> Vathcanarthen, the “City of Choirs” was the capitol of the empire, where rested the emperor Ekve’s throne. Located on Prathardesh Earthmote, it has been left abandoned for the jungle to grow over, but its great ziggurats and the ancient fighting pits remain still. Across the worlds, legends abound of treasures and riches still undiscovered in the city’s abandoned vaults, and every so often a daring “archaeological” expedition will forge deep into the jungle and linger a while among the ancient stones. None have yet returned with anything to show for their efforts but insect bites and empty bellies. —Denrick Roth, Elves.

THE RÜWYRDAN SET

Ilẹyede Earthmote, World-sphere of Sayf 09.06.03.08.11

Not many people ever got to enjoy the privilege of visiting an elf-village. Most, Jerl recalled, were remote by design, and the majority of elves simply didn’t have much patience for humans. Short-lived, mayfly things that humans were, why would a self-respecting Fey be interested in having one come poking?

There were tribes who lived in human civilization, Jerl knew. The Vathelan Set still lived in Auldenheigh to this day. There were tribes who lurked deep in the hidden valleys and woods and in remote earthmotes where no-one would bother them. There were the Nornfey, of course…

The Rüwyrdan were just a nomadic village, so far as he could tell. After telling his story to their Soothnadhar, he’d been asked to grant Sevise and Sinikka some privacy to discuss him, and so he just…wandered. Strolled around their encampment to see what life was like for the Rüwyrdan.

The answer, he quickly realized, was that their entire childhood seemed to be a preparation to go on pilgrimage. At one end of the village was a flattened training yard where youths of both genders duelled with sticks, bruising their dark red skins purple in impossibly fast and agile displays of brutal mutual violence until one was struck down, and would then retreat to a nearby mat where they would sit, and meditate and focus their own healing magics inwardly onto their own body, before rising again to repeat the lesson.

A rather younger group of children were sat in a circle around a storyteller, a wisened older woman whose ankle-length black dreadlocks had long since singed white on the outside, giving her head the appearance of being covered in hot charcoal. Curiously, Jerl noted they were busy with camp chores at the same time as the lesson: there was wheat to mill and dough to mix, and the task seemed to be used to focus their minds as they had the Ordfey’s terrible crimes recounted to them.

They seemed happy to let him watch, with only one exception: there was a tent at the far end of the village, around which the air was heavy with the smell of burning herbs, and he could hear somebody beating a soft drum inside and the sound of a young voice crying out in delirium. A guard posted outside it waved him off.

“Covka-unelir” he explained. “Remembering.”

Jerl nodded, and left whichever young Fey was within to recall their past lives in peace.

And that, frankly, seemed to be the entire camp, notwithstanding a birthing tent (presently not in use) and a large communal stewpot tended by an older elf built nearly to a human’s frame. He wasn’t quite big enough to be described as a bear, but by Fey standards he qualified.

Had the attitude of one, too. His was the first cool reception Jerl received around the camp. Still, he started preparing an omelette for Jerl on a large griddle over the fire. “Wight.”

Jerl blinked at the perfunctory greeting, and decided to reply in kind. “Elf.”

The elf set a bowl full of stew down, then handed Jerl a horn-carved utensil. “This is a spoon. you eat the stew with it. Like a shovel, yes?” he pantomimed, his expression patronizing.

“I know what a spoon is,” Jerl replied, patiently.

“Mm. Never can tell with you people. My last chal, humans ate with sticks.”

“I’m familiar with chopsticks, too. You’ll find I’m well-traveled.”

“Mm.”

“…You don’t like humans much, huh?”

“How much do you like a moth when it bothers you?”

“You’re trying to offend me into leaving.”

“Yes.”

“Funny attitude for a Penitent.”

The elf sighed and, deciding the omelette was ready, draped it over the top of Jerl’s stew before handing over the bowl. “Not all of us are like Bekhil and the Soothnadhar. I was a monster in past chal, yes. I do not see why that means I should enslave myself to a human’s whims.”

Jerl knew when he wasn’t wanted, and would ordinarily have left the elf alone. But Time was tickling him. There was something…not imminent, but…something, nonetheless. This elf was going to be important for some reason. Why, exactly, he didn’t know and didn’t really want to know. Seeing the future too clearly would probably be maddening.

But he saw clearly enough. So, he decided to stay and see if he could break through that shell.

“Maybe it doesn’t,” he agreed. “Maybe the whole chal-an-chal business is stupid.”

A hit. A solid hit. The elf blinked and gave him a surprised look. “…You think so? You who have Bekhil’s service?”

Jerl shrugged. “You know what worries me about Sinikka? Since I learned this about her, everything she does makes more sense to me. The way she denies herself. The way she pretends she’s not a person with a life here and now, and desires that she’s refusing because she’s guilty over what her past incarnations did.”

“So many Penitents do.”

“Yes. And I think it would be a terrible shame if there was nothing more to the elfish people than memories of the past, and an endless futile pilgrimage to make it right.” Jerl sampled the omelette and stew, and found it was truly excellent. He ate three spoonfuls while the elf who’d cooked it frowned at him in thought, then elaborated. “She has a man she loves, whom she refuses to love because she thinks she doesn’t deserve it. She smiles easily, but it hardly ever touches her eyes. She’s…”

“A ghost.”

“Yes. And as her friend, I hate to see it.”

The elf grunted thoughtfully, then introduced himself. “Harad Rüwyrdan Hakatin.”

“Jerl Holten.”

“I know.”

“Not going to apologize for the moth comparison? I like to think I’m a little more interesting than some stupid insect.” Jerl flashed a charming grin.

“Perhaps you are,” Harad grunted. “Marginally.”

“Heh!”

“…You are here to take on most of the Set as crew,” Harad said. “Why?”

“Because there’s a man out there with the power and ambition to enslave the world, worse than the Ordfey ever did. Slavery of the mind, chains nobody can ever break because they won’t even want to. I’m trying to stop him.”

“I know of this, too. When you told the soothnadhar, I was there, and I listened. I was not impressed.”

“…By me, or by my plight?”

Harad didn’t reply directly. Instead he wiped the metal griddle clean. “You have no plan. Find some elves, talk to Sayf, fight back, somehow….that is all you have. It is insufficient.”

“We’re only at the beginning. I’m still forming the plan. And gathering allies is a plan.”

“One does not dig the foundations before deciding what the house should look like,” Harad replied. “You spoke nothing to the soothnadhar of the empire you plan to build with your power.”

“Because I don’t plan on building an Empire. Fuck that.”

Harad arched a sharp eyebrow and leaned back slightly to get a better look at him. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” Jerl shook his head. “I know, I have this power, and with it I could rule the worlds just like Civorage is trying to. But that’s not me. I’ve seen what power does to men and elves, and I’d rather keep my soul. I’ll build as much of a power base as I need to settle the matter, and then with any luck the world will never know I existed.”

Harad watched him for a long minute, then took hold of the griddle by a pair of wooden handles on each end, lifted it out of the heat, moved the stewpot off the flames too, and circled around out of his covered kitchen.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Uh…sure.”

Jerl watched him go. The elf strode off toward the Truthkeeper's tent, whistled once when he was outside it, then ducked in through the flaps. Interesting.

Well…nothing to do but sit, wait and eat. There were worse ways to pass the time, especially with a meal this good. So Jerl sat, waited and ate his fill while watching the young elves train.

It was educational. Without hundreds of prior lifetimes to draw on, they were not a fragment as graceful or deadly as they would one day be, but that clearly was not the point. The point, so far as Jerl could tell, was to prepare their bodies to be ready for the skill they would inherit. Which made sense: it’d do an elf little good if they were a master swordsman but reincarnated in a flabby, untrained body with neither the strength nor hardiness to make proper use of their skill.

Still. It didn’t seem like a fun childhood. Training hard, nursing bruises and split lips, and waiting to become somebody else.

As he watched, a couple of them were dismissed from the training circle and limped over to grab a bite to eat. They paused upon seeing him, and Jerl realized that for these two, who couldn’t remember their prior chal, he might very well be the first human they’d ever met.

He greeted them in Feydh as best he could, and scooted aside to make room.

It quickly became apparent they didn’t speak a lick of Garanese, and his own grasp of Feydh was inadequate for conversation, so he sat and waited and ate some more while the pair tried to study him surreptitiously and instead only achieved gawking.

He smiled at a familiar feeling alongside him, and didn’t bother to turn.

“What are they talking about?” he asked.

“Can’t tell. It’s all in elvish.” Mouse sighed, and dug into his own stolen stew bowl.

“Figures.”

“Mhm. I can see the shape of their thoughts, though. That guy who just came in seemed pretty intense, and I don’t think he likes you much.”

“No? I was hoping I’d impressed him.”

“You certainly made an impression…” Mouse flashed a smirk at the two elfish teenagers, who were staring at him in astonishment and no doubt wondering where he’d come from.

“A good one?”

Mouse shrugged. “Look, something’s telling me it’d be best if I go back to the ship and check on Dad. Whatever’s going on here, I think…I think I’ll make it worse. I’ve got that feeling.”

“‘Kay.” Jerl leaned over and kissed him, which only made the elves go further bug-eyed, then sat back to relax.

He didn’t have to wait long. He was just finishing his stew when Sinikka ducked out of the Truthkeeper’s tent and joined him.

“Sevise wishes to speak with you.”

“Okay.” Jerl scraped the last of the bowl’s contents into his mouth, set the bowl and spoon politely together for somebody to wash, and hopped up.

The Soothnadhar’s tent smelled of spiced smoke, and was made musical by a collection of bone wind chimes high up at the tent’s apex, where the breeze through the ventilation made them rattle and clack softly against each other. Inside, Sevise was applying a white paste of some kind to Harad’s forehead. He gave Jerl a nod that said ’bear with me, please’ in any language, and carefully finished painting his swirly design before setting the substance aside.

“…I hear your story and what you ask, and Bekhil, she speak for you,” he said. “Still I am not…uh…” he snapped his fingers and frowned before turning to Harad. “Ke ‘caernmus’ en Wightidh?”

“He is not convinced,” Sevise translated for Jerl.

Sevise nodded. “No. To ask for as many of our tribe as we can spare is…you ask much. Our Set will need many chal, many years to grow back.”

“I appreciate that,” Jerl agreed.

“And now Harad comes to ask for a soothidh, a truth-speaking.”

“…What does that entail?”

“Sit.” Sevise gestured to one side of the woven rug in the middle of the tent. Jerl did so, crossing his legs under him while Harad squatted down opposite, his heels flat to the floor. Sevise knelt between them to one side, positioning himself as an arbiter of some kind. He placed a thick, straight stick covered in dots of paint on the rug between them.

“A sooth-speaking,” he announced to Jerl, “is for…rude honesty, you might say. What Harad wants to tell you, he thinks you will not want to hear, but he thinks you must hear. You do not have to, but if you leave and don’t hear him, my people do not come with you. You understand?”

Jerl blinked, and gave Harad a hard look. The elf stared back, challenging him. “…I think I do. But why does a stranger I only just met want to criticize me to my face? And by what right?”

“By right of age, experience and insight,” Harad replied. “And my reason is necessity: you need to hear this, Jerl Holten. For the good of all.”

Jerl frowned at him a moment longer, then nodded to Sevise. “I will hear him.”

Sevise bowed his head, then spoke to Harad in a serious tone, in Feydh. From what Jerl could catch, it sounded like swearing him to an oath of some kind.

Harad translated for his benefit. “What I say to you, I say in the spirit of kindness, for I desire to improve you. I know it is a difficult thing to hear harsh words of truth, and I regret the pain I must cause you. I swear that no undeserved insult or unnecessary cruelty will leave my mouth. Only the truth, as it seems to me."

Sevise nodded, and turned to Jerl “What he says is a gift, not a wound. Will you swear to hear it in that way?”

“This all seems…overly serious and formal,” Jerl pointed out. “Why not just talk, like we were outside?”

“Because it is important,” Harad said. “You need to be in the right mind to hear what I have to say. Had I said this outside, you would have just walked away from the rude elf, I think.”

“I think you don’t know me as well as you believe, but fine,” Jerl said. “I will hear what you have to say. Lay it on me.”

Harad glanced at Sevise, nodded once, and the soothnadhar lifted the stick out of the way. Harad stared at Jerl a moment longer, then exhaled, inhaled, and spoke.

“You are a parasite.”

Jerl frowned. “…I thought you just swore not to insult me.”

“I am not insulting you, any more than if I noted your hair is black or that your ship is made of wood. You, Jerl Holten, enjoy the life and wealth you have because other people work hard. The miners and trappers and hunters and brewers whose goods you buy cheap, the smiths and tailors you sell to at a markup, the hard-working men who pull on your ship’s ropes. You benefit from their work, while doing little of your own.”

Jerl glanced to Sevise. “I would like to defend myself from this accusation.”

“Then defend yourself,” Sevise replied, evenly.

“I take a risk every time I buy and sell. If the market changes, if pirates find us, if the goods are spoiled or lost, it all comes out of my pocket. My crew enjoy the safety of the salary I pay them, secured against my own reputation, credit line and assets. And I daresay I pay them handsomely for it. Certainly handsomely enough to earn their loyalty and trust.”

“And yet, other people built your ship and made the goods on which your business depends,” Harad retorted. “Understand, Jerl Holten, I do not object to the existence of merchants in general. The hard truth I have for you in particular is that you are a man of low ambition. You benefit from other people’s ambition and work while having little of your own. Worse, you think your apathy is a virtue. You believe you are somehow being morally the better person by wishing only to return to your quiet, comfortable, low-responsibility life. In any other man, this sedentary nature would be an inconsequential vice. In you, it is intolerable. You, of all the beings in the Nested Worlds, cannot say ’fuck that’ to opportunity when it calls.”

“Can’t I?” Jerl shot back. “Shouldn’t I? After I’ve seen what ambition did to Nils Civorage, and all the people he’s enslaved? In the face of something like him, what am I supposed to think except that ambition leads men to do terrible things?”

“Coward!” Harad spat. Before Jerl could take offense, Sevise shoved the stick in front of Harad’s face and glared at him until he subsided. At least he was an impartial arbiter, it semed.

Harad cleared his throat as he settled. “…I apologize for my tone. But I will not retract the word. You are a coward, Jerl Holten. You are so afraid of him, afraid of becoming like him, that it has robbed you of sense and the courage to act. And it has robbed you of self-esteem. Aren’t you better than him?”

“I hope so! But according to you, I’m a parasite!”

“And so you will remain, unless you can find the will to exert yourself on the world!” Harad growled. “What plan do you have? What is your goal? Is everything you do just a reaction to your enemy’s will? Because let me be exceedingly clear, wansuul; if that is all you have, if reaction is all you are, then we are already doomed.”

Jerl opened his mouth to argue, but Sevise thrust the stick in between them and held it there. He stared Harad in the face for a second, then did the same to Jerl, and only once both of them had taken a second to calm themselves and think did he withdraw the stick and allow them to continue.

“….Go on,” Jerl ventured, tightly.

“We live in a terrible moment of danger for all the worlds and all their peoples,” Harad explained. “And the source of that danger is a highly ambitious man. He has plans, and is executing them. He has intent, and the will to make it happen. He is a caernsuul, a strong soul. Men such as that, whether they are Wight or Fey, cannot be stopped only by reacting to them. And what have you done, thus far, except react to him?”

“We stole Mind from his safe.”

“That too was a reaction. A necessary and commendable one, perhaps, but it was not an exertion of your own will so much as a thwarting of his. And besides: other than that one painful sting you have fled him. Evaded him. And now you come here seeking to replace half your crew because you, good-hearted man that you are, cannot bear to lead them into danger unless they explicitly agreed to it. Because you lack the fortitude to endure the necessary hardships involved in defeating an evil such as we now face.”

Jerl blinked. “I—”

Harad waited patiently for him to continue for a second, then forged ahead. “You are a kind man. A humble man. One who values simple pleasures and the well-being of others. These can be virtues. But the definition of a vice is a virtue taken too far, or held too tight in the wrong moment. And this is the wrong moment to be kind, humble and simple. You said you would build the necessary power base and no more than that. That is insufficient.”

“Why?”

“Because it is irresponsible! How will you know whether you have the necessary power base until Civorage lies crushed and forgotten? How can you know, before the fact, that you have enough? What happens if you make your move thinking you have enough, only to suffer terrible defeat?”

Harad leaned forward in his squat, his red eyes boring into Jerl’s. “This foe cannot be taken lightly. He demands your every effort, the fullest, unfettered might you can muster. Anything less than your utmost is a dereliction of the responsibility that has fallen to you. You do not have the luxury of believing you can return to your simple, humble life, now. You must not expect to, and you must give up your desire to. You must become ambitious.”

“And what fate is that for the world?” Jerl asked. “He and I have the power of creation itself at our fingertips! What happens to all the innocent people out there when we go to war and seize all the power we can get?”

“What happens to them will be whatever is necessary,” said Harad, coldly. “You must claim the power that has come to you and build as much as you can with it, or else everyone will suffer for your lack of resolve. And you cannot balk at whatever that means. If the price of defeating Nils Civorage is that you must build an empire atop a mountain of innocent dead, then refusing to do it is no virtue at all.”

“So long as my mountain is smaller than his, is that it? The lesser of two evils?”

“His mountain is of enslaved innocents. Worse than enslaved: Enraptured. Enchanted. Ensorcelled. They have no chains to break, nor stockades to tear down. He has destroyed them entirely, and become their god. You must have the fortitude to kill them all and ten million more besides if that is what must be done to destroy him.”

“How very Ordfey of you,” Jerl shot back. “Life matters, Harad.”

“Life ends,” Harad snarled. “No matter what, one way or another, life always ends. But the chains Civorage would forge will be eternal. For every human to come, and for every Feysuul, forever, and ever, unto eternity. Next to that, every evil is not only lesser, but infinitesimal. You must find the fortitude to do what is right, not what your naive qualms find untroubling.”

Jerl frowned at him. “For somebody who only just met me, you seem to think you know a lot about me.”

“You are Bekhil’s student,” Harad said. He sat back and his head jerked upwards, judging Jerl. “And she has been a bad influence on you.”

“A bad influence?” Jerl asked angrily, about to jump to his friend’s defense, but Sevise raised the stick again. Right. Yes. He grit his teeth, took a deep breath, and listened.

Harad’s expression was stony. “This is an extension of an argument she and I have been locked in for lifetimes. Her focus is narrow and selfish. She focuses on personal redemption; she wants to wash all that blood from her hands and settle her conscience, and has never accepted that she is chasing a rainbow she will never reach. My focus is on the practical and the possible. My repentance for the monster I was is to guide those who need it in making a better world. And you, Jerl Holten, very badly need my guidance if you intend to succeed. So: I am coming with you. I shall not swear chal-an-chal, but you will have my counsel and my blade, even if you refuse them. I assure you, you cannot flee me, so the only way to be rid of me will be to kill me. And if you do that…well, despite my criticism, I do not take you for a fool. Certainly not one of that magnitude.”

Jerl stared at him for a long moment. Then he uncrossed his legs and rose into a kneeling position.

“Seeing as the spirit of this whole thing is brutal honesty…” he said, “I appreciate you believe you are in the right, and your intent is to help me. But I am not an unprincipled coward, nor am I too weak to do the right thing. And frankly, given elvish history, it’s very rich for you or any other Fey to try and claim the superior moral compass. But I will accept your help, and your counsel, because I do need all the aid I can get, and every sword arm. So…thank you. I will take your words under advisement.”

“That is all I ask.” Harad extended a hand. After a moment, Jerl reached out, and they shook on it. “May I say…if you are in the right on this matter, then I will be glad to live in a world that is kinder than I thought,” he added, squeezing Jerl’s hand with frightening strength before letting go.

“Then let’s hope I’m right, nay?”

Harad grunted. “…Hm. I believe we understand each other, then.” He turned to Sevise. “Soothnadhar, hako hen anaku’n mend da Wighten. Akunkun kenara ik cordd hido…chal fa.”

Jerl knew enough to recognize a farewell: “I’m going with this human. I don’t think we’ll meet again in this life.” Sevise smiled sadly and nodded, then rose to his feet to embrace Harad in a tight hug. “Chal fa, chaerdwyrd. Otem advatemku.”

Harad squeezed him back, they kissed each other’s cheeks, and that seemed to be it. “I will gather my things and meet you on your ship,” he told Jerl, and strode from the tent without further acknowledgment.

There was a moment’s silence, until Jerl became aware that Sevise was chuckling silently, under his breath.

“I…I’m sorry, what’s funny?”

“You make…what is word?”

“An impression?”

“Yes. Like a thumb in wet clay. But he is old, dry, hard clay. Not easy to impression. Many long chal ago since I see him like someone so much.”

Jerl couldn’t keep the skepticism off his face. “That’s his idea of liking someone?”

“You will see. He must like you much, to share a ship with Bekhil.”

“There’s an old grievance between them?”

“Old love.”

“…Ah.” Jerl frowned, and was about to ask something about Bekhil and Ekve, but then reasoned they were discussing people who’d been around for nigh-on twelve thousand years. Presumably every elf had a long and storied romantic past. “That…had better not become a problem.”

“A trial for you, keeping it not a problem.” Sevise said. “But. Harad is satisfied, and goes with you. I am satisfied, so the Rüwyrdan Set goes with you. You will have your crew. Give me time to tell them.”

“Thank you.” Jerl bowed, formally. “If I can repay you in any way—”

“You give a cause to my Set. That is repay enough.”

“…Alright. Well then…thank you again. I promise to lead them well.”

“I believe you.”

Jerl shook the truth-keeper’s hand, and ducked out of the dim tent to blink a moment in the hot afternoon sunlight. Sensing there was no longer anything to wait for around the camp, he jogged over to Sinikka, who was easily the palest thing in sight. She was sitting under a shady tree and fanning herself, waiting for him.

“So. A truthspeaking?”

“Yes.”

“Figures. Hakatin was always…very serious, nay?”

“You two have history, I take it.”

“We were lovers.”

“I thought you were the imperial consort?”

“The Ordfey was a fucked up, hedonistic time, Jerl. But in any case, my marriage to Ekve was political, not passionate. Ekve was my liege, Hakatin was my love. Across several lives and deaths.”

“But not any longer?”

“We’re not who we were any more. Let’s leave it at that.”

“As you wish,” Jerl agreed. “Anyway. We have a crew.”

“Good. I got the leaving lads’ pay sorted out, so…back to Mehoom, I guess.”

Jerl nodded his thanks, and together they strolled back toward the ship. He guessed they were probably going to be waiting a few hours for the elves to come aboard. Plenty of time to chew on Harad’s words. And he had to admit, one of the grim elf’s challenges had stuck with him: What exactly was his plan? What action was he committed to that wasn’t just…escaping and regrouping?

Well, they were going to visit Sayf next, to take counsel. But that was…that still wasn’t a plan. That still wasn’t what came next. Would he gather more Words? But then…who would he give the words to? Even if the Crowns allowed it?

He didn’t actually know. And Harad was right: it was time for that to change.

Soon.

He walked back to the ship deep in thought.

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

INTERLUDE: EIGHT YEARS PREVIOUSLY

Auldenheigh, Garanhir Earthmote

If he hadn’t known Ellaenie was alive and well, Gilber Drevin would have been in the grip of an unfathomable despair. Knowing she lived and was still herself was enough to keep his mood from becoming utterly hopeless…

But it was still as black as an unlit coal mine. His failure could not have been more complete. He should have spirited the duchess out of the city the moment he learned of Civorage’s presence. There were any number of safe houses he could have gone to, properties he owned himself or which belonged to families he trusted, or distant extensions of the ducal estate…

Leaving her in the city, in her palace, had been foolish. And they had nearly lost everything as a consequence.

Frankly, it was difficult to see what they had retained. Civorage now had the run of Auldenheigh, even if the man himself seemed to have unaccountably vanished. His agents were abroad now, and to Gilber’s witch-sight the magic of the Circle may as well have been a symbol as obvious as a distinctive hat, or a tabard. It felt like silvery chains, from a distance. Silvery chains and sweet, intoxicating music. Those poor buggers were wandering around in a constant happy daze, content that their life was part of something grand and meaningful.

He avoided them and moved through the crowds dressed slightly unfashionably, like a man who’d settled on the vogue of yesteryear and never moved on. The vogue in question had been for high collars and low-brimmed hats, paired with profuse sideburns. Plenty of camouflage for the face, in other words. The sideburns were glued on, and would pain his real whiskers when he came to peel them off later, but so be it. Better a painfully effective disguise than recognition, right now.

The palace looked like an airship had fired a cannonade into it. The duchess’ rooms were gone, smashed out entirely by some explosive effort of magical force. Broken glass still glinted on the lawn, and in the street far away across the lawns and over the wall. People in the neighboring manors had been woken by agonizing migraines as the psychic battle raged within…and those who had endured it well enough to stagger to the window had witnessed a wingéd figure, as beautiful as she was terrifying, descend into the ruined rooms amidst a shimmer of dark light, fairly radiating anger, hatred and grief so blinding that even the untrained were stricken by it.

There was no mistaking a Herald for anyone or anything lesser. Now the streets were abuzz with conversation and rumor about which one it could be. Rheannach’s name, of course, was the most mentioned: people weren’t stupid, and knew the Heralds well. There were few others who might match her description.

The Oneists were stoking the gossip and poisoning it with as much misinformation as they could…and as much truth as they could turn toxic. In just one morning, Ellaenie’s reputation had been sabotaged terribly. Gone was the image of a compassionate mage who had exhausted herself to heal her people, and now the people in the crowd were gossiping darkly that their duchess was…a witch.

Which she was, of course. And it should have been just as much a cause for admiration, in a just world. But the Craft had been feared and disliked among Garanhir’s people for hundreds of years. Gilber didn’t know how it had first come to be seen as a licentious, wicked and vile path, or how witches had first been blamed for the Shades, but redeeming the Craft in the eyes of the public would have been the work of generations, even with Ellaenie’s help.

The worst part was, every drop of the poison the Oneists were dripping into the public’s ear was brewed from a twisted version of the truth. The Craft was whispered (correctly) to touch on the mind and on powers of seduction, manipulation and enchantment. The word bewitchment existed to hint darkly at powers that a fully realized witch absolutely did possess. The Craft’s domain really was spirit, mind, insight and will, charm and enchantment, guile and beguilement. To Gilber’s thinking, that no more made it evil than the presence of a sharp steel edge made a kitchen knife a sword, but…

But public opinion was not a rational affair. To the Garanese, the Craft was evil, all those who practiced it were monsters, and there was no room for nuance. For the Enerlish to learn that their beloved duchess was in fact a hated witch had put a horrible dent in their hearts, and now they spoke bitterly of her seducing the public, and wondered what fornications she had indulged in out in the woods. What evil, soul-stealing secrets she must have learned from the hag thaighn….

And what terrible crime she must have committed to earn a Herald’s wrath.

Of course, there was an even darker current gaining strength, now: the Oneists ultimately wished to poison the worlds against the Crowns themselves. What better way than to hint that they approved of witchcraft?

Which, again, was true.

What a terrible skill Civorage had. Taking the true and good, and corrupting it to his own selfish ends. And now…he had won Auldenheigh. And through Auldenheigh, all of Garanhir. The dukes had not yet weighed in on the night’s affairs, but Gilber guessed Civorage was biding his time, letting the venomous rumors fester a while longer before having his puppets step in to really rot the wound. No doubt the Dukesmoot would meet, hear evidence of Ellaenie’s turpitude, and elect to replace her with somebody more…upstanding.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Gilber doubted whether Civorage could afford the audacity to claim the duchy himself, yet. More likely he’d install a puppet. It didn’t really matter. His victory on Garanhir was complete, achieved almost before his opposition had begun to notice he was moving, and terrifyingly fast. A year ago, the Church of the One had consisted of a single, small circle meeting at a nobleman’s town house. Now…

Well. They’d wrongly assumed Civorage would need a large base of public support and for the Oneists to be a major political force before he made his move. Now they knew better, and there was nothing to do except retreat, regroup, and prepare to defend against his next conquest using the knowledge they had gained.

Well..there was one thing. But it wasn’t his to do. All he could do was set another on the path.

His first stop was the bank, where he retrieved a safe deposit box stored under a name that was not his own. The second stop was a coffee house, where he sat and wrote for a few minutes on some distinctive stationery, then sealed the resulting letter with wax and signet that were not Gilber Drevin’s.

From there, he returned the box to the bank, strolled to a post office, and paid the small sum to have the letter delivered…and that concluded his business in Auldenheigh. It was not safe for him to remain any longer.

He mounted his horse and rode out of the city, following the river road down the Heigh toward Betlend. He rode all day and the villages and hamlets passing him by almost unheeded, such was his mood, until he came around a bend in the river to see the ferry village of Steffanside ahead of him, its magestone lights twinkling on the water.

His last duty was to trot into town and visit the village’s small hotel to speak, briefly but fruitfully, with the proprietor.

That done, he turned back the way he’d come, and trotted back up the road about two miles before taking a small side path up into the woods, following a farm track that was more like a tunnel through trees, sunk between two high, wall-like, thick hedges. The path dipped down, forded a stream, then bent sharply back on itself to turn and loop up the hill, curving fully back around the summit until he could look down and see road, and the hamlet of Ferryhaven on the far side of the river, though Steffanside was obscured behind the hill’s flank. The ferry was about halfway across, returning from the far bank to the near, and he paused a moment to enjoy the view, regretting that it might be for the very last time.

When at last the ferry had passed from view behind the hill, he turned himself away and toward a dry stone wall, which enclosed a small flower garden and a little three-room stone cottage with roughcast walls. A gentleman’s holidaying lodge which did not, on paper, belong to Lord Gilber Drevin at all, but to a Mister Edevard Spears.

Confident as he was that it was impossible the Oneists might know about it, Gilber still approached cautiously, straining his witch-sight to its limit and alert for any sign of occupancy. And indeed, there were some…but the expected signs, only.

It is alright, my love. I am here, and none other.

The first unadulterated positive feelings of his long and terrible day finally kindled in Gilber’s heart as he dismounted. As he unsaddled his horse and tended to him in the lodge’s small stable, he heard the cottage door open and latch, and shortly thereafter warm, almost hot long-fingered hands slithered over his shoulders to squeeze and massage them, then back and down under his arms and around his chest. A soft cheek rested on his upper back.

“We failed,” he said, after a silent minute.

She nodded against him. “I know.”

Gilber sighed, and hung his head. “I don’t know what to do next.”

“You cannot stay here, love.”

“I know. But…”

She nodded, her cheek scratching against his riding jacket. After a second, she reached out and patted his horse. “Will Jasper be alright?”

“I made arrangements at the village. Somebody will be along to collect him in the morning. He’ll enjoy a long and happy retirement as a merchant’s daughter’s favourite new gelding.”

“Good.”

Gilber sighed, stroked the old boy’s nose in a fond farewell, finished brushing him down and set the saddle aside before turning to face…Her.

The woman behind him had the wide and flattened high-cheeked face characteristic of the Yunei, though had she lived among them she’d have been Untouchable caste. Far too tall and long-limbed. But of course, when she moved among them, she took a suitably imperial form. When she was abroad among the Garanese, she wore a different face to avoid comment, but he’d always thought of this one as her real face…though of course, it wasn’t. Not really.

But it was a truly beautiful face. Pale, delicate and symmetrical, framed by a curtain of silky black hair and the subtle arc of perfect brows. And of course, there were those eyes…

Nobody else in all the worlds had eyes like hers.

“So. Where are we going? Yngmir’s house?” he asked.

She shook her head. “He is too distracted by his books, and too naive. We are not bringing him into our confidence, not yet.”

“The King’s cabin, then—”

She shook her head again. "You need rest, beloved. Take a day, take two. The enemy’s next move will be the Dukesmoot, so we are at least safe until then. Come with me to my roost, and gather yourself.”

He tried to summon the courage and strength to object, to insist on anything, anywhere else…but he couldn’t. She was right, he needed rest now in a way that went far deeper than just being tired from lack of sleep. He needed a balm for the soul. She smiled sadly when she saw him agree, stretched up on tip-toe to kiss him, then stepped back, cast off her long black coat, and…

And changed.

Jasper tossed his head and snorted, but Gilber just watched as his lover’s body extended, expanded, amplified in every way. Her soft, pale skin rippled and vanished behind an armored layer of thick golden scales. Her face elongated, the subtle fangs she always kept even in human form lengthened until they were scimitars in a mouth big enough to snatch up an ox and fringed by floating whiskers. The serpentine length of her body seemed to become infinite, wrapping beneath her until she was coiled on his lodge’s lawn, ready for him.

As always, her breath was a soft and deep but blisteringly hot growl as she ducked her head down for him to mount.

You will see. All will be well.

“I hope so…” Gilber agreed. He used her offered foreclaw as a step, found the patch at the nape of her neck where he could sit and hold her horns, and gave a farewell glance to this little cottage where he’d escaped so many times, when he needed to. Perhaps, if it remained undiscovered, he would be back…

But that was a matter for later. Now, Dragon’s vast muscles bunched beneath him and she sprang from the ground. There was a half minute of thrilling speed as she weaved between deciduous tree trunks and down into the unseen back-country valleys, then turned her nose upwards and rose vertically into the sky in a long, flowing slither. When Gilber turned his head, Garanhir was already a mile below him, two miles or more. Five miles, ten. The speed of her flight rose a cone of mist to flicker around her nose, and the thundercrack of her flight should have deafened him and beaten him apart, but she protected him: he never felt so much as a zephyr as she raced playfully through a cloud, and he lost sight of home.

He tried not to wonder if he would ever go back.

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

> “You ever see one of those Junei dogs? Samwais, they’re called. I tried to get one but apparently the reason they’re so expensive is they have to be smuggled out of the Empire ‘cuz owning on will get you executed if you’re not a noble or one of the Imperial family. Still, they’re meant to be soft as goose-down, loyal and loving, dumb as a pair o’ planks, and their ears are big enough you can use ‘em for a blanket in a pinch, so it might be worth it…”

>

> —Overheard in the Creamery Inn, Lower Heighporth, Enerlend

SAYING GOODBYE

Mehoom, Ilẹyede Earthmote, World-sphere of Sayf 09.06.03.08.13

Jerl found there was a certain bittersweet gratification in the farewells they were saying. A lot of the men leaving him were good workers who’d signed on with him year after year, and they had nothing but good things to say. And he knew from experience of that first terrible go-around that they were all loyal, tough, capable men who would literally go to the ends of the worlds with him if they had to.

But given the choice, about half the crew would prefer not to.

Hiring on the Rüwyrdan had been as simple as telling his story and having Sinikka vouch for him. The moment they knew some of the Crowns’ own power was being abused by a mortal man, the elves had been frantic to help, and as many as could had pledged themselves to serve on the Queen until Jerl released them or death took them. It had been the easiest negotiation of Jerl’s career. Not even a negotiation, really: just ask, and receive.

So, they were back in the city, where most of the elves were staying aboard the ship and were literally learning the ropes from as much of the crew as had stayed on. For the leavers, Jerl had arranged a small leaving bash at an intriguing tavern not far from the air-dock. It was a walled compound around a small water feature, decorated in a riot of paints so brightly hued that it practically glowed in the sunlight. The beer was intriguingly malty, sweet and spiced with aromatics, and the food was a stew of meat and rice that set fire to the mouth and left it watering.

There was no better way to say farewell than with good food, in Jerl’s opinion.

“I just wish I could drop you off somewhere with more traffic. It may be a while before you get to sign on with a different ship.”

“Sure we’ll manage.” The unofficial spokesman for the group of leavers was Alm Densel, a fellow Antage native, a fact which was remining Jerl of one of his more pressing worries. His family back in Antage were in danger, now: Civorage must surely have identified them as useful bait by now. He’d wondered whether Alm could get a letter to them before then, which maybe would help…

…Or maybe Civorage had already got to them and claimed them. That was the terrible part, Jerl just couldn’t know. The best he could do, for now, was stay away and pretend at indifference in the hopes that Civorage would assume Jerl was estranged or disowned or something and that the family weren’t useful to him at all.

A letter might give away the truth. So, reluctantly, Jerl had decided against sending one with Alm. It wasn’t at all a happy or comfortable decision, but it was made, hopefully it was the right one, and if not it was wrong for the right reasons. Which was as good as a decision ever got, really.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure and a privilege, gentlemen.” He stood up and made a last round of handshakes. “May your lives remain relaxed and peaceful, for Crowns know mine’s not going to.”

“Fair winds at your back, Mister Holten,” Densel said, gripping his elbow as they shook hands. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“Best for you if I do, I think. But thank you all the same.”

And that was that. Half his crew was gone, replaced by elves, many of whom spoke shaky Garanese at best, to match Jerl’s shaky grasp of Feydh. Needs must, but they were going to have to work on that language thing fairly aggressively. A crew that couldn’t communicate was a crew that got into trouble. And most of the elves had never been aboard an airship at all, in any of their chal. They were going to have to—

Sensation smote him in the head. It was a chill up his spine, a tingling in his scalp, a short tightness in his chest all at once. Adrenaline, fear, alertness, the sudden certainty that he was in imminent danger stopped him mid-stride so abruptly that Mouse, nearly bowled right into him.

“What-?” he began, but Jerl grabbed his lover by an arm and broke into a run.

“No time! We need to get to the ship!”

“Why?”

“No time!” Jerl repeated. He put his head down and charged, his boots pounding up a dust cloud from Mehoom’s unpaved streets. A woman balancing a basket full of cloth on her head danced aside and dropped it as he bowled past her, and her outraged declamations chased him up the road, despite Jerl’s over-the-shoulder cry of “Sorry!”

Hers was not the only load he upset. In his mad rush he tripped over a chicken cage and let its occupants loose, skittled a stack of water jugs, and had to stagger wildly to avoid bowling over a small child. But he didn’t dare stop and offer a real apology, because with every step, with every heartbeat, the premonition grew and grew in power and terror.

He reached the airdock and pounded up the Queen’s ramp almost totally out of breath, but he had enough air in him to call out. “Sin! Derghan! We have to go right now! Get us airborne!”

Bless them, but they jumped to without a moment’s hesitation, Sin shouting instructions in Feydh for the new Rüwyrdan crew while Derghan scrambled down below decks to light the engines.

Even so, they were painfully slow compared to how quickly the crew would have responded before. Marren’s rigging team were done with their task and the bag was straining against the ropes at full lift well before the ship’s other preparations were finished, with the result that when the bolt was drawn and the mooring ropes cast off, the Queen jumped into the sky with a sickening bottom-of-the-belly lurch rather than ascend gracefully.

The clumsy launch turned out to be good fortune. As Jerl steadied himself against the wheelhouse, his eyes turned to the horizon almost of their own accord, and he saw the reason for his intrusive sense of doom.

An airship was bearing down on them. A large airship, its bag decorated in the blue, white and gold of the Clear Skies Guild. Twice the Queen’s size and armed with cannons, the forward-facing quartet of which were hidden behind four white spears of smoke…

The shot smashed into the docking tower just seconds after the Cavalier Queen’s cork-pop ascent took her clear of it, smashed clean through and sent tumbling splinters raining down while the ground crew dived for cover. Jerl flung himself at the wheel, shooed Gebby off it, signalled for full power, and climbed as steeply as he dared while the attackers swung out and around.

This was bad, very bad. Not only was the Queen unarmed, but even if she were, the advantage in an airship duel always belonged to the ship with more speed and altitude. A ship taking off from port was at its most vulnerable.

The Clear Skies ship swept around in a wide arc. It was a smart move, outrunning the Queen downwind and then coming back in with a long run to line up a shot. But Jerl had Time. From his perspective, the ticking seconds crawled by, giving him plenty of time to see, calculate, adjust. He cranked the wheel around until the rudder locked, sending even seasoned airshipmen staggering across the deck as the Queen’s hull swung crazily under her bag, aimed her nose above the onrushing ship’s trajectory, and straightened out to let the engines pile on some speed. It was not only an insanely daring move, but an insanely quick one, the sort of thing no ordinary pilot would have the reflexes to pull off.

His ship’s hull missed the other ship’s bag by scant feet as the two roared past each other. Even before they’d passed, Jerl was hauling the Queen around to match his opponent’s heading.

Sin came skipping across the deck, sure-footed even as it leapt and rolled under her feet. “I hope you have a plan!” she called over the engines.

“Yeah! Step one: don’t let them fuckin’ shoot us!”

She grabbed the wheelhouse railing and held on as he banked as hard as the Cavalier Queen would go to catch the other ship’s course. “Outstanding! What’s step two?”

Jerl grunted as he found himself needing to slow and ease off the turn or else go shooting right into the other ship’s broadside. The Queen being smaller meant she was both faster and nimbler. Useful for staying in their enemy’s blind quarter, but all-too-easy to overshoot and get caught if he wasn’t careful. “I’ll get back to you!”

“Can you get above her?”

“Bad idea! Float mines!” Jerl pointed them out: the other ship’s stern was hung with several white packages, timed powder charges attached to a bag full of fuel and a lift gas balloon.

Even as he pointed them out the enemy ship detached three, which wallowed heavily right in the Queen’s flight path. He kicked the ascender, screwed the wheel over, and grit his teeth tight as the mines sunk from sight below and to his left. Seconds later, he heard a trio of cracking detonations, and when he glanced astern he saw fat, boiling clouds of flame that would only have licked his hull, but might have doomed the bag if he’d been slower to react.

Not to mention what all that burning fuel would do to everyone on deck. Horrible things.

Something snapped past his head with a sharp sound: rifle shot. The Clear Skies ship had marines. When Jerl glanced up, he saw a number of small punctures in the bag above him, and the whispy blue smokelike lift gas leaking out. Shit.

“Marksman! We need to knock out her helm!” he shouted. It was a desperate idea, the odds of even the best rifleman being able to snipe the helmsman of one ship from the deck of another during a high speed chase while under fire was—

A black and brown blur thrummed past him at absurd speed, trailing the howl of a wychwethel. In slowed time, Jerl turned and watched aghast as Harad sprinted to the prow, out along the bowpsrit and leapt.

There was a fundamental difference between humans and elves known as the Law of Form. A human could cast spells on other people, on the objects and phenomena around them, but the one thing a man’s magic could never touch was himself. Elves were the other way around: when they channelled magic, they did so inwardly, reinforcing and pushing their bodies to explosive limits. Harad launched himself off the end of the bowsprit like a cannonball and flung himself out into the open sky with a complete disregard for his own safety, nor any thought for how to get back. He just…leapt, shot across the intervening gap, and landed in the other ship’s upper rigging.

Behind him, Jerl heard Sinikka curse in Feydh. Even to his Time-accelerated senses Harad was a blur as he swung down, down, down the rigging to deck level and became a whirl of shrieking steel amidst the Clear Skies marines, painting the deck in blood.

Then he took his swords to their ropes.

“Crowns!” Gebby cursed in dismay. “What’s he—?!”

“Something crazy!” Jerl cranked the wheel over and adjusted the engine angle: the deck lurched crazily as he wallowed down in their attacker’s stern. Over on the other ship, Harad sliced up the Clear Skies attacker’s rigging like unlacing a pair of boots, before sliding past a pistol shot to lop the enemy captain’s head from his shoulders in a perfect, clean stroke. It was an elegant demonstration of just what elves could achieve against an unprepared human crew, but it was also impossible that Harad would survive this stunt unless Jerl could—

He could. There was a series of cracking sounds, rifle-loud and sharp as the last ropes gave way and the Clear Skies ship parted ways with its bag. Harad sprinted back along its sagging, suddenly plummeting deck, somehow ran along a near-vertical surface as though his feet were as sticky as a gecko’s, then launched himself back into the open sky as though lobbed from a trebuchet.

But the gap was just a little too far, and Harad was going to fall short. Not actually a fatal problem for an elf: skilled Fey war-adepts could land lightly from arbitrary heights. But going back for him would be—

Another blur, this one pale, shot out over the rail trailing a rope around her waist. At the last second, just as Harad was about to plunge down to the ground, Sinikka caught him by the wrist, his own fingers tightened around hers, and they swung down out of Jerl’s sight below the Cavalier Queen.

Some seconds later, a white-skinned hand came up over the rail and Sin vaulted back onto the deck over the starboard rail, then turned and helped Harad up. He was dripping in gore, painted with it, and panting heavily, but other than taking a second to breathe he seemed entirely unfazed by what he had just done.

He stumped up to Jerl at the wheelhouse, drawing a clean cloth from his pocket to wipe his sword clean.

“Do you see, now?” he asked.

“See what?” Jerl asked.

“The difference between reaction and action.”

“…I think I’ll meditate on your lessons after we’re well away from here,” Jerl replied, coolly.

“Hrm. As you wish.”

Harad turned and stalked away toward the head and the washing barrels kept there. Jerl shook his head, bemused, then looked around. “Everyone okay?” he asked.

“Nobody hurt, skipper,” Gebby assured him.

“Mister Marren? How’s the bag?”

“Couple’a punctures, none major!” Andony called from up the rigging. “We can patch in flight.”

A bloody miracle, considering. If not for Time granting him a premonition, and if not for a suicidally daring elf…

Well. They were aloft, away, and effectively intact. “Good, ‘cuz if we go back to Mehoom, they won’t let us leave,” Jerl predicted. “Gebby, you have the helm. I’ll get back to you in a minute with our heading.”

“Steady as I go, aye aye.”

Jerl moved to the stern and looked over the side. Below and behind them, their attacker’s hull had already smashed into the grasslands a few miles from Mehoom, and was now nothing more than a collection of firewood and scrap metal at the end of a short teardrop crater. Her bag was gone entirely, probably drifting on the wind never to be seen again.

Crowns. Sin had never done anything like that. Had Harad been driven by desperation, or competitive instinct? Or had that been a demonstration?

Amir intruded in his thoughts with a tap on the shoulder. “That was quite incredible all round,” he declared. “Good flying.”

“Thanks. Are you okay?”

“A little thrown around, and bearing a nasty bruise on my shin for it.” Amir shrugged. “Preferable to the alternative, I daresay. What was all that about with our new grim warrior?”

“He seems to think he has a lesson to teach me,” Jerl explained.

“What lesson?”

“He believes I’m too passive.”

“…This must be some novel Fey definition of passivity with which I was hitherto unacquainted. And if leaping from one airship to another in the middle of a high-speed chase is his standard for dynamism, then I think I rather prefer you passive.” Amir shot the elf a thoughtful look. “Why hire him? He seems…disagreeable.”

“He more sort of hired himself,” Jerl acknowledged.

“Ah. Exceedingly disagreeable, then.”

Jerl bobble-shrugged his head. “The first conversation we had was him trying to annoy me into leaving. The second was him ritually tearing into me and telling me what he thinks my flaws are. I’m…really not sure what to make of him.”

“I trust him,” Mouse said.

“Crownspit!” Amir flinched. “I do wish you would stop doing that!”

“And I wish you would stop forgetting me!” Mouse shot back.

“Believe me, I am not doing so intentionally!”

“I know! I’m….sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just getting frustrating.”

“No, no. Please forgive my outburst.” Amir straightened his kufi and exhaled to center himself. “You were saying?”

“I’m saying I trust him. Harad. He’s…there’s a cold place deep in his mind, like a pit of ice. But it’s not full of loathing, like Sin’s is, or most of the other elves on the ship.” Mouse indicated their new Rüwyrdan crewmates. The elves were clearly somewhat bemused by how the remaining human crew were handling the aftermath of the fight. Up in the rigging, Marren and his team were joking and verbally scorching each other in between work shanties as they patched the bag. Some of the elves were wearing expressions of dire alarm as they overheard what must have seemed like mortal, unforgivable insults.

“They do seem a serious lot, don’t they?” Amir agreed.

“Very. They’re all…ashamed. Harad isn’t, though.”

“But he’s still a penitent?” Jerl asked. “How does that work?”

“I don’t really understand, yet. I think he’s been waiting for something like this, though. A chance to, uh, bring others around to his way of thinking. I don’t know exactly. But…I don’t feel any deception in him. He’s like a…” Mouse paused then, shot Jerl a conflicted look. “He’s like a more scarred and saddened version of you.”

“Ah. No wonder he rubs you the wrong way then, Jerl,” Amir nodded sagely. “There is nothing worse than a version of yourself for getting under your skin.”

“Very profound…” Jerl muttered, feeling off-balance.

“One of Yngmir’s. Anyway. I suppose we shall be sailing for the Oasis, now?”

“….Maybe. One second.” Jerl turned to Mouse. “Are you okay?”

“I swear I’m losing control of this damn thing, not gaining it…” Mouse grumbled.

“You do still have the Word in your pocket,” Jerl pointed out. “So long as it’s on you, it’s going to keep seeping in no matter—”

“I know.” Mouse sighed. “But if you want rid of it, we need to head down to Talvi, not over to the Oasis. ‘Cuz you know what’ll happen if I just chuck it overboard right now, don’t you? Civorage will reclaim it.”

Jerl nodded thoughtfully, giving some more thought to Harad. Okay. So. Activity, aggression. Action. Thus far, the plan had been to head to the Oasis and take counsel from Sayf. He had a tickling feeling of a future memory, so the meeting was definitely supposed to happen…

But was he just reacting to his precognitions? Would he just be reacting to Mouse’s needs if he sent them off course? Or was there an actual plan here?

“…How much of a detour would that entail?” he asked Amir.

“Not huge. The Oasis is some way around the arc of the worlds, we can swing outwards and down to find a suitably large gap if that is your objective. The tricky part will be dodging eclipse.”

Jerl looked at Mouse and realized just how much tension was there. “Okay. Let’s be rid of the damn thing.”

“Jerl…others of us could use it,” Amir pointed out. “The more of us do, the more of us are armed and protected against Civorage. Are you absolutely certain you want to throw away a weapon like that?”

“No. No I’m not.” Jerl shook his head and turned to face him again. “I’m not certain of anything, Amir. I know I left myself a plan, and a trail to follow, but I don’t really know what tomorrow brings, or who’s going to have to die to make victory happen. I’m…honest truth, mate, I’m groping only barely less blind than I was before, for all my powers. The only thing I have to go on is my gut, and my gut says get rid of it. So that’s what we’re gonna do. And we’re gonna do it right now.”

Amir glanced at Mouse, then up over Jerl’s shoulder, then back to look Jerl in the eye and nodded. “I’ll set the course,” he said, slipped past Jerl up to the wheelhouse, and was gone.

Jerl turned to look at whatever he’d glanced at, and realized Harad was watching him from the washtub. Elves had sharp ears in more than just the literal sense. He gave Jerl a nod, then went back to scrubbing off the blood.

…Okay. Enough of him. Jerl gave Mouse a small squeeze, grateful he was alright, then headed below decks to check with Derghan on the status of their engines. They had a long way to go, and he needed to be sure the Queen was in condition to handle it.

After all: that was not going to be their last run-in with a hostile airship.

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

INTERLUDE: THE CROWN AND WHEATSHEAF PUBLIC HOUSE

Auldenheigh, Enerlend, Garanhir Earthmote

Serjant Jed Bothroyd of the Auldenheigh Constabulary was more tired today than he could remember being in all his life. An inevitable consequence of first being roused from his bed in the small hours of yesterday morning, and not since returning to it.

His temper was, to put it mildly, frayed. And the public of his city continued to burn it just that little bit shorter with every passing hour.

This time, it was manslaughter.

“So you hit him.”

The guilty man in front of him was broad, ruddy-faced, fat around the gut but thick in the arm. A millworker, or some other such hard graft. Bothroyd could well imagine those thick-fingered fists would land like hammers, especially on a young man who didn’t know how to take a hit…and now, would never get the chance to learn.

“It weren’t right, what ‘e said,” he tried to defend himself. Bothroyd wrote down his every word verbatim. “‘E said mebbe the Crowns approved o’duchess bein’ a witch. T’were a wicked thing to say!”

“So you hit him.”

“I just wanted to learn ‘im some respect! I didn’t mean for ‘im to fall an’ crack ‘is ‘ead like that!”

“But you did hit him.”

The millworker looked miserably down at the cobbles, and his head bounced up and down wretchedly. Bothroyd hummed, and wrote suspect agreed with accusation in his notebook.

“Right. You’re arrested for manslaughter. D’you ‘ave your own lawyer?”

The man shook his head. Tears dripped from his nose.

“Then you’ll ‘ave one appointed by magistrate for trial. Your bail ‘earing will be tomorrer, most like. I were you, I’d shut mouth and say no more until you’ve ‘ad chance to speak wi’ lawyer. You understand?”

The man nodded again.

“Alright. Load him in wagon, lads. Trot off smart, now, still lots to do…”

Two constable took the weeping worker by his elbows and guided him up into a waiting caged wagon, where he was locked in alongside three other men arrested for riot, arson and looting. Stupid buggers, all.

Crowns above, the smell of beer and good stew wafting out of the pub was maddening. When was the last time he’d eaten? Yesterday, probably. And his last drink too, probably…

…To Shades with it. He needed to wet his whistle and unstick his belly from his backbone. So, he ambled inside, paid for a bowl and a beer, and settled into a corner where all of his aches seemed to slide off and forget him for a minute just at the simple pleasure of sitting down.

Of course, it was too much to ask that he’d be left alone today.

“Excuse me. Serjant?”

“I’m on break,” Bothroyd grunted, despite knowing perfectly well it wouldn’t work. He didn’t look up at the speaker, a young woman in a black coat.

“I know, and I am sorry. You do deserve this rest after all the hard work you and the rest of the constabulary have been putting in, but…this is important.”

Bothroyd groaned and sat back. The woman was very comely, with lovely clean skin, a swell of magnificent auburn hair and an aquiline nose that made her strikingly handsome rather than beautiful. Not that Jed was much interested in a girl young enough to be his daughter, and besides she seemed terribly worried about something. Besides, her accent was old-city posh, upper crust.

“If you have a complaint or wish to report a crime to the constabulary, you can go down to precinct, miss…?”

“Countess Adrey Mossjoy.”

“…I apologize, ma’am. I wasn’t expectin’ a woman o’ your stature to frequent a public house like this.”

“I’m looking for you specifically, Serjant Bothroyd. May I sit?”

“Oh, my manners—” Jed made to stand up, but the countess shook her head and pulled out her own seat to join him.

“No, no. Rest your legs.” She settled opposite him, glanced around, then withdrew a letter from her purse. “This morning, I received this letter from…well, they identify themselves only as ‘Darkdrake.’ It names you specifically, and bids me show it to you as well.”

Bothroyd frowned, twitched it out of her fingers, and read, tracing the words with his fingertip. He’d never really mastered his letters as comfortably as some folk…

But it was definitely from the Darkdrake.

My dear Countess Adrey,

Forgive me, my lady, that there is not enough room in this letter to explain what has happened, nor would it be prudent. I had hoped for some time to bring you into my confidence on certain matters, but the hour has lapsed sooner than I had feared.

No doubt you are fretting for your friend the Duchess. You will be pleased to know she is safe, and has been removed to a place where she will remain safe for as long as she wishes which I suspect will not be long enough for those who care for her. You will hear many scurrilous accusations against her today and tomorrow. Let me give you some framing of the truth.

She is indeed a witch. Do not listen to public scandal and rumor, as this is a sacred office and duty entrusted to her by the Crowns themselves. Indeed, it was King Eärrach himself who initiated and ascended her. Whatever shameful stories you may have heard about the Craft and its practitioners, please accept my assurance as a gentleman that they are grotesquely untrue, and truly baffling to those in the know. If my assurance is insufficient, then please consider your good friend and ask yourself whether she would ever be a fornicator and violator of minds as the worst mutterings would have it.

As for your friend Lady Lisze, I fear she has come to a terrible harm, though you will not know it to see her. Her mind, I am sorry to report, has indeed been violated, and by the same most terrible foe whose assault caused such havoc last night. Indeed, I fear she was the tool of his attempt on Ellaenie’s life.

I appreciate this must be a painful blow to you, but Ellaenie has always spoken admiringly of you, and I have long considered you a very worthy friend to her.

Please immediately seek out Serjant Jed Bothroyd of the constabulary and give him this letter to read. All will be made clear if you follow him…or at least, I pray that it will be so, as if not we are lost indeed.

I remain, ma’am, at your service and your family’s,

The Darkdrake.

P.S. Jed my old friend, please grant her every courtesy and assistance. There is room at the old house for her if she desires it. I believe you still have the key. She is to have her pick of the library, though the place is rather cold. No doubt the fires will need lit.

Best of luck to you, old friend.

Bothroyd nodded as he deciphered the coded language in the postscript, committed it to memory…then cast it into the fire.

“What—?” Countess Mossjoy nearly sprang to her feet, but it was too late: the paper was already curling up into an unreadable black mess.

“Burning the letter was one of his instructions to me,” Bothroyd explained. “So. You’re the duchess’ lady-in-waiting, if I remember right?”

“I was, yes. She’s…where has she gone?”

“I don’t know. To be frank, milady, I had no notion the Darkdrake were involved wi’ witches an’ the Craft at all, but I know ‘im to be a good an’ dutiful man. If he sez witchcraft has a worse reputation than it deserves, I believe ‘im.”

“And..the old house?”

“Aye. If you’ll please bear wi’ me, milady, while I finish me victuals…I haven’t had a bite since supper yesterday.”

“Oh, of course…”

She sat and fidgeted as he ate. Bothroyd assessed her as he did so. There were a great many tears in the countess’ recent past, he guessed. She had the look of somebody who’d spent yesterday weeping, and become grimly resolved all at once. Good. Not that he’d have expected the Darkdrake to pick a shrinking, fainting, useless girl…

He was just finishing the last of his bread when a constable came looking for him. “Serjant? The watch captain wants you down at Elmsbrey Place.”

“’E’ll have to wait,” Bothroyd replied. “I’ve ‘ad orders.”

"Cap'n said it was urgent, sarge.”

“Everything’s bloody urgent today, lad. But my orders come from ‘igher up than captain, so you go back an’ say I’m indisposed.”

“Yes, serjant.”

Bothroyd stood. “That’s our cue to go where they don’t know where I am,” he said, and remembered his manners this time to offer the countess a hand up.

They climbed into a coin-carriage for the short ride to the old house, which was specifically Number Seventeen Pickler’s Lane. Once upon a time, the town houses there had been lodging for cannery workers. Then the canneries had moved down to the riverfront, and the houses had been knocked together to halve their number but double their width, and they’d become a popular address for modest gentry and merchants who weren’t quite rich enough to join the Vathelan elite.

Or, as the case may be, a good place for an inner-city lord to buy as a second address. Not that the Darkdrake had used his real name in purchasing it.

Bothroyd unlocked the door with a key kept on his own keyring, and welcomed the countess inside.

“Alright. This should be a safe place to talk,” he said as he shut the door.

“Good. I’m guessing the Darkdrake is Lord Gilber Drevin?”

“That’s right, milady. The study’s upstairs here…’Is lordship ‘as summat he wants you to read.”

Mossjoy looked around as they entered. It was a gentleman’s study alright, stuffed carpet to ceiling with bookshelves. The shelves weren’t over-packed, and lots of the space on them was taken by ornaments and knick-knacks. but Bothroyd knew the trick to opening one of them up to reveal a set of other shelves behind it.

He pulled out the “cold” box, the one for people only just being brought into the Darkdrake’s circle of friends. He knew the trick to opening that, too, though not the others. Apparently the others were magical, somehow. Or maybe just really clever. Either way, he hadn’t read their content, which wasn’t for him to know.

He removed the box’s contents onto the desk. “Lord Drevin meant ‘fer you to read this. ‘E wants to bring you in on ‘is confidence, the duchess’ spy network for the good of the realm. Exactly why in’t ‘fer me to say, milady. If you’ll ‘ave a read o’ that lot, I need to get back to precinct before I’m missed.”

“Will you be back?”

“Sayf’s honest truth, milady, I’m near to fallin’ down dead on me feet. I’ll be back tomorrer, but I’ll let the housekeeper know she’s a guest to look after.”

Mossjoy nodded, then took a deep breath. “…I…I am safe here, aren’t I?”

“Safe as you can be in city at moment, milady.”

“…That’s less reassuring than I had hoped.”

“I know. Grim times we’re in. But for what it’s worth, I worked wi’ the Darkdrake for years now, an I don’t think ‘is lordship would put you in ‘arm’s way wi’out cause or thought.”

“I just want to know what’s going on!”

“You’ll find the beginnings of it in that,” Bothroyd indicated the journals for her to read. “As ‘fer the rest…you’ll find out when I find out.”

“…Thank you, Serjant.”

“Milady.” He touched his forelock, and tromped back down the stairs and out into the street. Crowns he was tired. But at the same time, suddenly energized. They weren’t completely out of the fight after all, it seemed. Not yet.

But it was going to be a long uphill battle to turn this loss around.

“Best get to it, Jed lad,” he muttered to himself, put his helmet back on, and strolled away down the street.

Behind him, he knew, the countess was having her eyes opened.

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

> Perhaps the worst prejudice I had to overcome in my long travels was when I first met the Storm Clansmen of Stórsteinn. You will know one of these folk instantly should you meet them, for their hair is wild and braided, their limbs and bodies tattooed with unsettling runes, and men, women and children alike darken around their eyes with a black powder. They are fearsome to look at, proud of their prowess in battle, grim and confrontational, and train their girls and women for war alongside the men and boys. I confess I thought them brutes at first…until I heard their singing and their bowed harps. Then I saw they do not arm their women because they love the sword, but because they see no reason why any should be helpless when the swords inevitably come. —Prince Ruber of Valai, My Travels

OVER THE EDGE

Airship Cavalier Queen, the Unbroken Earthmote, Talvi 09.06.03.09.05

Two weeks of flight yielded no further attacks, though no doubt a large part of that was Jerl’s directions to give every other ship in the sky a wide berth. Still, they settled into the happily dull routine of a voyage, and Jerl was pleased to find his much-upended crew knitting together well. At first, the humans had eyed the elves with the testing hostility of seasoned hands taking on a clutch of lubberly novices, while the elves had eyed the humans with the indignation of the very old being judged by the very young. Mutual suspicion had crackled between them for three days.

Thank the Crowns for Mouse, who had (when the crew remembered he existed) a way of finding the perfect ice-breaker, leading the perfect song, saying the perfect thing to defuse tension. By the end of the third day, the first jokes and smiles had started cracking. By the end of the week, all the shanties and songs had been shared, and the crew was really starting to knit together.

It would still take a while longer, of course. But Jerl was content that things were going in the right direction at a decent clip.

And of course, at night he had Mouse’s company in his cabin. And there was not much room on his bed. So cramped was it, in fact, that they were forced to sleep cuddled together, big and little spoon.

What a terrible hardship.

Life, in fact, was turning out rather well for the moment. And now, two weeks out from Mehoom, he was standing on the prow, wrapped in his warmest fur-collared leather coat, and feeling the Talvian breeze play on his cheeks.

Last time he’d been down here, the cold had bit his bones. He remembered that dark, awful first go around, that encounter with Civorage amidst eclipse, shades and bloody snow. He’d remembered feeling the cold seep into him, and through him, until it seemed like his very marrow froze and he’d been forced to stumble along on worryingly numb toes, until Queen Talvi had restored him and suddenly the bitter chill had become…different. Not only tolerable, but almost pleasant and refreshing.

It seemed her gift lingered still. Far from biting his skin, the freezing breeze reminded him of throwing wide the window of a stuffy stale-aired room and breathing in that first fresh gust. The wind carried the scent of pine trees up to him, and indeed the Queen was sailing over a seemingly endless forest of them, so wide in every direction that Jerl could actually see its edges curling up around him in the distance.

Well…not in every direction. The horizon ahead was abruptly curtailed, and the wind was coming from behind now, blowing them in that direction.

Sin certainly seemed to be enjoying the cold. Up in the Sayfi earthmotes, her skin had been constantly sheened with perspiration, her clothes had stuck clammily to her, and her hair had always been damp. As an Ithfey, she hated hot weather. Now, she was parading around in the same shirt and breeches as ever, and looking quite comfortable while the rest of the crew labored in coats and scarves and gloves.

The rest, that was, except for Derghan. He too still had his sleeves rolled up and his head bare, and seemed to be quite pleased by the change of climate. Jerl found him sitting on deck with Whisker, trading whisky and stories.

Whisker, in turn, looked very much improved.

“Fresh air’s doin’ me good, I can feel it,” he declared, toasting Jerl. His whisky was in the form of a hot toddy, clasped in gloved fingers, and he was wrapped in a blanket still, but he no longer looked the complete invalid he’d been before.

“I’m glad,” Jerl declared, and nodded gratefully when Whisker offered to pour another hot toddy for him. “I don’t know what Mouse would have done if we’d lost you.”

“That lad of mine’s tough as teak,” Whisker declared, proudly.

“Who? Oh! Right. Fuck.” Derghan shook his head as through trying to dislodge something. “He’s so skinny, though. What'd you feed him on growing up, water and apples?”

“Near enough. We came from poor, and didn’t get rich ‘til he was already full grown.”

“I like him skinny,” Jerl declared.

“Aye, well. If I weren’t missing half a lung, you and I would be having stern words about you and my boy,” Whisker commented, in a growl that was more playful than serious.

Derghan snorted. “You Garanese…”

“What?”

“Where I’m from, being shot in the chest wouldn’t stop the father,” Derghan chuckled. “Men with men is…not well understood among the Stórsteinn-klanerne.”

Jerl and Whisker’s eyes met, and the understanding passed between them that they were both slightly amused by Derghan’s ignorance, but they weren’t going to spill Mouse’s secret to him either.

“It’s not generally well-received on Garanhir either, mate,” Jerl told him instead. “We’re a credulous and tight-minded folk when we want to be.”

“Bullshit! I’ve never met a Garanese who didn’t have a mind as wide open as the sky.”

“That’s because you’ve only met airshipmen, mate.” Jerl stretched until his shoulders popped. “I’m from Cantre myself, and Enerlenders have a reputation for being so far up their own arse they can eat their breakfast a second time.”

“The Cantrese meanwhile have a reputation for shagging their sheep ‘cuz they’re prettier than the women,” Whisker added, his face wrinkling in a dark smile.

“Eh, that’s just ordinary banter,” Derghan said. “You should have heard what the Vargurssons said about some of the other Clans.”

“Banter it may be, but the bit about Enerlenders is true enough,” Whisker opined. “We’re a people who thrive on a good scandal. It’s all gossip, gossip, gossip. Good for business in my line of work, but downright lethal if it turns your way all of a sudden. Just look what happened to the duchess.”

“Duchess? I thought Enerlend had a duke?” Derghan asked.

“The duchess before him, young Ellaenie. Nineteen years old or thereabouts on the day she vanished, eight years ago. Popular myth has it she was involved in witchcraft, black magic so foul the Crowns put a stop to it. It’s said Rheannach herself tore her palace apart.”

“…Well that’s a bowl of buttery shit if I ever heard one. And people believe that?”

“More than don’t,” Whisker shrugged. “So you see, the Enerlish are at least as credulous and tight-minded as any other folk, maybe more. It takes travel and really seeing the world to open most people up.”

Jerl nodded in agreement.

“Anyway.” Whisker clapped Jerl on the shoulder. “I need a job. At this point, lying around in that sickbed with nothing to do is going to kill me more than the lung will. The lung already missed its chance, I think.”

“I don’t know what we have that suits your skills. I’ve already got a quartermaster, and she’s damn good at her job. And Ju-Wi’s the best cook we’ve ever had.”

“A waste of her talents too, that. But I’ve been giving thought to this, and I’ve got an idea for you.” Whisker sat up a bit. “You have a problem. There’s no such thing as a safe port for this ship any more. Wherever we go, the Oneists and Clear Skies will find us. Even Mehoom wasn’t safe.”

“True…”

“Now, here’s something unique we have that might just make a safe haven possible. We have two navigators. Both of whom know messaging spells. Meaning one of them can leave the ship and set up somewhere that moves around, and let the other know where it is.”

“Like a wandering isle!” Jerl broke into a grin.

“Exactly. It’s a shame the idea only came to me after we’d parted ways with Cerkos and his family, but if we can create a home port for ourselves that the enemy’ll have a bastard of a time finding…among other things, it’d let me set up business again. Start putting out feelers, get in touch with my contacts. You’ll have a spy network.”

“I like the sound of that…maybe we can find Cerkos again?”

“That’s a bit far-fatched, given the whole point of this plan is that Wandering Isles are difficult to find.”

“True, but we have a couple of advantages there. Not least of which is that I intend to speak with a Crown soon enough. Maybe Sayf will be willing to point us in the right direction.”

“Maybe…and if not, any Isle with a family inn on it would do. It’ll be a mutually beneficial arrangement: they get permanent lodgers and business, we get a safe harbor and base of operations”

“They also get dragged into our conflict,” Derghan pointed out.

“They’re in our conflict regardless, whether they know it or not. Everybody is,” Jerl said. “Civorage wants everyone.”

“Won’t be easy convincing them of that,” Whisker pointed out.

“I know. But we must. You’re not the first person to tell me we need to start building a power base and taking the fight to Civorage, Harad’s been badgering me about it as well. And he’s right. We can’t keep running away. We need to be preparing and planning for the moment when we turn and fight back.”

Whisker nodded. “It’s a little early, I’d say. But I agree in principle.”

“Good. Then—”

“Jerl!”

Mouse came trotting up the steps to join them. He leaned in to give his dad a squeeze, then one for Jerl, then took a surprisingly shaky and nervous breath. “We’re here,” he said. “We’ve arrived.”

Jerl leaned over and glanced over the side. Below, the frost-strewn dark trees grew right up to and even slightly over the edge of a titanic five-mile cliff…and below that, only the endless haze of the air, and the black nothing of Outside.

It was time to be rid of Mind.

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