“All right, I’ve got stuff to get too,” Tern said, and disentangled herself from Loch. She walked off toward where Hessler was at the market stalls.
“She means well,” Icy said, and Loch nodded and smiled as he followed Tern.
Loch reached the estate’s gates soon after. The late-afternoon shadows stretched from the town buildings almost to the walls, making it seem quieter than it really was. The gates were open, and the guards chatted with townsfolk who walked by.
They stopped as she approached, and one of them, a young white woman, called, “Good afternoon. You have business inside?”
As Loch opened her mouth to respond, the other guard, an Urujar woman whose tight curls had gone completely white and whose face was lined with both wrinkles and scars, cut in. “Isafesira? Aitha, is that you? They said some crazy military man had killed you at a peace conference with the Empire.”
“They say a lot of things, Yeshki.” Loch turned to Kail and Desidora. “Tahla, this is Kail, who served with me in the war, and Desidora, who’s working with us now. Kail and Desidora, this is Tahla. She taught me how to use a sword.”
“A few lessons, when your father wasn’t looking,” Tahla said, grinning, “since his little girl was going to cut her own foot off on the downswing if someone didn’t help her.” It had been more than a few lessons, and Loch clasped hands with her gladly. “Look at you, all grown up. Your mother and father would be so proud.”
“How is Naria?” Loch asked, and Tahla’s smile softened around the edges.
“Your parents would be proud of her too,” she said. “Lochenville has done well under her.” Tahla gestured for Loch to come inside. “She is busy with some nobles who arrived today. Perhaps if you waited in the water garden?”
“The reports all said she was dead,” the young guard said. “We should at least use an illusion-ward charm to . . .” She withered under Tahla’s steady stare.
“Yeshki, I don’t mind,” said Loch.
Tahla sighed. Then her hand went to the hilt of the blade at her hip. “Strike.”
Her blade hissed from its sheath with a crosscut that would have taken Loch across the gut had she not gotten her walking stick up. Moving to the side, Tahla stabbed low, then high, stepping in as Loch parried. She stomped at Loch’s foot, then shouldered in as Loch lifted her foot to avoid the stomp.
Loch had ended up on the ground countless times as Tahla had taught her that dirty little trick. This time, she stepped aside, letting Tahla move past her, and tapped the older woman on the back with her walking stick. “Dead,” she said as the wooden stick plinked off Tahla’s armor.
“Dead?” Tahla snorted as she sheathed her blade, ignoring the young guard’s confused protestations. “Not with this armor, Aitha. I taught you to go for the head.”
“My father taught me to respect my elders, Yeshki,” Loch shot back. “Besides, if I knocked you senseless, nobody would be awake to remember me.” She brought her stick back to the ground, leaning on it casually, and turned to the young guard. “If you would like to use your illusion-ward charm, I have no objections.”
“That, ah, won’t be necessary,” the guard said, and waved Loch, Kail, and Desidora in.
Tahla walked alongside them as they came into the small but nicely maintained Lochenville estate. Some of the sculptures on the front lawn could have sat in any noble’s garden, comprised of bronze goddesses and old heroes. Other figures had been commissioned in bronze and marble, but were done in the old Urujar style, simplified forms with long, smooth limbs and gentle curves.
As a girl, Loch had argued with her mother about them. The old statues had been made from wood or clay, and Loch had said it was disrespectful to use the materials of the people who had enslaved the Urujar to make Urujar art.
She remembered her mother’s wry smile and sighed.
“You all right, Captain?” Kail asked.
“Just thinking back to when I was young and stupid, Kail.”
Desidora smiled at Loch with eyes that looked older than her years—not in a death-priestess way, but in a way that all good priests eventually learn to cultivate. “Tern sees you and her as similar, escaping your home and having to come back. But you didn’t want to leave, did you?”
“I wanted to serve my country,” Loch said.
Tahla laughed. “You wanted adventure, Aitha.”
“And that.” Loch grinned at her, then turned back to Desidora. “But had Silestin not framed me, killed my family, stolen the land . . . I would’ve come back.”
“You’re back now,” Tahla said, and Desidora nodded.
Loch was back. She would wait in the garden, as a guest.
The water garden was a great pool of waist-deep water where brightly colored fish swam in slow, peaceful circles. Water lilies covered much of its surface, their white-and-purple petals glowing in the slanting light of the late afternoon, and little wooden bridges arched between marble platforms set with benches and chairs for quiet reflection. Columns shaped like tumbled stone rose from each platform to block the sight lines. Some piped water out in artful streams or bubbling cascades, and all were wreathed in flowering vines, as were the ropes that connected the columns to create a gentle bower that kept the worst of the hot summer sun off the garden.
Tahla led them across several little bridges and stopped at one platform with a long bench and a small chair. “If you will wait here, Isafesira, I will tell Naria you are here. It will not be long.”
“Thank you.” Loch nodded, and Tahla made her way across the bridges to the white steps that led inside the manor.
“Your home is lovely,” Desidora said, settling down on one of the benches. Kail sat beside her.
Loch sat as well. “It was a good place to grow up.” The falling water had left the air misty, a pleasant change in the hot weather, and she closed her eyes for a moment to let the cool breeze kiss her face.
“Yeah, my water garden was a mudhole at the edge of town,” Kail said, and then started as a great splash sounded behind him.
Loch smiled and pointed, without opening her eyes, at a long wooden tube that was dumping a huge sheet of water down behind them. “Water clock,” she said. “It’s set at an angle, and when it gets full enough, precisely at every half hour, it will tip over and pour the water out.”
“. . . kind of stupid garden has sudden noises,” Kail muttered, settling back down.
“You are all right?” Desidora asked Loch.
Loch nodded, forced a smile. “It’ll be a better reunion than the last time I saw her. Ideally, we won’t be trying to kill each other.”
“That why are your knuckles white on your stick, Captain?” Kail asked.
Loch put the walking stick down in the unoccupied chair. “Thank you, Kail.”
They waited in silence for a time. The water clock emptied again, prompting Kail to swear. Loch stood up, eyes shut, smelling the flowers on the vines, remembering.
Finally, she opened her eyes at the sound of booted feet coming down the stairs. Tahla waved for her to come in, and Loch turned to Kail and Desidora. “I shouldn’t be long.”
“Good luck, Captain.” Kail tossed her a lazy salute.
Loch left her walking stick in the chair and crossed the bridges to get to the stairs. She met Tahla’s smile with her own as they walked up and into the manor.
Naria had left the interior furnishings the same as when Loch’s parents had been alive. Classic paintings and tapestries sat in the hallways, and sitting rooms were furnished with Urujar rope art and statues—these in the authentic clay and wood that young Isafesira de Lochenville had approved of. While the rooms were richly carpeted, the hallway floors were bare. It had been a compromise between her mother, who loved to dig her toes into the soft rugs, and her father, who had liked the sound of his heels clicking on the stone.
Tahla brought Loch not to a sitting room, but to the receiving hall where guests first met the family. White marble tiles were inlaid with malachite that twined vinelike across t
heir surface, and a golden pattern scrolled across the entirety of the floor, drawing the eye to the raised dais where a single throne sat, lined with velvet and decorated with crystals at the arms and back.
Naria de Lochenville looked down at Loch from the throne, a pretty young woman in a dusky orange gown that brought out the golden tones of her own skin. Her eyes were covered with crystal lenses, a legacy from the same attack that had killed Loch’s parents.
The last time she and Loch had met, Loch had crushed the lenses under the heel of her boot after Naria’s failed attempt to kill her. Loch supposed Naria had picked up new ones.
Loch walked in silence to where the gold scrollwork pattern on the floor ended, just before the steps to the dais. Guards stood on either side of the steps, holding great ornamental halberds and with far more practical blades at their hips.
Loch looked up at Naria, who had said nothing.
“Baroness de Lochenville,” Loch said, and bowed low.
She rose from her bow to the sound of light laughter.
“Oh, Isa,” said her sister, smiling brightly from the throne, “you have no idea how long I have waited to hear you say that.”
Ululenia walked through the forest that had once been hers.
She felt every living creature that ran or swam or flew or crawled, and her hooves left no prints in the soft turf. The great trees were thick with leaves, and all around her was life, growing and changing and fighting and failing but trying nevertheless.
Once, these woods had given her peace.
She reached for that peace, reached for what had once been here for her, as she came to a little stream where water splashed merrily over a fallen log.
And found an intruder.
Idrienesae, Ululenia said, and her horn flared as she pulled upon the ties of magic and life that ran through everything nearby, most especially the trees.
One tree, a great thick old monster whose leafy branches grabbed at the sunlight, split open with a low crack, and a small figure tumbled out, a slender, feminine foot-tall form in a short dress, with rainbow wings like a dragonfly’s glowing at her back.
“Ululenia, I didn’t think you would mind,” the pixie said, her little piping voice coming fast, “because you were gone, and the ancients were coming and I needed to be somewhere different, somewhere not where I was, and your woods were farther away, and you were not here or I would have asked, but we were friends so I thought you would welcome me.”
But then I came back, Ululenia said, and turned toward Idrienesae, and still you hid from me.
“It had been so long since I had seen you that I was not certain you would remember me, Ululenia, you know how we are, and I am small and do not remember very much at all to arching ardor, bejeweled bosom.” The little pixie stumbled and shook her head.
Why are you lying? Ululenia asked, her voice still sweet and pure and beautiful.
Idrienesae shrank back nonetheless. “You went dark, and I was afraid, Ululenia, we were friends but those who join the dark fey do not always care about those they used to know, and I am small, Ululenia, so small and unimportant, and you would gain so little by eating me, and I could help you if you curling caress, decadent desire,” she said, and then cried out and fell to her knees.
You told Shenziencis where I was.
Ululenia’s horn flared again, and Idrienesae flew as though struck. She rolled along the turf, then sprang to her feet and leaped for the tree she had come from, but the tree opened only a crack, straining and groaning as though held fast.
The pixie clutched at the tiny crack as though she would wrench it apart with her own little hands. Ululenia’s horn flared again, and the great tree, hundreds of years old and wide enough for a dozen men to link arms and encircle, cracked down the middle as though struck by lightning.
Idrienesae screamed, and her rainbow wings flickered and vanished as she clutched her chest. The two halves of the tree fell with the wrenching roar of tearing roots, crashing into other trees as they slowly sagged to the ground.
You thought she was a Hunter, and you told her where I was, so that she could find me.
Idrienesae looked up to find Ululenia standing over her, and she crawled back, whimpering. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, she was going to kill me and I was afraid, Ululenia, I was so afraid of her!” She slipped as she reached the edge of the stream.
A shining white hoof pushed Idrienesae into the water. She sputtered, gasped, and tried to stand, and the hoof came down, pinning her to the rocks below the surface.
You were more afraid of her than you were of me, Ululenia said, looking down at the pixie as she struggled below the surface, and so you betrayed me. Who are you more afraid of now, Idrienesae?
The answer came only in bubbles that popped around her fetlocks.
I hunger as the wolf in the winter, Idrienesae. As the lynx with the mouse in its jaws, I would gain so little from you, but that little would be so much more than nothing. And who would tell me that I was wrong? You betrayed me. You deserve it.
The bubbles were slowing. If Ululenia lacked patience, simply shifting her weight would crush the little insect against the rocks, and then it would crumble into the energy from which it had come, and Ululenia would be that much stronger.
It.
Ululenia stepped back, and after a moment, bent her head into the stream and pulled Idrienesae out. She dropped the pixie by a tree and backed away, her hooves making no sound on the soft turf.
Idrienesae lay there for a while, coughing. When she could breathe, she crawled to a tree. She looked back at Ululenia, saying nothing.
The tree opened beneath her touch, and the pixie stepped into it, and the tree slid shut, and she was gone, sliding through roots and dirt to some other tree.
Ululenia could feel the magic, could track it if she wished. She did not.
She pushed herself back to her human shape and looked at the dead tree, ripped in two by her fury. She looked at the stream. Her hoofprints marked the dirt at the edge, the only hoofprints she had made in her journey.
She turned at a noise and saw Dairy at the edge of the trees.
“You did the right thing,” he said.
She was in his arms then, holding on to him as the drowning squirrel to the only rock before the waterfall, and her chest heaved as the sobs broke through.
I want to go back, she said in his mind. I want to go back.
“Dairy went off to look for Ululenia,” Hessler said, joining Tern at a market stall where she was haggling. “He’s worried about her.”
“He’s got a pretty good track record for his worries being on target,” Tern said to Hessler, and then to the middle-aged lady selling the herbs, “Seriously, if you have cut this with basil, what I am doing to it will turn it into an incredibly toxic gas instead of the harmless sleep tonic I am trying to make, so if this is like a quarter basil, I need you to tell me.”
“Is no basil,” said the lady. “Twenty for pouch.”
Tern held the little bag up to her nose. “I can smell basil in this. I need sleep tonic, not pesto sauce!”
“Is no basil,” said the lady again. “Twenty for pouch.”
“Tern, Hessler,” said Icy, “the puppet show is starting.”
Tern looked at the woman’s wagon. “You’ve got an herbalist guild membership. You know, if this turns out to have basil in it, I can bring a grievance to the guild. They usually settle, because it’s not worth the legal trouble, but do you know what they do to the people who besmirch their guild’s reputation?”
“Maybe basil fall in,” said the lady. “Fifteen for pouch.”
Tern finished the now-much-more-reasonable purchase and followed Icy to where the puppeteer was starting up. The market had quieted, and a crowd had gathered near the stage.
“. . . still concerned about having delegates from the Empire here for the Republic Festival of Excellence,” the manticore was saying, wiggling its scorpion tail with worry. “Is that sending the right m
essage?”
“It’s sending the message that we’re ready to put these decades of war behind us,” the griffon said, puffing its mane a little. “And frankly, if Princess Veiled Lightning sees that the Republic is united and strong, I’m happy to have her take that back home to her mother and father.”
“Veiled Lightning?” Tern looked over at Hessler. “I didn’t know she was coming. Do you think we’ll get to see her? We never really got to talk last time.”
“Given that she was either attacking us or racing with us to prevent the destruction of the Republic and the Empire, yes,” said Icy.
“But this time, if she’s at the festival, we could grab a kahva, right? Maybe drinks or something?”
“You know that as a member of an inheriting ruling class, Princess Veiled Lightning is invested in the systematic oppression of workers,” Hessler said, “and while admittedly the Republic’s de facto oligarchy and still-present nobility is little better, I hardly think that she’s someone to idolize.”
“I don’t idolize her,” Tern said, “but, like, if we’re having drinks, maybe she asks about my hair, and I offer to show her how I do my braids, and then she shows me how to do hers, because the instructions that came with her doll didn’t have any words, and the pictures were confusing on which lock of hair went under and which went over, and then—”
“It is good to know that you do not idolize her,” Icy said, and then suddenly broke off to look back at the puppeteers, who had been going on about something Tern hadn’t caught because she had been thinking about braiding Veiled Lightning’s hair.
“. . . clearly a time of celebration, and I don’t think it’s necessary to mar that with discussions of an incident from so long ago,” the griffon was saying.
“Yes, but next week marks the tenth anniversary of the Red Trail Massacre,” the manticore pressed, flaring his wings and driving the griffon back, “and the Empire has never made reparations, so I think it’s justified to at least raise the question.”
The dragon hopped between the griffon and the manticore, flame puffing from its mouth. “The Red Trail Massacre was an ugly event that nearly brought the Empire and the Republic to war,” it declared. “From all official information, Republic soldiers at Fort Guyer were brutally slaughtered.”
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