Alfric didn’t particularly like how they were doing things. They were running into classic chrononaut problems, largely relating to trust and secondhand information. His mother had made several attempts at fighting Cate, which included the party at various points. They hadn’t managed to actually kill the dragon, nor to get her to reveal herself, though when they had her in a bad position, she did resort to torrents of incredibly hot fire that could burn straight through anything they threw at her. This had all come with mountains of disclosure and caveats that conversations weren’t verbatim, or had passed through a few hands before getting to them.
There were clear, obvious violations of everything that chrononauts were supposed to do. He’d spoken to his mother about it, and she’d disclosed that they’d had the conversation six times before.
“I understand,” she’d said. “It feels like hypocrisy to you. I’m doing all the things that people suspect that we do, killing — attempting to kill — in an undone day because there’s no consequence there, spying, probing. We taught you that it was wrong.”
“The argument being that it’s too important not to do?” asked Alfric.
“She’s not the only dragon,” said Ria. “If there are more of them, hiding away in demiplanes, if they can come out, if they’re older than her —”
“The ethical imperative of disclosure doesn’t apply to your enemies, and not if you’re in conflict with someone,” said Alfric. He wasn’t used to employing sarcasm, and it didn’t come out quite right. “If that’s what other people think about us — if that’s what’s true about us — then we deserve people talking behind our backs about what we do with our power.”
She gave him a sad look. “Do you mean that?” she asked.
“I think we’d be reaping what we sow,” said Alfric. “If you want people to trust you, you need to be trustworthy, and you can’t slip up. You can’t have people saying ‘well I’m glad they’re on our side’ or whatever else.”
“Then I understand if you don’t participate,” said Ria, giving him a nod. “I won’t try to coerce you into killing someone, even if they are a monster with too much power.”
“That’s exactly how people see us,” said Alfric.
“Fine then, a monster who’s using that power in all the wrong ways,” said Ria. “Someone — something — gone rogue.”
“This isn’t just an academic argument,” said Alfric. “I really do think that this is wrong. If we had the backing of the national authorities —”
“If we go for the throat, it will be with someone negotiated, maybe even with pen put to paper,” said Ria. “Your father will talk to people, explain what’s going on, and it’ll all be above board.”
Alfric was skeptical of that, and didn’t really think that ‘pen to paper’ would mollify him, but it was something. It was a bit upsetting that he’d had this conversation with his mother six times and that was the best that she could do, but at least she hadn’t tried to game it out, answering his questions before they were asked. He hoped that she hadn’t planned for that conversation, because if that was as good as she could do, it didn’t say much in her favor.
They were tasked with finding secrets, weaknesses, and allies, and everyone had their own things to do, though some less than others. Alfric wasn’t suited to subterfuge, and while he probably wouldn’t have outright confessed everything to Cate if asked outright, he did think that he would probably end up saying too much if he had any kind of extended conversation with someone.
He saw some of the things the others had talked about, like the food hall, and he had breakfast there, away from the others, trying to get some sense of the place. The food was good and plentiful, but Mizuki was right that there was some sterility to it, something that didn’t feel like a joyous breakfast. It felt perfunctory, he supposed, not like a breakfast that Mizuki had made, which always felt like she’d put effort and care into it. It was an entad meal, after all, and entad meals did feel a bit bland in that way sometimes, but this was the most that Alfric had ever felt that feeling — a feeling of eating something that was devoid of human touch.
He had, once upon a time, thought that he was going to be a spy, and it wasn’t until having this experience that he’d realized what a terrible spy he would be. He wasn’t good at lying, didn’t like lying, and preferred everything to be on the level. He’d only really ever been attracted to the spy game because it had seemed dangerous and interesting, a world that actually had some frontier to it. If there was one thing that all Alfric’s dreams had in common it was that, whether it was being a sailor, explorer, spy, or yes, dungeoneer.
Well, the demiplane had exactly what he’d been wanting all along. He had some excuse to be there: if there was one place he thought he might have some insights, it was the Wildlands. When someone mentioned at breakfast that a small group was going out and was looking for more people, he decided that he would go with them, not just to see the Wildlands again, but to see what they had to say. They were also people who were spending time away from the village and the palace, which meant less chance of them knowing that he didn’t fit in.
The meeting place was right at the edge of the Wildlands, right along the same path that Alfric had taken his first time. Alfric wasn’t entirely sure how big the group would be, but he hoped that it would be more than five, and more than a party. Dungeons had their limits, but the Wildlands didn’t, and he thought he would like to see how it was different with more.
There were only two others when he got there, a solemn girl with red hair and a few too many knives strapped to her person, and a lanky boy with spectacles sitting on top of a large pack.
“You’re coming out to the Wildlands with us?” asked the girl as he approached.
“If that’s alright,” said Alfric. “Someone at breakfast mentioned that you were looking for more people. Will it just be the three of us?”
“You’re early,” the girl said. She was looking at him. “A bit under-equipped though.”
Alfric held a hand out to the side and a pack appeared in it.
“Ah,” she said.
“Any way you could carry this?” the boy asked, standing up from his pack.
“Of course,” said Alfric. His pack disappeared and he stepped over to the other boy’s pack, whisking it away with a touch. The extradimensional storage was from an entad borrowed from the family vault, among those taken in by Ria. He felt slightly unclean about using it, given that he hadn’t earned it himself.
“Will we have a full party?” asked Alfric. “I’m only curious.”
“It’s whoever shows up,” said the girl. “Only one more confirmed.” She held out her hand. “Gelica.”
“Alfric,” he replied, shaking her hand.
“Bosmo,” said the boy, waving slightly and standing back, clearly not in the mood for a handshake.
“Have you been in the Wildlands before?” asked Gelica.
“Just once,” said Alfric, which was true for a given perspective on time. He only had firsthand memories of one time, but his mother had told him of other times he’d gone, and what he had reported to her.
“A good experience, if you’re doing it again?” asked Bosmo. Maybe it was the spectacles, but he looked like he wasn’t cut out for a hike through the woods. He was dressed for it, but that only made him look less prepared, somehow.
“Wonderful,” said Alfric. “Though I didn’t have any entads to show for it.”
“They’re not really the point,” said Gelica. “The village and the palace have everything a person needs already.”
“Er,” said Alfric. “But Bosmo didn’t have something to carry his pack?”
“Everyone will always have a need of some sort,” said Bosmo. “So there will always be problems for entads to solve, especially since they solve them so incompletely sometimes.”
“There’s our fearless leader,” said Gelica, nodding down the road.
Alfric turned and looked. It was Kell.
Either Kell was cool as a cucumber, or had already seen and recognized Alfric, but either way, he didn’t react at all. When he reached their small group, he pulled up short. “You’re coming with us?” he asked.
“I am,” said Alfric. “If that’s alright with you.”
“It’s fine,” said Kell. He looked at Gelica. “Do we have any more coming?”
“Not that I know of,” she replied. She moved over to him and slipped her hand into his, standing close to him. “It’s still early.”
“Less early, now,” said Bosmo.
“We’ll give it five minutes,” said Kell. “I think in the future, we’ll have to do things differently if we want to attract a good core of people. There’s no reason to have a group this small, not that it’s been hindering us.”
“I’m just glad I’m not the third wheel,” said Bosmo with a little laugh.
“Sorry, introductions,” said Gelica. “Alfric, this is Kell, Kell, this is Alfric.”
“We’ve met, actually,” said Alfric.
“Kell and I are engaged,” said Gelica. “Not that we’ve known each other all that long.”
“The Cairbre fashion, I’m familiar with it,” said Alfric.
“I think we might be the first wedding in the demiplane,” said Gelica. “Which would be nice.”
“I think there have to be some star-crossed lovers around here somewhere,” said Kell, giving a little laugh. “Though maybe that’s less common than all the stories would have us believe.”
“It’s usually a long engagement, isn’t it?” asked Alfric. He was looking at the place where Gelica had attached herself to Kell.
“Gelica isn’t actually from Cairbre,” said Kell. “So this is more a borrowed tradition than a cultural assumption. We can do things however we’d like.”
“I’d say that it’s been going very well,” said Gelica. She gave Kell’s arm a squeeze.
“I really don’t think anyone else is coming,” said Bosmo. “We’d be able to see them by now.”
“I can fly,” said Alfric. “Do you want me to go look?”
“No need,” said Kell. “This is just a one day trip. If they miss it because they’re late, they can just catch the next one.”
“Do people not want to go?” asked Alfric. “I would think it would be more popular.”
Kell snorted at that. “They equate it to dungeons, which it shares some similarities with,” he said. “So they think it’s a reckless thing that only people in hard times would do, or that you’d only do for wealth, and without the warp, they think it’s even more dangerous. Once you’ve been out a few times, you realize that it’s nothing like that.”
“It’s safe?” asked Alfric.
“Not entirely,” said Kell. “And not for longer trips. But I was a dungeoneer before this, and got to know the dungeons well enough. Those were dangerous in an immediate way, the danger was essentially the entire experience.”
Alfric didn’t know whether or not they were pretending that they weren’t acquintances. He didn’t like the deception, especially if it was being perpetrated against a woman Kell was possibly going to marry — but maybe she knew too, and it was only Bosmo they were keeping in the dark.
“Is a day long enough to get anywhere interesting?” asked Alfric.
For the first time, Kell smiled. “That all depends upon how we do it.”
It wasn’t long after that they started walking. Alfric tried not to watch Kell too much. They really didn’t know each other, and he felt as though he knew Kell more as Mizuki’s friend than through any interaction they’d ever had together. Mizuki didn’t talk about him much though, except in passing, and as much as he cared for Mizuki, getting a feel for someone else through what Mizuki chose to mention about them seemed like a bad idea.
“So what did you do, before this?” asked Bosmo. They had fallen in together while they walked.
“I was a dungeoneer,” said Alfric. “At least, that’s what I thought I was. We didn’t really do enough dungeons that I was comfortable with the title.” He’d been a dungeoneer in spirit, anyway. With Verity charging the dungeons up with more power, it was still an open question when and how they would go back to it.
“Oh, interesting,” said Bosmo. “I was a politician.”
Alfric reacted to that with real surprise. “A … politician?” he asked.
“Political theorist, mostly,” said Bosmo. “Though I had a position in Dondrian as censusmaster of one of the less populous hexes, and took a stipend for that, most of the actual work was in understanding voting trends and making strategies to ensure that certain candidates won, myself among them. I was fairly good at it, actually.”
“You’re going to have to mention it,” said Gelica, who was walking side-by-side with Kell, ahead of them.
“There was a scandal,” said Bosmo. “I suggested — only suggested, mind you — that Inter had an opportunity to take one of Kiromo’s provinces with a re-pledge. And of course those remarks would have died quietly, but they were picked up by a newspaper, and because it was a slow day, it had a good position in the paper, and I’m sure you can imagine how it went from there. I very quickly became a person of ill repute, cast off by everyone who had once supported me, and told that if I wanted to help, it would need to be from the shadows.”
“Which is when Cate approached you,” said Alfric.
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“Just so,” said Bosmo. “She understood that I hadn’t been talking about war, or something that would lead to war, I was only observing that Kiromo is a country of discontent, and certain provinces are ripe for a change in how they pledge. Actually making that happen … I had some thoughts on what it would take, how to budget it, the ways we’d sneak people in and engage in a different sort of war, a war where democracy and public opinion were the tools we employed, but I had never actually said we should do it. I’d certainly never put any plans in motion, only put them on paper.”
“But you did think that it was something Inter should do,” said Kell. His voice was mild.
“Well yes, I did,” said Bosmo. “But I had plausible deniability in the matter. That’s important.”
“Is it?” asked Alfric. “I guess I really wouldn’t know.”
“It shows that I’m not committed,” said Bosmo. “It means that I know which way the wind blows. If I’d cast off all caution and decorum, if I was actually advocating it rather than laying down the groundwork, that would be quite a different thing.”
“And Cate … wanted you to do a similar thing here?” asked Alfric.
“She never asked,” said Bosmo. “I have been trying to take the pulse, but it’s been very different, and of course we’re not in a hex, so we don’t have a vote, and there are no positions except whatever Cate actually is. I think there’s some argument that one of the things people want most is for there to be more structure in that regard, but she hasn’t asked me, and I haven’t spoken to her since my first day here, which was more than a month ago.”
“He’s off into the Wildlands because there are people living out here,” said Gelica.
“And some not-people who seem to have lived out here,” said Kell.
“The empty villages?” asked Alfric.
“They’re the best place to find entads,” said Kell. “And even then, they’re really not that good. We’ve been hoping to find a city, but it’s not likely without a multi-day trip.”
They were moving through woods, still along a path, though they were well into the Wildlands by that point. The background seemed to be shifting less than Alfric recalled from his previous trip, no mountains in the distance disappearing or shifting around, though he was moving slower. If it worked off observation, which it seemed to, then a group of people should have less of those shifts, he thought.
“You can coerce a city into being?” asked Alfric.
“There’s a principle of self-consistency,” said Bosmo. “It starts from the core of the palace and the surrounding stable area, and everything after that needs to plausibly be right next door. It’s woodlands, so everything in the Wildlands close to the hub will also be woodlands, or a place that can be next to woodlands. A river’s not just going to stop, you’ll reach the terminus, usually a sea or ocean, or you’ll reach the headwaters.”
“It’s the same with cities,” said Kell. “There are maybe a thousand people between the village and the palace, or something like that, and no major roads in or out, which means that they’re probably not close to a major city or in a populated area of the world. That’s what we think, at least. So to get to a city, you need to get to a place that wouldn’t be connected to the palace, or would be connected by a different road, or something like that.”
“But there are cities?” asked Alfric. “Cities without any people?”
“Nothing like bastlefolk,” said Gelica with a shrug. “Which is a bit of a shame.”
“I think it’s better that we don’t have people who only show up for as long as we look at them,” said Kell. “It would make me feel awkward about walking the Wildlands.”
Alfric agreed with that. The bastlefolk had made him feel awkward about the dungeons sometimes, even with the assurance that they were dungeon mad and typically brainless, the exceptions so rare that you could forgive yourself for not thinking about them. Here, with everything more coherent, less prone to errors, and no dungeon madness, the idea of there being real people was horrifying.
“How does it work?” asked Alfric. “The Wildlands?”
“We don’t know,” said Bosmo. “Cate’s been keeping mum. Which is another thing that people don’t really like. It’s not clear whether she knows and isn’t saying, or whether she’s just as clueless as we are.”
“With her talking about stabilizers, I think it’s pretty clear that she knows much more than she’s letting on,” said Kell. “Which is her prerogative. Personally, I’m hoping we can find the principles before she tells us.”
“Kell likes to know things,” said Gelica. “But to know them without being told.” She squeezed Kell’s hand and gave Alfric a smile.
They continued on until the road reached a small, empty village, then broke apart to search for anything worthwhile. Kell had a small piece of glass for each of them, a construct he’d created which would allow them to see magic, and they went their separate ways for a moment. It was a small village, maybe sized for a hundred people all told, the kind of place that would be labeled a ‘Point’ in central Inter if it had no other distinguishing features. There was a statue in the center carved from marble, but this seemed to be the terminus of the road.
The feeling of a place that had been only recently abandoned was as haunting as it had been when Alfric had seen it before, and having other people around didn’t feel like it helped all that much. The biggest difference between this and exploring a dungeon, other than the relative lack of danger, was that everything felt more real — was more real, more consistent, more like it was part of a whole, even if it hadn’t existed before they’d come here, and wouldn’t exist once they left.
Alfric was startled by motion, but instead of a monster, what came out of the bedroom he’d been near was a mid-sized dog with a golden coat of fur and too many ears. His legs were longer than a dog’s, but other than that, he could have been mistaken for a normal dog.
“Hello,” said Alfric.
The dog barked once, then circled Alfric and sat down.
“Were you — are you someone’s pet?” he asked.
The dog wagged its tail and panted slightly, just sitting there. When Alfric made to leave, the dog followed behind him.
“You got a pet?” asked Kell once they’d regrouped. He was holding a sword in his hand, and Gelica seemed to have found a cloak, both magical once Alfric lifted up his eyepiece.
“I don’t really want a pet,” said Alfric, though the dog had followed him. He wondered whether he should feed it, but he felt as though if he did, then it would never stop following him.
“I came up empty,” said Bosmo.
“These are probably worthless,” said Kell. “We’ll bring them back and get them checked though. A sword is probably too violent to see any use, but the cloak might be good. We’ll pack them up.”
“I was going to wear this,” said Gelica, wrapping the cloak around herself. It was blue with silver trim, finely made, and wearable as it was even if the magic turned out to be nothing.
“If I leave this dog, will it just disappear?” asked Alfric, looking down at the dog.
“Yes,” said Bosmo. “We tested that.”
“Ah,” said Alfric. “But if it comes into the village with me … it stays alive? Even if no one is looking at it?”
“It stays real,” said Kell. “All things do. Otherwise the entads we bring in would vanish.”
Alfric looked at the dog again. “Shame there’s only one of him. Seems like it would be lonely.”
“We’re at the end of easy travel,” said Kell. “If you don’t want him, it should be easy to leave him behind. I think we’ll head for a mountain, cross some rough terrain, and hopefully find something worth the trip before we have to head back.” He took out a sack and slipped the sword into it — the sword was longer than the sack but swallowed up easily — then pulled out a long contraption with two thick wheels set with one in front of the other, which he set on the ground. It had a seat between the wheels, and handlebars, like a wheelbarrow. Following that, there were a handful of rings.
“Er,” said Alfric. “What’s that?”
“Transport,” said Kell. He mounted the vehicle, as that’s clearly what it was, and as he did, the ground around him flattened out. Gelica wasted no time in hopping on with him, wrapping her hands around his waist. Bosmo took a ring, and Kell offered one to Alfric. “If we get too far apart, which we very quickly will, this will surround you with a bubble and pull you behind me. I found it two trips ago.”
Alfric took the ring and slipped it on, feeling somewhat skeptical. “Do you have one for the dog?”
“You want to keep it?” asked Kell. “You didn’t seem that interested in it.”
Alfric looked at the dog, which was sitting by his side, as though listening to the conversation.
“I’ll take it with us, yes,” said Alfric, though he really wasn’t sure about it. It seemed earnest and friendly in an unnatural way, though earnest friendliness was, in Alfric’s opinion, the best feature of any dog.
It took some time to affix the ring to the dog’s paw, helped somewhat by the knuckles that were slightly undoglike. For its part, the dog sat patiently while Alfric figured it out, after first having attempted to shake his hand.
When that was done, Kell leaned forward on his contraption, and the vehicle began to roll forward, slowly at first and then with more speed. The ground flattened around it and in front of it, making a path for him, crushing bushes and grasses flat. Once he was ten yards away, shimmering bubbles formed around Alfric, Bosmo, and the dog, and then floated up into the air, trailing after Kell at the same approximate speed.
It was an interesting way to travel, and he braced himself for impact against a tree a few times until realizing that the bubble was protective, and would bounce him off harmlessly without him being able to feel it. Alfric was weightless inside the bubble, floating, and eventually worked out how to affix himself in place so he didn’t turn upside down.
They were moving quickly, but the trip somehow still felt slow, perhaps because Alfric was having no part in it. He’d at first thought that Kell was going in a straight line, but there seemed to be some corrections as he went, perhaps based on the horizon. At a certain point, they were speeding toward the water, and Alfric braced again, but the two-wheeled thing went out over the water with no problem, flattening the waves down to a glossy surface.
Gelica clung to Kell, resting her head against his shoulder as her hair whipped behind her.
They rounded a mountain, which took at least an hour, even going as fast as they were. It was faster than Alfric’s board, which left him with a sense of unease. If he was stranded out there, he didn’t know whether he would be able to get back to the house in time. He could communicate through the party channel, but that still felt vulnerable since they knew Cate had a way to capture it.
“Mushrooms,” said Kell, and when Alfric looked, he saw them, great big ones all around the forest they were moving through, as big as dinner plates. In one place he saw one so tall that it was standing among the trees, the mushy stalk having veins of woody material to support it.
Kell’s voice had been surprisingly clear, and Alfric wondered whether they could have been talking to each other this entire time.
“What are we looking for?” asked Alfric.
“Something interesting,” said Kell. His voice was wind-whipped.
Kell stopped the vehicle not long after they’d rounded the mountain. The trees and over-large mushrooms had fallen away, leaving scrubland, and across it walked large creatures the size of elephants whose details were obscured with long, glossy hair. Just beyond them was a crystal spire surrounded by trees that had been planted at regular intervals, their shapes speaking to a careful gardener who’d pruned both branches and leaves to get a desired uniformity.
“There,” said Kell, letting out a breath. His hair was wild from the journey. “Something interesting.”
“I think I’m taking the ring next time,” said Gelica. She’d produced a brush from somewhere and was getting the tangles out.
“We’ll get better transport, if we keep doing this,” said Kell. “Better everything.”
“I’m not so sure that’s good,” said Bosmo. He looked at Alfric. “Can I have my pack, please?”
Alfric produced it, and Bosmo drank almost an entire waterskin.
“Why wouldn’t it be good?” asked Alfric after he was finished.
“I want to understand the Wildlands because people are going to come live out here,” said Bosmo. “It’s a refuge from Cate’s control, and it seems inevitable, even if just because of the demographics of who came here. But if we keep getting better and better transport, that will mean that everywhere is ten minutes from the capital, and there won’t really be a release valve except by mutual agreement.”
“Ah,” said Alfric. “So you didn’t just want to see the Wildlands?”
“I did,” said Bosmo. “Do. But I also wanted to get a handle on things. I think Cate picked me for a reason, and part of that reason was understanding people and how they vote, even if it’s how they vote with their feet.”
“Come,” said Kell. “Let’s go.”
They walked the rest of the way to the spire, which had no roads or other obvious transportation away from it. The interior had a cavernous area with a staircase that spiraled around the inside wall, at least ten stories, and was empty save for a statue of two people, one clutching the other. They had long ears and bushy hair, not human, and they were three fingered. A plaque in two foreign languages, different scripts side by side, sat at the base of the statue.
“A monument then,” said Kell. “That’s a bit disappointing.”
“I want to go to the top,” said Gelica. “There’s got to be a great view. Plus it should let us see far enough that if we blink, the whole view will change.”
“We could lock in a new location, if we’re careful,” said Bosmo.
“I’m staying down here,” said Kell. “I was hoping to talk with Alfric for a bit, privately.”
That got them some looks, but the other two nodded, and went up the stairs together.
Kell walked outside the spire, and Alfric followed.
“I didn’t know you’d be the leader,” said Alfric. “I had thought there would be more people. We don’t want to step on your toes.”
“That’s not what Mizuki said,” Kell replied. “She said you want to uncover major crimes, or something like that, and get Inter involved, which feels exactly like stepping on my toes.”
“Fair,” said Alfric. “Still, we don’t need to involve you.”
“You got involved because of me,” said Kell. “You watched the past, followed me, then snuck in. Right?”
“Yes,” said Alfric. “This is bigger than just you though.”
“I know that,” said Kell. He had his hands folded across his chest. “Have you found anything since yesterday?”
“I’d rather keep it to myself, if it’s all the same to you,” said Alfric. “The less people know, the better the chance that we can keep Cate in the dark until it’s time to make a move, if it ever is.”
Kell pursed his lips. “I like this place. I like the Wildlands.”
“I do too,” said Alfric. “I wish that I could do this, rather than dungeons, even if the entads aren’t coming fast and thick.” He gestured to the hairy creatures, which were close enough that they hadn’t disappeared when they were out of sight. “I like being able to see a creature like that in what seems like its natural habitat.”
“Not trying to kill us,” said Kell.
“Did I ever tell you that you were an alternate for the dungeoneering party?” Alfric asked. “I do think in some other world, we could have gotten along. I don’t know who you’d be in for, but it could have been a good party.”
“Maybe,” said Kell.
There was something between them, something almost like animosity, and he didn’t really know where it was coming from. Alfric would have loved to bury the hatchet, if only he knew where the hatchet was. He’d never been friends with Kell, had never even really thought about Kell all that much, but he didn’t dislike Kell, not really. There didn’t seem like there was much to dislike, aside from him being a bit reckless with the solo dungeons and joining up with Vertex when Alfric thought that was a bad idea. And of course going to a demiplane seemed bad to Alfric in some hard to identify way, as did the impulsive engagement. There was still some friction between them, an unplaceable sourness.
“I told Mizuki that if you had something on Cate, on the demiplane, I would help,” said Kell. “You don’t think it’s risen to that level though?”
“No,” said Alfric. “I’ll know more tomorrow. Or … today, I guess.”
“You’re undoing this?” asked Kell, raising an eyebrow.
Alfric nodded. “Probably. It’s too precarious and unknown to let a day go through the first time. Sorry.”
“So it’s all pointless, except for you,” said Kell, looking out at the scrubland. He let out a sigh. “Alright.”
“I can pass a message on to you, if you’d like,” said Alfric.
“No,” said Kell. “It’s fine.” He paused. “You and Mizuki … are you just not interested?”
Alfric didn’t like the question, in part because it felt like it was only coming because Kell thought the day would be undone.
“I think being interested isn’t the best reason to do something,” said Alfric. “If we weren’t in a party together, if we weren’t living in the same house, I think it would be smarter to try it out. But my last relationship, my only one, was with Lola, and when it fell apart, it destroyed my life.”
“She’s smitten with you,” said Kell. “I know you know that, because you’re not oblivious.” He shook his head. “It was so painful seeing you together sometimes,” he said. “She likes you, you like her, but for whatever reason — fear of failure, whatever — it wasn’t happening. You, saying ‘no thank you’, when it was all I wanted.”
“Ah,” said Alfric. “I … hadn’t realized that was how you felt about me.”
“I don’t want to talk about this with you,” said Kell. “I’m talking to you now because I don’t want to talk about it on some other day that I’ll actually remember. It would be better, for me, if you got together, but I don’t think that you’d ever do that on my account. Knowing that at least she had someone would be helpful for me.” He let out a breath.
“How much does Gelica know?” asked Alfric.
“Almost nothing,” replied Kell. “I should probably tell her, but I don’t know when the right time would be.”
“Soon,” said Alfric.
“I don’t suppose your code of ethics would let me test it out on an undone day?” asked Kell.
“Not really, no,” said Alfric. “But I’ve been running up against the limits of what I’m supposed to do for the past few days.” He hesitated. “I wish I could help you.”
Kell waved a hand. “I have my own problems. I’ll do my best to solve them on my own.” He let out a breath. “You know, part of me hopes that Cate really does have something that you can use as cause for a war with her, because then I’d have something more important to think about.” He gave Alfric a weak smile. “I think you’re a good man. I wish that all these feelings weren’t getting in the way. Maybe we would have made a good team.”
Alfric nodded slowly.
They heard a shout from the top of the spire, and looked up to see a waving hand.
“We should go join them,” said Kell. “We have some time, anyway, before all this goes away.”
Alfric wondered whether Kell was referring to the Wildlands disposing of things when no one was looking, the day being undone, or the end of the demiplane itself, but he didn’t ask, because it was very possible the answer was all three.