Meetings and movement. Harrowing though your efforts surely were, I think you have done much to heal last night’s troubles.”

“Were they really that successful at stoking unrest?” Ellaenie asked, before helping herself to more cheese.

“Among the desperate poor? Absolutely. The Church of the One have shown them tremendous kindness, while their landlords and employers have not. We can demand their loyalty and respect all we like, as our birthright. But actually receiving it…”

“Requires us to deserve it.” Ellaenie nodded. “Mrs. Baker said her bank was trying to argue the damage is not covered by her insurance.”

“They all are. Every one of the burned and demolished homes and businesses is facing the same problem: the banks are claiming some loophole in the policy, or that preventative demolition is not covered, only collapse due to fire. Or they’re claiming force majeure.”

“That,” Ellaenie asserted firmly, “cannot be allowed. Do please invite them to reconsider their decision. Selling insurance entails risk, after all. And if nothing else, I’m sure they can be persuaded by the power of goodwill to sell future premiums and policies.”

“I took the liberty of drafting the letter already, your grace.” He tugged it from an inside pocket and slid it across the table for her. Ellaenie scanned it as she chewed: the language was suitably diplomatic, while still expressing that the duchess would be most displeased should the banks fail to act charitably in this moment of crisis, and that certain longstanding royal appointments would be in danger of being re-evaluated. She held out her hand, Gilber gave her his pen, and she signed it: the palace clerks would send out copies bearing her seal.

“Thank you. As for the poor…It will not do to leave their grievance unreconciled. We should organize aid for the afflicted.”

“From your own treasure?”

“It’s not much of a birthright if we don’t live up to our responsibilities, is it? Besides, we absolutely cannot let the Oneists have even a shred of a victory in this. In fact,” she added, thinking strategically, “make a show of cooperation with the Oneists.”

“There is a danger in that. This magic they wield—”

“I’m certain you know how best to minimize the danger, Gilber. Our strategy here is to be aggressively reasonable. Let us open our hearts, coffers and kitchens to the poor. Let us make a show of contrition and even gratitude for having the public’s grievances shown to us. We will invest in our city’s future, and in the peace and prosperity of our people. And then, if the Oneists disrupt that peace…”

Gilber did something he rarely did, and smiled in genuine pleasure. “I understand, your grace.”

Ellaenie returned his smile, then looked to her Mother and Beldame. “What do you think?”

“’Tis an aggressive move on yer part,” Saoirse replied thoughtfully. “This was just the first openin’ move o’ theirs to see what ye’d do, I reckon, an’ ye’ve responded strongly. Now they know ye take them seriously as a foe, their next move will’nae be so soft, or so easily handled. Still, ‘tis canny an’ bold o’ ye, an’ I approve.”

“It was still an attack on you, on this city and on us,” Rheannach said. “There’s a terrible…hatred, flowing out of the Circle. Like…like hearing a wasp hive under the floorboards. And the worst part is, it’s not even their real hatred. It’s artificial, it’s only burning so bright because somebody’s pumping the bellows.”

“Who?” Ellaenie asked.

“His name is Nils Civorage.”

The lines on Gilber’s brow deepened. “I know that name. I think I’ve met him. A merchant guildman, yes? From Urstlend. He had some short of big scheme to conduct a mining operation down on the Unbroken Earthmote a couple of years ago, and was looking for investors.”

“That’s the one, yes.”

Gilber nodded, his brow furrows growing deeper still. “I took an instant disliking to him, as I recall. He’s one of those cold fellows who can put on charm and joy like a mask, but if you can look past the mask you’ll see nothing there but ambition and greed.”

“So whence the anger?” Saoirse wondered. “I’ve known a few men like that, an ‘tis no’ in their character tae hate unless they feel they’ve been insulted.”

“Unfortunately, his mind is a closed book even to Crowns and Heralds, now. Queen Talvi believes he dug up one of the Words of Creation.”

Ellaenie blinked, trying to absorb that through the fatigue still fogging her mind. “I thought…aren’t those just a metaphor?”

Saoirse sucked air through her teeth. “Och, maiden mine. If only they were. King Eärrach was no joking when he called them the end of learnin’. ‘Tis a terrible power that man has, if true.”

“That would explain everything I’ve seen of the Circle and the Church as a whole,” Gilber mused. “The magic involved is subtle, strong, and enormous, far beyond the abilities of any practitioner of the Art, and anathema to the Craft. I’ve been scratching my head about it since the day we first noticed the danger…”

Rheannach nodded grimly. “It’s a power no human is meant to have. The Crowns themselves distilled the Words in the time before, and they treat them with the utmost respect.” She sipped at her cup of tea and set it aside. “A human would be…overwhelmed. Broken by it. And if he was, as you suggest, already one of those brittle, flawed minds to begin with…”

“Then there’s no telling what dark emotions may have been unleashed in him,” Ellaenie finished.

“No. If some secret place in his soul truly hates life and the Crowns for burdening him with it—a sadly common affliction—well, now he has the power to infect others with it, and drive them into a frenzy. We’re quite worried, love. And this puts you in terrible danger.”

“I’d be dead already if not for a stroke of good luck,” Ellaenie pointed out. “I should be a Shade now, alongside my parents. But instead…here I am. Being in danger is nothing new. But at least this time I can see it coming and fight it.”

Saoirse nodded approvingly. “’Tis one o’ the qualities I admire most in ye, love. ‘Ye’re a bold one. Still: courage is’nae experience. Ye have’nae played this game before.”

“Have you? Tangled with a madman with deep and terrible power, I mean?”

“Mad? Aye. Powerful, indeed. But no’ this deep an’ terrible, ye have that right.”

Troubled silence fell over the table, and lingered for nearly a minute before a yawn forced its way up out of Ellaenie’s chest despite her best efforts to hold it back.

“Mmm…Sorry.”

Rheannach kissed her cheek, rubbed her back, and moved to the window, which she opened. “You need your rest. And…I want to spend time with my husband.”

“Should be a strong spring for us all, then,” Saoirse commented.

“Mm. Be glad you’re on a different earthmote…” A look of sheer unapologetic intent pulled Rheannach’s lips sideways into a smirk that sent a rush of heat to the tips of Ellaenie’s ears. “I’ll see you in a few days, loves. And Saoirse? Don’t forget your own people. The Oneists must be looking at the Craenen as well.”

“I know. But ‘fer now, I think my place is still here. Crae Vhannog can manage wi’out me a while longer, yet.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Rheannach nodded, and then—there was a twist, a flash of swirling energies like light and dark mingled into one single eye-bending non-colour. A handsome crow perched on the window for a moment, bobbed its head at them, spread its wings, and she was gone.

GIlber cleared his throat and rose to his feet. “I will see your will done, your grace,” he said, in a return to formality. “I hope you have a restful afternoon.”

“Thank you, Lord Drevin,” Ellaenie replied in kind, rising to her own feet with an effort. Sitting down, she’d been able to ignore how tired she really was. As soon as she was on her feet, it sunk into her that her bones ached. She needed that bath, and her bed. But she still had Saoirse to—

“Dinnae worry ‘bout me, love,” Saoirse interjected, clearly feeling her thoughts and intentions. “I’ll ne’er be bored in a palace wi’ such a library, I can promise that.”

Ellaenie thanked her mentor with a smile, and stumbled from the room right onto Lisze’s waiting arm. Her lady-in-waiting smelled of lavender oil and bath salts…

She stopped thinking for a while and allowed Lisze to fuss her into a bathtub, into her nightclothes, into bed…and despite the turmoil that should have filled her head, she was asleep before the quilt was even tucked around her shoulders, and didn’t wake until the next day.

----------------------------------------

> “The most important thing to remember about any Fey you may meet is that there was a time when they viewed killing humans as an amusing game. Some have repented of this past and are actively engaged in trying to atone, which your humble author can respect. Most simply live and act as though the past is irrelevant, which is less respectable. There is one tribe, however, who would resurrect that evil age if they could: their name is Ordsiwat, and to this day their favorite pastime is murder.”

>

> —Denrick Roth, Elves

STRETCHED TIME

Wandering Isle, somewhere in the cloud sea 09.06.03.06.09

Jerl could feel his body creaking at the edges as he tried to hold on and keep the power from running away from him.

Sidestep and turn, watch a thrown knife drift lazily past, its end-over-end tumble scarcely faster than the sweep of a clock’s second hand. Raise his pistol, take aim, line up as carefully as target shooting, squeeze the trigger…on to the next one.

It wasn’t the power of the Word he was struggling with, but the limits of his own flesh. He could slow time to the point where his own bullets seemed no faster than a hard-thrown pebble, but the mass of his limbs, his body’s momentum and the strength of his muscles? Those were unchanged.

He could think fast enough to watch the smoke coil out of a brass cartridge as it spun out of Sin’s carbine. But even his fastest twitchy movement felt like hauling on a bag-rope. His pistols’ triggers were leaden, heavy, almost jammed. Even his eyes were oddly slow: each shift of attention came with a disconcerting but mercifully brief instant of blindness.

Even so…from the elves’ perspective, he must seem impossibly fast, unerringly accurate, and utterly unstoppable.

Fuck it. He reached out, seized the tumbling knife firmly by its handle, heaved on it until he guessed it would fly back at its original owner with tremendous force and speed, then caught his gun again. It had dropped all of, oh, four inches. Oh good, the cylinder had finished clicking over. He hauled it around, took aim, and squeezed the trigger for what felt like ten seconds as the hammer lumbered back, thundered forward, and then the seconds-long hard shove of recoil.

All his instincts were off, and he could feel the fatigue and pain already grinding his bones. He was going to be sore after this.

Gun dry. Shove on the release catch with an aching thumb, free hand excavates six new rounds from the belt pouch. Hand moves fast enough he actually has to push the first tumbling brass out of the way with the nose of the new round. Gun jerks in his hand as he slaps it closed, got to use less force, don’t want to bend the base pin…

But where he was going to be sore, the Ordsiwat elves were going to be dead. And for all Sin’s lamentations about how much she hated how much she loved killing…Jerl felt absolutely no conflicted conscience at all. These fuckers had come here to kill innocent people, and he got the privilege of embarrassing them. And frankly, that was about all you could do to an elf, anyway—send them off to their next chal and give them plenty to chew on when their reincarnated memories returned. It wasn’t like killing a human.

Sin was certainly enjoying it. Apparently telling him about her past had let her relax a bit and allow the Laughing Death to show some more, because that was definitely not just a violent rictus on her face. Her eyes were shining.

And Mouse? Mouse was a shadow, even Jerl kept losing track of him. There’d be a slightly odd shift in the pattern of dappled lights under the orchard trees, and suddenly like one of those drawings of a cube popping from in to out, there was Mouse. The elves didn’t even glance at him, even when he was right in front of him: they leaned around him to keep their eyes on Jerl and Sinikka.

Blood sprays as Mouse drives a dagger into a slim fey throat from the side then slashes it viciously out. Victim collapses, unconscious before even hitting the ground, the Ordsiwat next to him flinches as arterial spray gets in his eyes, but somehow still doesn’t notice the lethal gangster within arm’s reach…

Oh, they were fighting back hard. But as Jerl had learned from Sin and from his own observations, the thing about elves was that they expected to win, instantly and overwhelmingly, by just being so much better than a human. After all, they had thousands of years of experience to draw on, and magically strengthened bodies. They expected humans to be afraid of them, and to be on the back foot.

They didn’t really seem to know how to handle their own tactics turned against them. Or at least, the Ordsiwat raiders didn’t. They scattered, tried to flank Jerl and Sin and overwhelm them with numbers, but from Jerl’s perspective they were just so slow that his worst difficulty was in judging how much to lead his target.

Some people thought that because elves were so fast, that meant they could parry bullets out of the air. It wasn’t true. Their bursts of speed were in straight lines, planned in advance then committed to: their actual reaction times were no faster than a human’s. He could see it now: Sin wasn’t any faster than them, she just planned an extra few steps ahead, like a master game player who already knew every way the board could develop. Every time she clashed with a charging fey, it was because she’d seen them coming before they’d even thought to act.

Together…

It was over in seconds. As Jerl relaxed his iron grip on time’s flow he saw the airship, which had been drifting overhead like it was coming in to land, not skimming the treetops in an assault run, accelerate and shoot away out over the island. A glint of light at it stern was a figure watching through a telescope.

Like a pike circling a wounded perch, the Ordsiwat ship swept around the island, completed a full circuit, then straightened its course and ran downwind into a cloud bank. The last Jerl saw of it was a flicker of purple, gold and dark wood among the mists, and the glint of that telescope, still telling him he was watched…and known.

Then the pain arrived.

He groaned, and crumpled to his knees. Ever limb, ever fiber of his body had been waiting patiently to register their complaint at the accelerated abuse he’d put them through, and now that they had the chance, it was like a flood of angry petitioners all battering the doors down and flooding in. Sin was at his side in an instant. “Jerl?”

“Fuuuck…!” Jerl flopped onto his side and then his back, unheeding and uncaring of the blood still soaking into the soil. He felt like he’d been stretched on a rack, every muscle was as taut as a harp string. All he could do was screw his eyes shut, clench his teeth, force himself to breathe steadily and suffer as the cramps played out…

He became dimly aware of the sound of running feet. Then there was warmth, an energy that radiated out from his heart and soaked into his flesh, banishing the cramps and the agony. As the pain subsided, he opened his eyes and gave Amir a grateful nod: his friend was kneeling beside him, gripping a magestone and concentrating on a healing spell while Derghan hovered behind him, scanning the skies with his hands tense around his rifle.

He dropped his head back and sighed as the torment faded away, down to a mere lingering sting in his skin, then nothing. Amir exhaled, and returned the spent three magestones he’d used to their pouch for later recharging.

“You okay?” Mouse was kneeling on the other side. Jerl saw Amir jump slightly and then remember Mouse and his powers.

“I think I overexerted myself a bit…” Jerl admitted. He sat up, and though his abdomen protested and felt surprisingly weak, he found himself quite mobile. He felt Mouse’s concerned attention dance feather-light over the surface of his mind, and projected a private reassurance and an echo of the experience.

Too much. He’d strained so hard against everything he’d made it all move at blinding, superhuman speeds but of course his body had endured all that force too. He was going to have to practice with Time, he could tell. This had been only a short fight, seconds long. Suffering the pangs of overexertion like that would have got him killed in a longer battle.

Or, well…sent him back. An odd thought, that. And potentially quite bad, given he didn’t know exactly when his last “safe” moment was. Hopefully it was here, a few days ago, but there was a real fear that it might send him all the way back to the Queen’s deck just before they docked at Long Drop and his encounter with Arthir Bellarn.

He shook the thought off, accepted Derghan’s hand as he hauled him to his feet, and teetered for a moment while looking around.

“…Shit.”

Mouse nodded. “Yup.”

“Did we do that?”

Derghan nodded, looking a little wide-eyed and intimidated “You shoulda heard it from the other side of the island. Sounded like there were ten of you.”

There were bodies everywhere, a good thirty at least. That airship must be running on a skeleton crew now.

“Just how many people do the Ordsiwat have?” Jerl asked around.

“A couple of hundred wyrdsooth, maybe the same again in wansooth.” Sin said, idly. She stooped next to one of the marauders, and tilted her head curiously at the neat bullet hole between his eyes. “Good shooting.”

“I’m sorry, Sin, give me that in Garanese?”

“Sooth is the feydh word for…well, it means a lot of things. Truth, message, philosophy, cause, faith, tenets…” She tugged a vamdraech out of its fallen owner’s chest sheath and shoved it straight into the body’s heart: the corpse didn’t twitch. “Creed, nay?”

“Right…?”

“And wyrd means…strong, enduring, lasting, permanent or robust, while wan is the opposite.”

“I think I get it.”

“Right.” She stabbed another corpse, again without reaction. “Most fey don’t really have a lasting philosophy. Death cleanses away old allegiances, and each chal is its own, nay? It’s rare for us to have convictions that transcend lifetimes. So, most of us are wansooth, just going along with whatever the tribe we’re born into happens to believe. Wyrdsooth like me, true believers who cleave to a creed in life after life…we’re not so common.”

“So which are this lot?” Mouse asked. He too was checking the bodies, though with a more pecuniary intent: he hefted a purse in his hand and pocketed it with an approving nod.

“Wyrdsooth. They don’t let the wansooth stray far from home, they’re essential to maintaining the tribe’s population.”

“So you just wiped out a good chunk of the tribe’s true believers for a generation,” Derghan realized.

“Yup.” Sin gave Jerl a serious look. “They’re not gonna be happy about that, nay?”

“They hardly gave us the option of a peaceful resolution,” Amir pointed out.

“No…” Sin agreed. “The question is, was their being here an accident?”

“You don’t think they’re in league with the Oneists, do you?” Derghan asked.

She shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. Ordsiwat don’t stoop to interacting with humans except…well.” She gestured around.

“Civorage could change the rules, there,” Amir pointed out.

“Mouse?” Jerl asked, but the blond street rat was already shaking his head.

“There was no touch of the Word about them. Civorage doesn’t have his claws in them, I’m sure of that.”

“So their coming here could just be a coincidence?” Amir folded his arms. “I don’t truly believe in coincidence.”

“Nor should you. Don’t underestimate Ekve and the tribe’s core,” Sin warned them. “Ordsiwat means ‘Patient Throne.’ They’ve been plotting to restore the ancient empire since the day it fell, and there’s something right here in Mouse’s pocket that would let them achieve that goal, nay?”

“You think they know what happened in Long Drop and tracked us down somehow?”

“It’s plausible. Coincidences do happen, but…not when powers like yours are involved, I think.” She arched an eyebrow at Jerl, who had to agree.

“Great. Fuckin’ great.” Derghan scratched his nose and sniffed dismissively. “Seems we’ve got a knack for makin’ enemies these days, hey?”

“Not just enemies,” Mouse said, and up-nodded at something behind them. Jerl turned: Cerkos and a group of his brothers, sons and cousins were approaching, slowing and looking around in awe at all the elven corpses decorating their orchard.

“…It’s over?” Cerkos asked, cautiously.

“For now. Reckon there’s barely enough crew left on that ship to fly it home,” Jerl agreed. Muttering passed around the group as one of Cerkos’ sons translated for them.

“Then you have saved my family.” Cerkos dropped his gun, embraced Jerl by the arms, and kissed him firmly on both cheeks. “We know who that was. We hear many stories of Isles that are found drifting and dead, their families raped and tortured to death, nailed to their own walls, hanging from their own orchards and skinned alive. Elves are so cruel…”

His eyes flicked guiltily to Sin, then he took a step back and bowed to her. “…But perhaps not all. You fought for my family against your own kind, elf. I…apologize to you for not welcoming you as a guest.”

Sin shook her head. “You have nothing to apologize for," she promised him. “And I’m sorry to say, if the Ordsiwat really want their revenge, they’ll find this isle again.”

Cerkos’ expression turned grim and troubled for a moment, before he rallied and wrenched the genial smile back onto his face. “…Well! That is a problem for tomorrow, yes? Today, here and now, we are alive! Come! Let us bathe the blood from your bodies and fill your bellies in thanks! It is less than we owe you. And as for these—” he kicked one of the fallen marauders. “Let them do some good with these bodies at last and nourish the crops.”

He gestured to the men around him, who slung their weapons away and commenced to cleaning up the orchard. Jerl exchanged a glance with his crewmates, nodded, and leaned heavily on Derghan to limp away. The magic had done much work, but he was going to need a proper hot bath and maybe a massage to chase away the ghost of all those spasms. His left leg in particular felt about as heavy and stiff as a log.

Mouse helped him from the other side, and Crowns. The man could fight, but the body under those baggy, hard-wearing clothes was skinny and tough rather than strong. Still…Jerl felt a rush of warm affection at the contact. And…he smiled, and aimed a thought at Mouse. Playful and teasing, but candid. After all, there was nothing like a good fight to get a man feeling alive.

Mouse glanced up at him and smirked, replying mostly in kind…but there was a tinge of hesitation in it. Something he wasn’t quite ready for, yet.

Jerl gave him a squeeze by way of reassurance, then grunted as a lance of pain shot up his leg and made him stumble.

Right. Yes. Rest first, fun later.

And after that…well, if they had a new enemy, he was going to have to figure out what to do about them, too. A bit vexing that their troubles seemed to be growing rather than shrinking, but hey: things were still much better than last time. Nobody he cared about was dead, for a start!

And maybe it was all part of the plan. Maybe their troubles needed to grow before they could shrink. He wasn’t naive enough to think this was all destined to be straightforward. Nice as that would have been, he knew the world didn’t work that way. There was still much for him to figure out, before he could start setting things right.

May as well think about it in the bath, though. He accepted the help, and hobbled back toward the inn.

And wondered when they’d see the Ordsiwat again.

----------------------------------------

> “Why don’t they lift a finger to save the worlds from its various evils? Now that is the sort of question which demands answering in questions. Why should they? Who are you to demand it of them? How do you know they do not? Is it possible that their intervention would be a greater evil? Oh, have you tried this blend? And have you noticed the way young Nomiye there is looking at you…?” —Rivishchandra Banergupta, Conversations with the Shisha

A PLEASANT EVENING

Eärrach’s lake cabin, a private earthmote 09.06.03.06.09

The sound of crickets in the night, and the sight of moths fluttering confusedly against a lantern were, sometimes, all the evidence a Crown might need that making the worlds had been entirely the right thing to do. Even those tiny, mindless lives, barely more than a biological stimulus-response automaton, deserved to exist. And they were beautiful for existing.

That was the secret to an indefinite life. Sit on the porch, smoke a pipe, and relax into the simple pleasure of presence.

He blew a smoke ring—perfect, of course—and sent it on its way with a slight puff of his cheeks: it drifted away and out toward the lake. For a moment he entertained the idea of holding it together until it had completed a full lap of the shore but…no. He stopped focusing and allowed it to dissipate naturally.

Small, delicate, cool hands lightly touched the back of his neck, slid down his shoulders and around and forward, down onto his chest where they felt him approvingly; their owner’s lips touched his cheek, and a voice murmured warmly in his ear. “Hey.”

King Eärrach smiled. “Hey, you.”

There was a shift and a sense of movement, and Haust settled herself into place on the porch railing, leaving the coolness of her touch to linger for a second. She was like that, relentlessly ethereal even with him and the others. When she wasn’t being human, she didn’t deign to do something as mundane as walk when she could flow from place to place as though the intervening space was just a suggestion.

Always a fun trick, that.

Eärrach preferred his embodied existence. Mostly it was a matter of ancient preference, whether he presented as the man he’d once been, or as something less…fullsome than his physical reality for the comfort of others: a more modest woodsman, or perhaps as a bear, or a great mythical beast—

Or as a dire stag, as was his favorite.

However he lived, he was always rooted here. In the material, the physical. The necessary grounding of the real.

This wasn’t without some issue, for Eärrach was a man of size. Big feelings, big passions. He loved his fellow Crowns, passionately and gently, and he had a body to match his power. The strength of worlds was within him, in a very literal sense. So for the sake of everyone, he preferred the outdoors. Suited him better, anyway. Life was sacred, and there was no better place to commune with it then here.

Communion was the order of the day. And with him, those were predictable affairs. Big, warm feelings for the people he loved most. Big, powerful passions too, as much as they could handle, and a playful bit more besides just to remind them who they were dealing with. Sometimes they shared some big fun grunty exercise on his hidden earthmote, with some of his favorite and most secretive heralds—the rest of the world wasn’t ready to know about them, not yet.

Today they were indulging in a big, glorious bit of relaxation. Wonderful time to smoke a pipe and get his think on. He had to be a bit more deliberate about it than the others, because his obstinate will to remain embodied had an effect on how he had to think about things the others didn’t quite understand.

Didn’t stop him from teasing Haust. Teasing was his love language, really.

“Aren’t you a little young to be out this late?”

She smiled and smoothed the long, diaphanous layers of cloth she preferred to wear in this form comfortably under her. “My parents are asleep.”

“Who are they this time?”

“Amdahene and Palatu. You’d like them. Palatu calls me ‘little foal’ and sneaks me some extra cheese when he thinks Amdahene’s not looking. She always notices, but it makes her smile.” A warm smile of her own lit her lips, the only part of her face Eärrach could see amid the shadows of her hood. It was a funny affectation on her part, he’d seen her face often enough, but…

Well, they were all creatures of habit.

“They sound wonderful.”

“They are. I’m fairly sure the shaman suspects me, but that’s alright.”

“They’re a canny bunch in that tribe. Always have been.”

She noddded. “My favorite type of people. And you worry for them.”

“For all of them.”

She looked around. “Don’t tell me I’m first to get here?”

“Oh, no. Sayf is out making like a shark just now. He promised me fish!”

Water was one of the few things Eärrach found difficult to indulge in. Oh, he could dispense with much of his size, ditch his mountainous mass and become buoyant, all that. He was in no danger whatsoever of drowning, and danger hadn’t worried him for innumerable billions of millennia…but it took effort of the mind to do such things. He wasn’t merely physical by choice or preference, he was physical by nature, too. Formlessness wasn’t natural to him, like it could be with the younger two.

“So we’re just waiting on Winter.”

“Not much longer, I think.” Eärrach pinched his fingers together, stuck them in his mouth, and aimed a whistle toward the lake that shook the trees and, some seconds later, unleashed an avalanche in the mountains beyond.

He gave a mischievous sideways look to Lady Haust. “Haven’t seen you this young in ages! Too bad, normally I’d waggle my eyebrows at this point, and gesture to the bedroom…”

She laughed, “you’ll need to wait and see! Besides, you have Rhee and the other two…”

“And I am blessed in them,” he said warmly, and honestly. “Blessed in all of you.”

She flowed seamlessly off the railing and kissed his cheek again. The words love you too, big man flickered through his awareness and then she was a wraith, flitting away down the beach toward the lake. Meanwhile, far out in the middle, a rather larger, darker and much more material form had just broken the surface and was sending a perfect ring of ripples out across the perfectly glass-smooth waters.

Ah, Prince Sayf: a glorious balance between magnificent and hot mess, done with the deliberate intent of a master performance artist. And it looked like he’d been successful in his noodling. The catfish latched onto his arm was a monster, its thrashing body churning the water into a foam.

“Dang! That’s a heck of a catch! I’ll need to whip up some hushpuppies to go with that.”

Sayf waded up the beach and shook himself off. The long surfer’s mane he’d habitually worn for eons sprayed droplets everywhere as he hefted the catfish onto his shoulder and traded welcoming kisses with Haust. “Haven’t had those in a long while. Sounds good.”

“Still got your strength under all the padding, I see! Could do with less of the Shisha’s sweets…”

He couldn’t help but tease. Sayf had made a point of embodying the concept of '"work hard, play harder.' He was handsome but overindulged it with perfumes and luxury; he was a strong, powerful warrior of old, but had let himself pack it on, nearly but not quite to the point of obesity. There was a sharp-edged man under it all, but that edge was almost blunted away.

Almost. His was a life of promoting all that was beautiful and comely, and also a warning against going too far. Like all of them, he taught the people by his example.

There was a lot going on under all the fat and jolly. And he was never without good banter!

“Good sport is just as much an indulgence as good baklava, old man! Both are even better when thoroughly baked!”

“Ha!” Eärrach knew better than to indulge in the Shisha’s mind-expanding confectionary. Nobody wanted a being like King Eärrach impaired.

“Besides, you could stand to take a little edge off of that hulking anatomy chart of a body you’re wearing! Who are you trying to impress?”

“Everyone,” Eärrach retorted smugly, bouncing his chest. “You love it.”

Prince Sayf gave him a look that said, plainly, that he loved it very much indeed. Hmm! Well, why not, later on? It’d been ages since he’d last indulged his favorite prince! Grinning, he showed off his physique a little more, appreciating the results from countless years of hard work. It was his original body, genetics and physics upgrades (and Ship of Theseus issues) aside, so he’d always kept it around and intact, even when his awareness was occupying another form. He didn’t know why he felt so strongly about that, but all the grueling work he’d invested in himself over literal æons seemed important to preserve, somehow. And he wasn’t done building himself up, either…

Haust, meanwhile, rolled her eyes at all the boy energy, (which earned her some grunty posing and affection, too) and settled herself comfortably alongside the beach fire pit, which she lit with a gesture. “Speaking of heralds, are Rhee and the puppies joining us?”

“Not tonight.” Eärrach stopped teasing them both, joined her and thumped down into the sand with a bump that rattled the bear traps hanging on his cabin’s wall. “You know the pups, they’re not interested in being involved in the heavy thinking. And Beloved is away on business.”

“Pity. I haven’t seen her since..oh, eight years ago?"

“Well, visit us more!”

A cold swirl of air licked across his skin at the precise same moment as a fourth and final voice joined their conversation. “We always promise to visit each other more, don’t we? But there are always distractions…My, that’s quite a fish!”

“Ain’t he?” Sayf agreed with a swagger. “I was just about to clean him up.”

“Then let’s.” Talvi graced the three of them with a freezing peck on the cheek apiece, and set her walking stick down by the fire. It was purely an affectation anyway, so Eärrach favored her with a big, tight hug.

“Missed you.”

Queen Talvi, like Eärrach, was more attached to her original form than the younger two. She mostly presented as older and matronly, in a severe, quietly affectionate way. The disciplined grandmother, perhaps. When she was feeling joyous, though…

She had been a stunning woman in her original life. And she still was.

But with her, there was a proper time and place for everything, and right now was not the time for what he really wanted to do; he was the Crown of Spring, after all. Nonetheless, Eärrach always respected people’s boundaries, because if he didn’t, how could he expect anyone else to do so? The powerful must always take care; what might feel playful to him could easily seem frightening to anyone else.

He had loved her for something effectively approaching eternity, from a time when he was already mighty and she merely human. In all that time, he had never taken advantage.

Not that she needed protection these days, but what could he say? He was set in his ways.

She glanced up at him warmly, much conversation embedded in a single look. “And you too. All of you! We four haven’t cooked and dined together in far too long.”

Consensus. In seconds, the four of them fell into a domestic dance honed over epochs. Since it was catfish tonight, Eärrach got the pot and oil ready, Sayf set into cleaning his catch, Talvi prepared the seasoning and Haust flitted around to set the table.

Eating was, strictly speaking, a ritual rather than a requirement for them all, given that the energies they each embodied far transcended things like carbs and protein. But they had bodies still, and all that went with it. Eating just felt better. There was also a spiritual side to sharing a simple meal with one’s closest and dearest, and the chance to relish being a creature of the world, even though all four of them largely eclipsed it.

The fact they could still have these moments was something to be tremendously thankful for. They came around too rarely.

So, for an hour, perhaps an hour and a half, they were just four friends having dinner together and nothing more. But it had to end, eventually: they had business to discuss.

Meetings of the Crowns were rare indeed. At least, rare on the timescales of human and elf. For beings as vast and ancient as the Crowns of Creation, a gap of centuries might feel as short and familiar as a day or two between fond greetings. Conversations were often much the same, picked up wherever they left off, pretty much the moment they were all sitting around the fire outside.

“So. The Ordsiwat have decided to join the drama too.”

Talvi nodded as she stretched her bare feet toward the fire to warm them. “I told you there would be further risk. Did I not warn? We won’t be able to light-touch our way out of our predicament. Not this time.”

Haust pulled an extra shawl out of thin air to add to the many layers already wrapping her against the chilly night air. “Our ‘predicament’ is the same as it’s ever been. We’re attempting something new and difficult, and we’re doing so with a clean slate version of humanity.”

“I don’t know if I would go as far as ‘clean slate.’ They’re still genetically the same people who evolved on our home planet so long ago. The culture may be new…”

“Culture is everything, with humans.”

“Culture is their expression of reality and their relationship to it. It isn’t their reality itself. So many of the same patterns and mistakes…”

Eärrach sat naked to the air, as was his custom, and thumbed some leaf into his pipe from a handy pouch. “Yes. Necessary mistakes. You don’t grow up if you don’t fuck up.”

“In any case, what they—we—face is novel and dangerous. They cannot be expected to stand against the unrestrained power of godhead run amok among them. We rightly treat the Words with severe respect, and are we not all but gods ourselves?”

Eärrach sighed. “You know I hate claiming that word.”

“So do we all, but sometimes we need to be honest about it. There’s a reason we’ve all wrapped ourselves in the trappings of deity. We are what they need us to be.”

“Exactly. Our touch needs to be as light as it can be,” Talvi replied, then looked up at Sayf. “Chuckles? You’re being unusually quiet, it’s making me nervous.”

Sayf’s handsome face wasn’t built for frowning. It was built for quick smiles, smouldering intensity and artistic rapture. His present thoughtful scowl looked quite out of place. He was resting his chin on his thumbs with his hands tucked up under his nose, and he drummed his fingers thoughtfully a couple of times before speaking.

He might well have been the smartest of the four, in his way. Nobody with any wisdom ever failed to listen to him, when he deemed it important enough to get serious.

“…We could have just wiped Civorage’s memory, put Mind back in a new vault, and this whole incident would have been over before it had really begun and nobody would have ever noticed. We didn’t. I don’t see why a ship full of elfish marauders changes our rationale.”

Eärrach shrugged uncomfortably and sighed. “Perhaps we should have done precisely that. Perhaps I should have.”

“As I recall, you were the leading voice in advocating against it.”

“Yes, and I can’t say for sure if that was out of selfishness. You…please don’t take this the wrong way, but none of you are on the verge in quite the same way I am. Wielding Mind requires surgical precision, you know this. But wielding it at that level of use might just be the end of it for me.”

“Nobody wants that, sure enough.”

“I least of all. I am…I know what lies across that threshold. I’m not ready, and I’m not worthy. And I have a duty to this creation of ours, to see it through. We all do.”

“Agreed,” Haust poked the fire. “Which is why caution is warranted. Right now…they’re good folk, who oppose Civorage. Surely that must count for something!”

Talvi nodded fervently. “Jerl is such a wonderful person, darlings. And the Word wants him.”

“Which is precisely why I have doubts. Direct intervention…I still worry. You cannot wield the power of gods without risking godhood itself.”

“So maybe he’s our first to rise from this epoch,” Sayf suggested.

Now that was an unwelcome thought. Eärrach shifted uncomfortably. “So soon?”

“Why not? Can we really claim we were ready? Especially given what you just said?”

“But if you’re right then we’d be…what? Twenty, maybe fifty thousand years ahead of schedule.”

“The schedule was always our best guess. We’ve all been around long enough to know that reality never conforms to expectations.”

Haust snickered at that, and nodded with a wry expression. “It’s true. And the Words aren’t just tools. If they think the time is right to emerge and there are minds worthy of them—and it seems evident that they do, considering Civorage would never have got the vault open without the Word’s assistance—then they’re going to emerge. Time persuaded us to release it, after all.”

Eärrach nodded, agreeing with her point, and finished his own. “But more, I think our young heroes need breathing room. And guidance. They both do.”

“They all will,” Talvi said. “Let’s not pretend it’s going to stop at just two.”

“Guidance was always part of the plan,” Sayf added.

“Yes,” Eärrach acknowledged. “But we can all say from experience that a Word is a terrible thing to inflict on the unprepared. They need time, and not in the sense of Time, either. They need…some rest, and a moment to adjust to their new situation. I think we can give it to them, and maybe clean up an old mess we should have attended to millennia ago.”

Sayf sat back and made a grumbling noise. “Not this again.”

“The elves were your idea, Sayf. A good one, too!” he added, quickly. “But their nature means they need guidance even more than our humans do. If this is indeed the start of a new human era, and new Ascended are coming…”

“You’re suggesting an attitude adjustment.”

“It’s that or genocide. Here,” he offered. “See as I have seen. Gaze into deep time. See where all the paths lead.”

Of the Crowns, none could wield the Words so effortlessly as Eärrach, but therein lay the danger. Every indulgence of their power could leave a little more of it in the user, which dragged that person further from the real, and closer to…well, the Source of it all. To godhood entire, not merely a relatively safe approximation of it, as the Crowns held.

Eärrach was on the very border of crossing over and had been for an immeasurably long time. He knew well the dangers. The others? They had margin, yet. Lots of it. So instead of carefully meditating on it, wielding without further imbibing, they could dive straight in without much fear.

All had Time within them. And with just a little prompting…

They saw it. All of them. There was a bloodbath coming. It would start with a genocide, but it wouldn’t end there, oh no.

Talvi was the first to blink and look away from it. “Oh…my.”

“Yes.”

“Things really are evolving so fast now, aren’t they? So much faster than we thought they would.”

“Maybe that was inevitable.”

“Maybe.”

There was a long silence. The fire crackled, the invisible crickets continued to sing. The four most powerful living things in all the universe sat in each other’s company and thought.

"So what are we going to do?” Eärrach asked. “Are we going to do anything? Or is this still something they need to sort out themselves?”

Silence again. And that, in itself, was a consensus: for the first time in a long, long while, the Crowns didn’t know what to do next.

“…I say…a small nudge is in order,” Talvi decided after a minute. “Not much. Just enough. To give them time to rest and recover before the next challenge.”

Eärrach nodded. “Maybe we can do both at once. Give them a nudge, and also address our elvish problem, when the moment is right.”

Haust picked up on it. “Subtlety through extreme unsubtlety? How very like you!”

“Shut up!” Eärrach laughed, but sobered up quickly. “But…yes. We face two problems. We can’t do this for them, nor can we remain indulgently in the background any longer. They’re growing up, now. Far faster than we were ready for.”

“’Tis always the way with children.”

Their heads all bobbed. They had all been parents uncountably many times over, down the long years.

“…So. What nudge?”

“The old reliable,” Talvi said. “A crossing of paths, with the right person at the right time. And I think I know who they need most…”

She explained. They listened. And, one by one, their smiles returned.

They reached consensus.

----------------------------------------

> “Lest you mistake my previous chapters for fearmongering, let it be clear that the elves are militarily extinct, having lost their ability to engage in serious warfare sometime before the decline and fall of the Ordfey, with no hope of ever recovering. Their population numbers a mere million across all the worlds, meaning if they were all to migrate to Garanhir, they would be a minority in even the least of that earthmote’s great cities. The elves are scattered, divided, and stateless. They have not the unity, numbers, materiel, industry, agriculture or logistics to wage war in any meaningful capacity. Those who involve themselves in war at all do so as mercenaries, or as marauders. In either case, their approach is necessarily the same: They are warriors and raiders, who compensate for their lack of mass through prodigious skill and natural cruelty. In other words, dear reader, never expect an elf to fight honourably. They fight only to destroy your morale. But is that not, ultimately, the acme of warfare?” —Denrick Roth, Elves.

A WELCOME BATHTUB

Wandering isle, the cloud sea. 09.06.03.06.09

Jerl had to hand it to Cerkos’ people: they knew how to draw a perfect bath. The water was just a degree or two shy of painful, so he’d had to lower himself in gingerly and with held breath, but the oils and salts added to it filled the air and seemed to soak through his skin along with the heat, and soak all the lingering tension out of his abused muscles.

Crowns. What a day. And what a lot to reflect on, about what Time allowed him to do…and not do. He certainly was going to need a lot of practice if he was going to use it in future without injuring himself.

Speaking of which…

He reached out, picked up a sweetmeat from the platter beside the tub, and indulged in it. That was the problem with magical healing, it left the body hungry. Still, better hunger than agony.

He sighed as he chewed, settled back, and basked.

Some minutes later, he went reaching for the platter again, and this time a sweetmeat was offered to him, right under his nose. He jumped and nearly sat up straight in the tub out of alarm and surprise before realizing—right. Yes. Mouse. Sitting on the tub’s edge with a look of puckish amusement on his face.

“Crowns!” Jerl complained. “You scared the shit outta me!”

“Forgot I exist, huh?”

Jerl settled back. “Sorry…but, wait, you didn’t come in here with me?”

“Nope. I snuck in just now. You’re still…mostly immune to me. Unless I’m really trying.”

“Heh!” Jerl chuckled and relaxed fully again. “Never had a peeping tom sneak up on me in the bath before.”

“Their loss.” Mouse ran a shameless eye down Jerl’s body, at least as far as the bubbles and waterline would let him.

“So, you gonna join me?”

“I’d like to.”

Jerl tilted his head. “But?”

“But…there’s something we need to clear the air on, first. A, uh…a secret I want to let you in on.”

Before Jerl could ask what that might be, Mouse stood up, loosened the laces of his shirt, and peeled it off. Underneath he wore a wide cloth wrapped tightly around his chest. And under that, once it was unwound and red-facedly thrown aside…

“…Huh.”

Mouse shrugged at him, blushing crimson from scalp to sternum. “You really didn’t guess at all?”

Jerl looked up. Mouse looked terrified, he realized. As though the mere sight of tiny, barely-there but undeniably feminine breasts was all it would take to bring their relationship to a crashing halt.

“Not a clue,” he admitted.

“Does it…” Mouse took a deep, nervous breath, then changed course. “I…feel like I owe you an explanation.”

“Sure,” Jerl nodded. “Though I mean, I think I can guess…?”

“So guess.”

“I’m thinking…a little Garanese girl and her dad leave the old country ‘cuz his dealings with the wrong kind of business partner are starting to catch up with him and he needs to get out while he’s still in one piece. And because he’s a shady sort who hangs out with some nasty people, he knows just how dangerous traveling the worlds can be for a lass, knows it’s just a touch safer for a lad, so…a haircut, a change of clothes, and nobody’s any the wiser. Something like that?”

Mouse nodded, and sat on the tub’s edge. “Something like that.”

“And then it stuck. Going back felt impossible. Safer and easier to just live as a man. Until eventually it just became who you are, and now—”

“Something like that.” Mouse repeated. “I’m sorry if you feel like I’ve been lying to you but—”

“A little,” Jerl confessed. “But…I suppose everyone has secrets.”

Mouse nodded glumly, then looked him in the eye. “You don’t. It’s…astonishing. Everyone else is full of them, but you? You’re like this clean blade that just cuts right through it all. There’s nothing in your head that’s not out there on your face.”

“Well…yeah,” Jerl agreed. “And this is why. Because secrets always come out eventually, and then they’re awkward. I like simplicity. And you being a woman rather than the man I thought you were…complicates matters.”

Mouse sighed, looked down, and nodded. “Yeah. I…yeah. I’m sorry, you prefer men, I shouldn’t have let this go so far—”

Jerl reached out and caught her wrist before she could stand and leave. “That’s not…quite right,” he said.

“No? You told Ju-Wi your bag’s rigged the other way…”

“Men, in my experience, are less complicated,” Jerl said.

“…Shit, Jerl.” Mouse paused, then took his hand and held it. “That’s…who hurt you?”

“You don’t know?”

“There are knots of pain in your mind, right at the bottom of it. Everyone has them, and I don’t look too closely because…well, it feels like a violation. But it seems like everyone’s mind is shaped by pain, somewhere.”

“Well, a big part of that is prob’ly my dad, but…” Jerl shook his head. “Her name was Elise. She chartered the Queen, when I was just a big strapping fourteen-year-old still learning the airship trade. She was…older. Twenty, thereabouts. I think she was a courier or something, she was escorting a big load of crates up to the Observatory. And then she spent most of the voyage lounging around the ship working on her tan. She was fascinating, you know? Beautiful, witty, confident, sultry…”

Mouse nodded, softly. “I can see her face in your mind.”

“Yeah. She stuck with me all these years.”

“She was your first time.”

“And the first to break my heart, a few days later.” Jerl shook his head. “I was much too young. To this day I dunno if it was a moment of weakness she regretted, or if she got off on the dynamic of seducing and breaking in a boy and then abandoning him once she’d had her fun. Depends if I’m feeling charitable or not, I guess. After that…I dunno. Women just seemed to tie me up in knots. Men were easier.”

“And now I’m adding to it.” Mouse sighed and tried to stand and leave again. “I’m sorry, I—”

Jerl shook his head and held on. “Mouse…for the right person…for you…maybe I’d be willing to try a little complication.”

Mouse blinked, then sat again and leaned closer to him. “I…don’t want us to be complicated at all.”

Jerl smiled, then surged upward. He felt a surge of delight at the ridiculously cute squeak Mouse made when their lips met, or the waves of unguarded gratitude and relief flooding out of his-slash-her mind.

Jerl didn’t go so far as to pull Mouse fully into the tub with him, but he didn’t try and hide his intent or desire. Mouse chuckled playfully, and moments later, after a few hasty contortions and unfastenings, Jerl was treated to the feeling of lithe, wiry, and entirely naked skin pressed against his own, all the way down.

They basked in each others’ arms and kissed for a good long while, celebrating the simplicity of mutual attraction. Then, once they had kissed to satiation, Mouse rested an ear on Jerl’s chest and breathed deep, enjoying the sound of his breath and the beat of his heart. It was a curious feeling for Jerl: Mind drew him in and let him feel exactly what Mouse felt. For a moment, he got to know just how comforting it was to be safe in his own arms and Mouse, he could feel, got to enjoy the experience from his perspective, too. The delight of having someone small and vulnerable to hold close and be solid for, and the flame of affection it stoked in his heart. For some minutes, it was almost difficult to tell where each of them ended and the other began. The feeling of their minds melting intimiately together at the edges was strange, but the very opposite of unpleasant.

They did, however, eventually have to start using their words again.

“So…who else knows? Just me and your dad?” There was a scar on the side of Mouse’s neck: a memory that wasn’t his own told Jerl it was a relic from a knife fight years ago that had all too nearly gone the wrong way. He traced his thumb along it, wondering how different life would be now if that blade had sunk just an inch deeper…

“And Imdura.” Mouse was exploring Jerl’s scars too, tracing the spot where a smashed bottle in a barfight had left five bald streaks through his chest hair. “Sinikka too. She figured me out right away. But she’s the opposite of you, she’s nothing but secrets; she’s not going to out me. Other than them, nobody. I’d, uh…I know you don’t like to keep secrets, but I’d prefer to keep it that way, please.”

“It’s only my own secrets I don’t keep,” Jerl said. “Other peoples’, that’s their business. So if that’s what you want, my lips are sealed.”

Mouse laughed. “Oh, Jerl. I’m disappointed. You didn’t try to extort me or anything!”

Jerl scoffed. “Heh! Guess I’d make a piss-poor Street Rat, huh? But okay, I’ll bite. What’s my silence worth to you?”

“Hmm. How about…this?”

Jerl opened his mouth to ask what this might be, then gasped as clever, strong, nimble fingers wrapped around a part of him that had very much wanted to be touched for several minutes now. “Ah! Oh! Uh…yeah. If you’re looking to buy my silence, that might be the, uh, the wrong way…”

“Oh?” A circling fingernail made Jerl inhale sharply. “Talkative, are you?”

“Your secret,” Jerl promised fervently, “is safe with me. Payment accepted.”

Mouse grinned. “Good…”

Jerl rested his head back, shut his eyes, and Mouse put those skilled pickpocket’s hands to work on him.

And by the time the water grew cold, they were both feeling very relaxed indeed.

----------------------------------------

> “Suffering is inevitable, and all relief from it is temporary. That is why relief is so precious and necessary, of course, but also why our own interventions are so careful and rare. Should we police every street gag? Prevent every murder? What about every heart attack, or every sickly child who dies before attaining the age of five? Should we intervene whenever an airship’s rigging snaps? Should we make it our mission to erase all misery from the human experience? Because let me assure you…if we went down that road, we would do you all a harm far worse than any the elves could invent. And so, we were forced to stand by and watch the Ordfey’s cruel excess…but we never endorsed it.”

>

> —Attributed to Lord Sayf, Mithras at-Sayat, The Collected Quotes of the Crowns

EKVE’S PALACE

Vathordweth, The last bastion of the Ordfey 09.06.03.06.11

Ekve woke, as had been his habit across the thousands of years and dozens of chal, to the feeling of silk sheets, the breeze through the open window, and of warm bare flesh against his own. And, in this case, to the feeling of two sets of lips leaving cool spots on his skin as they explored across his chest and down, down, down…

There could surely not be a better way to greet the new day. He licked his lips as the two figures so dilligently serving him completed their journey and found something to share, and opened his eyes.

On mornings like this, he could almost pretend he still ruled from the towering spires of Vathcanarthen. The breeze playing through the curtains and across his bed was warm today, much akin to a cool morning on Prathardesh. It carried the scent of honey, meat and baking from the kitchens as the last palace of the Ordfey woke up and prepared breakfast.

He also smelled blood, and smiled up at the ruined figure of a human hung on the wall opposite. He really had to commend Valis and Orod, and not just for their skill at suckling his balls. Even after all this time, the pair were still so wonderfully creative at making art from shattersouls…

And, on occasion, when he was feeling especially decadent, from each other. Perhaps he would have them kill themselves while he made love to them tonight. They were starting to look a little…stale. Not yet lined by years, but their faces and forms were now completely familiar, too long-established. It was time to refresh them, though It was tedious to have to wait the fifteen years for them to return from limbo. But that too was just an opportunity to enjoy some other playthings.

On the other hand, they did know and love him so well…decisions, decisions. He tucked an arm behind his head, carressed Orod’s cheek, and allowed them to bring him to climax at their leisure.

Their ministrations were interrupted by the welcome sound of a watch-horn. One long, clear note that was allowed to fade—the airship was back. And about time, too: Ordsiwat Set was running low on slaves.

Less welcome, some minutes later as he was on the edge and being held their by their delicious cruel restraint, was the sound of the horn blowing again in an unusual rhythm, four short notes and one long, pa-pa-pa-pa-paaaa….What did that mean again?

Valis did something unspeakable with her tongue, and Ekve entirely forgot about the damn horn.

For a few minutes, at least. He was in the middle of holding Valis down by the throat and rewarding her for her creativity when the sound of running feet filtered through his lustful haze and drove the idea home that perhaps that horn blast had been important after all. Annoyed, he tossed her aside and left her wild-haired, flushed and unsatisfied in his bedsheets as he rose, marched to the door, and flung it aside without bothering to cover himself or wait for his arousal to subside. Why should he? He had taken all the Ordsiwat at one time or another, as was his due as their sovereign.

“The airship is back with news, I take it. Speak.”

His aide Motha bowed deep, in a hurried way. “Most of the crew are killed, Endless King.”

Ekve blinked. Then he reached out, and threw on the robe hung by the door. “The oracle was quite explicit that this wandering isle would be the catalyst of our redemption. Their vision has never been false. Explain.”

“It is…unclear what happened, Endless King. But they think…” Motha cleared her throat. “There was an Ithfey. Captain Lithara believes it was Bekhil.”

Irritation and disbelief gave way to sudden anticipation and dawning delight. “Could it be, after all this time? Is Lithara certain?”

“She is confident. There was another, too. One who used the weapons of a shattersoul but moved like a true Fey. Lithara could not identify them.”

“Two traitors, in one place?” Ekve swept from the room, his sexual conquest entirely forgotten in favor of a much rarer pleasure. “Oh, I’d always dreamed of what I will do to Bekhil when I finally get the chance, but the chance to give a prelude…”

“Sire, just these two killed half the raiders,” Motha pointed out, cautiously.

“Bekhil was always the best of us.” Ekve said it dismissively, then paused as he considered what Motha had just said in more detail. “…I believe Avinil was keen to lead the raiders, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, Sire. He’s dead, sire.”

“And Bosa, Amren, Asha, Verin? All dead too?”

“Yes, sire. Everyone who set foot on the mote in question. And they died quickly, sire. Lithara says the last of them was dead before the first had even properly fallen over.”

Ekve had spent thousands of years cultivating a properly royal confidence, but he also had the wisdom of lifetimes to know when the news he had just heard was cause to set it aside. And as truly wondrous as Bekhil was, the most magnificent and talented killer Ekve had known in any form and a lover to match…he couldn’t quite believe that even they could have killed five of the Ordsiwat Set’s best so quickly, help or no help.

“I wil speak with Lithara.”

Motha nodded and hurried away. Ekve frowned thoughtfully for a minute, then turned back into his chambers and shut the door.

“Bathe me and clothe me,” he ordered.

So it was that, not long thereafter, the king of the elves was in the garden courtyard, smelling cleanly of fragrant soaps rather than the musk of sex. He restrained the impulse to run his fingers through his newly oiled beard, and instead considered the space around him as he waited for Lithara to arrive.

The garden was a monument to what the Fey had lost, and what Ordsiwat Set was pledged to one day restore. The frescoes around the walls told the full story, from the Day of Creation, through the Fey slowly awakening to the mortality of humans, to the First Conquest and the building of the five cities, the age of plenty and leisure…

That was one side of the courtyard. The other was the downfall. The slow decline in diligence and attentiveness, the growth of a hidden human kingdom in exile, and finally the year when slaves had sold their meaningless lives by the thousand to overthrow their rightful masters.

The last two panels were scenes of treachery: In the penultimate scene, the Crowns and Heralds tore down what their chosen people had built, and the final panel showed only two figures: Bekhil, chained and bowed before Queen Talvi. The final act of the Crowns’ caprice.

The Ordsiwat could not and did not ignore that their gods had sided against them in that terrible age. But Ekve had long held the belief that their reasons for doing so were ineffable and complex. After all, their vision pierced through time far further than anyone, be they mortal or eternal. And in the long years since that war, the Crowns had not returned to finish the job, nor do to Ekve what they did to Bekhil.

For six thousand years, the Ordsiwat Set had continued the ways of the Ordfey and worked toward its return. Ample opportunity for the Crowns to object…and they had not. Not once.

Ekve had spent much time sitting in this courtyard, surrounded by the flowers and hanging vines, and meditating on the conundrum posed by those last two panels. What exactly did the Crowns expect of the Fey?

Footsteps dislodged him from his thoughts, and he turned to welcome Lithara. In this chal she was a taranfey, her hair as black as a thundercloud and her skin the dusky hue of blued steel, from which gazed eyes as bright and startling as a lightning bolt even as she closed them to bow.

Beautiful. He would have her tonight, if this conversation was not displeasing. He had no reason to believe it would be, though: she looked untroubled, confident this debacle was not her fault. She, like him, wore the thoughtful expression of one confronted with an interesting new problem. Good. If she’d come in here looking even the faintest bit guilty or nervous, Ekve would have needed to dig for the truth…which would be fun too, in its way.

“Sit with me.”

“Thank you, my liege.”

Ekve sat first, of course, and sipped from his wine cup as she settled opposite him. “So, you believe you have found Bekhil.”

Lithara nodded. “We know they are a female ithfey in this chal, and persist in the ridiculous doctrine of abasing themself to kine,” she said. “The latest rumor is that they serve on a merchant airship from Garanhir. What I saw was, indeed, a female ithfey wearing human clothes, fighting to protect the shattersouls from us.”

“Uncommonly skilled, this ithfey?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Did she laugh as she killed?”

“No, sire. Deathly silent.”

“Hmm.” Ekve drank more wine. “And there was another, you say.”

Lithara hesitated. “Yes…”

“But?”

“But…” Lithara was clearly struggling to gather the words. “I…there may have been three. I would swear, some of our people fell from knife wounds though neither of the two I saw used a knife. And the second one…”

“The one who used kine weapons?”

“I would swear he was kine, Sire. He was…big. Brutish like a working slave. And he fought like kine too, but he had the speed of our people.”

Puzzle upon puzzle. Ekve drank and considered all this, then poured another cup, offered it to her, and settled back in his chair. "Start from the beginning. I set you to hunt a kine airship, the Cavalier Queen. Tell me all that happened..."

Lithara nodded, sipped her wine, and recounted the brief history: how the target ship had docked at Long Drop, remained there a few days, then departed in haste, unprepared and undersupplied. They had sought refuge on a wandering isle, and that was where Lithara had bided her time until the moment was ripe to strike the humans amidst their celebrations and capture the ship's crew, as she had been ordered.

Except the moment had proven unripe indeed. Disastrously so.

“…Very curious," Ekve commented at last.

Lithara tilted her head. “Sire?”

“Our loyal spies have been pursuing rumor from Garanhir and other earthmotes for years concerning a Kine chieftain, Nils Civorage. He has grown greatly in power and influence in just ten years, and I had thought him a threat, or possibly an asset. It was he who first put out a hunt for this Cavalier Queen. Now it seems he had very good reason indeed...."

“Yes, Sire.”

Ekve chuckled at Lithara's diplomatically neutral reply, and decided to give away no more, for now. “…I commend you. Though the raid was a disaster, you could not have known it would be, and you have returned with valuable knowledge. I do appreciate a raid captain who keeps their head when things go wrong.”

She smiled, and inclined her head downwards in a grateful bow. “You are very kind, Sire.”

“How would you like to be consort for a spell? I’m sure Valis and Orod will be delighted to let us consummate our union by spilling their blood together…”

Lithara’s smile grew wider, and she opened her mouth to reply only for her expression, and jaw, to fall quite abruptly as her gaze slid past Ekve to focus on something behind his shoulder.

Ekve turned. There was a…troubled…moment, when his eye seemed to skip over something he couldn’t quite make sense of, and then the feeling of things snapping into place. There was somebody standing behind him, under the arches of the pergola. Somebody slight, tiny even, clad in shades of grey and subtle brown. Her feet were bare, her body concealed behind layer upon layer of smoke-thin whispy fabric swept up into a hood, which was pulled so low over the eyes that all Ekve could see of her face was a set of thin, pale lips, and a stray curl of escaping hair the color of fallen leaves.

Slowly, with his heart pounding suddenly in his ears, Ekve rose to his feet, took a step back, and bowed with his hand on his heart. “My lady Valkyr…”

She considered him for a moment, then took a step to her left and passed behind one of the pergola’s pillars. She didn’t emerge from the other side. As Ekve was blinking and wondering, he felt a light touch on his arm and Haust was there, right beside him.

“I have heard many marriage proposals in my time, Ekve,” she said. Her tone was light, soft and calm. “But that was one of the most disturbing.”

“You made us eternal, My Lady,” Ekve pointed out. “Who are we to refuse the joys your gift affords us?”

Haust’s lips and jaw moved slightly sideways. Then she was gone, as swiftly as a shadow fading when a cloud passed over. Ekve was left blinking and wondering whether that was the entirety of her visit, when the sound of her voice made him turn.

“And you, Lithara? I’ve been proposed to many times, and I said yes to most of them no matter how fumbling or strange, but I have never been offered murder as an incentive to wed. Is the idea of torturing your friends and tribe-kin to death so enticing?”

Lithara blinked at the Crown, then at Ekve, then back at the Crown. “May it please you, Lady Valkyr…It is, yes. I enjoy killing. And they will return.”

“And do you enjoy being killed so?” Haust asked. She shot a glance at Ekve that was entirely unreadable through her shadowy, diaphanous hood, but nevertheless felt critical. “You must know that is how your own consortship will end.”

Lithara’s eyes flicked to Ekve’s and held his gaze as she answered. “In the right circumstances, My Lady…yes.”

“Hmm.” Haust considered the bas-reliefs around them, then sighed and shook her head. “We really fucked you up, didn’t we?”

She shimmered again, and faded from view. Ekve waited, certain she would reappear, but…no. The subtle, tickling sense of her presence drained away, leaving shallower shadows and brighter colors.

Lithara exhaled as she relaxed. “What was that abou—?”

There was an awful flash and an impact like Ekve had never felt. The whole earthmote lurched underfoot, and instants later the roof tiles came raining down around them to smash on the flagstones. High overhead, with a crunching and splintering, the high spire in which he’d awoken just an hour earlier swayed, broke, and fell. He could hear shouting, screaming, wails of confusion and fear.

Another impact made him stagger, and fractured all the mortar in every one of the palace’s walls. Lithara moved to his side, either to protect him or for protection, but Valkyr was back, and this time there was nothing serene or ethereal about her. She was twice her former height now, and she loomed above them as she stalked out of the billowing dust, trailing her capes behind her like the wings of a terrible storm. Both Ekve and Lithara retreated on instinct, shying away from her, but somehow she was faster, her unhurried pace carrying her to them as though the intervening distance were only a suggestion.

Lithara fell to her knees as the Crown approached, and Haust touched her lightly on the forehead, laying a hand there as though blessing her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, almost choking on the words. “We failed you so terribly.”

She pinched her fingers and drew a seething, lively spark from Lithara’s forehead as though plucking lint from a swatch of fabric. Lithara twitched, once, then slumped sideways and collapsed to the ground dead.

“My Lady!” Ekve protested, holding up his hands as though she might heed him and stop. “Why?!”

Haust raised the naked soul in her fingertips to eye height and turned it back and forth in the same way a jeweler might consider how best to re-cut a damaged gem. Whatever she saw in Lithara’s essence, she sighed softly and tucked it away in a pocket woven from smoke and shadow before finally turning to address Ekve.

“Because it’s what you need,” she said. The smoke and dust curled, and she was gone.

Ekve was still gawping at where she had been when a huge, dark, beringed and heavy hand clapped down companionably on his shoulder with enough force to buckle his knees. It was attached to a thick arm draped in silks and finery, which rested heavily across his neck and hugged him close. The aroma of wine, incense, perfume, spices and sweetmeats eclipsed the smells of his palace collapsing as the mote-shattering force laying waste to Vathordweth continued its unseen rampage.

“We’re all sorry, Ekve. We really are. We thought and hoped time would be enough, but…here we are.” Prince Sayf gave him an avuncular kiss on the forehead.

“Wh—? Wh—?” Ekve couldn’t even stammer the word out. He wasn’t even sure if it he meant to ask what or why.

“In the fullness of time, I’m sure you all would have come around. But time is no longer on our sides, and our respect for your free wills must now be tempered by larger concerns; remember, we may be as unto gods, but we are not God. We are not infinite, and we no longer have the luxury of waiting for you all to mature out of this phase.”

Ekve struggled to squirm and look up into the Summer Crown’s eyes. “Phase? What are you—?”

“I know, I know. We made you immortal, so that must mean we made you to rule, right? They don’t matter, only you do, beccause you are eternal and they are not. I understand why you think that. It’s not that stupid a conclusion to draw, really. But it’s exactly backwards. I’m sorry we didn’t make that clearer from the start.”

“But—”

“Hush, now. Absorb the moment. There’s a terrible poetry in all this, don’t you think?” Sayf gestured around at the disintegrating palace. As the walls came crashing down, Ekve realized he could see the airships burning at their anchorage, and some overpowering force had smashed down all the city around the palace too. “It’s a story of arrogance, aloofness, excess and twisted priorities. How power makes the powerful blind to their lessons…and the story of how victims beget victims. Fucking beautiful, in a tragic way. And humbling.”

“H—”

“Yeah, humbling. I’m so old, Ekve. So incredibly old, you can’t even grasp it. And that’s no allegory, if we actually managed to fit a true understanding of the number inside that skull of yours, it would implode your brain. Literally. And yet…I still have lessons to learn. I still make mistakes. Even after all this time, even as deep as the four of us go…we’re still only human.”

His eyes were shining, Ekve realized. “I used to hate being humbled, but nowadays…It’s a gift, Ekve. A precious gift like no other. I hope you’ll come to love it the way I do too.”

He smiled sadly as another blast rocked the earthmote, and kindly moved Ekve aside as a vast crack shot right through the courtyard and split the ground open wide and deep. Ekve reeled: he'd seen sky at the bottom of that rift, suggesting the entire mote had just been cracked in half.

Before he could fumble together another attempt at a question, Sayf gave him a hug, turned him around, pushed him away. Ekve stumbled a few steps, spun around to try and ask something, anything…but the Crown wasn’t there any longer. Only the lingering scent of perfume and the fading sound of masculine humming betrayed that he’d been there at all.

“Lord Cankuu!”

“He’s gone, dear one,” a new voice said, carried on a coil of air so cold it raised the hairs on his arm. He turned, knowing exactly who he would see now.

Sure enough, Queen Talvi was seated on the fountain’s edge, where her mere presence had frozen the water’s dance solid in mid-air. Unlike Haust’s visible sorrow and Sayf’s bittersweet smile, her expression was grim and serious, as she curled a finger to beckon him then pointed at a spot in front of her. Authoritative and scolding.

Numbly, Ekve obeyed. There were no thoughts in his head now, only a sensation of plummeting toward an inevitable fate he could do nothing to avoid.

Ithmatra looked him up and down. Whatever she saw, she didn’t comment. Instead, she rose to her feet, spread her arms, and drew him into an incongruously warm hug. Ekve stiffened, rigid with fear and doubt and turmoil.

“Just remember…you are loved, no matter what,” she said.

And then there was one. Ekve blinked at the blizzard swirl of ice crystals that settled around him, and breathed in the fresh, cold air she’d left behind. Something shook the ground behind him, and turned toward the sense of radiant heat and pressure now growing on him.

King Eärrach strolled through the palace rubble, pushing aside one of the last standing walls with no more effort than Ekve would have put into waving away a fly. Ekve’s breath caught: he’d seen Caernnenas before, of course, on the Day of Creation when he and all the million other Fey and the first million kine had formed from dust and raw life on an earthmote they’d never identified. The Crowns had bid them welcome to life, filled their heads with the knowledge of how to survive and then, at a gesture, scattered them across the worlds.

Later, he’d seen Caernnenas as a distant mote of brilliant light and power as he laid waste to Vathcanarthen, but a human arrow had ended that Chal before he could properly lay eyes to the forestfather.

Now, he realized with a sinking feeling, Caernnenas preferred the brutish form of a human. He was vast, muscle-laden and deep-cut in his brawn, blunter and more brutal than any kine Ekve had ever laid eyes upon. His face was square, his hair wild and untamed, his body deliberately devoid of the elfish graces.

That, all by itself, was a dismaying message.

Caernnenas said nothing. Ekve said nothing. They had nothing to say to each other. He just bowed his head, and waited for judgement.

There was a long, still moment. The only sounds now were the crackling of flames and the hiss of dust blowing on the breeze.

Then a flash of light.

Then limbo.