Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Rapunzel pulled Maximus to a stop at the docks and slid off the saddle, scanning the small welcoming party for a familiar face. She oriented quickly on the sight of Faith, who was beckoning to her frantically, and sped towards there to take the group’s central place—vacant thus far—and do her best to pretend that she’d always been there. Then she noticed the herald beside her exhaling a discreet sigh of relief, and glanced to him without turning her head.

“I’m not late, am I?”

“No, your highness, not just yet,” the herald murmured back at her. “However, with respect, I must insist that you pursue self-expression in the art of painting more often than in the art of cutting it close.”

Rapunzel smothered a breathless chuckle. “Sorry. I was supposed to be having history class right now.”

The herald didn’t answer, settling into a more official pose at the sight of a small group of Ingvarrdians walking down the gangplank—at the head, a woman only a few years older than Rapunzel, at a glance, but noticeably taller and more broad-shouldered, her garb much finer than the clothes of sailors around her, a tunic trimmed with stark white fur and a billowing half-cloak clasped with a pin of amber and gold, a thin coronet circling her brow and light brown hair. A familiar woman, if for having only visited once before. How long has it been? Rapunzel thought back quickly. Two years and change.

“May I present,” the herald’s formal tone snapped her back to the present, “her highness, Solveig, Crown Princess of Ingvarr.”

“We’ve met,” Rapunzel stepped forward and shook Solveig’s hand, grinning at the easily returned firmness of it—something that was always great about exchanging pleasantries with Ingvarrdians, a sense of honesty behind the etiquette. “Welcome to Corona. My parents send their apologies for not being able to come greet you in person, but a pressing matter demanded both their attention unexpectedly.”

“You are good enough company on your own,” Solveig told her simply, inclining her head to accept the apology. Then gestured to the pair flanking her: a man and a woman. “My huskarl, Tonje.”

“Good to meet you,” Rapunzel greeted with a smile.

“You as well, your highness,” the warrior at Solveig’s side murmured. She was wearing snakeskin gloves with what looked like ribbed fins on the outer side of each wrist, Rapunzel noticed as they shook hands.

“And Ogmund Nottsvegir, captain of the Ocean’s Warden.”

“I hope you had safe seas?” Rapunzel asked as she extended her hand to him in turn.

“Safe as they can be this time of year,” the captain said dryly, and cocked a curious eyebrow at the strength of Rapunzel’s handshake. “Her highness and her escort are the real reason we’ve arrived unharried and on schedule.”

“Please,” Solveig demurred in a calm tone.

The captain grunted. “I’ll have my men start unloading cargo.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you.” Rapunzel let him walk back to his ship, and beckoned the guards forth to lead a heavy wagon closer to the gangplank. Soon, the sailors were beelining to and fro between the ship’s cargo hold and the wagon, stacking the latter with barrels and chests and bolts of fabric. “Shall we go, then?”

“I’d rather wait and escort the transport,” Solveig said simply, folding her hands behind her back in a neutral posture. “I’ve been made responsible for personally overseeing the transfer, and it would not do to step away before it is completed.”

Rapunzel nodded. “We can wait, if you like.”

“About half of the bounty money is in gold, half in goods. Your knight-errant did Ingvarr a great service by slaying that man, and brought great honour upon herself.” Solveig’s eyes slid quickly across the members of Rapunzel’s retinue, lingering briefly on Faith, who shrank back at the scrutiny. “I don’t see the servant you teamed up with for the Contest. Am I right to assume she’s the one we owe the occasion to?”

Rapunzel bit back the acidic taste that hearing the word servant in a conversation about Cassandra flooded her mouth with. “Cass is the knight-errant, yes. It’s kind of a recent arrangement, and I may have not... handled its formal aspects very well.”

Solveig shrugged her shoulders with a dismissive hum. “Formalities are an aspect of much less import than the choice of the person themselves, in such arrangements. I have no doubt she’ll continue to make your kingdom and court proud. She has already proven that she values your safety and well-being higher than victory, and if the news we’ve heard from here around four months past was accurate, she also values both higher than her life. Combined with her capability and her drive, these traits make her an excellent candidate for a huskarl in my homeland or a knight-errant in a continental territory, such as yours. I believe you’ve chosen wisely.”

“Thank you,” Rapunzel said, trying not to sound strained.

She noticed the Ingvarrdian heiress giving her a searching look at that, and made an effort to smile back. If cheerfulness was such an effective shield for her, if it came to her so easily, then perhaps she could learn to utilize it in formal settings—to let the kingdom’s guests see through her only as far as she allowed them to, and to only see that which she wanted them to see, without making her presentation seem false.

Shortly, the armoured treasury wagon was stacked to full capacity, with two more kegs that didn’t fit inside chained securely in place on the roof. The guard contingent fell into a defensive formation around it; servants led up a pair of horses for the Ingvarrdian princess and her companion, and Rapunzel climbed onto Maximus’ back again. With Solveig riding alongside her and Tonje keeping a respectful half-stride behind them, Rapunzel excitedly detailed everything the guests asked about—the extent of recent repairs to the city, the storefronts and fountains and manors and parks—between waving back at every citizen who came out to watch the small procession, calling back by name to each who greeted her. And with Maximus knowing the route to the castle better than anyone, she was free not only to focus on that, but also to stare. Which, in the end, did earn her an amused look from Solveig.

“Is something the matter?”

“You cut a very striking silhouette, do you know that?” Rapunzel told her with a smile.

The heiress to the throne of Ingvarr laughed, an unexpected and completely disarmed sound, brief that it was. She did, however, straighten from a merely formal pose into an almost statuesque one for a few seconds: chin lifted proudly and a hand rested atop the saddle and a ray of sunlight striking her face just right, turning her coronet of white gold and black onyx into a blaze of light studded with dimly sparkling windows into the night sky’s endless void, contrasting starkly against the warm tone of her hair and bringing out her dark eyes, eyes that danced with mirth now. “Almost dignified enough for my station, I hope.”

“Oh, definitely.” Rapunzel’s mind was already on mixing paints, on contour and lighting and texture. “How long will you be staying?”

“We plan to depart tomorrow morning, weather permitting.”

Rapunzel made a disappointed face. “That’s even shorter than last time.”

“I’m afraid so,” Solveig gave her another amused look. “But at least the occasion is far less fraught with the spirit of competition.”

“Oh, that’s right! You haven’t even toured the castle, back then, did you?”

“No, there wasn’t time for such pleasures. We were not here to sightsee,” Solveig told her with a smile. “We were here to win.”

Rapunzel grinned at that. “And you did!”

“Yes, but you and your knight-errant made my sister and myself work for it, in the end. We were evenly matched in many of those challenges, I feel.”

Rapunzel laughed, and shook her head at the memory of how her blind focus on an entirely different prize had sabotaged just about every effort that Cassandra put forth to actually win for a good half of the contest. “That’s kind of you to say. Well, if we’ve only got until tomorrow morning, there’s not enough time to show you all of the castle. But the gardens are beautiful even this time of year—though, you should really see them during summer someday—otherwise, some of my favourite places are the library, the map room, and the portrait gallery. Where would you like to go?”

“I was hoping you could show me along the battlements,” Solveig said with an expert glance to the castle’s fortifications. “And perhaps the library later on, time permitting?”

“I knew I couldn’t be the only one who loves walking the battlements. The view from up there is amazing.”

Once in the castle, Rapunzel took a moment to thoroughly clean her bare feet with a wet, hot washcloth, before leading the Ingvarrdians slightly aside of the room that the treasure was to be deposited into, so they could watch the transfer without being in the way of the guards unloading the armoured wagon now and carrying its contents inside. And there had to be an entire room cleared out for that, Rapunzel thought back, when the Bayangoran ambassador passed along a fortune no less impressive than this on behalf of his own kingdom. With the Ingvarrdian prize deposited side by side with the Bayangoran bounty money, the room would be as stacked as some of the vaults that Lance and Eugene had proudly broken into in the past.

Barrels of gold and chests bursting with ever more gold, thick bolts of satin and lambswool and velvet and cashmere, end tables and jewellery boxes inlaid with tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, sculptures and statuettes carved from ebony and marble and coral, masterwork paintings in gold-dripping frames and tapestries studded with tiny gems between cloth-of-silver threads, rare books with gilded covers and each page masterfully illuminated by hand, ornate silverware and crystalline goblets cut from a single slab each, artisanal glass carafes and porcelain so delicate as to almost be see-through, jewellery of silver and gold and too many gems to remember, and loose cabochons of precious stones as well, each now nested in soft fabric for protection from scratching. And even beyond that, a seemingly endless display of one-of-a-kind goods equally fit for a treasury and a museum: here a crate full of narwhal teeth, there a horse bridle set with sapphires the size of walnuts, elsewhere a small flotilla of immaculately crafted model ships held each in its own bottle.

All for ending the lives of two men, Rapunzel thought quietly.

“I’m so sorry– Do you walk barefoot everywhere?” Solveig murmured in a bewildered tone, even as she still kept one eye on the guards carrying treasure past them and into the room.

“Some habits are very hard to break, and with this one? I’m not trying all that hard,” Rapunzel admitted with a little grin, grateful for something less depressing to think of. “I guess the court has been largely... indulgent, of a little eccentricity or two, what with the whole mess about me disappearing for eighteen years. Better to have a barefoot princess than no princess at all, huh?”

“Inarguably. Do you get snow in Corona often?”

“Not very often, and when we do, well, it’s only cold for the first few steps,” Rapunzel laughed. “Then you lose feeling and it’s really nice again.”

Solveig huffed an incredulous laugh as well. “You would get frostbite within a day, in my homeland, to speak none of Galcrest.”

Rapunzel perked up at that immediately. “You’ve been to Galcrest?”

“Briefly, and only during the summer months,” Solveig said. Then blinked at the thrilled look on Rapunzel’s face, and continued slowly, taken aback with her excitement. “It is a very austere landscape, I would say, and I am used to Ingvarr’s tundra and fjords and snow-capped peaks. Harsh, but spellbinding in its beauty, and what the climate of Galcrest lacks in warmth, the hearts of its people make up for tenfold.”

“I hope I’ll get to go, one day, that sounds incredible.”

“I would recommend very warm boots for such a visit, and as waterproof as at all possible. It’s very easy to catch a cold when you don’t keep your feet warm, and only more so when conditions are both frigid and wet.”

“You know, I did catch a cold recently. Fascinating experience. If unpleasant.” Rapunzel sighed dramatically. “I guess we all make sacrifices in the name of peace and maintaining good diplomatic relations between the Seven Kingdoms. It seems that mine will have to be a severe training regimen... with shoes.”

“I have no doubt they will fall swiftly against resolve as ironclad as yours. Maybe begin such training with footwraps,” Solveig suggested in an amused tone.

“Ooh, sound tactical advice.”

Solveig chuckled, and while she seemed as if she was about to say more, in the end she only shook her head before glancing to the Coronian guards again. Seeing that, Rapunzel reached to take a passing guard by the elbow.

“Stan, how many more left in the wagon?”

“Oh, it shouldn’t be more than two or three kegs, by now.”

“Okay, thank you.”

Stan smiled brightly under his moustache. “Of course, princess.”

Looking back to the Ingvarrdians at her side, Rapunzel noticed Solveig exchanging a brief look with Tonje before the huskarl gave a small nod. She must have been keeping track, silently, while they were talking.

“Once this is done, do you want to come see the battlements straight away? Or I could show you to the guest rooms we’ve got for you guys tonight, if you’re tired or hungry?”

Solveig raised an eyebrow at Tonje, who gave a minute shake of her head, before turning back to Rapunzel. “We’re good to go. And since you mention quarters, those of my people who enjoy the company of a huskarl generally quarter together with them. I hope your staff will find it an eccentricity of the easily accommodated variety.”

Rapunzel grinned. “Oh, very good. And yes, we’ve been made aware of that custom. It’s not the same room, exactly, but still a joint suite—there’s only one door, and you enter the second room by walking through the first.”

“Good enough,” Tonje said simply. “My thanks.”

Rapunzel gave her a curious look, waiting for further commentary. None came. “You treat your job very seriously, don’t you?”

“One does not become charged with ensuring the safety of the heiress to the throne by not treating every day like a matter of life and death, your highness,” the huskarl told her dryly.

“No, I suppose not,” Rapunzel relented immediately. Still not quickly enough to outrun the rise of memories of every time when Cass had tried to do that job, and Rapunzel and her other friends made it either unnecessarily dangerous and difficult on her, or outright impossible. Or gave her a hard time about being a joyless stiff for trying anyway. Or worse. At least the guards had finished carrying treasure into the vault room, by now, and locked it away. “Well, shall we go, then?”

Solveig inclined her head in assent, and she and her huskarl followed Rapunzel towards an exit onto the battlements. Once there, Rapunzel caught Faith’s eye, who hovered in the doorway with a slight look of trepidation.

“I’ll take our guests for a walk around, could you come find us when supper is ready?” Rapunzel offered her an escape.

Relief flooded Faith’s face, even as she bowed hurriedly and withdrew into the indoors warmth. “Yes, your highness.”

“Thank you!” Rapunzel called out after her, and smiled at the two Ingvarrdians exchanging a slightly bemused look behind her back. “Your cloak pin, there’s something inside the amber, isn’t there? Can I see?”

“There is, and you may; I’m actually a little curious,” Solveig admitted as she unbuckled the large, oval brooch and handed it to Rapunzel, holding her cloak in place with her other hand for now. “I’ve been told that you have an interest in ornithology?”

“A little bit. I like to read about all sorts of things.” Rapunzel paused as she lifted the brooch to the light. The darker shadow she thought she’d spotted before inside the amber turned out to be a feather—long, and with the sharply defined edges of a flight feather, deep dark brown flecked with white dots now tinted golden through the amber. “Wait, don’t tell me. Woodpecker?”

“No,” Solveig said with a smile.

“Nutcracker.”

“Yes. Well recognized.”

“I thought it takes thousands and thousands of years for amber to form,” Rapunzel pointed out, confused now. “Are nutcrackers even that old? Are nut-bearing trees, for that matter? And how rare must it be to find a single piece this large, much less with an inclusion already?”

“Well, there was a bit of a process involved with this one.” Solveig took the pin back and clasped her cloak with it again. “But I was under the impression that attempting to discuss magic is considered a major faux pas in Corona.”

“My dad hates magic,” Rapunzel admitted easily, and didn’t keep a note of disappointment from her voice. “And Coronians aren’t... generally, positive about magic, especially recently that we’ve had to rebuild almost the whole capital after some troubles with an ancient warlock demon. I know it can be used to ruin lives, and I understand where my dad and my people are coming from. But I know it can be used to save lives, too. Two of the people most important to me would have died in my arms if it weren’t for magic. So I don’t hate it, and I’m not afraid of it—I think it’s fascinating, but there isn’t anyone I can talk about it with, anything I can learn about it from. Even in the academic sense. I don’t know if I’d want to learn to do magic even if I could, but just... how it works, why it works, who uses it and what for, I want to know and no one else here does. So I’d be grateful, actually, if we could talk about magic, because we won’t be able to in larger company.”

“I see,” Solveig said slowly, studying her a little more closely now. “My cousin mentioned you seemed enthusiastic to hear about the practice of it in Ingvarr, but His Majesty preferred to have the matter left alone.”

“Erling’s huskarl did tell me a little bit about it, though, that it comes from a place of respect and understanding. And that everyone in your navy is taught a spell to protect them from drowning,” Rapunzel recalled, smiling a little more easily now, and gestured to Solveig’s belt, where an ornate dagger sat sheathed square in the front. “And I can see that you, Tonje, the captain, and every sailor on his ship are carrying these. It’s almost odd now that Erling wasn’t.”

“Erling is sixth in line to the throne, and his claim will be further displaced with the birth of heirs and heiresses to myself, my sister, and both of his sisters. Something truly cataclysmic would have to occur for him to face the responsibility and burden of rulership in the earnest,” Solveig said simply, folding her hands behind her back as they walked. “And while this does mean that he is bound to serve the interests of those his elder and rely on them for any political power of his own, it also means that his position comes with certain freedoms. Ones that my sister and I, in particular, will never know. Such as the fact that it is not required of him to take even a single sorcery trial.”

“Would you not have tried, if you weren’t expected to?” Rapunzel asked gently.

Solveig thought for a moment, letting out a short sigh as she frowned. “I think I would have attempted more, actually. Now, personally I don’t mind having this discussion, but I’d like you to know that Ingvarrdian magic, by its very nature, is a sensitive and extremely personal subject, and asking questions like this is considered prying, indelicate, and a display of terrible manners. While passing the first trial renders one capable of singing any spell at all, two trials are necessary to be recognized as a warrior, and four to gain an indisputable right to the privilege of leading other warriors into combat. As such, anyone poised to serve as the kingdom’s monarch must pass four at the least—it is impossible to command the respect of such war leaders if they have any platform at all, even half-reasonable, to argue that you are their lesser. However, it is near-universal for any chanter who passes the sixth trial to lose the thrill of the fight, and no longer yearn for glory on the field of battle—which means that to retain the respect of the same war leaders, I cannot take that trial, no matter my own wishes in that regard.”

Rapunzel considered that slowly. “What happens if you fail a trial? Or resign partway through?”

“There is no resigning once a trial is commenced. And not because of tradition or law, it is simply physically impossible. As for failure, well, there is only one way in which that occurs,” Solveig told her with a raised eyebrow. “And it is for the chanter to die before they can succeed.”

“Oh.”

“You might see how I’d like to avoid such an outcome.”

“Definitely.”

“It’s also the reason for why the worst transgression a teacher can commit against a student is to force them into taking a trial they are ill-prepared or simply not yet ready for, as it may amount to indirect murder. And even if such an initiate is ready, certain trials are widely considered more difficult, therefore, much riskier to attempt at all. Not to mention the simple fact that what is easy to some will be insurmountable to others, and what is difficult to some won’t put a hitch in the step of others.” Solveig leaned her face into the breeze, closing her eyes for a moment. “The first one is the hardest to fail—though failure is not unheard of, if a rare tragedy—and carries consequences easiest to contain if such a novice chanter fails to maintain good conduct afterwards. It’s why all our sailors are required to take it, after they receive enough schooling to increase their odds of success. Come see us off at the docks on the morrow if you’d like to see a group chant in person—detested as magic at large may be in Corona, I will not subject my captain, his crew, my huskarl, or myself to needless risk by neglecting to perform the most basic blessing in existence before we depart home.”

“The one that will protect you all from drowning?” Rapunzel asked hopefully.

“From drowning and from seasickness, until we step onto land again,” Solveig clarified with a smile. “It raises the quality of life on a ship by a considerable amount. Now, to come back to your original question, about my cloak pin: the feather and the amber came separately. An advanced enough chanter, with skill enough as a gemcutter as well, was asked to assemble a multitude of similarly coloured amber shards into this single piece around the feather, utilizing both their magic and their craftsman’s expertise. Were he lacking in either respect, this pin would not exist.”

“See, this is why I think that magic is amazing!” Rapunzel burst out happily. “Look at this. It’s so beautiful! And it’s impossible, but because of magic, it’s here anyway. I really hope you’ll get to study it as much as you want, someday, without having to care about admirals and generals.”

“Maybe someday,” Solveig permitted with a smile. “Maybe in the far future, if I am fortunate enough to live until I’m old and gray, and queen mother.”

“You are thinking about having children, then?”

“You and I will both have children, and that is not a decision either of us is free to make this way or the other,” Solveig said calmly, the late afternoon sun setting her coronet ablaze once more. “It is only ruin that awaits a kingdom without a clear line of succession, and I would think that yours may have used up a century’s worth of miracles on averting such catastrophe, time and again, in these past two decades. We are young, and we have time, but we cannot escape the future of becoming mothers—while it need not happen tonight, or tomorrow, or next year or the following one, it does need to happen eventually.”

Rapunzel didn’t answer that for a long while, and they walked along the battlements in silence, between the golden-red light of the setting sun and the long shadows cast by the crenellations. “Then, do you have an idea of who you’re going to marry?”

“Not at the moment,” Solveig admitted easily, her tone entirely unbothered. “There are a number of potential suitors to consider, but even an arranged pair must at least get along. It would not be wise of me to rush, or to let others push me into a too-hasty choice.”

“So you think about marriage as just a responsibility, too,” Rapunzel said with a small frown. “You’re not even hoping that you might fall in love?”

“I didn’t say that. If an arranged marriage is matched well enough, there is nothing stopping them from growing into love of one another. And that is without considering the other possibility.”

“What other possibility?”

Solveig paused for a moment as she seemed to remember something, then shook her head with a smile. “Oh, of course. I keep forgetting that most of the continental kingdoms only have one form of marriage.”

Rapunzel blinked. Then turned her head sharply to the Ingvarrdian heiress beside her. “Wait, you have more than one?”

“We have two,” Solveig told her with a grin. “The first is quite like yours here: a simple choice of a partner for life out of love, obligation, or opportunity. The other is tied into the nature of our sorcery—I’ve mentioned that two trials are required to be considered a warrior, haven’t I? That statement is actually a bit of a shorthand, because what makes a warrior is knowing a spell one becomes capable of singing after they pass the second trial. It is based in the chanter’s understanding that all life is at the core one and the same, enabling them to use their own blood as a vector through which to utilize their life force for sustaining the fading one of another, and shoulder half of the other’s injuries in a bid to spare them from dying. Such a bond may exist only between one pair at a time; if the chanter were to sing that spell again, for a second dying person, it would not work unless the first one had already passed away. To risk one’s life for that of another, and to bind one’s fate to that of another, often capitalizes on pre-existing fondness and the two may work it into a love just as profound as that between a married couple. And there is no rule stating that one may not have a partner by love at the same time as a partner by spell—as such, pairs and trios are the most common in Ingvarrdian families. Theoretically, a longer chain of spouses is possible, but it rarely happens simply for the practical considerations of sharing a partner’s time with too many others, and these others sharing themselves between even more, as well. It’s also common for one to have a partner by love but not by spell, or by spell but not by love, or to share both bonds with the same person.” Solveig turned over her shoulder then, looking at her huskarl. “Tonje, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Rapunzel glanced, as well, and watched the huskarl open her vest and undo a few top fastenings of her tunic to show a narrow, long-healed blade scar slashed across her breastbone—a shallow cut, and one that looked self-inflicted.

“My husband is a scribe in the royal court. We only learned that he is deathly allergic to pine nuts when he ate some. Fortunately, I was close enough to react in time,” Tonje said by the way of explanation. “And, amusingly enough, I have also been deathly allergic to pine nuts ever since.”

“That sounds like you didn’t hesitate at all to risk your life for him,” Rapunzel noted softly.

The warrior shrugged at that, even as she fixed her clothes again. “He was always a sweet boy, even when we were little.”

“Not everyone is happy having to share their partner with another person,” Solveig continued, and Rapunzel turned to her again. “Similarly, not everyone is happy in a relationship with one partner only. But as long as everyone involved is honest and understanding with each other, and willing to put in effort and to compromise, there are few conflicts that cannot be surmounted—and if their differences are so fundamental as to defy resolution, there is nothing keeping such an arrangement from being dissolved on good terms and rephrased into life-long friendships. All it takes is effort, maturity, forgiveness, and a lot of patience.”

“That,” Rapunzel said slowly, “may just be the most wonderful thing I’ve ever heard.”

Solveig grinned openly at her, and she thought she caught the far more reserved huskarl smiling as well. “I must admit, this is a matter extremely easily misunderstood and derided by many of Ingvarr’s continental allies. I’m glad to see we won’t have to expect such mockeries from you.”

“Mockeries? How could one mock—” Rapunzel shook her head with a grimace. “Why wouldn’t anyone just be happy to find love and companionship?”

“My mother’s wife has only been one for a few years. Accusations of sleeping her way to the top have been depressingly common. Or rather, they used to be,” Solveig amended with a chuckle, “until she fell into the habit of challenging a duel against anyone who said such things to her face. She knows better than to presume any sort of authority over my sister or myself, and does not pretend to have any parental influence on us; we have a relationship closer to that with an older cousin who’s not been present in our youth. Or a cool aunt.”

Rapunzel smiled at that. “I have a very cool aunt, too.”

Solveig nodded. “Now imagine gaining a second one overnight.”

Rapunzel did, thinking about what it would look like if Aunt Willow brought someone with her next time she dropped by. About how it would be a whole new exciting person to meet and make friends with, and already so loveable for making her aunt happy. About how it’d have to be someone able to keep up with Willow, but also to hold her interest and make her want some measure of permanency with them, and about how that could exacerbate or mellow down Willow’s own temperament. About how Willow could thrive, with love the sun in her skies and freedom the wind in her wings. And she couldn’t help her face pulling into a tender smile at the thought of it all.

Solveig patted her shoulder, watching Rapunzel’s expression with a smile of her own. “You understand.”

“Now I actually wish it’ll happen someday,” Rapunzel said with a laugh. “My aunt isn’t the type to settle down, but if she found someone up for travelling with her...”

“Maybe someday she will.” Solveig paused for a moment as she looked past the castle’s battlements, across the sea darkened and glimmering with the sunset. “Hm. Would you say we have walked far enough around not to be readily visible from outside the castle?”

Rapunzel looked around quickly, reorienting herself. “I think so. Why?”

Instead of answer, Solveig turned to her huskarl, looking askance at her silently.

Tonje sighed. “Must you?”

“I really want to,” Solveig said, the tone of her voice entirely unrepentant.

“I can’t believe I’m not telling you 'no' immediately,” the huskarl grumbled, then made an exasperated, yet permissive gesture. “Just don’t expect me to carry the conversation in the meantime.”

“Do I ever?”

“Solveig.” There was a note both of warning and of amusement in the huskarl’s voice now, and she extended one hand. “Don’t make me change my mind.”

The heiress to the throne of Ingvarr chuckled, even as she took her coronet off and handed it to Tonje. Then she walked to the wall’s edge and climbed atop the crenellations, peering curiously down the deadly length of the drop, while Rapunzel stood frozen in place and watched with her breath held.

“Careful! I can’t catch you if the wind throws you off!”

Solveig swivelled on her heel to face towards Rapunzel again, thumbs hooked into her pockets and the wind already whipping at her half-cloak, an amused look on her face as she patted the sorcery dagger sheathed in the front of her belt. “Not to worry, I have contingencies.”

Whatever Rapunzel could even try thinking of to say in response, she left forgotten when she heard the huskarl still beside her on the walkable bit of the battlements begin to breathe differently—almost as if Tonje was putting herself through a breathing exercise, actually. She turned, and found the huskarl watching Solveig with a look of almost meditative focus on her face now and holding herself in a way not unlike the one Rapunzel had seen Cass fall into for fending off any potential danger: a slightly lowered, stable stance, not too tense and not too relaxed, ready for anything.

With no better ideas for what to do, Rapunzel kept pace with them both, but kept silent for fear of breaking Solveig’s concentration as the Ingvarrdian princess continued the walk by leaping from merlon to merlon with disturbingly practiced ease. And for not talking, she noticed a little more quickly that she otherwise would have, maybe, that with each consecutive leap Solveig’s face pulled into a look of only ever more powerful confusion.

“I’ve not forgotten how you spoke of your kingdom’s prejudice towards magic,” she said with open dismay as she leapt back down to where Rapunzel and Tonje were walking—with the huskarl exhaling an audibly relieved sigh and relaxing once again as soon as she did. “But does it honestly reach so deep that you do not weave any wards into your fortifications? This wall is just naked stone; I want to think it must be the exception rather than the rule, but why would the outermost castle wall, one most exposed to any bombardment or arcane trickery, be the only one left unwarded?”

Rapunzel stared, and found herself mirroring Solveig’s expression or unease, but for a different reason entirely. No wards on the stone. No added magical protection. Certainly not against magic itself.

That must have been how Gothel got in.

“My apologies,” Solveig said when the silence stretched on. “It was not my intention to conjure up a painful memory.”

“No, it’s alright. Something just... made sense to me, and I wish it didn’t, but it did anyway.” Rapunzel shook her head a little. “So other fortified places you’ve been to have walls of stone and walls of magic, then?”

“Yes, when the matter is simplified to its bare-bones basics,” Solveig said slowly, her tone thoughtful, even as she took her coronet back from Tonje and allowed the huskarl to smooth out the half-cloak over her shoulders. “There are many ways to augment a rampart with a ward, and many different purposes for which wards can be raised in the first place. Any Ingvarrdian estate is fortified in both of these ways. Kotoan practice of magic differs from ours rather dramatically, but their entire capital is a gallimaufry and a clockwork-precise system, at the same time, of magical protections. Pittsford seems to rely on the highlander ethnic group’s portable talismans and the lowlanders’ static symbols of power carved into the doorsteps and rafters and foundations of their homes, for the most part, but there is little weakness to be found in a warding system as compartmentalized as that. I can’t say about Galcrest, because I’ve visited there before I was advanced enough to be able to tell.”

“They had wards,” Tonje said calmly.

Solveig nodded at that, and turned to the Coronian heiress again. “Truthfully, I think yours is the only unwarded roof I’ve ever slept under.”

Rapunzel thought that over. Then found herself taken with a furtive little laugh. “I can’t even imagine raising this subject with my dad.”

“Perhaps it would be prudent to consider an exchange of... stonemasons, of sorts, between our kingdoms once His Majesty abdicates his position on your behalf,” Solveig suggested. “That is, if you are in any position to push it past your people, to augment the defences of your seat of power with magical means, by then.”

“It can’t hurt to think about,” Rapunzel said with a sigh, “and thank you for the idea. If there’s a chance for it to take off, in the future, we’ll find a Coronian craft that Ingvarr could benefit from as well. Something connected to metallurgy, maybe? I think I read somewhere that your kingdom imports most of its steel, and that your iron mines mostly yield pig iron.”

“Both of these are true,” Solveig admitted easily, “which in turn finds an echo in the traditional uses of it. The weapons of a common man or woman in Ingvarr are axes and spears—cheaper to make than swords, viable for use as a craftsman’s tool or a hunting implement respectively, and easier to keep in good condition even after the metal parts sustain damage from frequent use. It’s a little amusing to find signs of this in the earliest sagas, as well, where the most common properties of magical weapons are that they don’t break or rust. One that predates the Seven Kingdoms alliance includes a scene where a certain warrior straightens a sword’s bent blade with a foot.”

Rapunzel laughed despite herself. “Could that even... happen? As in, really happen, not just due to artistic license and poetic metaphors and all that.”

“It could, if the metal was soft enough, and pig iron is... shall we say, ill-suited for bladesmithing. Delicate as that description is. It’s interesting to me, comparing the early Ingvarrdian techniques of doing so anyway, from what little is still preserved of that part of our history, with the northern Bayangoran martial tradition—where warriors only had access to poor-quality iron, too, but mitigated that with developing incredibly specialized methods of swordsmithing and a fighting style that remains perpetually conscious of their weapon’s fragility, leading to duels often over and done within a single strike. Or to such warriors marking their station by openly carrying two swords at a time, partially for how common it was for one to break mid-fight.” Solveig folded her hands behind her back again, even though there was an animated spark in her eyes now. “It illustrates, in such clear terms, the differences between early Ingvarrdian and northern Bayangoran mindsets and outlooks on life. Where Ingvarr expanded until it found sources of better iron—whether through pillaging it, or trading for it—northern Bayangor did their best with what they had already. Each approach codified the warrior social class in our cultures, and with that, often the meaning of strength or elegance or authority, many of which still reverberate to this day in our ways of life, in art styles traditional in our kingdoms, in our languages, in the stories we tell ourselves and each other. All tracing back to the scarcity of one resource—the same resource—and the same final use of it.”

Rapunzel spotted Faith walking out onto the battlements a little ways ahead of them, bundled in a warm cloak thrown over her dress, and waved to her before turning back to Solveig. “I’m so glad we came here and talked about all these things. And so happy to have met another person who’s just... so in love with people, in general, everywhere and in different times as much as in the present.”

Solveig studied her for a moment, before shaking her head with a smile. “I see now why my cousin was so taken with you.”

“Really? And why would that be?” Rapunzel teased.

“You are so thoroughly unconventional for a princess,” Solveig told her with a note of amusement in her tone. “Someone inclined to dislike you before they even met you, or trying to maintain a bit of professional distance, might be put off by that—but outside of such situations, where this might work to your detriment, you seem so earnest in your fascination with everything in existence that it turns you incredibly charming. I have little fear for the future of diplomatic summits in decades to come if this is to be the influence you bring to the table.”

“Thank you,” Rapunzel said warmly. “I’m relieved you already believe in me, even though I still have so much to learn.”

“We learn all our lives, and yet still die foolish,” Solveig told her with a grin.

Rapunzel laughed a little at that, just as Faith caught up to them and bowed.

“Your highnesses, supper is served. His Majesty requests the pleasure of both your company.”

They followed the handmaiden back indoors, and to one of the castle’s dining halls—not the main one, for how empty it would feel with only two guests at the table, but still spacious and decorated enough to be appropriate for hosting someone of Solveig’s station. With conversation over the meal dealing with tactfully neutral matters and amounting to diplomatic nothings, Rapunzel watched the Ingvarrdian princess falling back into the more official, somewhat stiffer manner she had behaved in initially, before their walk along the battlements. When the meal—mercifully more substantial than the conversation—was completed, Rapunzel had to admit that the hour had grown so late that there was no more time for a trip to the library, and remarked sorrowfully on that after offering to show the Ingvarrdians to the quarters that have been prepared for them for the night.

“All the more reason for me to visit again someday,” Solveig told her to that, a smile on her face once more. “The library and the gardens—and the map room, you’ve mentioned?”

“And the portrait gallery. Well, this is the room, and a second one through it,” Rapunzel said with a sigh as she pushed a door open. “I really wish you could stay longer.”

“Do you know, I find myself wishing such were the case, too.”

Rapunzel grinned at that. And instead of shake the Ingvarrdian princess’ hand to wish her goodnight, she held out both arms. “Do you hug?”

“I don’t in public,” Solveig said, her tone firm, but her eyes dancing again. “Then again, we aren’t quite in public right now, are we.”

And she stepped in, if bending down slightly for it. She didn’t mitigate the strength of her arms any more than she did with a handshake, Rapunzel noted with delight—and let out a happy little squeak when Solveig shifted her arms a little and straightened her back, and Rapunzel’s feet lost contact with the floor.

“You are so small.”

“We can’t all be big and strong,” Rapunzel teased back easily.

“I didn’t say you aren’t strong. It’s a little difficult to breathe. And that’s just the physical sense of the word.”

“I’d say sorry, but you don’t seem too bothered.”

“What is difficulty for if not for overcoming it?” Solveig drew a long, deep breath, as if to prove a point, before eventually setting Rapunzel back down and letting go of her. “Weeks at sea or no, I’m glad I came here and met you again.”

“Thank you,” Rapunzel said warmly. “I’m really glad to have met you again, too. I hope you have a good night.”

Solveig inclined her head. “And you.”

Rapunzel looked to Tonje, who held up a hand at her. “I don’t hug in private or in public.”

“That’s fine, too. Sleep well.”

“You as well, your highness.”

And with that, Rapunzel left the Ingvarrdians alone for the night, as they went into the joint suite that had been prepared for them and she walked back to her room. Immediately after being helped out of her back-laced dress, she sent Faith to bed, as well, and sat down with her journal to wind down a little before bed.

Squeak, Pascal said sleepily.

“It was really cold outside, buddy. You wouldn’t have liked it one bit.” Rapunzel scratched one finger under his chin before reaching for her paints. She turned her journal to an empty page, and pondered a moment on what to fill it with.

Squeak, Pascal said again, inquisitive now as he watched her frown slightly.

“You know, I’m not sure? It was a really good day, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t help but feel like... like a lot of things were almost bad, they just turned out okay after all.” Rapunzel sighed as she rubbed her face with both hands. “I don’t know. I feel a little off, and I should be feeling great after meeting someone that wonderful. I hope it’ll make more sense after I sleep on it.”

Squeak, Pascal encouraged, and uncoiled his tail to point the tip at one of her paintbrushes.

Rapunzel smiled at him. “Yeah. Let’s turn one last thing okay, today.”

And so she painted Solveig’s profile, crowned in a blaze of whitish flame against a ray of sunlight, a little smile about her lips and a look of keen curiosity in her eyes. Around that, she penned down her impressions from the day, which were generally positive. When it was finally time to leave it be and let the paint dry overnight, she took Pascal along with the little pillow he’d fallen asleep overtop, and carried him to bed with her. And in a turn of events as predictable and repeated as it was unwelcome every single night, the moment Rapunzel laid down to sleep, her mind became saturated with every little oddity, every unpleasant revelation that have compounded into this pervasive bit of unease.

Like the look of disbelief and confusion on Solveig’s face once she jumped down from atop the crenellations, a sorceress in her own right who seemed to have a penchant for comparing the martial cultures of the Seven Kingdoms and an interest in magical defences, asking, Do you not weave any wards into your fortifications? This wall is just naked stone.

At least she knew what she was going to paint in her other journal next, Rapunzel thought with resignation as she drifted off. She’d have to go to the portrait gallery first, to look for any painting of her parents from twenty years ago. And think back to what Gothel used to look like when not sung for through an entire week, to a cloak thrown in a swirl around her form and transitioning smoothly into a spiralling plume of smoke.

And in the department of digging up those memories, her dreams were ready and raring to provide. So when morning came, Rapunzel was happy to throw the quilts and blankets off, and go see the Ingvarrdians off at the docks—and this time, Queen Arianna came as well. With the last of formalities completed, and the sailors as well as the heiress to their kingdom’s throne walking towards their ship, Rapunzel leaned to her mom as she watched the Ingvarrdians removing their shoes and stepping onto a lower portion of the pier—where they stood halfway up their shins in the freezing water.

“What are they doing?”

“It’s a custom among their people, to stand in the water and sing before they leave port,” Queen Arianna murmured back. “As much among the royal navy as among common fishermen, I’m told. You’ll have many opportunities to see it practiced if our relations with Ingvarr remain as cordial as they currently are.”

Rapunzel looked to the Ingvarrdians again, where Solveig—with her shoes tied together by the laces and thrown over one of her shoulders now—had just removed her coronet in a very deliberate motion and tucked it into her tunic. Moments later, a voice rose from among the group; one of the younger deckhands had begun to sing, a crisp if nervous tenor cutting through the air for a moment before it was joined by the voices of everyone else, princess and huskarl and captain and crew standing together and equalized with the perspective of having to spend more weeks arrayed against the might and indifference of a winter-clenched sea.

There were no flashes of light, no impossible colours wrapping around them all, no swell of the wind or waves—nothing that Rapunzel came to associate with magic, from what uses of it she had witnessed prior. There was only a mixed choir united in a slow, deliberate, almost ceremonious chant, no single voice leading or piercing through the harmony with others as they climbed into a crescendo on a higher, longer note, and continued smoothly into a repeated verse, like a wave cresting with foam and crashing over a breakwater, and rolling onto a shore in a far gentler manner.

“Can you tell what they’re saying?” Rapunzel murmured again.

“I’m not as fluent in Ingvarrdian as I am in Kotoan, honey. All I’ve picked up so far was of a wide bridge and of being shod for a burial. As for right now...” Queen Arianna trailed off as she listened to sailors repeat the verse again. “I believe they’re on all of life, resting; all of life, glimmering at the moment. They do employ a certain amount of mythical imagery, to be sure.”

Rapunzel frowned as she turned to watch Solveig and Tonje again, both of whom—just as much as the sailors around them—wore expressions of an almost meditative calm, of concentration attained by letting all else fall away. The spell was to protect them from drowning and from getting seasick, Solveig had said. Why would they look so peaceful and accepting if its incantation was about being readied for a funeral?

No sooner than she had the time to ask herself that question, the group of Ingvarrdians trailed their song off and, as one, bent down to gather the seawater into their hands and bury their faces in it for a moment, and she thought she could see them all breathing out in synch, as in synch as they were while they sang. A moment later, each of them straightened again in their own time, and the ship’s captain began giving out commands like normal; the sailors scurried to execute their orders, while Tonje went back to Solveig’s side, who looked over her shoulder one last time. Rapunzel waved at her, and smiled at the sight of the Ingvarrdian heiress grinning and waving back briefly before she walked aboard.

With a small pilot boat leading the Ingvarrdian ship out of the harbour, Rapunzel and the Queen rode back to the castle, intent on focusing on the matters of the day. And along the way, Rapunzel thought hard, the feeling of sadness about a new friend having to go away again so quickly pulling the persistent unease she’d been grappling with since last night into stark focus.

“Mom, can I talk to you for a second?”

“I suppose this is a good time, before we’re too busy to remember,” Queen Arianna acquiesced easily, and gave her full attention to her daughter. “What’s on your mind, sweetheart?”

Rapunzel lowered her voice, mindful of the stablehands and servants and guards around them. “What happened last night, when you pulled me out of class and sent me to the docks at the last second? Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy I got to spend time with Solveig, but it’s rare for either of you to tell me not to study.”

Queen Arianna sighed, and motioned her aside. “Do you remember that tax dispute we asked you to be part of, some time ago? With the count of an eastern province?”

“I do,” Rapunzel admitted with a frown. Day after she’d learned that Gothel had her help with making magic trinkets enchanted with innocent people’s deaths. Day before she’d screamed and cried for hours on end during one of her sessions with Adira. “The records didn’t match up.”

“They did not,” her mom said softly, “because the count was paying a foreign mercenary company to stand at the ready to march on Castle Corona, on a moment’s notice, for years.”

Rapunzel stared. Then shook her head, stunned and as outraged as she was suddenly frightened. “He was what? Why?”

“Honey, there was no heir to the throne for eighteen years while you were gone. The line of succession goes through your father, not through me, and all of your father’s relatives were considerably older than him—he is the last one alive of his siblings, all of his uncles or cousins have passed away. It isn’t any wonder that many peers of the realm were preparing for an interregnum and a war of succession.” Queen Arianna put a hand on Rapunzel’s cheek, looking at her sadly. “We knew that Rochester would stand with the capital, but the allegiance of many other nobles, like that count or the Quintonian duke and duchess, were far less certain. Even if they would not attempt to seize the crown for themselves, even if they did stand with Castle Corona, what would they stand for? We could not have another child, no matter how we tried. One last desperate effort we could attempt would be to name my sister the heiress to the throne, but as much as I love Willow, she would make for a terrible queen, and I’m half-certain it was a potent factor in her decision to make herself scarce before we could ask her to stay, making sure she could run wild and free across the Seven Kingdoms and beyond. When you returned to us, it was as unexpected as it was miraculous—and it destroyed the decades-long work of more than one noble planning to take your birthright for themselves and their children. It comes as no surprise that this count would seek to seize the throne. It only worries me that no other schemes of the sort have been uncovered thus far, that no one had tried to openly undermine your position—or claim that you’re not truly our daughter, only mistaken for the real Crown Princess of Corona, or even impersonating her on purpose.”

“That’s a lot,” Rapunzel said weakly.

“I know, sweetheart.” Queen Arianna kissed her daughter’s head. “Your father and I have had a very long night, as did the Captain of our Guard, but the count’s plotting has been brought to light and he has no means left with which to hurt us anymore. We are safe, and strong in our position. Maybe stronger than we’ve ever been. Take heart in that.”

“I will. Thanks, mom.”

Safe and strong were the last words Rapunzel would use to describe how she felt as she walked back to her room, slow under the weight of what she just heard, and sat heavily in the chair at her desk. She rubbed at the scars slashed across her palms, thick and too smooth and discoloured against the unmarred skin, thinking of the walls unprotected against magic and a bitter, selfish woman shadowstepping onto a high balcony to abduct a newborn child, a child who had only been born thanks to ever more magic, a child who had been taken for that very same magic.

She sighed, and smoothed her scarred hands over her hair, and her own voice rang clear in her memory, a startled cry rising from her as unbidden as it had been earnest: a warning that she couldn’t catch someone who was falling.

She couldn’t. Not anymore. Because her hair was short, and brown, and no longer magic.

Rapunzel tilted her head back, and stared at her own murals that seemed old to her now, and off, mistakes and naiveté leaping out at her from every piece, all of them pieces that she had painted before the eclipse, before she was able to walk into a moonlit pond every time she calmed her breathing and closed her eyes, before she realized Cass had needed to leave because of her.

The murals that covered all of the highest portions of the walls and the whole ceiling.

How was she ever going to get up there again?

~*~

Only three other sellswords who’d hired themselves out to escort the logger teams had horses, too, and none of their steeds were the massive gelding or the palomino mare that the farrier had mentioned to Cassandra before.

With four mounted contractors, the foreman divided them to have one scout per each logger team and the fourth keeping an eye on the area at large, and rotated them through these positions every day. Cassandra didn’t mind, and at least two of the others seemed grateful for a break in the monotony, an Equisian astride a chestnut stallion and an Ingvarrdian riding a bareback black mare. And besides the four of them, there were about a dozen infantrymen per each logger team, as well: Ingvarrdians with bearded axes and round shields mixed with Equisian spearmen and archers, for the most part, but with more than a few Pittsfordians tossed through, the taller highlanders as well as the stouter and more squat lowlanders, and here and there a face hailing from Corona, Koto, or Bayangor.

“Haven’t I seen you on a bounty notice a few months back?” one of those errant Coronians had asked her, as soon as she showed up.

“I got pardoned,” Cassandra told him flatly. When he made it clear that he wasn’t about to take her word for it, she pulled out the wanted poster confirming her words, earning herself a heavy sigh.

“What does a man have to do to score a worthwhile reward around here?”

“Put in some effort?” Cassandra suggested in a scathing tone, before she nudged Fidella forward again. She heard the man grumble something inaudible, individual words drowned out by the laughter of a few other sellswords who’d heard the exchange.

While the lumberjacks picked every other tree to log down, then hacked the branches off and hitched draft horses to the trunks, Cassandra spent her days in the saddle, keeping an eye out over the plain and between the thin forest’s trees, her bow and archery aid at the ready. Two days in, she settled into a bit of a routine, if an alert one, and measured time of day by contemplating the loss of feeling in her toes as the frost held—for as long as she could feel herself curling them, it wasn’t too cold out, and once she couldn’t, it wasn’t too long before the foreman called the logger teams back.

She really needed to get warmer boots made.

But at least in the cold that severe, her withered arm came a little closer to a shade of its old functionality. It ached considerably more, yes—so much that Cassandra was steadily going through the small flask of painkiller every evening, one spoon per half-pint of water like Bruno had instructed her, if only so she could sleep—but she could close the hand almost every day, now. It was still injured beyond recovery, and she still wasn’t going to ditch her archery aid or try fencing right-handed again, but at least she could properly hold the reins again. Or a spoon. Or a quill, for that matter.

With the Equisian Guard’s wage paying for a stable stall for Fidella and food for them both, Cassandra took to sleeping with her in the stable once again, trying to save up at least a half-dozen gold every day. Short exchanges of words with the other contractors on the job, whether in passing or during the single mid-day meal break, were enough to make her stick with the first tavern she’d gone into in the city—there was hearsay of only one cheaper place with a stable, and it was a favourite of off-duty guards and more contracted hirelings. Rather than deal with all that, Cassandra decided she’d stick with the Forester’s Catch, where the proprietor was one of the only people around who didn’t give a shit about her accent, her favour, or her attempts to slowly scribe a letter after she ate—over multiple evenings, this time, and shaking her withered hand out with every couple of sentences.

Fortunately, he also didn’t seem to give a shit that Cassandra’s immediate reaction when someone had elbowed their way past her and knocked her small inkwell over was to snatch the paper out of the way, leaving the ink to stain deep into the countertop’s wooden surface. He didn’t interrupt when Cassandra almost got into a fight with the hunter responsible, either, only watched as she finally managed to intimidate them into shoving a few gold at her by the way of an apology. It wasn’t enough to buy herself the same amount of ink again, but there was nothing more to be gained by pressing the issue, so she just sat back down with a frustrated sigh and an unfinished letter, and looked up at the bartender refilling her mug without being asked.

“Thanks.”

He grunted at her in response. “It’s best for both of us if you’re too busy pouring something down your throat to knock out my regulars’ teeth.”

“That’s not going to wash out,” Cassandra said with a nod to the ink staining the countertop, now with a wet rag thrown overtop.

“Great. Maybe I’ll finally have an excuse to kick myself in the ass and give the entire thing a new coat of paint. Or just plane it down until it’s clean again, that might be faster.”

She couldn’t help a chuckle at that, and shook her head. The barkeep leaned his elbows against the countertop, watching her for a moment as if to make sure that she was no longer mad enough to start a fight before he spoke again.

“Sleeping in the stable this time, too, I take it?”

“Yeah. I’m trying to save up, I need warmer boots.”

The barkeep leaned over the countertop to look at her shoes, and scowled immediately. “Oh, fuck. Yeah. Yeah, you really do. Soon as you’re able at all.”

“Well, now I have another expense prior. You happen to know any place selling ink that might still be open past sundown?”

“Palace of Parchment,” the barkeep said without a moment’s hesitation. “The old fuck running it hasn’t gone off schedule in the forty years he’s been in the business, not once, opens at eight in the morning and closes at ten in the evening every day like clockwork. Might have never figured out there’s no longer any Kotoan inquisitors around to sell books and loose paper to, if I’m being honest.”

“Then he’s trading in books, too?”

“Books, paper, parchment, inks, quill nibs, pencils, everything adjacent. Repairs the Guard’s printing press and binds journals made to order, too. You’d probably even find a map or two at his, since he’s got a steady hand for drawing, I mean—” the barkeep pointed his rag at one of the trap schematics framed along the walls. “—most of these, I bought from him. Really weird guy. But worth enduring if you need scribing materials.”

Whoever that person was, he couldn’t be worse than the faux-Keeper of the Spire, Cassandra thought to herself privately as she asked for directions to his store so she could pay him a visit next evening. A few ounces of ink would only set her back a day or two with saving up for winter boots, she decided with resignation, and there wasn’t room for much more delay with sending Owl back to Corona again. She had gone further north—he was going to take days longer, both ways.

Her third day under contract with the Royal Equisian Guard was as uneventful as the previous two. At least up until the moment when she heard a signal horn, and turned sharply to see the Ingvarrdian sellsword knocked to the ground and blowing the horn with all she had, a red-fletched arrow sticking out of her shoulder, her unsaddled black mare laying down on command to shield the prone rider and make herself a smaller target.

Shouts of alert rang out; the loggers threw down their saws and ran for shelter at the woodpiles, the hired infantry fell into an unpractised formation to protect both the workers and the timber. Cassandra pulled Fidella around, trying to get the mare out of the enemy archers’ line of fire, and dropped from the saddle as well to try and shoot back from behind a felled tree. A quick glance to gauge the situation, and she finally noticed splotches of red among the green-brown-white of the snowy woods: mercenaries of the Scarlet Brigade loosing another volley at the contractors protecting the nearest logger team, then putting their bows away and charging into the melee. The Ingvarrdian scout was picking herself up and onto horseback again, even as she pulled out an axe with her uninjured hand; half of each infantry team protecting the other two logger teams was running over to help the central one.

“Stupid,” Cassandra snarled under her breath as she watched more figures with red scarves on their faces begin storming towards the now nearly-unprotected logger team on the left. Climbing back into the saddle, she pointed at the Ingvarrdian scout and sharply waved her in that direction. “Hey! You! With me, left flank!”

The scout turned to look, and swore loudly before pushing the black mare to gallop across with Fidella. Cassandra nocked an arrow and tried to shoot along the way, twice, missing the first entirely and only striking a shield with the second, before she tossed the bow into her withered hand and drew her sword with the left as she closed the distance to the swiftly losing infantry. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Ingvarrdian scout slamming her axe into a Red’s chest as she rode past and leaving it there, jumping to the ground again as she whipped out a sword instead as well; distantly, there were the hoofbeats of another horse approaching, the Equisian scout and his chestnut stallion charging across to help.

And then there was no more time for looking, as Cassandra swiped in passing at the back of a Red about to clobber some Pittsfordian, and rammed Fidella through the middle of the Scarlet Brigade’s formation, knocking a few of them to the sides and turning the mare around for another pass. A slice through a Red’s throat on the left side, a foot pulled out of the stirrup on the right to knee another Red in the chin and knock him back, to pull her steed to the side and finish him off before he regained his footing; she saw the archer too late, and only barely had the time to yank on the reins hard enough to make Fidella rear up, and cried out as the arrow sank into her thigh rather than the mare’s side. Before the Red could nock again, the Equisian scout’s thrown spear impaled him clean through, dropping him to the ground. The Ingvarrdian one was still on foot, swinging her sword one-handed and yet still pushing another Red back on every hit he struggled to parry, before she tripped him up and cleaved his head in twain with a roar that echoed across the plain. Another quick glance around, and Cassandra pushed to where four of the few remaining Reds had almost reached the loggers, no doubt intending on killing what they couldn’t take or at best on taking hostages. Another swipe in passing, and another overhead blow after that, and then there were hands grabbing at her injured leg and yanking, and Cassandra screamed again as the last two threw her off the saddle; she managed to put a foot in the stomach of one of them and knock him backwards for long enough to push through the pain in an old, practiced motion of springing back to her feet. By the time she did, the other Red seized up with a pained cry and dropped to his knees, the hilt of an ornate knife sticking out of his back and the Ingvarrdian scout a few feet away straightening up from a throw, and startling the first one just enough to give Cassandra an opening to run him through with her sword and pull it back out, and slash at his throat for a quicker, more merciful end.

She swayed on her feet with a hiss of pain, leaning hard against Fidella to relieve the leg she still had an arrow stuck in, but turned at the sound of a desperate little wail as the Red with a knife in his back attempted to crawl away through the bloodstained, steaming snow. Not fast enough to outrun the Ingvarrdian scout as she marched up and tore her knife from the wound, eliciting another howl.

“Yield! I yield!”

“Wrong crowd, motherfucker,” the Ingvarrdian growled as she flipped him onto his back with a hard kick, and drove her sword down with a roar, entirely hard enough to stab through the Red’s throat and a few inches into the frozen soil underneath. Then she left the weapon where it was for a moment, and wiped the sweat and blood from her face with back of her uninjured hand, nodding at Cassandra. “Good eyes, Coronian.”

“Thanks.” Cassandra looked across the area again. A few of the Reds were retreating, with the other two mounted scouts chasing them down; about two dozen bodies littered the ground, both the attacking Scarlet Brigade and the Equisian Guard’s contractors, as well as three dead lumberjacks. A bad day that could have easily been terrible. She turned back to the Ingvarrdian, who was now using a dead Red’s scarf to clean that ornate dagger—straight blade sharpened on both sides, pommel carved into the shape of a badger’s head—before sheathing it in the front of her belt. “Sorceress, huh?”

“I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve, yeah.” The Ingvarrdian sniffed slowly at her, as if trying to catch a scent, and cocked her head curiously. “And so do you, don’t you?”

“No,” Cassandra said flatly.

“No? You certainly smell like you do.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes, trying to think of how to close the subject without saying anything substantial. “Cursed scars. Careless friend.”

“Ah, okay. Damn. Shit out of luck, aren’t you?”

Cassandra gestured at the arrow still sticking out of the Ingvarrdian’s shoulder, same as the one in her leg. “Do you wanna sit down and get these out, or waste time talking all day?”

“Oh yeah, that happened.” The Ingvarrdian reached with her good hand to the back of her injured shoulder, pawing at the exit wound for a moment. “Hm. At least it feels like a bodkin.”

And so it was, in both of their wounds and elsewhere across the small battlefield, they found as they sat around a hastily kindled campfire fed with the scrap branches of trees logged down earlier in the day, five more injured contractors and two loggers around them. The puncture wound in Cassandra’s leg was light in comparison—still entirely enough to make walking an issue, but the bone and the major arteries were intact—while the Ingvarrdian scout’s shoulder was skewered clean through with half of the arrowhead poking out on the other side. Finding the others around them too squeamish to handle breaking the arrow and pushing it the rest of the way through to burn both the entry and exit wound shut, Cassandra did it herself, ignoring how the Ingvarrdian bit down on a glove and the muffled screaming that followed. She did, however, whistle Fidella over to pull out the first aid kit that the Silberstadt physicians had stocked for her, and put some of the starlight woundwort ointment over the burns, as had been done for her after she fought the barbarian and the ogre.

“This is a loaner,” Cassandra said firmly as she started bandaging the other scout’s shoulder up. “I am going to want this back once you don’t need to wrap the wound up anymore.”

“Fancy,” the Ingvarrdian remarked, if in a faint tone. She was shivering against the cold, what with her clothes shrugged away from the wound until it was tended. “I know the medicine, but not the fabric. What is that?”

“Silk. It doesn’t stick to burns.”

“Huh. Thanks.”

“It’s fine. We need you on your feet. Or on horseback, I guess.” Cassandra turned her head at the sound of approaching footsteps, and found herself looking up at the logger foreman.

“You together enough to show up again tomorrow, Badger?”

“It takes more than a pointy little stick to put me out of the fight,” the Ingvarrdian with a badger-headed sorcery dagger said dryly.

The foreman nodded at her, and turned to Cassandra. “You?”

“I’ll be there,” Cassandra told him calmly. “But this entire effort is too easy a target. The Scarlet Brigade’s tactics today were incredibly basic, and very nearly worked anyway. Tell your men to haul timber into the same place, all three teams, so that we only have to defend one location. And have them pile up excess branches in one place, too, so that it can at least pretend to offer some cover from archer volleys; if they can’t run for the woodpile, have them run for that. Whoever’s left of the contractors without horses, tell them to pair up—one with a shield, one with a bow—and stick together in those pairs while on the job, so that if we’re surprised again, they can try to shoot back at the Reds without dying immediately. It’s not a lot, but it’ll make our job much easier. Especially if we don’t get reinforcements to replace the contractors we lost today.”

The foreman grimaced at that, partway considering and partway scowling. “It’ll slow the work down, though.”

“Do you want your men quick or alive? Because you’ll have to pick one, at this rate.”

“Listen, if you have the strength to argue with me, saddle up again and get back to work.”

“Don’t mind him,” the Ingvarrdian scout said when the foreman walked away, even as she fixed her clothes back up over the now-dressed wound. “He can’t admit it when he’s wrong, but he’ll think over what you said and probably start doing it tomorrow.”

Cassandra sighed. “That’s what matters, I guess, even if he wants to be annoying about it.”

“Hey, you know what’s better? We’re getting paid half again the normal wage today.”

And they did, with Renée doling out hazard pay for skirmishing against the Scarlet Brigade in the Royal Equisian Guard’s employ without a hitch at sundown. Cassandra tucked the money into her pocket as she rode towards the bookstore. Twenty extra gold. As long as she spent no more than twenty gold, she would still shave a few days off the time necessary to save up for new boots.

She dismounted in front of a store with a sign carved into the shape of an open book, making sure to land on her good leg, but still had to lean against Fidella for a longer moment, and felt at the wound dressing tied overtop her trousers. It still held in place, thankfully, and didn’t seem to be soaking through again.

Snort, Fidella said with open concern.

“I’ll be alright. I’m not about to try walking very far, and indoors I can just lean against a wall.”

Snort, the mare said again, clarifying what she meant.

Cassandra stroked Fidella’s nose. “Well, you’re the one who can walk for us both, so I’d take that hit for you again any day. I’ll be right back.”

She limped into the store, where an elderly Kotoan man removed a pair of spectacles from his nose as he looked up at her with a smile. “Ah! Good evening! How may I be of service, milady?”

Cassandra blinked, and looked over her shoulder. She was the only customer in the store. Belatedly, she realized she must have been the person addressed, and lifted a withered finger at the bookseller. “Uh, not a lady.”

“Dame?”

“What? No.”

The bookseller cocked his head at her curiously. “Forgive me for having assumed, then. That kerchief you bear, it’s reminiscent of the way in which knight-errants of the Seven Kingdoms carry favours from their liege lords and ladies.”

“Yes, but—” Cassandra shook her head slightly. “I’m not blazoned or titled. It’s just Cassandra.”

“Very well, miss. What may I offer you?”

“I need ink to write with. Not something that’ll fade before the month is out, but not your most expensive, either.”

“Let’s see what we can do.” The bookseller reached under the counter, pulling out straw-padded cassettes stacked with squat little jars filled with inks of every colour under the sun. And while he was at it, Cassandra looked across the store.

Books were taking up an entire wall, indexed by theme as far as she could tell at a glance; most were printed, but a rare and expensive few had been copied by hand, and there were blank journals and notebooks for sale as well. Another section of the store held reams of paper and parchment of varying formats and finery, as well as paintbrushes and quill nibs fit for simple writing and calligraphy and more detailed scribing work like illuminating manuscripts, cartography, or drawing schematics for architecture or engineering. A locked display cabinet housed magnifying glasses of various size and strength; another open cassette on the countertop held sticks of sealing wax in various colours. And in-between, absolutely everywhere, were artworks done with pencils on paper: a griffincat and a hooded crow fighting over a rat carcass, a panorama of the riverbank and the three massive bridges that Riddersbrug had been built as fortifications around, a study of the gatehouse's knight statues back from before they had been defaced under Equisian rule.

Turning back to the inks, Cassandra decided on a reasonably priced dark blue. Then considered the omnipresent art pieces. She did need to get warmer boots. She really needed to. But Raps had asked what it was like where she was, last time she wrote, and Cassandra would never be poetic or descriptive enough to really tell her all of it.

“Do you have any sketches of the area that would fit inside a scroll case—” she lifted her hands to indicate the size of Owl’s backpack. “—about this large? The city, maybe the surrounding land?”

“Certainly. Here are some to look through,” the bookseller placed two heavy albums in front of her, one slightly smaller than the other, each leather page actually a stiff frame for a sheet of paper with another artwork. “These are eight gold apiece; these, five gold apiece.”

Leaning an elbow against the countertop to relieve her injured leg, Cassandra took her time flipping through the cheaper array of pencil pieces before choosing two, and tapped a finger against the more expensive album. “I can’t afford it at the moment, but when I can, would I be able to commission something like this from you? It doesn’t need to have separate pages, but I would like it to be as waterproof as at all possible, hopefully enough to shield letters and oils on paper from rainfall.”

The bookbinder smoothed two fingers down his goatee in a thoughtful gesture. “Yes, I’ve made such items to order before. It would cost you upwards of eighty gold, however.”

Cassandra nodded. “I’ll come back when I have that kind of money. These two pieces and the ink for now, please.”

Which left her with one gold piece left of the day’s extra pay, and she sighed after limping back out of the store. At least she didn’t actively set herself back on saving up for the necessity of getting herself new boots.

“Spare a silver, sir? Please? Ma’am, spare a silver?” she heard, and turned to see a desperate-looking Equisian who could have been anywhere between early twenties and late forties in the wan light of street lanterns, huffing into both shaking hands between holding them out to passersby—few and far between at this hour and in this cold. No sooner than she turned, the beggar looked up at her, and backed away a step, but held out their hands again. “Spare a silver, miss?”

Cassandra tossed the last gold coin of the day’s hazard pay to the beggar, and rode towards the tavern and the night’s stay in the stable. Hopefully the Scarlet Brigade would attack the logger teams again, she thought tiredly, and shook her head as she caught herself on that thought—on hoping for more pointless deaths among the contractors and danger to labourers who didn’t need any more than their work already came with.

Hoot, Owl asked.

“Just thinking about normal it feels for everything to be a mess,” Cassandra told him quietly. “Will you be good to start making your way towards Corona tonight?”

Hoot, Owl said, detailing what he thought about the prospect of leaving her behind while she was injured.

“Oh yeah? Great, then I don’t have to finish writing yet.”

So instead of write, she patched the hole in her trousers that the arrow had made, the stitches thoroughly unsatisfactory for having been made left-handed as Cassandra tried to limit her wither hand’s use to threading the needle and holding the fabric steady. Then the fourth day on contract came, and went by without event; the most interesting thing to happen had been that Cassandra noticed, true to the Ingvarrdian scout’s assessment, that the logger foreman had actually listened to what she’d told him to do. Then the fifth day came, and brought with it another skirmish with the Scarlet Brigade, repelled a little more easily and with fewer losses, and by that evening Cassandra did manage to complete writing.

“Listen, this is an easy task,” she told Owl before turning in for the night. “I’m not doing it alone, and even if I were, it wouldn’t end as poorly as the one I took before you came back the first time. It’s going to be weeks before you make it there and back again, and I don’t know how hard or easy a time I’ll have finding another job after this contract with the Guard is over. I don’t want to have to move too far before you’re back.”

Hoot, Owl agreed reluctantly.

“I’ll try to lodge in this building until you’re back. If that’s not possible... do you think you’ll be able to find me within the city, long as I'm not underground?”

Hoot, Owl confirmed easily.

“Hopefully I can stick to this side of the river, at least.” Cassandra packed Owl’s backpack, and put her forehead down to his for a moment before clasping the scroll case around him. “Fly safely.”

Hoot, Owl returned the sentiment, and flew off as she boosted him into the sky.

The moon grew full three nights after that, and as it waned again, Cassandra continued to show up every morning for the scouting and escort job with the logger teams. The Scarlet Brigade kept trying to harass them, attacking two or three times per week—eventually shooting down the fourth mounted scout and making off with his horse—but the contractors on foot were growing practiced in their defence of the loggers, as well, managing to repel the Reds each time, if with varying losses. And it seemed that there was no shortage of mercenaries searching for work in Riddersbrug, with such losses mitigated within three days’ time at the most. With the extra bit of gold for hazard pay, she’d finally gone to a shoemaker’s workshop one evening—and before the new moon started to wax across the sky, Cassandra could no longer measure time of day by loss of feeling in her feet. Not through thick cowhide boots that came up to mid-calf, each closing on a row of four metal buckles at the outer side and each with a steel cap over the toes for an added bit of protection and hardening a kick, worn overtop much warmer woollen socks than she’d had beforehand. And though the new weight took a few days of getting used to, and the new leather was going to chafe for a little longer until it creased enough to work with her feet, Cassandra couldn’t bring herself to consider those things a problem, not next to the perspective of no longer having to tie shoelaces with her withered, endlessly wracked with pain, dominant hand.

About two thirds into the time under contract, the Ingvarrdian scout sat next to Cassandra during the mid-day meal break, and handed the silken bandage back to her—washed and rolled up primly. “I’ve not forgotten that I have something of yours.”

“I haven’t, either. At least it saw some use,” Cassandra told her as she took the silk back. Her own leg had healed by now as well, only a bit of persistent ache remaining, not enough to cause a limp anymore.

“Hey,” the Ingvarrdian said, a touch awkwardly. “You got an inside pocket somewhere in that vest?”

“Yeah, why?”

The Ingvarrdian cleared her throat, and pulled a flat glass bottle from a chest pocket on the inner side of her own sheepskin coat. “There’s a Coronian brewery next to the northern shore’s contract board, red brick building with a paper lantern above the door. Thought it might give you a taste of home.”

Despite her surprise, Cassandra took the flask and sipped from it, if only to be polite. The beer was warm—though, at least it wasn’t frozen solid—but lighter than the local ales, and with a much stronger bitter aftertaste. Which immediately made it excellent, warm or no. “Thanks. It’s really good.”

The Ingvarrdian nodded at her.

“Why are they calling you Badger?” Cassandra asked after a moment.

The Ingvarrdian glanced at her with a bit of surprise of her own, now, evidently having seen them as even now and the matter as closed. Then she tapped a finger against her badger-headed sorcery dagger. “This, and I used to have badger fur gloves. Some fucker stole them off me while I was sleeping, though. I guess Badger’s easier to say for you southerners than my actual name, and I don’t give that much of a shit, better to be a fucking badger than hear your accents mangling my name one more time.”

“Southerners,” Cassandra repeated flatly, and indicated the snow-covered plain and thin forest around them. “Yeah, real tropics we’re in.”

Badger snorted at that. “Anyone who’s not Galcrestian is a southerner to me. Though, I see you finally started treating the winter seriously?”

“I had to save up first.” Cassandra rolled one of her booted feet to the side for emphasis. “Frost has been holding, but I’ve not noticed it getting worse, do you know when that’s supposed to happen?”

“Second month of the year. It’s really going to clench down, though, not very fun for the horses.” Badger glanced over her shoulder to the bareback, sheer black mare she usually rode. “She’s a southerner, too, I’m not that great on what I’m gonna do with her about the cold.”

“What’s her name?”

Badger shrugged. “Beats me, I found her with the previous rider’s leg still hanging from a stirrup.”

Before Cassandra could ask for elaboration on that, the foreman’s yelling let the contractors and the lumberjacks know that break time was over, and she took Badger’s offered hand with her left to be pulled to her feet. Both of them mounted up again, as did the Equisian scout, and everyone went back to work—whether with logging down more timber, or with making sure the loggers were watched over.

The short winter days grew ever shorter, little by little. And throughout, Cassandra didn’t have any more reason to talk with Badger than alert calls during this skirmish or that with the Scarlet Brigade, every other day—and slowly found herself growing thankful for that. She hadn’t expected the Ingvarrdian scout to start taking yields, not after the first fight she’d seen Badger in, but she hadn’t expected her casual brutality against the Reds to slowly keep growing with each skirmish, either. Or for that furious, bloodthirsty attitude to start seeping into her interactions with the foreman and the lumberjacks. But at least she kept fighting hard—and once the loggers’ work came to a close, so did the mercenary contracts each of them had signed with the Guard, and Cassandra didn’t have to deal with any of that for a moment longer if she didn’t want to.

What she did want to do, and had embarked upon on the first day that she didn’t have to begin at the southern city gate’s garrison, was to visit the Palace of Parchment again and commission that waterproof album to keep Rapunzel’s letters and paintings in. Once she arrived at the store’s door, however, she had to abruptly back away to avoid colliding with a few children barrelling out onto the street, laughing as they chased each other down. After making sure there was no stragglers lingering, she stomped the snow out of the soles of her boots and came inside, nodding at the proprietor.

She noticed there was a new oddity at the store’s countertop: a pocket-sized framed portrait that was gilded, rather than painted, of a man with a bushy gray beard reaching halfway down his chest and a golden nimbus around his head, and a plate stacked with small treats in front of it.

“Saint Jean,” the bookseller said warmly when he noticed Cassandra staring at the icon. “Patron of those like me, and all who work with the written word besides. Today is his feast day, so please feel free to help yourself.”

“What are these?”

“Saints’ bones. Not to worry, not actual bones, it’s a thin wafer piped full of sweet custard. Traditionally, we’d make them with a paste of ground almonds rather than a wafer, but, well. It’s not so easy to get almonds with an embargo on Kotoan trade.”

“I imagine it must be,” Cassandra admitted, and experimentally took one of the treats. It was sweet enough to make her feel like her mouth was going to break. “Are there many feast days over the Kotoan year?”

“Three or four per month, for the most part. Some have two, one over summer has as many as five. Saint Jean is the last one in the year, what with only four days left in it.”

Cassandra paused mid-bite at that. Four days to New Year’s Eve.

Her birthday had come and gone, a month ago, as forgotten by herself as it was unknown to those she now spent her days around. And that felt empty, even as in a small way, it felt right—the only thing that having a birthday meant was that she would be saying twenty-five now, rather than twenty-four, when asked how old she was. There was little, or indeed nothing, she had accomplished in these twenty-five years that another person couldn’t.

But at least, recently her quiet little hope that someday, being born could become an event worth celebrating, no longer rang with the desperation of a scream smothered before it could sound.

The bookseller cocked his head at her. “Something the matter, miss?”

“No, nothing. Time sure flies, huh?”

“That it does. I feel like I was nineteen yesterday, and then I wake up and my hair’s all white. When, pray tell, did that happen, and who permitted it to?”

Cassandra chuckled despite herself. “We don’t have saints in Corona. I apologize that I don’t know how to ask this question respectfully, but what are they... for? What do they do?”

“Well, they don’t do anything on their own, anymore, seeing as they’re dead,” the bookseller told her with a bit of amusement. “You see, miss, in times past it would happen, every now and then, that a Kotoan citizen would do such a great service to the Crown or its people in their time of need, the monarch elevated the person to sainthood after their passing, as an example for the rest of us to aspire to. We give our prayers to the saints in matters too trivial or too nebulous to ask the Crown’s officials and soldiers with; we ask our patrons to help us steel ourselves for the coming hardships or to watch over us as we walk the same paths they have trailblazed for us, and give thanks to them afterwards. Take my own patron, for example—Saint Jean was an Inquisitor of the Royal Office of such, a scholar of the Polymath Order to be exact. Much of Koto’s oldest history is penned in his hand, both the events he had witnessed across his lifetime and the recounting of earlier occurrences he had compiled from sources that predated his own life, sources now long since lost but for his telling. Those of us who work with the written word look up to him for inspiration, and we partake in his continued work each time we pen down another account, each time we bind or publish another book. I’ve heard some other trades pay homage to him, as well, such armourers and locksmiths—I imagine they draw the association between their trades and his own through a shared idea of safeguarding the well-being of others, although they do so in a sense of warding off thieves or injury while Saint Jean had protected the past from falling prey to the oblivion of being forgotten.”

“Is it common for a saint to have been an inquisitor in life?” Cassandra asked with a small frown.

“Oh, it is a requirement for the process of declaring one a saint. Mind, there are some instances of local saint veneration that aren’t expressly sanctioned by the Crown, and do not enjoy an official, kingdom-wide feast day. Such is the case with the Ice Saints, whose days mark the last ground frosts in the late spring, and begin the planting and sowing seasons. As such, it isn’t any wonder that many farmers observe their days, but they are not given separate names or the recognition of a royal mandate.”

“And these feast days, they’re celebrated on the anniversary of the saint’s birth? Death?”

“That varies quite widely. You see, during the canonization process, the life of such a saint-to-be is examined in detail before the findings are presented to the reigning monarch and distributed to the public—whether as a dry hagiographical text, or a novelization of sorts—and it is the Crown’s decision on when to mark the saint’s feast day. Oftentimes, it is marked on the anniversary of the chief deed that the saint had committed. So for those who hailed from the Tribunal Order, it can be the anniversary of their deaths, if that deed had cost them their life; such is the case with Saint Maurice, if I recall. But for those who came from the Hospital or Polymath orders, it isn’t uncommon at all to be celebrated on the anniversary of the day they had made an important discovery, or rendered a great service to another who would go forth to change the world, or prevented a catastrophe of some description.”

“I see,” Cassandra said slowly. “It does sound like these saints are quite the cornerstone of Kotoan culture.”

What a versatile tool of statecraft they were besides, she thought to herself silently, as impressed as she was distraught by their existence: sworn servants of the Crown leashed into advancing its interests even beyond death. And that didn’t even touch on the heavenly mandate of the Royal Kotoan Office of the Inquisition’s origin legend, that of four angels having descended from the heavens themselves to serve the first King of Koto by founding the Inquisition, and of how mortal citizens have continued their work ever since. Or on the function of convents and monastic orders, dotting the provinces where the Inquisition’s own reach was stretched too thin, due to a scarcity of personnel or resources.

With the exact measurements of a reasonably waterproof letter album taken off the sheets of paper that Raps sent her letters and paintings on—specifically, from the piece showing the cityscape of Castle Corona, for how non-descript it would be even when shown to a clearly well-read elderly gentleman—and the price agreed upon, fifty gold upfront and fifty upon completion, Cassandra bid the bookseller goodbye and went back to Fidella, who was still waiting outside.

Snort, the mare remarked.

“I’m not 'in a mood', I’m thinking we need to find work again,” Cassandra grumbled as she climbed into the saddle. “Let’s go look for that contract board across the river.”

Days shy of New Year’s Eve, and only strangers to spend it with. Hopefully Owl had landed in Castle Corona by now, at least.